Today the Web is 6,628 days old. That number may not be completely correct, but I’m pretty sure I did my math right.
The PEW surveys focused on growth. There's the "Growth of Internet Usage by Gender" line chart and the "HOW USE OF THE INTERNET HAS GROWN" bar chart, but Pew fails to consider how much the internet itself has grown.
According to Kevin Kelly's video on the web at 5,000 days old (this video is 20 minutes long..=/), the Internet started out as the net (linking computers), then the web (linking pages), and will finally become "the One" (linking data). The Internet is growing at an extremely fast rate. You could compare the number of links to the number of synapses in your brain. And the Web to a single human brain...but your brain isn't doubling in size every 2 years. (cue dramatic DUN DUN DUNNNNNN)
Although the Pew survey offered an extremely high percentage of people globally who use the internet, this information is about 5 years old. Internet usage has only grown since then, especially with the introduction of the Iphone in 2007. How did anyone live without those portable little windows to the Internet? Hasn't anyone seen Eagle Eye???? *SPOILER ALERT* The phones and handhelds and telephone lines and the computers are all connected to the Internet. That's how the computer "lady" who lives in the Internet kills people!!!
Yes, the idea of the Internet using its information and unlimited access to everything to kill people sounds a little, ok extremely, far-fetched. As well as Kelly's closing remarks about the future of the web, "There is only one machine. The web is its OS. All screens look into the one. No bits will live outside the web. To share is to gain. Let the one read it. The one is us."
It sounds like some sort of cult that only people who swear by being abducted would join.
But who really could have possibly imagined that Skype would exist, and I could watch my brother blow out his candles on his 10th birthday while sitting in my dorm room? Who ever would have thought of Wikipedia? Seriously. But, in the past 6,628 days, it's all happened. We can't even imagine the next 6,628 days. Kelly predicts that the Internet is becoming an organism, and in a way, it is.
So, I'm not really concerned with the government being the one on the other side of my webcam. I'm more worried about a thing that has access to all my Google searches and facebook conversations....that's just plain scary.
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So I saw Eagle Eye, and yes it is scary to think that something as terrible as that could happen! When you think about it, all the information on the internet has to go somewhere. Who has access to the entire internet and all the little cookies that continually follow us around knowing with every click of a mouse what we are doing? Again, as we have been saying with every topic, with good comes bad and "with great power comes great responsibility" (to quote Spiderman). So it seems to me that if we use common sense and good moral judgment we should be safe from the internet haunting us, but then again what is stopping the internet itself from rising up as an "organism" as Sydney said? I do not forsee a catastrophe such as this in the near future actually occurring, but then again I am not a computer/internet expert and there are some people with twisted and deranged minds who probable are probably much more computer savvy than I am. I would say that I hope that I could have more faith in humankind to not abuse the powers of the internet, but I do not think I could make such a statement without knowing how naive it truly is.
ReplyDeleteWe're living in a world of bad science-fiction. Movies that used to be far-fetched and fanciful are quickly becoming common, accepted reality. We can predict the weather, connect A/V with people hundreds of thousands of miles away, and receive masses of data with a simple click of the mouse. Cell phones, internet connections, and virtual-reality are just a standard of living in America. Science is making remarkable advances, and it's truly amazing how quickly technology has progressed. However my fear is that someday we'll look back and say (to paraphrase the character Dr. Ian Malcolm in "Jurassic Park") we got so caught up in the fact that we could, that we didn't stop to think if we should. The worlds of once far-fetched novels like George Orwell's 1984 or Ayn Rand's Anthem are creeping ever closer. I’m not trying to claim that technology in itself is evil, or that it’s going to grow little computer hands and strangle us all in our sleep. Rather, I’d like to suggest that we start to unplug before it gets to that point.
ReplyDeleteI, for one, welcome our new robot overlords!
ReplyDeleteNo, just kidding. The quantity of the accumulation of information in our time can sometimes seem rather frightening. To think that the average 18th century person saw less information in their entire life than the amount contained in one edition of the New York Times is sheerly mind-boggling. And with the rapid expansion of anything usually comes the rapid expansion of fear and misunderstanding. However, just like those enlightenment thinkers before us who learned to cope with the world becoming more and more integrated by the raw power of communication, I think our society will only improve (on the whole) from an expansion such as this. Orwell and Shia are right to fear that the information that is collected from them could be used against them- but these are dramatized worst case scenarios. The truth is, the more easily collected information is, the easier it is to track down who has collected it, why, and warn others about it. We, as internet going citizens, are more cognizant of the value and use of our own information than any other human beings ever. To think that one entity (be it HAL or Skynet) will somehow be able to exploit everyone who has ever used modern technology is preposterous without someone at least finding out about it. So keep in mind that as the internet and other modern communication evolves, we as the users and proponents of the technology will evolve to become more equipped to handle it.
I agree with Chris. No matter how much we distrust the proliferation of technology in the modern world, technology is slowly (actually it's outrageously quickly) seeping into just about every facet of our lives. The important thing is that we protect ourselves from the misuse of technology, take advantage of the benefits, and adapt to technology's ever-changing landscape. I think about my great grandma, who's still alive today. She's lived through the debut of radio, tv, cell phones, the pc, AND the internet. And she has a cell phone, watches tv, listens to the radio, and (okay, she needs my grandpa to help her navigate the pages) surfs the web. I can't imagine how many technological advances I'll live through in my lifetime, but I realize that I can't get bogged down by the amount of change. Instead, I just need to be flexible, like my great grandma! That's not to say you shouldn't be concerned about the presence of overly-intrusive technology in your life. But I think it's important that in the face of modern day technology, you can run, but you can't hide. Well... Mostly...
ReplyDeleteCooper advocates that we take the good and leave the bad; or rather, protect ourselves from the bad. This principle applies to almost everything in life and I whole-heartedly agree with him. However, most everything in life is a lot more easily controlled by commoners, such as you and I, than the internet. There is a video that probably most of you know about on youtube called "did you know; shift happens." In this video, there is a statistic that by 2020 a $1000 computer will surpass the computational capabilities of the human brain. In 2008 100 million lap-tops were shipped and maybe 2 billion will be shipped in 2020. Now imagine the impact of these computers that surpass Einstein in their ability to "think" individually. Now imagine that they are all bonded together by the portal we call the internet. The capabilities of their raw producing power is immeasureable. Computers will be able to do more than the entire human race. Intelligence means more than physical strength any day, and these computers possess greater intelligence than the entire human race can even comprehend. Every instance of our lives will be controlled by a learning machine. Humans will lose their power as intelligent beings on earth. Compared to these new creations we are poultry...and we are on the grill.
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