I was really blown away by Kevin Kelly's thoughts on the next 5000 days of the internet. His words prompted a lot of reflection about where we are now, and where we will be.
The photo of the man with the cell phone rubber-banded to his head made me giggle, but in reality, isn't that where we're headed? As devices, or "portals into the one machine", as Mr. Kelly calls them, get smaller and more portable, there will be no reason to disconnect from a device for any reason.
Right now, when I log into Facebook, I see a sidebar of people and pages I might know and like, based on my current and likes and friends. Amazon and Netflix also display things that I might enjoy, based on previous purchases or rentals. Isn't it a natural extension of that to anticipate that the cloud will monitor all my habits to anticipate my preferences? Will my screen automatically redirect to Burlington Free Press at 12:00 PM, because I usually scan the paper while I eat lunch at my desk?
Early on in the discussion, Mr. Kelly mentioned artifacts in a casual way, referring again to our various portable devices. That word triggered a revelation for me. Right now, the majority of our culture exists in bits and bytes, not tangible artifacts. We can look back at the pots and tools and structures of an earlier time, and begin to form a picture of how people lived, and what their lives were like. For us, almost all of that will be electronic. In one hundred years, someone could find my computer and phone, but without the electronic media that those devices capture, they could not understand me and my cloud, which I illustrated last week. How will we preserve the anachronisms of "now" when it can be erased or dissolved in a flash?
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Hi Laurie,
ReplyDeleteAn interesting thought of how without the technology, our information isn't available to others. The implications of that for history could be problematic in a disaster scenario.
Bernice