One Seeker's Journey: Future Shock    
 Future Shock1 comment
12 Jan 2004 @ 11:08, by Craig Lang

An experience over the last few days has rekindled my interest in Alvin Toffler's book Future Shock. Making some adjustments to the day-to-day business of life again brought home to me just how complex our civilization has become.

For example, we don't just have a telephone anymore. Now we have the landline, the cell phone, the fax, the DSL, and probably several others that I'm not thinking of.
Another example: getting a bank statement - you have your choice of doing your entire banking online, getting on-line statements, etc. No-longer does one just get one's cancelled checks and statement once a month.

Each information channel seems to add a layer of complexity. Although I can't actually state that this is the case, the complexity of information channels in modern life seems to me to follow a Moore's law progression. That is that there is a doubling every 18 months.

This morning for some reason, I was struck by the magnitude of this complexity. It was sort of an overwhelming feeling, as I realized just how much information each of our minds has to keep track of. My question is, does this increasing volume of information really add value to our lives? If none of these channels of information existed, would our lives have any less quality to them?

Something to think about as you pick up your combined PDA and cell phone and start punching buttons...

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1 comment

14 Jan 2004 @ 20:27 by magical_melody : Ahhh indeed!! Great Post Craig!
What's really frustrating is when you have something all typed and do not utilize the copy key before entering the info, and you get that page we all hate, and you refresh the page and your data is forever lost in net space. Oye! That is the down side of technology, and it robs us of needed time/space. However, that must have been the perfect point to address here. Ah the benefits versus the consequences or losses involved with technology. I found some interesting info regards cell phone etiquette I thought you would enjoy: PDF file from CHIMERA, Institute for Social Technical Innovation and research and Cell phone etiquette: 10 Do's and Don'ts and Let's Talk Percentages

I can tell you one thing Craig, I truly have an enormous appreciation and gratitude for technology, especially involving communication, so that I can reach out and touch you and whomever I choose right NOW! Awesome! Just need to be mindful of staying on track with the original intent, or you can get carried away on the information highway to places unplanned, and look up, and see that it is an hour later, and your at a whole other neighborhood than the one you intended to get to(well in this case-20 min versus the 10 min. due to word loss, ha!) Time to fly!

One more thought, I realized that by taking the time to enter this comment, I accomplished keeping in touch with a good friend, and was able to provide interesting comment and links for others to enjoy as well. Hmmm. Accomplished more than I thought I would versus an individual email to you personally Craig. This site NCN is an amazing playing field as well as the opportunities that the net opens as our world can reach out and touch in a more expansive manner and accomplish more collectively than ever possible, so kewl! Now on to read your other post before I move on to do the next task for the day.  

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23 Jun 2006 @ 18:34: Response to Space.com 'Ten Alien Encounters Debunked'
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31 Jan 2005 @ 20:55: Another Spooky Connection?
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21 Oct 2004 @ 00:05: For everything there there is a time

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