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Saturday, November 30, 2002
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Digital
Greenwich¹
Technology life cycles aren't getting
shorter -- although it sometimes seems that way. Even if we could
deliver new technology more frequently (and it isn't clear that we can),
customers aren't capable of absorbing new technology at a more than
usual (stately) pace. Occasionally, something important to an
individual or an organization can happen much faster, but on an overall
basis, organisms have a life pace and they stick to it with great
persistence.
I've been noodling on this idea for awhile. Trying to make sense of the
deep change I see while it seems to remain invisible to most of those
that I know and love. Amy Wohl is right, the cycles aren't shorter.
Still there is a darwinian process transforming society that is at once
a source of great debate and, still, paradoxically, largely invisible.
About 40% of the households in the US do not have a PC and about half
do not have Internet connectivity. The digital revolution is largely
invisible to them even as they use their new digital TV connected to
their digital cable service and talk with family, friends and business
partners on their digital cell phone while driving their digitally
empowered car down a "smart" highway. They can still go into a bank and
make deposits and withdrawals much as their grandparents did. Or they
can use an ATM that doesn't look or act much different that one of
twenty years ago. They can ship packages by USPS, UPS, or FedEx and not
really think about the transformation in how the package is delivered or
how it is tracked. They just know it gets there sooner and, if there's a
hitch in delivery, they can call someone who will quickly know where it
is and get it unstuck.
Pretty cool. Nothing has changed. Everything has changed. They don't
really need to think about how the back-end of all these businesses have
been transformed - about how technology cycles allow business process
change - how, for example, the
back-end of their bank may be outsourced to southeast Asia (report
titled Federal Reserve: Economic
Effects of Technological Progress).
And about another 40% of households have a PC and Internet connection -
but the PC is basically pre-Internet and the connection is a phone line
at 56k. They email, research on the Internet, maybe bank online, maybe
have a website or even blog. They see the added possibilities of
combining digital cameras with the Internet and the other possiblities
the Internet adds to a digital life: music, online games, telework, etc.
Pretty cool. Somethings have changed. Everything has changed.
Meanwhile the remaining 10% or so are households with digital devices
geared to "alway on, always connected." They seek online
banking for its convience, check nearby movie schedules online (and
can play the movie trailor and buy the tickets online), and they mail or
weblink those home movies of the new baby or new house to family and
friends scattered around the world. One talks on the phone from
where one is rather than where the phone is. One transfers funds and
pays bills from where one is rather than where the bank or business is.
One chooses not only what movie to watch but where and when. Music is
something you carry in your pocket or plug into by any number of
connections. Books, magazines and TV shows can become e-morphed too.
Your car can tell you where you are, even draw you a map - and even
place the call for help if need be, and again, with location info
provided.
There was a commercial not too long ago of a guy dashing into a store
and sweeping things into his pockets and dashing out past the security
guard - who wished him a nice day. Automatic purchase when he left the
store, items debited instantly. I'm not sure how quickly you can pass
the reader but there are systems like that now - you don't pull out your
credit/debit card, it is read while in your wallet.
At some point the digital boundary is unconciously crossed. Where it is
will be different for different people. And crossing it doesn't mean
change is complete or that one is on the digital escalater and, for good
or ill, locked in to constant change. It simply means a boundary has
been crossed. And it will likely be like crossing the boundary from
scribes and illiterate masses to books and literate masses - a
transformation of person and society. And, as with that literacy
transition, it takes time. And it takes vigorous debate to hammer out
the new social roles and mores in that new society.
The book that I think will come to be regarded as a key classic
articulating this fundamental shift is Being Digital by Nicholas Negroponte.
And other very important works are:
Combined these four books layout many of the key concepts and issues
facing a digital society. They each simply look forward and anticipate.
We will need to adapt, enlarge and modify as we move forward through
this time of change.
¹ Royal Observatory,
Greenwich - Home of the Prime Meridian of the World
Longitude 0° 0' 0", Latitude
51° 28' 38"
10:10:08 AM 
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Scale-free networks and mirror worlds. I visited my local den of piracy in order to read Linked sooner than Amazon could ship it to me. Now I know more precisely what Clay Shirky means when he talks about "power law distributions" and "scale-free networks." An example of a power law distribution, as Clay noted in his ETCON talk on LiveJournal, is the way in which such networks display a "rich-get-richer" pattern of clustering. This is something Tim O'Reilly has often called attention to, as well. There is a kind of naive egalitarian notion that because links are free and everything is connected, all nodes are created equal. In fact, although it apparently never occurred to early network theorists, nothing could be further from the truth. As networks grow, new nodes don't attach themselves randomly. They prefer to connect to the nodes that are already the best-connected.
... [Jon's Radio]
7:12:41 AM
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...what the article pointed out was that information in general was
being shifted now that it was digital.
Take that to its logical conclusion, and you realize that people
aren't going out to get information anymore. Instead, it's coming to
them. Think about that for a second and you'll recognize the
truth in it. After all, don't you feel information overload in your own
life? That's because information is coming to you from everywhere now.
Most of it may be noise, but focused information can come to you in new
and more efficient ways than ever before.
A Shifted Reading List
6:22:46 AM
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© Copyright 2006 Russ Savage.
Last update: 5/8/06; 8:54:23 PM.
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