Are we there yet?, are we there yet?, are we there yet?…
From this weekend’s bout of internet trolling that gives me something to think about for the subsequent week, I stumbled on the above video: “Did You Know 3.0″ by Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod. As both a professional working in digital media and a student who has studied the media and communications in the past, it definitely puts some perspective on this whole “internet thing”. Looking back on how the internet has come and integrated into my life makes me wonder. I remember my first computer was a family-shared, Pentium 200mhz MMX with a 10 GB hard drive that I got about ten years ago. The internet, back then, was mostly a place for me to instant message friends and toy around with “new” technologies like forums, newsgroups, and IRC. And oh, the dialup. I swear, if I had a dollar for everytime someone in the house picked up the phone in the middle of an “important download at 2.3kb”…
What struck me, though, was the speed with which the personal computer matured and got better, much better it seemed every week. I can recall meticulously going through the Sunday paper for the latest deals on high-tech gadgetry (it was fun to imagine purchasing a Panasonic 3DO or WebTV with lawn mowing money) and noting how every week Best Buy and Circuit City were offering computers that not only got better with more RAM and higher-resolution video cards, but cheaper. This trend of “Better, Faster, Stronger” (to take a line from some of my favorite French audiophiles) seems to have no end, especially when I drool over Apple’s slick new MacBook and iPhone, hardware that has become two thirds cheaper in just over a year since launch.
So technology is getting better, allowing for more information to be processed and sent. But at what cost? Are we all destined to become hard-drives made of flesh and bone, eternally connected to this centralized virtual hub that allows us to meet new people, exchange ideas, read news, and buy things? I’m not quite sure. To contrast Robert Scoble’s argument for increased productivity, I am interested (and somewhat of a believer) in information overload, the idea that digital potential far outweighs what the human mind is capable of processing. Contrast this concept with today’s unlimited flow of information exchange in the form of blogs, social networks, links, and mainstream content and I’m curious to see what effect all these online conversations will have on our next generation. Will they be good public speakers? Will they be able to handle themselves well in daily, face-to-face communication?
As for myself, I don’t subscribe to every RSS feed under the sun and don’t Twitter what I eat for lunch. I think the next step is balance, not capability. We already know what is possible; let’s at least entertain the idea of thinking about what is useful and what is arbitrary.
Tags: information overload
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