How will we think in 50 years? Much like Bush thought in 1945 the process of organizing and accessing data (which has already reached speeds that he could not have anticipated) will only continue to increase in speed and efficiency. And in 50 years we will have grown to expect this from all types of technology. Additionally the networks that tie both time and space together will continue to occupy us more and more. Our thinking processes will revolve around this interconnectedness and speed.
Like Jennie mentioned before we will see disciplines as being even more interconnected and more intimately tied to computer technologies and programming. I also believe that this interconnectedness will spill over into the technology itself as well as our social patterns. The physical aspects of technology will become increasingly standardized so as to make both physical connections and wireless networking far easier. These physical changes will only reinforce the themes of connectedness that will permeate our through process.
Like Yu Tsun of Borges short story what we initially thought of as chaos and randomness will be challenged by our own intellect. We will not be able to accept things that don’t make sense and as a result our ability to rationalize and forge connections and patterns will increase. We already feel this urge (religion and science both combat the anxiety we feel in the presence of randomness) but the reality of the world in 50 years and our ability to access and organize information will only increase the mental dexterity with which we draw connections.
It’s this ability to forge connections and the speed with which we access this information that combined with the current trends in social networking sites that could potentially form a “global village” in the truest sense of the word and I can’t help but think that some of the more “tribal” attitudes that McLuhan worried about might very well become the reality.
I can only say that what precedes this statement is a guess, and a fairly poor one at that based on the reality of technology as I understand it now. My hopes for the future (one perhaps a bit more than 50 years into the future) runs more along the possibilities of ubiquitous computing and augmented reality. I would have to say that it’s my hope that how we will think in the future (again, perhaps a bit more distant) hinges on our abilities to integrate the digital and the physical worlds until then simply both become the natural course of reality as we know it.
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2 comments:
Pretty comprehensive and optimistic answer here. So you look forward to a future with smart houses, etc.?
Not in any near sense. But I've seen the expos with the ovens that one can program and turn over the internet. I don't picture them catching on anytime soon, but I think there might be a future in highly wired houses. It has to be more than just something we think would be cool in order to be fully implemented. There has to be some type of genuine need or pull for that sort of technology. Right now it's not particularly broken so we shouldn't be trying to fix it.
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