Hi
I had some spam.. hmm.. useful industry news letter. Through today. I was bored so I read it and unlike most of the c$%p I get through this, was one got my brain going. What happens next with the Internet?
"With talk even of Web 3.0 on the horizon, once enterprises and individuals have become more comfortable with the current Web 2.0 media, there's a raft of possibilities where digital content and communities are melding in a way unthinkable before broadband, before mobile and before content. Perhaps in years to come, historians will look back at this first decade of the new millennium and amongst other historical events, take note of the immense cultural changes engendered by mass access to content, and will see it as the first post-modern digital revolution which saw the death of distance and the birth of the real knowledge economy." - Paul Quigley - Enterprise Content Management 365
One culture - Internet culture
For decades the popularity of Western and particularly American culture has had an impact on societies around the world. But it's always been as something separate, different 'cool'. With the widespread use of the Internet then that boundary that kept the different cultures apart. We truly are moving beyond boarders. This past year has exposed the real extent of globalisation. The American elections swept the whole world up, with people having a view on the candidates regardless of what country they were from. This is the first election where the real cultural phenomenon that's been taking place within America was actually experienced in all countries. The first election that felt like a global election. Like it was an election of a world president. The political language in America is understood by many outside it's boarders through TV, music and the Internet.
Equally evident is the economic crisis as a global phenomenon. The normal checks and balances aren't in place because all the banks had the same view around the world. It wasn't one group did one thing and the others did something else. Everyone acted together. The big safeguard that there used to be was cultural differance. The attitude towards lax regulation was common all over the place and the massive media switch from hope to fear. Fear of a global depression and anger at the banks is truly global. These events have really acted as a catalyst for people to realise just how closely so many countries and cultures are growing together. All the inter linkages. All the shared hopes, dreams and fears. Main society opened it's eyes and didn't see their world ending at a boarder but was universal.
What does this change? Where does the technology go?
It's interesting to see the view points of others, the great fears the experts have. Knowledge is power and the Internet is the greatest source of knowledge yet. So I can see the logic behind their 'end of the world' predictions.
In some senses we are setting a cultural reset button, the structures and concepts of a 'social contract' don't seem to apply to the Internet yet. There aren't be cultural boundaries online that we're built, rely on and often take for granted off-line. But unlike the dooms day predictions I don't think that this won't happen. We have the templates of social structure, democracy, anti competition regulation, law and fair justice. We will be forced to have to apply these on a global level. Better cooperation between police forces, better cooperation on regulation and political movements that spread beyond a single country. The closer we move towards a single culture the risk of war becomes greatly reduced. However the risk of terrorism becomes amplified. There will always be a minority in a culture that opposes authority. But over time we will overcome this as we have overcome civil war and violent protests in our own national cultures.
How long these changes will take? No one knows. Will we take a big step backwards if we are slow to build our social boundaries into a global online culture? What's really up to us. Will it be an easy transition? No, and it won't be a straight line from here to global peace and a true global culture.
We've been lucky in the past, we've had the right leaders at the right times following civil wars that have driven us to a more socially just society. I hope we can make this relatively bloodlessly. We already have good templates we can use.
I think that the Internet is much more likely to change how we do things, rather than what we do. After all, we are still human. The Internet won't change that.
What do you think?
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