We are already seeing changes in business and social interactions, in language use because of texting, in availability of information- what will be the long term effects on humans?
What do you think will be the historic cultural changes that will take place because of the...?
In the short range future, I see technology bringing humans together across languages and across borders. Business has been doing this for a long time, but now with the internet and computers becoming ubiquitous, that kind of networking will reach critical mass among the common man.
We will not identify ourselves by borders and currencies and skin color. We will identify ourselves around common ideals and common projects. We will be able to use groups of people around the world to create and organize in ways that our various governments, religions, and traditions would never allow.
There will be resistance. I don鈥檛 know how it will come out.
One day we will use the improved communication among common people to harness our strenghts as a worldwide unity of individuals to decide who we want to be, how we want to get there, and who is standing in our way. By so doing, we will usurp the structures of power that seek to divide us and dilute our resolve as a family of humankind.
There will be resistance. I don鈥檛 know how it will work out...
What do you think will be the historic cultural changes that will take place because of the...?
We will become fat, illiterate social retards who do not know how to communicate to each other face to face.
maybe the 1st gay, black President
hopefully more employment... the ability to work from anywhere, freeing up peoples time, and expense of travel...
Human interaction does not change as fast as the technology we use to socialize.
IMHO being connected to the net gonna have the same effect on society as phone lines did. Most people gonna join the grid in a few years, cause the information will be more plenty and travel much faster amongst those who are online, but it won't phase out person-to-person interactions.
People that would never meet in real life are meeting. People are marrying people that they met online, who lived hundreds or thousands of miles away from eachother originally. I think that changes social interactions by people of different backgrounds coming together and meeting without having made a judgement about eachother as they originally didn't know what the other looked like.
I think we will see more segments of people moving up in the world economically because internet and computer jobs can be created in buildings in areas where there are no crops can be grown. It has already been proven in some blighted areas of cities where an internet company or online business rents a warehouse or a second floor office in an urban area and suddenly other businesses like lunch places crop up around them to service those employees. And then a related business moves in and it snowballs creating jobs at every level - tech, food service, maintenance, management, administrative.
I do not think that creates a utopia, even though you could put an internet company in the middle of a third world country or an area where no crop will grow because the customers can be around the world. But it will give people another option. It has been proven in India where the caste system has been rocked due to people from lower castes being able to move up in the world based on aptitude. But at the same time technology doesn't solve all because we are still human. Those of the very lowest castes have only moved up significantly when they were able to conceal their caste by using a different name, etc, and by the time people found out they were already trusted/proven. Or, in some cases, they had a mentor who %26quot;made it%26quot; who was from their caste or a boss or manager who took a philanthropic attitude and wanted to help people of lower castes based on their character.
It does not change the world for everybody, but for the willing, the internet it gives someone the ability to move up if they do not have the bus fare out of the countryside, the rich benefactor, etc that they needed in the past to break social status.
