Predicting the Next 5000 Days- FINAL POST

Predicting the Next 5000 Days

Kevin Kelly

>>>> 

The internet might be the most significant force to emerge in the last 5,000 days of world history.  The sheer magnitude of power it gives each person with a network hook-up and a connective device is astounding. Kevin Kelly mentions a few of these in his TED talk, including global satellite images. But all of these things taken together amount to a gigantic portion of the human created information available in an instant.  To begin to understand how vast this is it helps to try to list some of them, beginning with 
the ones he mentions

Instant

• Global Satellite Images and Global Maps (Google Earth, Google Maps)
• Patents on commercial innovation (U.S. Patent and Trademark Office)
• Personal Contact Information (Google Search)
• Global Commerce (E-Commerce enabled websites, Ebay, Amazon)
• Bureaucratic forms (Federal, State, and Local websites)
• Meteorologic Info (NOAA)
• Social Connections (Facebook)
• Quotes and Scores (Google Finance, ESPN)
• Bulletin Boards (Craigslist)
• Culture and Entertainment News

• (my list)
• Socially compiled encyclopedia (Wikipedia)
• News and Opinion (New York Times, Blogs)
• Financial Account Management (Bank Websites, Mint)
• Free- copywrited and non-copywrited -media (Torrents, Youtube etc.)
• Networks

The benefit of our global capitalist driven idea economy is that we are very good at producing new innovative things. The drawback is that we never really get to fully utilize the capabilities of these things. This has been one of my most important takeaways from the course readings. A metaphor of 
this might be how we sign up for 6 month waiting lists and pitch tents outside computer retail stores in order to obtain the latest device, and then when the next device comes out we shelve that last thing to again repeat the process - as a society we never fully explore and engage what we have available. Take for example the creation of hypertext and how its possibilities have been curtailed significantly.  
At least this hasbeen the model of the past 5,000 days.  

Kevin Kelly says this about the next 5000 days: The network is becoming one super-organism that contains all of our collective input. He argues that the web is moving toward a semantic model ("web 3.0"), one that will be able to "read its self" and smartly determine what the content residing on it actually is. He sees the implication of this being a tightening of the network with increased adaptiveness. This would entail a further opening up of privacy standards. You are no longer you. You are a node in the network of the human race, with no choice to opt out. (I'm not going say anything about the implications of this, I'm just going to note the type of emotion this man is projecting and level of awareness he is displaying while talking)

For the next 5,000 days and beyond I think and feel that the same pattern of innovation in IT will slow down significantly. The integrated circuit is hitting a technological wall, with bio and quantum computers still a long ways off, and the development of the semantic web still a pipe dream. Next, screens are overhyped. People are not ready for a glowing technological dystopia. One could counter that people have tolerated until today the same industrial dystopia born several hundred years ago, but that too is in the process of breaking down in the world's largest industrialized nation. The downturn cycles of the two are coinciding now because the two's elemental bases are much different (the staying power of the molecule was much stronger than that of the bit). Finally, the people (namely venture capital firms) who seeded the growth of IT in the last 5,000 days are shifting their focus to ET (energy technology). The capital markets will follow this innovation, and track the latest iterations the same way they did before. Meanwhile the wealth of technology that they spent creating and monetizing it will be sitting on the shelf. This is where the real fun begins. During this time people will be able to soak up and experiment with the internet and work to fully implement it without the disruptive incursion of the market.

Bring on the Green Energy Revolution! I want no part of it! 

(or the semantic web for that matter)