Twitter. Facebook. When Seal Team 6 killed Bin Laden where did you read it? I read it in about 300 simultaneous status updates and tweets. We Americans want things as fast as they can possibly be given to us. But how fast is too fast?
Lets say that Facebook and Twitter existed in 1990, and from now i'm going to refer to them as Twitbook Plus to make it easier on me. Okay, so 1990, not everyone has a personal computer, the internet is in its early stages of being a thing, so Twitbook Plus doesn't get used much. Fast forward to 1998, you're on your way home from seeing Armageddon with your bros and you're Gettin' Jiggy wit it to your brand new Will Smith compact disc. When you get home you want to check your Twitbook Plus so you turn on your computer, 15 minutes later it is up and running. Then you click the internet explorer 4.0 icon on your desktop and 20 minutes after that you are on the World Wide Web. Just another 3 minute wait and you are on the Twitbook Plus home page rapidly digesting any news you can. Fast forward to 2007, the release of the iPhone! Now where ever you can make a baby cry you can get reception to the internet! Is that not how iPhones are fueled? I don't know I don't own one. Regardless of the science behind the iPhone, you now have a hand held device that you can take almost anywhere and be connected to Twitbook Plus. Twitbook Plus is being used by a very large amount of people and news spreads quickly.
Fueling the iPhone since 2007
Fast forward to 2012. 1 in 7 people on Earth are on Twibook Plus. The internet is faster than ever before and accessible virtually everywhere. Yet still nothing can deliver it to us faster than the device we have to hold in our hands, what an inconvenience! If only a large company could develop something to display our Twitbook Plus right in our vision, that's something I could really get behind.
So where do we go from Google Glass?
We become the Borg. Uh oh, I'm a nerd. In case you are unaware the Borg are a race of cybernetic organisms from the delta quadrant in the Star Trek universe. They communicate in collective thought and have a hive mind. In other words they learn and gain experience collectively. Its really what we do now with Twitbook Plus but at an instantaneous rate. Their goal as a race is to become the perfect life form, so they "assimilate" other species to gain their biological and technological distinctiveness. Essentially taking what is good from another species and applying it to what they already know and have. They are the greatest villain in Star Trek because ultimately they have the same goal as human beings without the moral restrictions.
Now that most people have stopped reading I will move on to my point. There are humans in the Star Trek universe. They live in a Utopian society and are a part of the United Federation of Planets. I really can't explain their society better than this:
Star Trek is set 300 years in the future. On Earth during that time there is no hunger, there is no money, there is no war. All of mankind's needs are met. Beauty pageant contestants having nothing to wish for anymore. The challenge of life is to simply better yourself. Is this not what we want today? Imagine if you woke up on Monday and you didn't have to go to work because you don't need money anymore. Anything you need is given to you. You would go to work only to further humanity. That is such a strange thought with today's mindset because not many people think that what they do is helping humanity in any way. Also, no one would go to work are you crazy! If you could do anything you want, would you do anything at all? If I didn't have to work and could do whatever I wanted, I would stay home with my wife. I would hang out with my friends. I would listen to music, play video games, complain about nothing in a blog. I sure wouldn't be curing diseases or helping humanity advance in any way. Very few would, or some would for a while, and then they would just begin to live their life vicariously through some one who is on Twitbook Plus. I would like to believe there is hope for us to turn this planet into a place of peace and abundance, but I can't help think that we are becoming more like the Borg than the United Federation of Planets. Of course with less assimilating and more fast food.
Let me leave you with this thought.
If you asked a 14 year old girl from Anywhere, U.S.A if she could have a chip put in her arm that would allow her to update her Facebook and text with her brain, do you think she would want one? It's one step away from Google Glass and one step closer to...
No comments:
Post a Comment