From Gutenberg, to Gates, to Google

“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.”

How the Internet REALLY Works

In 1945 Vannevar Bush published his article “As We May Think.” In this article Bush describes a device that would be used to store information; including photography, a compressed library, a voice recorder and transmitter, accounting features and would be a source of knowledge. This device could also be used to add or follow trails of links and notes created or recorded by individuals. Bush is describing a memex. Bush defines a memex as “a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.”

Today’s memex is the iPad. The iPad holds books, pictures, and videos. It also allows the user to make charts, pages and use the internet to seek out information. We now have the device that Bush had imagined over sixty years ago at our fingertips. Today’s memex works as a memory bank to organize and retrieve data, and our society is connected to everything and everyone, just as Bush had described.

In “As We May Think” Bush describes what he views as the record. Bush wrote, “Science has provided the swiftest communication between individuals; it has provided a record of ideas and has enabled man to manipulate and to make extracts from that record so that knowledge evolves and endures throughout the life of a race rather than that of an individual.” Today “the record” can be described similarly to what Bush stated; “the record” is on the internet. The internet holds a lot of ideas, and we are able to add on to that information with hyperlinks, comments or blogs. Today are able to keep a record of information all in one easily accessible location, and our society is connected. Our society is able to share ideas freely, quickly. We can use the internet to expand our knowledge by adding valuable information for future readers in an interactive writing space.

The new interactive writing space is much different than the writing space created by the printing press. Not only are we able to access information more quickly, we also are able to expand or add on to the text. After reading a book, that is all there is to it; there is no room left for you to write more about the subject. Hypertext allows us to be an “equal participant in an unfolding ‘social’ text.”

Hypertext is defined as, “text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access.” As stated by Stuart Moulthrop, “Books are not and never can be open discursive networks. No matter how assiduously we attempt its deconstruction, print retains closure and coherence.” At the end of a book there is nothing there that will automatically take you a new book. Hypertext, on the other hand, allows you to access a new reading immediately. “Electronic writing systems enable an unbinding of the text that allows you to continue into a new reading that touches on the same topic.” This unbinding of text was made possible because of hyperlinks.

The Good and the Bad in Everything

As Postman stated, “People do not see what new technology will undo.” This statement is true with every new technology that has been arriving in the past decade. We started off with print, moved to computers and now are moving into a technologically advanced future that no individual is sure of. As we are advancing we are forgetting that we are leaving some things behind; such as print, radio and even the music industry. “Every technology is a burden and a blessing.” If we all forget about the music industry we will allow it to disappear, and is that a good or bad thing?

The internet brought our society many new and exciting things. We are now able to get up to date news, play video games and chat with our friends that live in a different country. One of the most exciting things that has become a huge issue is the continuing use of online music websites. The popularity of Pandora, Grooveshark and Last.FM has put the music industry between a rock and a hard place. How can record companies sell music if everyone can now go online and listen to it for free? Why would we want to go out and buy something when we can just open our laptops and listen to a new song instantly and for free?

“When we admit a new technology into the culture, we must do so with our eyes wide-open…” Did any of us realize that by using these new music websites that we were potentially putting the music industry out of business? I am sure some people were aware of this, while others were not. But, now that we all know where the music industry is headed will our personal ethics tell us to stop using Pandora? Ethically we can decide to not use these sites to help the music industry, but we probably will not. Healy discusses ethics and moral obligation within his article, but do we have a moral obligation to the music industry?

“Sometimes a technology is so pervasive that we cannot escape it, but often we have the freedom to choose.” If we all now know that the music industry is deteriorating why do we still use the internet for music? Two reasons are obvious; it is cheap and convenient. The problem with our society is that we do not think about the long-term consequences, we are only concerned with the immediate consequences. We do not think about what listening to music online will do to the music industry ten or twenty years from now. As Healy states in the article, “…unanticipated consequences are a part of life.” When the music sites first began to show-up on the internet the potential consequences may have not been thought out, but now we can see the unanticipated consequences of online music.

Ariely stated in the video, “We need to understand our cognitive limitations.” What does this have to do with the music industry? If we all realize that we have cognitive limitations maybe it would help us see the hold corporate America has on us. Corporate America is very aware of our irrationality. This helps them influence us, which also helps them influence how we listen to or purchase music. Corporate America knows that we want what we want and we want it now. So, they allow us to get what we want when we want it by supplying us with online music. We get to pick and choose what we listen to without having to leave our homes and go to the store to purchase a CD. What about the music industry? They have no control over us anymore. The music industry cannot coax us into spending our time and money because we have discovered another way of getting it.

Bell Labs and AT&T knew that our society can easily move on from one thing to the next, which is why they took matters into their own hands. Instead of releasing magnetic recording to the public in the 1930’s they hid their discovery for many years. Why would they want to keep it a secret? They knew it could potentially cause major consequences. Bell labs felt people would reduce the use of telephones behind, and where would that leave AT&T? It would potentially leave them with less revenue.

The story of Thamus and the god Theuth makes a good point that our society should always keep in mind. “These new technologies may have been made with the intention of helping our society but people do not think about the potential consequences.” I knew that the music industry was beginning to fall, but what I did not realize until today was that I was helping the music industry towards potential destruction. Does that mean I will stop using Pandora or Grooveshark? No. Does it mean I will continue purchasing my music legally? Yes. We do not know what will potentially happen to the music industry ten years from now, but we can all keep in mind that new technology does hold future altering consequences.