The Future As Seen By Me In 2010

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Well looky here, things one has scanned in eh. (ignore the photo, that's some guy that made some accounting software, not sure what became of him ;) MIKE RIVERSDALE is fuming. The expensive headphones he bought in Sydney three weeks ago have just died. His first reaction is not to randomly spill expletives into his coffee, but to use his iPhone to vent his frustration to his Twitter con- tacts, under the moniker Miramar Mike. "I will also put, 'What should I do?' It's a conversation. I'm reaching out to the people following me." The council predicts hand-held digital devices such as smartphones will rule the world in 2040. They already rule the life of Mr Riversdale, whose company WaveAdept helps businesses adapt - their computing sys- tems to allow staff to work from anywhere - and with anyone. In order of fre- equency, he uses his iPhone to tweet (1136 followers; 8363 tweets since joining), e-mail, make phone calls and use online services, such as checki
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RSS/Web has made the world smaller ... but!

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I haven't the foggiestSomebody out in the blogging world (I will find it later) recently said that whilst they now have greater amounts information coming to them via this computer-thingy and they feel that they know a lot more than before it's at a much shallower level.

I can go with that. With my online desktop (Netvibes) it's so easy to subscribe to RSS feeds that I feel I have a plethora of headlines appearing before me. But that's just it, they're headlines and even when I click to read the article I'm left at the end of the day feeling I haven't really got to the bottom of stuff.

And I think it's because I am reading, nearly every "news" item I go to is text based.

With the wireless and televisual presentations of the news I receive sooo much more than just the words. The moving picture, of course, tells so much more than my Web based 1,000 words but the spoken expression imparts more than the words being used - the "music" behind the words supply information that just isn't available when you read it (it's why we had to invent emoticons :-) and why we regularly suffer from, "I don't mean that in that email, sorry!")

Of course we had the written word far earlier (and for much longer) than words and pictures over the ether - newspapers. But I suspect that if I now returned to newspapers I would say the same thing - I'm not getting enough info! (I gave up NZ newspapers a year or so ago, they are just pathetic) With the Web at least I have the perception of being able to "drill down" and find out more information - I suspect it's merely a perception though.

All of that is about depth of knowledge around a particular story. I do, however, have a completely different theory about breadth of knowledge around what's happening in this world (why in this world but on this earth). I don't think I'm missing out on much that is world-wide news - there's just not that much that happens on a daily basis. Oh I'm sure there's buckets happening in your life (as there is mine) but on an "importance" level to others not in your immediate circle probably not that high. Take a look at the headlines the day you read this - how much is actually happening around the world ... go on, count the events - not much really is it?

Of course you have probably used the news media (like I did) to check out what's going down on this planet. If they don't report it, it ain't news - it's just something that happened. There's loads happening but not much "news", that's more like it.

So, in summary. Whilst I read most of the world "news" I get to learn little about what's happening in any great detail.

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The Future As Seen By Me In 2010

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