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| Mass Humanity in Today's Wired World |
We could relate to the 80's. Not much different from the 70's except for a rather inappropriate hairstyle called a mullet. The row over the miners that closed most of the pits, was a bit upsetting but we were OK because we already had good jobs, could sit back and watch in our conceit. Our music still held sway, we had given birth to the punk scene, many of the 70's groups were still going though a little greyer. Eric and Ernie were still dominating Christmas air waves and many of our shows including Dr Who and Top of the Pops still held sway. None of us were aware of the rotten heart of the celebrity world where young children were being molested. Its a KnockOut was still a damn good show and Jimmy Saville a man to look up to. There were rumours of a new world coming. Our familiar slide rule and electric calculator were being usurped by a machine called a computer, there was the first mobile phone the size of a brick. But we could ignore the fuss and carry on living as if it were still the 70's. It was, wasn't it.....really?
The 90's dawned and if we had kept our ears to the ground we would have heard the rumblings of a new world. A man named Bill Clinton was investing millions in something called the internet, there was something called windows 95 that was supposed to be big, money spued out of a bank wall at all hours if you had the right combination code. Some clever dick came up with an expression that technology quadrupled every two years or some such nonsense.... My father died.... But then we were saved, our focus became Y2K when everything was supposed to freeze up due to the lack of two numbers. Freeze all other development, concentrate on the big one. Save the world. Four years we spent on this project and we saved the world, the year 2000 came and went without so much as a whimper, Someone said a train got stuck in a tunnel because it thought 2000 should be a leap year, but we got through it and we congratulated ourselves. But behind our backs something was going on, the floodgates were about to open and technology was about accelerate like never before. All that pent up, running in circles from Y2K had created a monster that was unleashed, digital technology came of age, the 21st century was indeed a new world, a mad scramble took hold, the race was to the swift. And we from the 70's were not ready.
So
where does that leave us. Well the new century started and we all survived Y2K.
There was the usual soul searching as to whether it had all been necessary, but
then the fact that we had fixed everything meant that it inevitably went
through without any problems. The unforeseen consequence was that four of five
years pent up demand for innovation that had been stalled by Y2K, literally
exploded. Banks ramped up their systems, phone companies upgraded their
networks and a new 21st technology known as the ‘app’ entered the
lexicon. Information was at your fingertips 24/7, your location mattered little
and when the internet’s technology combined with GPS location technology the
result was simply stunning as seen with Google maps or Facebook check-in. The phone
has now simply become an ‘app’ on a mini hand-held computer. To call the iphone
an iphone in some ways may be an insult. The phone feature is just an ‘app’.
So
what of the children of this technological evolution? We are all acutely aware
of the teenager walking down the road and whenever they stop, at a shop, at a
bus stop or simply on a park bench, the phone is taken out and checked for
whatever service or services are available. Most phones can now be linked to a
laptop at home and a lot of the features can be linked. The children of the 21st
century are truly hot wired to the internet and all that entails. Using my
daughter as an example, she evolved with these features as she grew up.
Facebook is the classic example where friends were added as they joined the
social network, videos were uploaded to youtube, the de facto leader, photos
were uploaded to flickr, another leader. Or it could all simply be placed on
facebook There was no longer any need to store this stuff in boxes in the attic
or bedroom. Letters became texts or emails, articles became online newspapers,
books became ebooks although there is still some doubt as to the demise of the
physical book. I met some girls once at a car boot sale and I was selling some
second hand CD’s and asked if they were interested. We don’t buy CD’s any more!
They just watch on youtube or their cloud files. Pity the poor CD, a
revolutionary wonderful device that looks like a dying breed after a mere 25
years of existence. Even the USB that may yet be reprieved, is being largely
subverted by cloud technology.
But
let us return to my central theme and of social network technology which is at
the centre of this whirlwind. My daughter, as I mentioned, keeps all the
friends she has made on facebook, she keeps all her photos on flickr, receives
all her bank statements by email and everything is stored somewhere on the
internet. Unintentionally she has provided herself with a massive library of
herself, her friends, her interests and her life. This will continue to build
over the next 40 or 50 years to a massive library online that defines her life.
Nowhere in man’s history has this previously been possible on such a vast
scale. Oh sure we have Samuel Pepys diary, but this is one man and few others
were as prolific in the minutiae of their daily lives. Many souls simply lived
and died and their lives are now represented by some old photographs that are
unlabeled resting in some antique shop. My Aunt Bessie is a good example where
I have boxes of hopelessly unidentifiable photos. I have collected together
what documentation and photographs that can be identified with any degree of certainty and placed in some meaningful order Bessie Field Website. But
compared to what could have been and to what my daughter will have, it is a
paltry offering. My intention is to put the rest on flickr and invite people
to identify the locations so that maybe bring some meaning can be made of them. It will be a
labour of love and one small representation of the untold millions who have
lived and died. To see my progress please visit Bessie Field Photos.
But
what of the us. The generations who, to a large extent, are still living
yet have a large chunk of their history in diaries, photo albums and VHS tapes not yet lost.
Whose friends are phone numbers and addresses in an address book and what’s
more to the point have lost contact with 90% of the people they ever knew. It’s obviously too late for the ‘dead
people’ and truth be told the generation from the 1950’s in general shy away
from all things technological. I am not defining everyone but in general the
generation before the decade of the 1970’s (and I refer to the ten teenage
years) are less than enamoured with technology and happy to live out their
lives without it. Whereas the the generation from the 1980’s were aware of what
was afoot and have generally got up to speed more or less intact. No, it is the
group from the 1970’s who most want to be technologically wired and are faced
with a bigger mass upload of their lives than anyone else. The teenagers from
the 1960’s I have identified as being the one where the jury is still out. They
were the hippie generation, free love, free everything and where the young
rebelled from the old. I can only go by what I see and in general my older
sister and her ilk want little or nothing to do with computers outside work
hours and what has to be done. ‘I still prefer to go to the bank in person’. Prefer,
not insist, simply prefer.
It
took me about three years to upload and digitise all my photos, 2005 to 2007
and I am still working through full annotation of place and people etc. It’s a
long job that will last many more years. How laborious compared to the photos I
take today that are uploaded fully annotated and complete. I don’t think my CD
collection will ever be fully uploaded. I have an amazon cloud library and it
is building but the back catalogue is a mere 250 songs until I buy more space.
But it is also an ongoing project. I have few videos in comparison so I have
finished those already. Yet I pity the fans of super 8 who must to this day be
working through boxes of old reels or VHS tapes if indeed they even care. Books
are my next challenge and hinges on the purchase of a ebook reader next year.
If there is a ‘to be updated’ part of this diatribe then this subject is it.
Which
brings me to social media. I have all my current friends as part of this
network but I can never hope to have many from my past prior to the advent of
facebook. When I think of all the people I knew at school, most of who I
can’t remember their names and the ones I can, the girls names will have
changed. I have used facebook since 2005 and have about 60 contacts, paltry
compared to the 500 plus of my daughter. Why do I care, I don’t but its like a
dictionary, you have one but you don’t necessarily look up every word. And yet
when you want to find a word you would hate it if it wasn't there. As a
library, as a dictionary, as a research tool later in life I think we are only
just scratching the surface with what social media can do. But for me it has little to do with chatting with friends and much more a warehouse diary of my life.
In conclusion, I will continue on with the completion of this project to the best of my ability. I will complete my photos file. I will add to facebook any friend I find. I will continue with blogs and document as much as possible the interesting things of my life. I will become as 21st century as I possibly can. This is a scary world and I am sure many feel like bewildered Victorians as the railways changed communication from the horse and cart speed of life to something akin to frighteningly fast. We live in another fast new world, I have embraced it but I still find it daunting as I open yet another box of dusty papers.
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