I have posted several times before the idea that something big is changing in our culture. There are many subtle, but important changes in how we have added computers to our everyday lives. Ten to twenty years ago I had a computer at work, a computer at home and a cell phone. For all practical purposes they were pretty unconnected aspects of my life. I wrote some computer programs at work, played a few games and “surfed the web” at home, and used the cell phone to call people (all of this was pretty much like everybody else…). Things have changed.
As time went on, I started to get tools which would allow me to integrate my home and work computer experiences. I could surf at work, and was becoming able to burn Cd’s on both of these computers. This allowed me to start to effectively synchronize some of my work on both PC’s.
Soon I had an iPod to sync with my home PC, as well as a lot of time to render all of my music Cd’s into MP3 files. I became pretty well versed in the intricacies of ID3 tags, bit-rates, and other MP3 related details. I then started using thumb drives. At first it was only as a sort of huge floppy disk with which to transfer files, but later (with the use of the Portable Apps Suite) got tools which allowed me to create a personal environment on almost any PC. I had my own web browser, word processor, FTP program, media and music player, and a whole slew of other applications to carry with me wherever I went.
Even when I went back to school, having a thumb drive with every document I had related to every class I was taking became quite a boon to have in my pocket. I should mention that during most of this period I was using laptop computers. These earlier computers were good enough to work on, but only had battery power to cover me for a couple hours (at best). This essentially kept me from doing any computer related activity anywhere…other than near an electrical outlet.
There were some additions over the years, such as using Zoho Suite’s online word processor while I was a student teacher (it worked faster that the thumb drive version of Open Office…). This was essentially the setup I was using when I went to teach in South Korea. The majority of the technology I was using to get through the day was still based upon PC’s and had a number of incremental refinements (at least for what I was doing…).
It seems that we are at what could be called the ‘knee of the curve’, that is a situation where things will start to change much more rapidly. As an example…in the last two years I have found tools (this is a term I use to describe any hardware, software, application, or physical implement which allows me to accomplish something)which allow me to synchronize all of my PC’s, even with my phone. I have all of my e-mail, contacts, calendars, bookmarks, RSS reader subscriptions, and even some music and movies on all of my ‘gadgets’. I should mention that that I have been rendering all of my DVD’s to data formats which allow me to deal with my movies as I deal with my music (all of it). The nest result of this as that the only media I have in physical form now is books (and this could change sooner or later too!).
The resulting situation for me is that I have access to almost all of my personal information, photos, music, websites, and even this blog almost everywhere I can use my iPhone. My story is certainly not unique or that forward looking, I have described it only to showcase that there have been quite a few small and large changes in how we deal with information over the last several years.
But I haven’t taken that much time to consider some of the second order effects of this sort of ubiquitous data and media integration into my life (or any other for that matter…). I think something like the Apple iPad is a good example of what I am starting to see in our future. What I mean is that if you were to have almost instantaneous access to everything, all of your media, books, movies, music, photos, e-mail, documents, calendars, websites, etc. and have all of them automatically sync-ed, would you perceive all of this data differently from how you see them now?
I would imagine that the idea of Mash-ups is about to become a growth industry.
I think that it is interesting to consider a future where YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook not being at the forefront of all thought. I also think that the idea of emergent properties in how we deal with ‘our’ data is something which will certainly be more personally important to many more people that those who merely ‘tweet’.
