The Wonderful Blog Which You ve Never Seen

Every night, while we sleep, new technology is being added to our world. While that may be a good thing, it seems to make less sense and we have less time to figure it out. In this demanding life, there are so many paradoxes; it is easy to see why life does not make sense sometimes. We are adding years to our lives rather than life to our years! There is more spending, more ’stuff’, but less enjoyment; more medicine and less wellness; nicer, bigger homes but broken families; cleaner air but polluted souls; concern about outer space but not inner space; we are learning to rush instead of wait; we have more knowledge but less judgment; more degrees but less sense.

Ironically, the great information highway of all time is a paradox in itself; the Internet. The highways add more lanes and wider versions, but communications are breaking down everywhere. I saw a short quote this week describing the Internet as, “social technology that reduces social involvement.” That could become a whole topic of controversy, depending on what side of that highway you are on.
The integration of the Internet into our lives is about as monumental to our world as the invention of television. The big difference is that television brought the outside world to our homes, while the Net takes us into the world of no boundaries. Here lies another interesting paradox; people accessing the Internet can express his or her individualism while being so much a part of whatever net community they are drawn to. We all strive for the right to privacy but once you click on, you pretty much put your privacy at the mercy of anyone on the web. While there is plenty of reliable, and educational, information on-line, there is also plenty of misinformation as well as sick individuals out there inputting the negative junk that we have to screen and filter. It makes me think of the ‘good, the bad and the ugly’ scenario.

It is a revolution of sorts, things are guaranteed to change, and it is a matter of choice whether we adapt to that change or not. Everyone must find his or her own comfort zone. I find myself stuck in the ‘midlife’ stage of cyber years. I often get lost in space in more ways than one, as my kids would attest to! When I was going to school, space was where the planets and the universe were. Now, it seems to me that this space has been invaded, not by aliens but by information and digitization.

Back in 1995, Bill Gates started his Microsoft campaign with, “where do you want to go today?” That was the beginning of a phenomenal change in how people would think. Search engines and a mouse at our fingertips would replace encyclopedias, paper, and pens. You can shop, gamble, chat, date, bank, counsel, research, and send instant mail messages as you see the person at the other end. On the less positive side of that, there is a decline in the interaction of family members, as well as decline in social circles, but an incline in loneliness and depression.

So, how does one explain the Net world or Cyberspace? What will the future hold? We know not, but what we can be sure of is that the Net will one day have to adapt to change, just as the people who support them have. I am also sure that we will continue Living in Paradox, but nothing can ever replace reading and holding a newspaper in one hand, coffee in the other, across from a real person. Nothing will ever replace a reading a good book, watching an old movie or having a real life visit with people you love. To all you Web-sters out there, remember that not everything new is better, so keep your options open in case ‘the net goes down’!

Tags: internet, society, technologyinternet, society, technology

Share This

No Comments »

It has recently been announced that VCR’s are obsolete and several electrical chain stores have said that they will no longer stock them. This seemed to happen very suddenly, there is usually a build up to this sort of announcement and we are accustomed to things being gradually phased out. Not this time though, the news just burst upon us and people who have not yet become comfortable with DVD technology are in a panic.

It seemed to me that the VCR had not been around for very long. I could understand this sudden rush on the part of the stores to remove it from their shelves if it was a failed experiment but the VCR has been a monster success. I suppose this is just an example of how the rush towards obsolescence and replacement with new inventions has speeded up.

I don’t have a problem with using a DVD recorder and the discs certainly take up much less storage space than the big old video tapes. It just made me feel suddenly old. No, not quite that, more as if I should be feeling older than I do. Don’t get me wrong, I am not all that ancient (baby boomer if you would care to know), but I have a problem with getting old. The problem is that I never feel any older and the face I see in the mirror sometimes takes me by surprise because in my mind I am still about nineteen. My children are no doubt thankful that my youth remains in my head and is not reflected in my wardrobe or social habits.

When I was a child, the VCR was still waiting around for someone to come along and invent it. Suddenly, it has been invented, been scaled down to a quarter of its original size and is now well on the way to disappearing altogether. The meteoric career of the VCR started me thinking about how many other things which we take for granted did not exist or were too expensive to be owned by the average person when I was a child.

Other generations have experienced massive events and social change. Nothing I have lived through can compare to the two World Wars. There was the invention of the National Health Service, the discovery of penicillin, the industrial revolution, the first aircraft, nylon. If you want to go back further there was the invention of the wheel and discovering how to make fire but I feel as if my generation must have seen a larger number of changes (great and small) than any previous one.

So much has happened within my lifespan: scientific inventions, historical events and cultural changes. Some, like space travel and the internet, are momentous. Some, like motorways, are part blessing and part curse. Some, like the cell phone and everyone owning a fridge, we don’t even notice as being progress because nobody thinks about it. I doubt many people spend time reflecting upon the fact that, a few years ago, the cell phone was the size and weight of a house-brick and needed a long aerial.

The internet has made possible all the mad scientist dreams which inspired the writing of many shelves of fiction. We are now quite blas

Tags: changes, internet, inventions, progress, science, scientists, society, VCRchanges, internet, inventions, progress, science, scientists, society, VCR

Share This

No Comments »

It’s interesting to consider the ways in which the computer and the Internet have changed our lives. Tasks that once required visiting certain locations and interacting with specific people, such as booking a holiday or accessing your bank account can now be performed online. Often when you do go somewhere to talk to an assistant they end up performing the task online in the same way you could have done yourself.

Online banking intrigues me greatly. We’ve almost lost the need for real currency. I get paid by check, which goes straight into my bank account. I then access my bank account using the Internet and transfer some money over to my savings account, which is at a different bank to my regular account. If I ever need money from my savings account I log in and transfer it back to my main account. I have never given any ‘real’ money to this bank, nor have I ever received any from them. The majority of my purchases these days are made using Eftpos. I hardly ever actually have cold, hard, real cash on me. Basically we purchase things with data these days. Numbers flit all over the place, being subtracted and added from one variable to another. Presumably there is still real money somewhere being couriered between banks but I generally never see it. It makes me wonder how long it will be until we actually don’t technically have money.

The stock market similarly intrigues me. I’ve never been involved myself but it seems to me that it’s the professional equivalent of gambling. People take a punt that a certain stock will go up or down, and they either gain or lose money depending on whether or not their bet pans out. What interests me more is the fact that in essence this is an economic reality built around the concept of buying and selling absolutely nothing. What you own are theoretically ‘parts’ of a particular company. Collect enough bits and you could own the company. In actuality you transfer a few numbers that represent money and receive a few numbers that represent stocks. When these numbers become larger numbers you sell them again, and receive in return a few more money numbers. There’s usually no real product or money (that you hold in your hands) seen in any of this process.

We have moral dilemmas now that just didn’t exist in the past. For example, is piracy really stealing? All you take is a copy of data. No one actually loses anything tangible out of the theft. Stealing a handbag means that someone no longer has their handbag. Stealing a car means that someone has to catch the bus for a while. Stealing a computer program means that another copy just ‘magically’ pops into existence and becomes yours. The futuristic super-villains of the past held countries to ransom with real-life weapons of mammoth size, often floating in space. The reality of our modern world is that you could hold a nation to ransom with nothing more ‘real’ than a copy of a few files from a secure computer.

Virtual reality may not have eventuated in the way of realistic virtual worlds, but in a way reality is becoming ‘virtual’. It may not be problematic or even surprising, but I find it interesting that cold, hard cash and cold, hard facts are fast becoming anything but tangible.

Daniel Punch
M6.Net Web Helpers
http://www.m6.net

Tags: bank, finance, gamble, imaginary, internet, life, market, money, reality, society, stock, travelbank, finance, gamble, imaginary, internet, life, market, money, reality, society, stock, travel

Share This

No Comments »