University of Oregon Jam Squad

Another piece for school.

Where the internet is going.

Read an interesting article the other day. Note when it was written.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1969/12/as-we-may-think/3881/1/

Vannevar Bush was a man who had the foresight to realize something needed to be changed. All of us at some time have thought, what’s next? Where is our next technological breakthrough going to come from? Dr. Bush called it. Although he was off in some aspects, such as the personal library being mechanical, he was correct in his premise. The world needed a way to handle its information. 

This article is still read today for many reasons. One primary reason is to understand why we have this technology. Why did our scientific forefathers create the personal computer? It was to help up share knowledge. How are we doing on that? Is Facebook in the realm of sharing knowledge? When Facebook was set up, the premise was to help people who went to college together keep track of their friends lives. Now, business is exchanged using the Facebook messaging threads. People create events for their companies. Companies advertise in every way imaginable on Facebook. In my opinion, Facebook has become a microcosm for what the internet is.

Dr. Bush wanted the internet and computers to be used for good. To be used to share information in the scientific realm, in essence, he wanted a scientific Facebook. Instead of adding friends, you would have colleagues, instead of “liking” something, you would “concur”. Status’s would read “OMG just brk the petaflop barrier! Knew I could do it LOL!” “Dr. Johnson concurs.”

Fortunately and unfortunately, the internet became more than another place to post your scientific knowledge, it became a worldwide forum. Artists can now reach millions where the previous generations could only reach hundreds. American businesses can exchange financial information with their sister companies in China in seconds. People can lose their life savings in a few minutes by giving away their information to the wrong website.

Recently, the internet has broken its desktop prison. It has moved to laptops, tablets, phones, gaming devices, televisions, GPS units, cars, and more. Instead of a lack of information, we have an overload of it. Sorting through countless web pages for the truth becomes more and more intimidating. So where do we go from here?

Aggregation is the next step. Instead of expanding knowledge, we are now seeking ways to condense it. Give us our information in short sentences; we just want the gist of it. Give us our headlines, our blurbs, our RSS feeds, our paragraphs; spare us your essays, your novels, and your papers. Could Dr. Bush have foreseen this? Where the information was plenty, we wanted less? By reading “As We May Think”, we will constantly be wondering: what’s next?

Yup, i'm obsessed.