The Internet
With the current big stories of Film and Music Piracy and the universally despised net neutrality, I realized something very different and groundbreaking: The Internet is The Revolution.
While this century has seen tot he slow demise of Communism, Lenin's vision of a International Marxist Revolution was tainted early by their misguided decision to use a tyrannical form of government to buttress a Socialist Economy. In a time of nearly Global Capitalism and free market the foundations of the Revolution have been cemented by everyone's favorite source of pornography and home videos of people being hit in the crotch: The Internet.
See, at its very core The Internet is a socialist construct: a global meeting ground where information is a more valuable currency than...well currency. In the beginning maelstrom of proposed prosperity--the dot com boom--businessman across the world sought to use the technology to be able to reach a huge market, or maybe the entire market. All of these companies failed, except for a few heavy hitters like amazon.com. However one company not only survived but became a monolithic business and a buzz world all at once: Google.
Essentially, google exchanges information, you search for information on their engine and then those that have information can be found, easily, on it. Though the site is funded by ad space by other companies and Google's own ventures, it is still much like an information desk at the front of the world meeting ground of the Internet.
Now on a smaller, and illegal scale, you have an even more socialistic prospect of person-to-person actions. Between messageboards and music blogs I've gotten 99% of my music from someone else sharing it with me. I've discovered lists of bands and genres I would have never even heard of in a tradition music market. In turn I have shared this music with others and by word of mouth bands that 10 years ago would have been known by an elite music snob handful, can now enjoy fans from all over the world, who are willing to buy things from them directly.
What this technology brings us is essentially a chance to go back and forward at the sametime. What I envision is that in a few years kids with little-to-no money will exchange information for information. An 18 year old in Boston and a 27 year old in Osaka will exchange several albums for a movie or two. People will exchange books for paintings, pictures for programs. Bartering will make a massive comeback--as it has already begun.
I became dissapointed in my own time as a child, the space race of the cold war took a major backseat during my tenure on this world, seeing the Nasa budget get pulled further, and further back. In a sense computers created and destroyed Space Travel. Until recently I felt that we may never get to that Start Trek moment where man explores the Universe and expands its knowledge with interaction with other lifeforms. But recently I've reconciderd.
When Human Space Exploration first began Humans were at their most divided and aggressive, the Second World War had just ended and the Cold War was beginning. We were a tribal warring people at the time with far too many problems to fix at home before we went off to see the rest of the Solar System, let alone the Galaxy. But with our concentration on computers, namely on the telecommunication field we have now been able to shrink our world down to a village where a person on one side of our world can instantly talk to one on another. Perhaps it is with the internet that we unite and pacify ourselves. Maybe we needed a taste of the wonder of space, before we went in and fixed ourselves up enough to truly explore it. Many ridicule the idea of the internet of as being the greatest invention of the 20th century (The Refrigerator, Microwave, Air Flight, Air Conditioning and others do hold very good sway) but maybe it was this one invention we needed to force us to grow up, get rid of war and the dollar and unite ourselves as a species and a planet.
Or maybe it is just a great place to get porn.
While this century has seen tot he slow demise of Communism, Lenin's vision of a International Marxist Revolution was tainted early by their misguided decision to use a tyrannical form of government to buttress a Socialist Economy. In a time of nearly Global Capitalism and free market the foundations of the Revolution have been cemented by everyone's favorite source of pornography and home videos of people being hit in the crotch: The Internet.
See, at its very core The Internet is a socialist construct: a global meeting ground where information is a more valuable currency than...well currency. In the beginning maelstrom of proposed prosperity--the dot com boom--businessman across the world sought to use the technology to be able to reach a huge market, or maybe the entire market. All of these companies failed, except for a few heavy hitters like amazon.com. However one company not only survived but became a monolithic business and a buzz world all at once: Google.
Essentially, google exchanges information, you search for information on their engine and then those that have information can be found, easily, on it. Though the site is funded by ad space by other companies and Google's own ventures, it is still much like an information desk at the front of the world meeting ground of the Internet.
Now on a smaller, and illegal scale, you have an even more socialistic prospect of person-to-person actions. Between messageboards and music blogs I've gotten 99% of my music from someone else sharing it with me. I've discovered lists of bands and genres I would have never even heard of in a tradition music market. In turn I have shared this music with others and by word of mouth bands that 10 years ago would have been known by an elite music snob handful, can now enjoy fans from all over the world, who are willing to buy things from them directly.
What this technology brings us is essentially a chance to go back and forward at the sametime. What I envision is that in a few years kids with little-to-no money will exchange information for information. An 18 year old in Boston and a 27 year old in Osaka will exchange several albums for a movie or two. People will exchange books for paintings, pictures for programs. Bartering will make a massive comeback--as it has already begun.
I became dissapointed in my own time as a child, the space race of the cold war took a major backseat during my tenure on this world, seeing the Nasa budget get pulled further, and further back. In a sense computers created and destroyed Space Travel. Until recently I felt that we may never get to that Start Trek moment where man explores the Universe and expands its knowledge with interaction with other lifeforms. But recently I've reconciderd.
When Human Space Exploration first began Humans were at their most divided and aggressive, the Second World War had just ended and the Cold War was beginning. We were a tribal warring people at the time with far too many problems to fix at home before we went off to see the rest of the Solar System, let alone the Galaxy. But with our concentration on computers, namely on the telecommunication field we have now been able to shrink our world down to a village where a person on one side of our world can instantly talk to one on another. Perhaps it is with the internet that we unite and pacify ourselves. Maybe we needed a taste of the wonder of space, before we went in and fixed ourselves up enough to truly explore it. Many ridicule the idea of the internet of as being the greatest invention of the 20th century (The Refrigerator, Microwave, Air Flight, Air Conditioning and others do hold very good sway) but maybe it was this one invention we needed to force us to grow up, get rid of war and the dollar and unite ourselves as a species and a planet.
Or maybe it is just a great place to get porn.
posted by ESN-TNS at 7:53 PM
3 comments
