I am getting old enough to see long term effects, but the causes are still so mired in context that I would still need another hundred years to get a worthwhile historical purview of what has happened in my lifetime. I can remember life in the 1950’s, where people where not so explicitly consumers. And in this light, I have seen some amazing and sometimes subtle changes in our society as a result of the impact of computers and the internet.
It is almost alarming to see how quickly the home PC (whether PC or Mac, whether on a network or even dialup…) has become a completely ubiquitous accessory to our lives. Ten or fifteen years ago, this appliance would have been for household finances, doing school homework, ‘surfing the net’, and playing a few games. Now, especially with the relatively new social networking sites and the increasing amount of laptops, we seem to have accrued a few new behaviors (all of us).
I have already written a few posts about the growing amount of virtuality in our lives, as well as how we (as a group) are on the verge of becoming media consumers in the same way that we are consumers of physical products… Here is where I think that many people can see that things have changed, but to what end, and is this a good thing or a bad thing? I can’t answer that…yet (refer to my need to wait another 100 years…).
There is one thing which I find a bit of a poser (and bothersome), is that so much of this has taken place without much notice. It seems ironic to me that we all live in a complex world, but some of these complex ideas (which may well have a huge impact upon all of us) are taken as too complex to discuss. I see very few articles on the internet covering any aspect of this sort of topic, which is also ironic, in that there is so much self referential writing in this medium…sigh.
So, allow me try to recap some of the points I am trying to make.
1. The internet has really changed our lives (and will continue to do so in an increasing manner for the foreseeable future).
2. If anyone talks about this idea it is only in terms of good or bad (almost never in terms of merely trying to understand what is going on…).
3. In a similar manner to product consumerism, we may be on the verge of becoming media consumers, where we passively consume information.
4. As an example of some of the changes which have been creeping towards us, consider that we (as a culture) are on the verge of becoming post-literate. This isn’t as dire as it may sound. This means that we gain context, information, and meaning increasingly more often through images than through text.
5. As a result to some of these questions and impressions, I wonder why this is never noted, and (more importantly) what does this bode for the future?
If you have taken the time to get to the end of this post, I would really love to read any comments you might have. You see, I am not some sort of expert on this topic, I am just a ‘guy’, and I think that this is certainly a topic which deserves some conversation!
