“As Gutenberg’s movable type printing press ignited the Renaissance, computers, the Internet and networking ignited the Digital Renaissance.” The movement from print to digital began years ago with the emergence of the computer, the Internet and other technological devices. Our society has huge amount of information being placed into an accessible place, which ultimately brought about various other changes. It changed how we access information, when we access information and it shifted the power from the producer to us, the consumer. We can now see that Moore’s Law is affecting our society; technology is growing at an exponential rate. Not only is technology growing the amount of information is growing. Our society is in the time of The Internet Revolution. As Jukes stated in his article, “but then combine this (Moore’s Law) with the subsequent emergence of the Web as a commercial force in our lives…”
Gordon Moore formulated Moore’s Law in 1965. Moore’s Law is an exponential trend that suggests that, “we could squeeze twice as many transistors on an integrated circuit every 24 months. Given that the electrons have less distance to travel, the circuits also run twice as fast, providing an overall quadrupling of the computational power.” Recently, Moore revised his law and stated that it is now doubling every twelve months. Others have even suggested that Moore’s law will be doubling every six months with the emergence of nanotechnology. What could happen in the future if Moore’s Law is correct? Technologies will continue to rapidly improve, but this could lead to many technologies becoming obsolete even though the technology works sufficiently. Our societies will quickly move onto the ‘next best thing’, even if what they had before works just as well, which could cause unanticipated consequences.
Gilder’s Law was proposed by George Gilder. Gilder’s Law is another exponential trend. This law predicts that, “bandwidth speed and capacity per dollar will triple exponentially every six months (a factor of six per year).” Data transmission speed keeps getting faster, and according to Gilder it is now tripling every six months. As Juke states, “Gilder further asserts that this exponential tripling will likely continue for at least another twenty years. If it does this, bandwidth speed will increase during that span of time by in excess of one billion times.” Think about how fast our computers are now, and then triple it. It is remarkable to think that today’s technology can get any faster than it already is, but in time it will be faster. Not only will it be faster the internet will be everywhere. We now have Wi-Fi connections all over the globe, but imagine if at all times you could be connected to the internet. This will lead to “an absolute explosion of new portable technologies and services beyond our imagination.”
The Internet Revolution, an exponential trend, states that “the number of web pages will double exponentially three times a year (a factor of eight).” It is hard for me to remember a time without internet, since I am part of the first generation to take full advantage of the information the internet holds. But, it is hard for me to believe that there was a time without it. Everywhere you look, whether it is in a magazine or on the television screen, there is something about the internet. Articles in magazines suggest sites for us to visit for further readings or the television commercials flash their websites on the screen to get more customers; the internet is everywhere and it continuing to grow. In 2005 Juke’s wrote, “It’s estimated that the internet traffic is conservatively doubling every one hundred and twenty days – that in terms of content, the web is growing exponentially in size of three times a year.” Think of the world today and compare it to the world in the year 2005. Today just about everyone in the world is on the internet. Can we imagine what is going to happen another five years from now? Today we can carry the internet with us wherever we go; it is on our laptops and even our cell phones. It is hard to imagine what our technology will look or be like five years from now with the amount of growth that has happened since 2005.
Exponential trend number four is The Age of InfoWhelm, which proposes that “the amount of unique, new technical information will double every two years, which will then be expected to double every two weeks by 2006 and every seventy-two hours by 2010.” This means that the amount of information will be exceptionally great by the year 2010, and we are currently in the year 2011. It seems that we currently have almost too much information available to us. As Juke states, “This has lead to a fundamental depreciation in the value of technical information.” This means that our society has so much information available to us that our value of this information has declined. As Gilder suggests, “…a student who just graduated from high school and had started a four year technical degree or college, half of what they learned in their first year of study would be outdated, obsolete or just plain wrong by the beginning of their third year of school.” Does this mean that what I learned just two years ago is wrong?
“Technological convergence happens when what had been previously separate technologies fuse together to create powerful and unique new devices.” When this article was written in 2005 the four technologies being fused together were the television, interactive real-time communications devices, computer and networks. The fusions of these four technologies lead to the term synercation. “Synercation is the (syn)ergy of int(er)active communi(cation) systems.” The convergence of the four technologies mentioned before has already happened. Is that not what our laptops or cell phones currently are? Are they not a convergence of television, communications systems, speed and a global network? “It is not an exaggeration to suggest that synercative devices are turning everything in our world upside down, which has led almost overnight to a fundamental change in the way we do business, and changing relationship between the producer and the consumer.”
According to Jukes the power has shifted from the producer to the consumer. “Synercation has resulted in the digital services now being readily available to the masses/consumers.” As consumers we are able to access what we want, when we want it instead of having to wait for the producer to give us the information we are seeking. We now have direct access to goods and services; online newspapers, books, banking “are disintermediating what has previously been the middleman.” What does this mean? It means that the consumer has freedom. As the consumer we do not have to conform, there is individual empowerment. The consumer is now a part of the process; “the consumer is now actively involved in this process and the shift has seen publishers being expected to adjust to the consumer.”
As technology revolutionizes and the internet grows our society also changes. How we seek out information changes, how we use technology changes and the relationship between the producer and consumer changes. But, we must remember to think about what these changes mean for our future. In the words of Jukes, “In an age of exponential growth, you must try to visualize where this might lead tomorrow, and to consider what implications such technologies might have for you personally and professionally.”
No comments:
Post a Comment