It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way...
-Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
Future history of human species will mark twentieth and twenty-first century as one of the most crucial period for the collective progress of the species. During the last century, history witnessed worst of the exhibitions of human capabilities as well as a few of the future-defining technology-leaps and breathtaking expansion of human knowledge. While the barbarity of Jewish genocides, massive loss of human lives in world-wars, chilling cruelty and cold-blooded ruthlessness of dropping atom bombs, cluster bombs and napalm on innocent people continue to haunt collective consciousness of humanity, unprecedented progression of science with discovery of fabric of DNA, general theory of relativity, quantum electrodynamics, information theory etc., matched with equal advances in technology, have opened a new chapter of human progression. Space travel by Yuri Gagarin, first human footprint on Moon by Aldrin and his team or massive expansion of telecommunication network, electronic broadcast media and invention of modern day computing systems, each by itself is an astounding feat of human progress. However a sweeping change by definition is one that changes the lives of mass and alters the way they operate or live in an irreversible manner. Using that as benchmark, let me pick few technological breakthroughs that brought in sweeping shift to the human civilization. My conjecture is that each of this technology shift also has brought in permanent shift in human psyche.
Sweep One
First major Shift was brought by the invention of telecommunication network in the beginning of this century by Graham Bell. The first few decades of this century saw massive expansion of telecommunication network, across countries, across continents. Suddenly geographical distance was no more the big barrier for human conversation. Continents got closer, people could talk across timezones, across thousands of kilometers.Humanity got the first taste of getting connected across geographical distance.
Sweep Two
Next technology sweep came with the discovery of radio communication. Although Mr. Jagadish Bose did not get his dues during his lifetime, his discovery in 1894 created the path for further far-reaching technological breakthroughs. Though Radio was dicovered in nineteenth century, it was not so much of technology for people till Marcony popularized it in US and Britain in early twentieth century. Radio communication made it possible to send people in space, learn about galaxies, stars, nebulaes. It changed the way human look at entertainment. Radio channels, Televisions changed the concept of human entertainment and brought up a new set of Industries. It made possible for the army to remain in contact in difficult war-terrain. It made possible for the rescue network to function in a disaster-struck area. It made possible for the rich world and poor world to get connected and share information. It made possible for the mainstream human civilization to reach out to people living in the remotest corner of the earth without ever knowing them. It made possible for the world powers to remain in control and connected.
Indeed, Mr. Jagadish Bose continues to touch the human lives even today in way that he may not have ever imagined.
Sweep Three
After communication technologies, if any technology that has impacted the lives of people in a major way is the invention of computing machines. In last forty years, this technology swept the population across continents and created new possibilities that people could not even imagine fifty years ago. It made possible breakthroughs in medical diagnostics. It made possible complex simulation of weather model hugely improving our ability to forecast weather changes. In fact computing technology impacted almost all branches of human knowledge and in all cases accelerated the advancement of the fields.
It also started a paradigm shift from analogue domain to digital domain. To understand the full import of this shift, consider that the entire gamut of communication technologies were analogue before the onset of computing industry. Telecommunication technologies were lot costlier and error-prone before computing revolution changed the technologies. Moving to digital domain helped bring down transmission errors, cost of manufacturing, equipment size and thereby made them scale for massive number of users and larger area of coverage. Today, we truly live in digital age. Our telecommunication network, both landline and radio, our electronic media all are digital. Needless to mention, this is just the beginning of computing era.
Sweep Four
Computer network that started with DARPA and ethernet have become the most ubiquitous network for both computing devices and communication devices. Internet is one of the most beautiful inventions that became possible because we had this network. Today, internet is bringing people together in a way that was unimaginable even ten years back. Google, Facebook are examples of the immense impact that internet can potentially bring to human collectiveness. National and geographical barriers of information flow have been demolished albeit with a few exceptions. This freedom of information flow has empowered ordinary people in a way none envisaged earlier. Governmental regimes are finding compelled to change the way of their functioning to cope with this freedom of information. Information in the internet is global and so are the people who are using it.
Collaboration across different continent is not myth any more. Two persons sitting at different corners of the world can work together now thanks to the ubiquity of the internet. Online education is a new phenomenon that has happened only because internet happened.
Sweep Five
Last technology sweep, that we see happening now, is the digitization of information storage. Storage technology has travelled a long way from stone tablet/papyrus/paper to reach the modern age of digital storage. Entire information of the entire human population and its collective knowledge are now ready to move to digital electronic bits to be stored in magnetic/optical media. Interestingly, this news article from BBC tells us that total information about and of the human world was 295 exabytes as on 2007. BBC refers to an article in the journal Science that effectively says that the figure above was not a speculation but provided by scientific measurement. With new-found popularity and capability of internet, digital storage is expanding almost exponentially. Ten years from now many industry data centres will have similar capacity of storage. This enormous digital data explosion is propelling many new technologies and growth of new technology startups. Plummeting cost/MB of storage, continued focus to invent chipsets with lower power consumption and expanding storage capacity mean that civilization will have plenty of cheap online storage capacity which would in turn will incentivize higher online footprints. And that will lead us to a new way of working.
In the next twenty years, information about every single individual, be it from Europe, or USA or from India, Srilanka,Singapore,Hongkong,Malayasia or China, will be available somewhere in the vast hyperspace of digital network. Your digital persona will be equally important, if not more, as your physical persona. Your most trivial social transactions, recorded and memorized by the internet for the eternity, will define your past and influence your future. One way of looking at this would be that one not only will need to perform and excel, he/she will have to remain consistent to his past persona, since one's entire past is captured in the digital storage for others to dig and there is no option to erase/modify/hide that. You got to explain every action that you have committed intentionally, unintentionally, unknowingly, frivolously.
But being human is also about irrational choices, about freedom to break consistency, about the freedom to not want to explain one's action. So may be, we will learn to accept our irrationality rather than running away from it; learn to live freely with full knowledge that the past is not something one can do anything about and stop living burdened of the past.
That perhaps would bring our ultimate freedom, the emotional freedom of being oneself all the time, without fear, without guilt.
