12 Replies to “Two Posts About The Future&#153 [BRD]”

1. Dan Collins says:

   January 31, 2007 at 2:25 am

   BRD–
   
   These go to eleven.

2. Meg Q says:

   January 31, 2007 at 2:26 am

   You think YouTube is cool? That’s fine. But remember this: Blogs were cool once too. Hell, AOL used to be the eighth wonder of the world. Things change.

   HA! I remember back in the early ‘90’s, when I was maxin’ with my 4600 modem on CompuServe boards. Cool or what? (And soon I’ll be one-upped in this thread by people who were IRC’ing on DARPA in the ‘80’s, or using a BBS in the late ‘70’s . . .)

   Large-scale social engineering on the Internet is impossible. That’s the next big thing, right there. That realization.

   Well, sure. Which is why so many governments are trying to block access. And why the EU is trying to wrestle control from ICANN.

3. wishbone says:

   January 31, 2007 at 2:31 am

   The web is a widget.  It is what we make of it (or don’t.) I think the delivery of our information and entertainment is different from twenty years ago.  Adn those that don’t get it or are late arriving will have a difficult time.

   Such an outcome is no different from other adjustments in the past (steam to coal to oil to Ed Begley making compost as part of a television show–no, I haven’t watched–I only surmise).  What does make this go round different is the ability of anyone with a connection to do their thing whatever that may be.  Until we can actually step into the action (and I do believe that is the next big thing), Glenn Reynolds summed up what sort of interactions and influences we will have in An Army of Davids.

   So, kick back, read and write on PW, get instant scores from espn.com, and eventually watch “Hawaii Five-O” episodes on demand from anywhere.  Cool.

4. The Lost Dog says:

   January 31, 2007 at 3:37 am

   wishbone –

   I’d like to agree with you, but if the U.N. ever gets control of the internet, Google has been practicing in China for a while, now. At least they would already know what not to do. You know, like provide access to all sites?

   The Internet is the best thing that has ever happened in communications history, but there are many countries that take machetes to it. Shit, Iran is smashing satellite dishes! No thinking! No thinking! No information! No information! Information is bad!

   If the UN actually ever takes control of the internet, you may, if you’re lucky, be able to get onto a K-Bees Toys site (If they are not selling anything offensive to the UN “Human Rights Commission”, but you will probably still be risking your life. Big Ha Ha here).

   I think that the UN should get at least 100 gazillion dollars from the US. Then they could pretty much finish us off…

   Oh! And how did you like Kerry’s blow job for Iran? I think they all had to change their underwear.

   What a MAN!

5. The Monster says:

   January 31, 2007 at 3:56 am

   First there was the spoken word, and ‘writing’ was ideographic.  Symbols on paper represented ideas, just like they still do in the (written) Chinese language of today, and to a lesser extent in other languages in the region.  When a new idea came along, someone would have to make up a new character for it. Why do kids in Japan have to study their asses off so hard?  One reason is that they have to learn so damn many ideographs borrowed from Chinese. 

   Then came the phonetic alphabet.  Instead of having to study thousands of symbols, the entire language that ruled a great empire could be rendered in the 49 characters of Alexander’s Greek, or the 23 VPPER CASE letters of Latin.  Then we got the digits from the Hindus and Arabs to simplify things further.

   Gutenberg invented the printing press, but at first an entire page had to be composed as a single block.  Then movable type came along, making the newspaper practical.  The telegraph/telephone allowed the news to move quickly; radio/TV even more quickly, but as broadcast media.

   The Internet has simplified the alphabet to two characters, the 0 and 1 that can occupy a bit.  The designers of this meta-medium, influenced by a mindset at Bell Labs that networks exist merely to connect the parties to a conversation, but leave the format of that conversation to the parties themselves, made the Internet Protocol incredibly simple.  It provides a mechanism for routing data between endpoints, but ascribes no meaning to the data that it dutifully hauls about the planet.

   Turning McLuhan’s dictum on its head, the new meta-media knows better than to pretend that it is the message.  The old media doesn’t get that.  The MSM really thinks that whether Bob Schieffer or Katie Couric is the news anchor makes a difference in the news.  Motion picture and record executives think they can package hits for our consumption, as if the network were the product.

   The Internet isn’t the product.  It’s a system that reduces the marginal cost of moving data to nearly zero.  Anyone who creates compelling content can have an audience in the time it takes Glenn Reynolds to type “Heh.”, or Markos Moulitsas Zúniga to type “Screw them!”, and press Publish.

6. Mark says:

   January 31, 2007 at 6:35 am

   (And soon I’ll be one-upped in this thread by people who were IRC’ing on DARPA in the ‘80’s, or using a BBS in the late ‘70’s . . .)

   I’m sure they’ll be along Meg Q, but I can only claim GEnie, Prodigy, and CIS myself. Oh, and a trial of AOL when a bunch of us wanted to check out chat there—but we hated AOL (or was it Steve Case) on general principles too much to actually sign up permanently.

7. Karl says:

   January 31, 2007 at 6:38 am

   The posts were okay as far as they went (and I generally like Shape of Days)…

   but

   the key quote:

   What’s it all mean? For me, on a personal level, it means that anybody who tries to predict long-term trends in communications is full of crap, and anybody who claims to understand how communications works is a liar.

   Yep.  So when you predict there won’t be a need for more communications infrastructure in the future… you might be wrong.

   And when he writes that bloggers started thinking they were Important, I would respond that the vast majority are not, but that blogs are.

   The fact that many folks will move on to the next new cool thing bothers me not in the least.  My regular web gig is primarily about music, primarily indie rock—and most folks blogging that beat are all about moving on to the next new cool thing. 

   But I disagree that something necessarily becomes less cool when it is no longer new.  “Cool” need not be synonymous with “popular” or “faddish.”

   Newspapers may not be the new, cool thing.  Most (sane) news-bloggers would not want to run a newspaper.  But I’ll bet a lot of them would like to be able to deploy the resources a good newspaper has.

8. Ric Locke says:

   January 31, 2007 at 1:33 pm

   Huff. One infrastructure supports and bootstraps another. The railroads wouldn’t have been possible without heavy wagons and “metalled” roads to get ore to the iron foundries or workers to the construction sites, and materials for the Interstates were carried on railroads.

   “Prediction is hard, especially about the future.” Whatever the Next Thing is, it will be enabled by the existing infrastructure, but it won’t be predictable from the characteristics of what we have any more than Fulton could have predicted the Dixie Flyer.

   Regards,
   
   Ric

9. B Moe says:

   January 31, 2007 at 2:28 pm

   One infrastructure supports and bootstraps another. The railroads wouldn’t have been possible without heavy wagons and “metalled” roads to get ore to the iron foundries or workers to the construction sites, and materials for the Interstates were carried on railroads.

   I read a little essay once discussing technological developments overlooked by history, the case in point being that the printing press was only significant with the development of cheap paper.  The author had a book about more of these type things and I planned to buy it, but I have forgotten his name.  Ring a bell with anyone?

10. St. Humid the Incontinent says:

    January 31, 2007 at 4:01 pm

    Sounds like something Richard Burke would have done on “The Day the Universe Changed”…

11. Anonymous Coward says:

    January 31, 2007 at 5:55 pm

    Sounds a bit like James Burke in Connections. It’s more than an essay, though.

12. McGehee says:

    January 31, 2007 at 6:21 pm

    The future just ain’t what it used to be.

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