The future is ours to see 3

Let’s talk about communication…

It is a general believe that Internet, and especially Social Media, are instruments to enlarge world wide communication. Mankind never assumed a bigger mistake. Since the mid nineties we were offered an amount of tools through which we can broadcast our selves, show-off, if you like, but interaction, in fact, is very poor. Basically Internet tools are developed for a wider range of commercializing, and all too often mistaken for communication.

The base for communication is interaction between two or more individuals. They react on each others needs and expression: words, sounds and images. This is where misunderstanding begins: Internet in general is about up~ and downloading the same issues: words, sounds and images, however, with an enormous lack of interaction.

If we would behave in a room filled with people, like we do on the Net, that room would empty in no time. Imagine individuals expressing them selves without listening or looking at others.

Internet is an invention which could only happen in times where individualization is the main goal for almost all of us. It would not work in a small village where people sit and talk in front of their houses after working hours. Those people would be too busy communicating to go inside and lock them selves up in front of a machine. The invention of the www was possible, because communication was already fading.

Communication, a basic need for humans, has slowly slipped into a false interaction of pimping up our needs. The world of commerce took over, and this had nothing to do with the launch of the Internet. This slowly slipping started with globalization and industrialization, and the electronic highway became nothing more then a logical follow-up in this process. When people complain in their own private environment about a lack of attention, it is not the computer or Internet to blame. This disinterest in the others needs lies far beyond, or better: before, the electronic possibilities of today. We, as people, are loosing the abilities of communication, and convert them into slogans as a form of expression, and ego focusing. Why? -  Because we interact on, and copy the media around us.

The biggest disease mankind is suffering is the commercial rat-race, which let us believe that no happiness, or even humanity, is possible, without gathering more and better, but see – the opposite happens. Global crisis, a decrease of poverty, more unhealthy people… The question is: can Internet change this?

Internet, or what comes next, will grow, not only in volume or reach, but as a medium that will replace the way the world is ruled today. The www is the monster that kills commerce. The signs are already all over: the illegal download of music, films, software, hacking of enterprises and governmental institutions…, still a minority today, which can be dealt with. The losses are high, but can be overcome. No one realizes that this way of interaction is just over 15 years old, and the damage done is already many billions, and increasing… What the business-world still does not understand is that our economic system is not build for the Internet, that globalization in terms of the G20 is a farce. There are no borders anymore, and warriors are no longer men-with-guns, ruled by a government, but everyday-people-with-mobile-phones. That is today and changing fast.

Members of a young generation become billionaire’s over-night, while other members of that same generation use the same field as their playground for free, is as eating from two different sides: the first still limping on old values, the second showing the way to the future. Today the alleys and bushes of the Net are filled with Robin Hoods’, calling them selves “ethical hackers”, those who show others the lacks and gaps of the electronic highway. They hide the future in side, because Internet in itself does not belong to anyone, which means that it is truly free, and no act can change that. Men invented their worst nightmare: the killing-machine of the world today’s systems…

…to be continued…

The future is ours to see 2

From a historical view, it is a dangerous path we are going today. The wired connections we are facing, but do not see, is like an enormous city of alleys: narrow and dark. At least for most of us! There are some individuals, which are generally addressed as Nerds, who can shine their light on a doorstep or portal, now and then. They understand the techniques, but not what can be done with it.

No one invented or developed the Net to hide and seek, however an unknown amount of bytes and bits are used for it today. The average terrorist or child-pornographer does not have the skills, in spite of the fact that they work and play in the dark back-alleys, where even the geeks among us have trouble to enter.

Internet is not so much an electronic highway, as well a mathematical one, by which I mean: it is not about the way of transport, but about the vehicle that carries what we send.

Mathematics is endless. It won’t ever stop. Two parallel lines always cross in infinity, is a mathematical rule, but no one knows what infinity really means. It can be calculated, we even have a symbol for it, but it can’t be seen, and predictions which cannot be verified the hard way, are at least disputable… Infinity is, in a certain matter, the end of mathematics, but when we reach it, it won’t be infinity anymore. That’s the trouble with our glorified electronic highway. We see the wires and can tell how much cable is needed to connect every individual on this world, but we cannot foresee what transportation possibilities lye ahead. And it is not only transport in disguise…

When people hide something, it is never about hiding, but always about that “something”. Hiding itself, the way of transport, is not the goal. It’s all about the package within, which can be encrypted to make it even more difficult to find.

The world is changing, hasn’t really changed yet, because what is happening on the Internet, is still to much a copy of the hardware we know since mankind exists. I write this by hand, not just thinking and it appears. It is materializing in front of me on a white-sheet-look-a-like, and I will send and publish it in a very similar way, even if I do not have to walk to the post office anymore. The game we play is still the same, nothing has changed. Life has become easier, in a matter of speaking… But is that so?

Mankind always played hide and seek, as long as we exist, but we never had so many alleys and bushes to go for. Infinity could be nearer then we think, or believe, because the numerous ways of traveling this highway are literally endless, and won’t ever stop as long as we are here…

…to be continued…

The future is ours to see 1

It is human to predict the future. It is also human not to believe in these predictions, but nevertheless it’s not so hard to foresee what is coming.

Since the Internet we experience the prologue of a brand new world, which, for most of us, is still hard to understand. We believe that things are going fast, to fast for a lot, but is this really so?

In spite of applications like Facebook or Twitter, the new medium didn’t change a lot. These hot items of today are nothing more then a globalization of what already existed. Where we are involved in now is nothing more then a wide spread school magazine, with personal stories and pictures of ourselves. Is this the ultimate of what Internet has to offer?

The answer is YES! At least if the medium itself doesn’t evolve. Internet today is just a bunch of connected machines which allow us to share sounds and images: a picture postcard of were we live, an expression of how we feel… It’s new that we basically can connect from almost every location in real time, and because it is new, we think of it as hot. In the past people had to travel, today we switch the button, and like to believe that it is the same, that we are really connected within a distance of half the globe.

There is, however, a major difference. What we express in our homes, we can freely do, because of the fact that those who we are expressing to, are not in front of us. We are still in the stadium that machines addressing machines, in stead of humans communicating.

One can argue that Internet allows world wide communication, and in a certain way this is true, but with the ability restrictions of the user.

In spite of all apps, most users today are unable to express or communicate the same way as they would in their own pre Internet environment. And that is were the future changes will be.

Internet is just the beginning of a narrower world where distance and know-how of techniques still make the difference. It still is a divided world with more walls then the middle ages ever saw. The individual in his cabin, facing the wall of his provider who can cut him loose if he doesn’t pay, or express him selves in a way the lordship doesn’t like. For the avarice user there is no way around. He has to obey the rules and regulations, but that will change…

Like the downfall of the music industry after the Napster war, in future the bricks of the protecting walls will collapse in every area as we know it. Not because of a www and the difficulties of global regulations, but because of expanding knowledge and simpler techniques, available to everyone. An ongoing development which is called evolution, gave power in the past to those who were physical strong, later to those who had access to materials, and today to the ones who have the knowledge skills. The evaluation is not hard to see. Even this fetus, the Internet truly is, gives access to all the knowledge an individual can dream of, which means that knowledge in future won’t be a reason for power anymore. Power as an expression for the individual ruling a group will disappear, which struggle we already see today. The next stage will be a true and worldwide anarchy. The question is, because of this, if mankind will survive or disappear as a victim of his own success…

… to be continued …