The Internet is revolutionizing the way we learn, communicate, meet, interact, do business, the way we spend our time, our sleep, in short, the way we live.
Its impact is far from having peaked and has futurists deliberating on exactly where it’s taking humanity. The networked online life has, in its relatively brief history provided unparalleled change of a revolutionary nature mostly benefiting humanity, but it’s not that simple.
Its impact is far from having peaked and has futurists deliberating on exactly where it’s taking humanity. The networked online life has, in its relatively brief history provided unparalleled change of a revolutionary nature mostly benefiting humanity, but it’s not that simple.
We may multitask more but that does not necessarily mean more productivity nor smartness. Some would argue the Web is dumbing us down in our quest to seek instant answers to just about anything life throws at us. Consider how often young people use spare or “dead-time” compared to yesteryear. Read a book? Thankfully many still do, but many more prefer to surf aimlessly or otherwise immerse themselves in social media and its imaginary acquaintances commonly termed, online friends.
The simple impacts include the demise of telegrams, its influence on politics and political campaigns, it’s becoming our first port of call when sick, it’s giving many a form of false celebrity status, its killed phone books, road maps and relationships. Do wrist watches still serve any functional purpose? Will kitchens survive? Think Ubereats. Meeting people at bars, clubs or parks (imagine that) poof. Music discovery has become a thing of the past, in its place algorithms in apps such as Spotify to curate the songs and genres you or they want you, to like. Entertainment in terms of television (remember that word?) and movies are available whenever and wherever we want.
The internet is having a homogenizing effect far greater than cheap airline travel and killing languages, consider that little of the world's 7000+ languages and dialects have migrated across to the web. Encyclopedias and reference books are out, even Britannica is out of print. Privacy is all but dead, try as you might to remain anonymous.
Recall the days when Web pages were nothing but a bunch of words with scattered hyperlinks? That was Web 1.0 seemingly a lifetime ago and yet Web 2.0, denoting websites that emphasize user-generated content, usability, and interoperability for end users, is only around 16-18 years old depending on your source. What will Web 3.0 bring? Is it already upon us? Some say yes. And what role will Artificial Intelligence play in its emergence?
Combined with globalization, the internet is already changing us not merely as individuals but in terms of cultural identity. Previously understood models of space, time and distance are being turned upside-down. Cultural globalization, for better or worse is upon us and raises an important question for humanity. Considering its profound influence, has the internet and all it encompasses become more than a technology? Will social science practitioners soon refer to it as a kind of cultural artifact that emerged in the late twentieth and early twenty first century?
In the face of rapid exponential adjustment, the perpetual fusion - immersion if you will - of a future internet in our lives and, the way in which it may blur online life as opposed to real life, make it nigh impossible to foretell what our lives will look like, even in as little as 30 years. It would not be unrealistic to suggest that attempts at forecasting likely changes in around 50 to 100 years would render common folk and, perhaps even current day experts, incoherent. If you doubt me, consider how often we hear the term social media today; "social media" as we know it did not exist just 10 years ago.
In the film Her, Theodore has a relationship with an Operating System.
I would argue that the future will brim with opportunity and benefit, but we must begin deliberating upon the potential harmful impacts awaiting humankind and whether we must ever confront challenges of the kind put forward by proponents of dystopia and whether we will ever have to deal with that, “hypothetical instant in time when artificial intelligence and other technologies have become so advanced that humanity undergoes a dramatic and irreversible change” – the singularity moment.
Further reading:
5 Movies that Explain the Concept of Singularity
Feel free to leave a comment:By 2030 we may find ourselves in an #InternetOfActions world where billions of autonomous machines will use interoperable data to manipulate matter, orchestrate human activity and alter how we perceive the world. Hearing from the experts @Telstra #TelstraLabs tonight #IOT #ethics pic.twitter.com/rZPw4hXJBB— Madeleine Grummet (@MadsGrummet) July 18, 2018
