This is the part where I write about whatever is on my mind for my own satisfaction.
Once again, Ars has put up a top shelf interview that gave me the itch to write. The first of a two part interview about cloud computing covers a range of topics, but I’d like to comment on the notion of the cloud as a shared memory. In the final exchange of the conversation between the interviewer and his subject, the two agree that, while the cloud pools humanity’s collective memory by serving as a permanent repository for all our combined knowledge, it concomitantly drains each individual of his or her cultural identity. While the interconnectedness of what the average Netizen reads on a daily basis has grown exponentially, they explain that this interconnectedness has also shifted laterally. The deep cultural heritage passed down through our masterful storytelling ability is being forgotten, erased by a preference to reference each other rather than remember our past as we spin new tales. The two conclude that this leaves each of us less distinctive, presumably fading society’s cultural tapestry in the process; our end is cultural bankruptcy. Thus, as we increasingly come to rely on the availability of such an unfathomably deep ocean of knowledge as the cloud in our daily interactions, our own reservoirs of retained information begin to dry up. The Renaissance Man devolves into an oaf sitting with a glazed over stare in a baby pool of banality.
I don’t consider this to be a very controversial outlook in the short term, but I wonder if we might see a reversal of this trend as the first generation born into the information age ages.
I admit that when I engage others face-to-face in a topic I haven’t read real-live books about, I often struggle with a feeling that I know the topic fairly well, and yet I can’t quite seem to lay a proper foundation to support my argument. I’m stripped of my superpowers: Googling and The Link! (Perhaps I need an iPhone)
But when I write, I stand on the shoulders of giants—and not the oafish kind.
I can craft emails that unleash rants fueled not by hyperbole, but hyperlink. Grammar, spelling, word choice—vocabulary, given that for years now I’ve instantly looked up every alien word encountered in cyberspace—all approach perfection as a linear function of time spent e-educating myself. No topic is ever over my head, provided the party with whom I am engaged in correspondence has enough patience.
Thus, my ability to communicate meaningfully has developed asymmetrically along two axes: the instantaneous and the intermittent. I can engage in either form with equal capacity using information I’ve retained from my book learnin’, but when off topic, I’m only fluent in the latter medium. Increasingly, though, I find myself drifting in that more stable direction. As a child I spent hours instant messaging each day (though I’d refuse to pick up the phone). Today, however, I’ve become disenchanted with the deluge of Facebook and Twitter. I would much prefer to spend an unnecessary amount of time on a single comment to a thoughtful article than I would on an unnecessary amount of comments in the echo chamber of tweets and statuses. When we all begin to suffer from the inevitable information overload, I am confident that we will collectively step away from the edge before diving into that baby pool. We will get bored. We will stop scanning. We will get old, and slow. And most importantly, we will be made rich by the wealth of knowledge we will have amassed.
I’m not saying we’re going to suddenly drop this great riding lawnmower we’re all strapped into from rabbit straight down to turtle in one fell swoop, but I do think we’ll learn to compliment our chatter by plotting a course along that more stable axis.