It's Tomorrow Already
I'm sitting here watching a William Gibson documentary where the man speaks of how fast the world is being flung into the future, how post-geographical cyberspace society and technological advances are shaping tomorrow in ways no one can foresee.
I'm sitting here watching this documentary on my computer while a friend is having a casual phone conversation with his girlfriend halfway across the world. At my fingertips, just a few clicks away, is a wealth of media, mounds of detailed information on whatever subject catches my fancy. I can go most places in the world and still have instant access to all my assets and a direct line to everyone I know back home.
Whenever I so please, I can begin a new life in any of a number of cyberspace worlds, self-contained universes with their own social customs and rules of law, and I can immerse myself however deeply I see fit. With every passing day, the physical world becomes less of a necessity and more of an option.
It could be argued that this vision of the world as an evolving techno-scape is westernocentric (maybe even to the point of naïvete), but even taking into account the poverty experienced by vast tracts of the world, technological advances - and their very real influence on parts both east and west - are constantly growing in both scope and application.
For us lucky(?) few, the future isn't just here already; it has already passed, and we don't realize it because we're sitting on the other side, eyes on the horizon. What comes next is anybody's guess.
I'm sitting here watching this documentary on my computer while a friend is having a casual phone conversation with his girlfriend halfway across the world. At my fingertips, just a few clicks away, is a wealth of media, mounds of detailed information on whatever subject catches my fancy. I can go most places in the world and still have instant access to all my assets and a direct line to everyone I know back home.
Whenever I so please, I can begin a new life in any of a number of cyberspace worlds, self-contained universes with their own social customs and rules of law, and I can immerse myself however deeply I see fit. With every passing day, the physical world becomes less of a necessity and more of an option.
It could be argued that this vision of the world as an evolving techno-scape is westernocentric (maybe even to the point of naïvete), but even taking into account the poverty experienced by vast tracts of the world, technological advances - and their very real influence on parts both east and west - are constantly growing in both scope and application.
For us lucky(?) few, the future isn't just here already; it has already passed, and we don't realize it because we're sitting on the other side, eyes on the horizon. What comes next is anybody's guess.
posted by fnoonf at 11:50
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