(This is part three. See part one here )
In 1440, Johannes Gutenburg developed his moveable printing
press, initiating the first great change to the information landscape. For the first time mass distribution of
information was possible. Knowledge was no longer the purview of the few
wealthy enough to support their own scribes (namely a few royals, and the
church).
Fast forward to the 1950’s, and the personal computer was
born. By the 1970’s the PC was being mass produced. Then over the next few
decades PC’s became more powerful, more prolific, and less costly. Disk storage
grew from Megabytes to Gigabytes to Terabytes. Costs went from thousands to
hundreds of dollars.
The 1960’s saw another development – connecting PC’s
together. By 1990’s these efforts culminated in the creation of the internet.
All of this computing power and connectivity had amazing
implications on information. Data could be replicated instantly, nearly
infinitely, for virtually no cost. It could travel the globe in mere seconds.
It certainly sounds like a mature information age. You can
see how the experts would call it a sunset. Sadly, the experts misread the
maturity level by several decades. The present state of the information age is
closer to three. And heavily hopped up on meth, crack and hallucinogens.
There are a few things that work
together to create this situation; privacy, anonymity, transparency,
accountability. For some the problem is too much, for others, the problem is
too little.
No comments:
Post a Comment