subject: The Digital Age Is Here [print this page] The Digital Age Is Here The Digital Age Is Here
Many of us feel that the digital age has begun with a big bang and we already well saturated in it. I feel otherwise. In fact, I feel that the digital revolution is something completely new and revolutionary in human history, while the speed of progress of the Industrial Revolution was a natural result of the hundreds if not thousands of years that led up to it.
I believe that not only have we just begun to scratch the surface of the cyber age, no matter how rapid progress may seem, but that by the time this revolution starts reaching maturity the world will be completely and unimaginably different than it is now.
Let's face it, while digital technology may be ubiquitous to us, what we actually do with it is after all quite simple. While it is true that Facebook may change someone's mind and attitudes, is it really progress in any sense of the term? Do digital devices and programs really extend our capacities and talents- to a formidable degree- or do they merely expedite our access to data mostly- including data that is personal? How many people do you actually know that are fairly 'savvy' with a computer? How many people do you know who are brilliant with them? Compare that with the numbers of people you undoubtedly know, perhaps including yourself, who really don't know much about cyber technology at all- that would be most of us.
The implications of the cyber age are not the same as all of us learning to drive a car. You simply get lost and ask directions if you don't where you're going in a car. But cyber savvy people of the future will be inventing brand new places to go and brand new ways of getting there. Places for now that are impossible to imagine.
