One portal to the entire world…
Consider the following scenario: sometime in the future, everything will be in digital format. Nothing will be printed at all -not your bills, not your contracts, nothing. Sometime in the near future, you won’t store anything on your own computer either. Your music collection, your pictures, your “newspaper”, your personal library -all of it will live in its own personal home in the Cloud.
Imagine carrying all of your personal information -absolutely EVERYTHING- in the palm of your hand or in your pocket and only needing a single passcode and ID to access it.
You take out your smartphone, open the main application, and enter your login information. One main login for everything. Your bank account is there, your mortgage contracts are there, every possible piece of information for your entire academic history is there (transcripts, records, report cards, term papers, etc), your travel history, your credit report, your personal library, your music collection, EVERYTHING. You take a class and the instructor uploads the class information. You automatically have it upon coming online. You don’t go to website and put in special login information to gain access to it. What if you only need a single ID and passcode to access all of this instead of fifty million different passwords that you somehow have to keep track of? Or what if there’s a built-in application that magically remembers every single password and instantly logs on to all the applications all at the same time, upon powering up?
Maybe Google and Apple have teamed up to make this happen. Maybe the government fits in here some place. Maybe not. With everything moving toward efficiency -mobile devices that serve as stereos, computers, phones, cameras, calendars, address books, televisions, and more- this notion can’t really be that far off. Do we trust whoever decides to put this into motion? Should we? Should we embrace the technology when it comes about or all vow to become Luddites?
Think about it -information is power and whoever has control over the information has power over the masses.
Organic vs Conventional
I’m not talking about the choice in produce at your local supermarket… I’m talking about the fact that technological algorithms have circumvented the organic search and discover process when it comes to nearly everything and anything. Earlier this month, I posted about Twitter’s new “Who to Follow” feature and the fact that I was so disappointed in it -not so much because of the feature’s functionality, but rather due to its very existence and implementation at all. Don’t get me wrong, the notion of suggestive “selling” has been around for a long time -it’s not something brand new or prolific on a fundamental level. However, never before has its status been so elevated to steroid-fed proportions.
Suggestive marketing used to be limited to actual sales of something -services and products. Today, it applies to the “sale” of anything -whether it be a service, a product, a process, a patent (which itself has become something of a product versus a document), a public persona, or even a virtual byway to information, i.e. a hyperlink/profile for “_____” that may provide you with data that may be of interest. Dozens of internet-based services and platforms offer the “Recommended” feature in one shape or form and it’s all based on the accessibility of one’s matrix of contacts, our contacts’ networks, and your historical action with the platform. Beyond the basic suggestions of people to follow, these platforms have added a certain level of “credibility” to their tips by letting you know that someone in your circle knows this person, follows this user, bought this item, and so on. It’s believable that most people will default to referrals from those who make up their inner posse when it comes to most things in life, which is why this line of thinking works. I call this flavor of information exchange conventional because it relies on your trust in someone else versus finding out for yourself -much like seeing pictures of Michelangelo’s David in a book or online versus going to Firenze, Italy and seeing it for yourself.
For me, organic means fumbling around through the trenches yourself. Maybe you hit a restaurant that you end up hating or fall in love with an author whose book you found smashed in a bargain bin at the used bookstore downtown or you legitimately make a new friend at the park after crashing his picnic with his dog or you find a new band because they were the opening act for the Manic Street Preachers -versus checking Yelp to make sure the restaurant is for certain going to be good, reading every single review on Amazon of the #5 book on the NYT Best Seller List, or going off what Clear Channel decides is the band of the moment. I’m not saying that the online options can’t be organic either -go pilfer through some random user’s library on Last.fm or Goodreads or perform a hashtag search on Twitter to find a cool new person to follow. Organic means “derived from living matter” and when it comes to the process of search and discover, your adventure comes from actual living versus existing or passively participating!
So which is better? Which is worse? Organic or conventional? I think that both have their merits, but perhaps we should all pay attention to how much of the newly conventional suggestive “selling” we are buying into and make a point of getting our daily dose of organic adventure -no matter where it takes us.
Google and New Imperialism
Sometimes it seems that Google is simply a cutesy version of the government with their endless supply of information and their simultaneously endless and ubiquitous supply of funds, which appear to be used for a new acquisition every other week -roughly eighteen this year alone. I mean, seriously, where do they get all of this money? Is this the new, shiny, modern version of imperialism for the 21st century? Instead of racing to take over as many countries as possible, it’s, “Let’s see how many companies we can acquire and add to our media empire!” Google can be the government, Apple can be The Church with Steve Jobs as the Pope and Silcon Valley the new version of Rome, and Facebook is some off-kilter version of the phonebook on steroids.
It begs to note, however, that Google has become the primary information medium. Yes, it’s thorough, but can the lens of Google be entirely trusted? Should it be trusted? Traditional imperialism was about conquering the world through the procurement of land, which led to the concept of certain nations as “world powers”. If Google serves as the example of new imperialism, what does that mean for the classic definitions of government, community, and communication? Information equals power, so what kind of power does that yield for the chief supplier of such knowledge?
*Personally, I’d be interested in what happens to all this Facebook data when Facebook pulls a Friendster and naturally implodes in another five years or so. By 2016, there oughta be room for all that stuff on a single Chinese thumbdrive.
I love Bruce Sterling.
Facebook backlash time | Beyond The Beyond
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Are we losing that sense of human connection?
Today we have all sorts of ways to keep contact with the people in our lives -both active and passive ways that no longer require that sense of human touch. Email has gradually replaced letters sent via post. The 10-Year High School Reunion has been rendered somewhat obsolete because we now have Facebook, where people update what’s going on in their lives on a daily basis –from what they ate for breakfast to what their kid threw up to whether or not they’re 1)Single, 2)Married, or 3)Looking for Random Play. You may or may not want to know what the Prom Queen is doing with her life, but she can still look you up and request to be your friend now –even if she hated you back when you were 17. Your LinkedIn profile with its list of “Connections” somehow socially dictates whether you have been successful in business or not and sometimes it acts only as an online black book for all of your professional contacts. LinkedIn is essentially your Rolodex, but online and complete with pictures.
Notes passed around class were replaced with text messaging and now, text messaging is being replaced by Twitter, the ever-expanding ecosystem of Twitter, and the world of mobile device apps such as Foursquare, where you can let the whole world know how many times you’ve been to the Pink Elephant in NYC and if you’re there right now. Even voicemail, which replaced physical answering machines what seems to be a million years ago, has been edged out via software programs such as Google Voice & Phonetag –whereby your voicemail is transcribed and sent to your email. With the increase in communication methods, the simplification of communication that has birthed unnecessary, over-communication in order to somehow make evident how small the world is becoming, to bridge the gap in communities and cultures, to decrease the digital divide that once cloaked parts of the world in darkness, I can’t help but wonder if we’ve lost sight of the whole pointed of being “connected”. If we merely spend all of our time in front of screens –whether they be our computer screens or mobile device screens- is that “I’m in like with you” lost in translation? If the only evidence of our existence is numbers and code lost in The Cloud, do we really exist at all?
Is it necessary to document every last minute of our lives? Do we really need any more proof of living that our own experience of it?
For this new generation born in the flood of new media and the change that is crushing old boundaries everyday, it should be their one mission to not only remain connected, but also to do so in manners that are genuine, sincere, and meaningful. Productivity hacks and tools all have their place, but when bigger/faster/stronger/cheaper sacrifices the soul of any activity they are nothing short of modes for addiction… Of course, who’s to say that sending out mass holiday cards via Twitter or whatever platform is available in twenty years won’t be as fulfilling?
