It's a new world humanity is moving into, and sometimes downright goofy when technology works, but works in weird ways. Be warned, this is post with me talking out loud. Would love to hear your comments.
This is information age, we're told. As an economist, I tend to abstract concepts down to a variable (presumably linear), and I often think about measuring all of technology as the famous "A" reisdual term in Solow's growth equation. But what if we want to break technology into a taxonomy -- communications, production, health, construction, transportation? But even then, no category is big enough to measure using a linear variable. Communications is a great example. We tend to think that faster commo is one of the best measures of human advancement, but that would imply that technological advanced peak the day I plugged into the Internet, right? That day I became connected at the speed of the light to anyone.
Aha. Maybe not anyone. What about that Ethiopian villager? So we need to extend the variable by adding a scale dimension to it, right? That's easy, but still obviously incomplete. Communication is multi-dimensional in terms of type (voice, email, text, imagery) and time (asynchronicity is the great power of email) and ... what else? How do you evaluate RSS or Hulu or webcams?
Well the weirdness for me is that Google keeps coming up with amazing technologies, and they all keep stretching my sense of how to measure communication. One of the most useful little things they have is called Google Alerts (wiki here), which I have been using for years (I think).
While this is a fascinating thread in its own right, this morning I am just laughing at how I get my daily Alert for any web postings that have written about "growthology" or "Tim Kane." Unfortunately, I live in a state where I nearly share a name with the Governor, Tim Kaine. It seems like a lot of other mothers didn't realize my name was taken and gave it to their sons also. So, some days I get cool stuff like this:
Google News Alert for: "tim kane"
It seems there is a Tim Kane who is a good super-hero artist, and that MUST be me living in an alternate universe. There are a handful of Tim Kane professors. And of course the governor, and almost Vice President. What is hard to imagine is how communications technology continues to advance. But we know it will. The natural extension is the way that tecting allows an individual to be hyper-aware of multiple other individuals. Right now, text/chat involves active engagement, meaning that others have to actively send messages. But how long before that becomes passive? Can't you imagine the demand for parents to have heartbeat and location monitors on their children? What about devices that monitor in real-time what we browse? I still think the hive mind is creepy, but you know me, I'm a Luddite. |
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