I’ve decided that I want to take a slightly different tack with my weekend SciFi-Guy.com posts. I want to explore the exciting advancements that are making things of science fiction in to things of science, and there are thousands of great stories going on right now that are incredibly profound to me. I’m not claiming to be a futurist, but rather more an avid fan of watching the world evolve and improve all the while imagining where it might go from here.
One of the most elemental aspects of our lives, and for the forseeable future of mankind, is the Internet. The Internet has done more for communication and connecting the world than any other communication advancement in history. Of course, the telephone is a very close second, but even in that respect the Internet built upon where the telephone and fax machine left off. One required the other, and in that light, they are both immense contributions to the improvement of man kind.
I recently was shown this video, and I present it not because it breaks new ground, but because Asst. Professor Michael Wesch breaks down the complexities of the concepts we are facing (that, and the tune was catchy). In the final moments of the video, he remarks that we will have to rethink a few things, including concepts such as copyright, authorship, identity, ethics, aesthetics, rhertorics, governance, privacy, commerce, love, family, ourselves.
In many of my conversations with friends and family, we discuss what the Internet means and will mean to our culture and our species as it and we evolve. I have ability to place a message on the web and instantaneously, potentially millions if not billions of people can read it, and in turn learn from it. The modern web is building a community forum unlike anything mankind has envisioned or imagined.
Unlike the cyber-punk futures outlined in less optimistic tales, the future that we’re looking towards seems to be one where we can collaborate, communicate, share, and educate simultaneously with the people who are interested in the same topics. I know, by creating a blog titled “SciFi-Guy.com”, that I will not be the first destination for people interested in learning or discussing Elephant mating habits. But sub-niches can now be realized, and with luck I’ll find other fans of my favorite sub-genre of science fiction, post apocalypse. Perhaps its a population of 1 in 10,000 that finds that interesting, which means that in my home city of 60,000 I’d be lucky to find 5 or 6 people that would look forward to discussing that particular thread. But on the web – 1 in 10,000 means there may be thousands of potential friends to be met.
The other side of the coin, as I see it, is that most of the successful Web 2.0 adaptations of late are remarkably people and lifestyle oriented. We aren’t all yearning to plug further in to our computers. Instead, we are finding amazing ways to use the computer to connect with the people and fit within our life.
I just had a chat with a friend yesterday about the amazing power of a service like Myspace. Every few weeks, when I log in to my account, I’m greeted with a new and unexpected message or friends request from someone I’d lost touch with months, years, or even decades ago. We can touch base, passively or actively, rediscover our connections, and find out where in the future our real lives may hope to overlap for a long-awaited reunion. This isn’t climbing deeper in to the machine. This is using a machine to serve a purpose.
The machine is the web, and the web is us.
Edit: For further exploration, there’s a great UC Berkeley PhD student that has spent a lot of time investigating the shifting social paradigms caused by social networking: Visit Danah Boyd’s Website.
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