The Future is Already Here..

I can’t believe that it’s already week 12. Time passes so quickly nowadays. It seems as though just a few weeks back I was at home with my family, packing my suitcase to head back to Melbourne. That was January. Today, it’s almost June, halfway through the year, and soon enough I can celebrate the end of the semester. In fact, I have been for the past week and it’s time for me to get serious now.

As I mentioned in the previous blog, throughout the whole semester I have learned in Social Media that the Internet has not only acted as alternative means of distribution but is also used by various people, even organisations, as an alternative to larger movements, larger audiences, to speak up their opinions and in the case of social activists, even extend on their campaigns.

Another thing that I have come to notice is that as people become more dependant upon the different types of social media; blogging, facebook, twitter, second life, YouTube, Wikipedia and other social media platforms, at the same time, technology is also constantly evolving and offering us different types of medium.

I remember the days when we used to imagine the future with all these fancy gadgets; phones where we can see and talk to one another, computers, where we can touch the screen, instead of tap on keys. Where we have everything we need in just one compact device, and that there will be no more need for books and magazines, because everything is electronic. We are so used to visualising that this future is still so far away, that when we stop to think about it, we realise that we have already arrived the future.

We can say that Donna Haraway’s theory that one day, we would all become a part of everyday technology, that we would all become cyborgs, is actually happening right this moment. Think about the iPad for instance. I heard that, they have applications where we can read magazines and are actually allowed to virtually flip the pages. How cool is that?

I would definitely say that not only the mobile phone, but technology in general; the convergence of mobile phones, laptops, the Internet and especially the applications available to us will dominate the eLandscape in the future.

My housemate has an iPod. He downloaded an application that enables him to control his laptop from his iPod. This would mean that no matter where he was, whether outside, in class, or even in his own living room, he will have access to his laptop as long as it is turned on. This also means that he no longer needs to carry around his laptop or his thumb drive, for that matter because he now has a little gadget that can solve all his problems!

You know what else this means? This means that the future will be filled with lazy people. We are now all too dependent upon technology that we can almost agree with the dystopian life, the potential that human beings will become more like robots, and robots adopt feelings and personality to become more human. At this point, there will be no distinction whatsoever, between robots and human.

I may be getting ahead of myself, but if what we imagined twenty years back is happening now, there may be a possibility that what we imagine now will in fact, occur in twenty years to come. Now, I hope that I have given everyone something to think about.