I am going to be Nostradamus and make a prediction

Hello everyone,

For the final post, the time has come to talk about the future of the Internet. Actually, it is more like I am going to make some wild mass guessing about the future while trying to sound logical and hope that my predictions will not be too far-fetched. We all now how Nostradamus (you do know who he is right, if not just google or wiki him) regularly predicted when the world as we know it will come to an end. Well, we certainly have not gone extinct yet, so I hope that maybe my predictions will be more accurate than him, or not. It could be that he predicted that the Internet would mean the end of the world as we know it since the Internet changed our lives so much, but people misinterpreted him and thought that we would all meet a hard and horrible death.

Perhaps he was right about one thing after all...

As for me, I always thought the Internet is the next stage in human evolution. Humanity evolved into a more intelligent being with the usage of language, tools and abstract thinking. I believe humanity evolved with the invention of the Internet. It is not a biological evolution, but a more philosophical one. With the Internet, human beings now have a very form of collective knowledge and consciousness. A very crude form, but its still a form of collective human knowledge and consciousness. The Internet is where alot of our learning and information is stored. People can communicate near instantly with the Internet. Perhaps one day, with the invention of cybernetic implants, we would be able to access the Internet using only our brains and now external devices. Telepathy here we come! Or maybe not. I wouldn't want that body-builder sitting across me to know that I think he looks like a steroid abusing alien and that he is all brawn and no brains. Telepathy may not be a useful thing for people like me, who comes up with all sorts of insulting thoughts in his mind.

Yeah! Virtual Facebook for the win!

Or how about a society where the government can keep track of all its citizens by monitoring the Internet? Every word that you write or say on the Internet will be taken note off. Even the stuff you utter in your sleep, will be recorded by the government, courtesy of the bed you are lying on which is connected to the Internet. I better not say to much then, because Big Brother is watching me.

Apple.. I mean, Big Brother is watching you.

Or maybe in the future we can have use virtual items in the real world. I am talking about a kind of virtual reality which integrates itself into real life. A similar term would be augmented reality, where the world we around us can be viewed through a special camera or screen and all virtual stuff would be displayed over the real world environment. We can interact with stuff with our hands in real life, which would interact with objects in virtual world. I could use my hands in real life to pick up an virtual pen, write something on a piece of paper and hand it over to my friend to read. He reads the message while in reality, there is nothing written on that piece of paper. Heck, maybe the paper itself could be virtual. That way we could save both ink and the trees. Maybe I could have a virtual pet to carry around when I go for a walk in a park. The Internet could act as the medium and digital database where all this virtual world objects are stored and accessed. Hmmm.....

Thank goodness those pink things only exist in the virtual world and not in real life. Because those things can shoot lasers!

So we have seen how the Internet has changed the lives drastically since it was introduced. From Web 1.0 to 2.0 and 3.0 in the future. Who knows what the future may truly bring?

I have the Internet! Here me roar!

Greetings everyone,

Previously, I talked about citizen journalism. Or at least I hope you cared enough to know that I was talking about that. I came to the conclusion that not everyone has what it takes to be journalist. Or if people even cared about what you were writing in the 1st place.

So this brings to a somewhat related topic concerning Social networking. Especially new systems like Twitter and to some extent, Facebook. Alright, I don't really like using all these social networking systems so my views may undoubtedly come off as a bit biased. But please bear with me. To me, social networking is something that allows me to keep in contact with my friends and other people and let me know what they are doing with their lives. This is fine and dandy, and Facebook and Twitter do a remarkable job in doing this. Unfortunately, it is doing too good a job.

When I say that I know what they are doing with their lives, I want to know what is their status. For example, if they are working, changed job, changed wives, changed sexes, had a child, or married a child and therefore ended up in jail. Heck, I would like to know if the person is even alive, or whether he was just a figment of my imagination. I would certainly NOT want to know about that very normal chicken rice you had for a very boring lunch in an unremarkable workplace cafeteria. Neither would I like to know how much trouble you have changing your baby's diapers, nor the new Kama Sutra position you are trying out with your loved one.

You might think that a person who posts this kind of stuff on the Internet for all to see is some kind of narcissist or has some kind of issues. Well guess what? Millions of people are doing this on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Twitter is even worse as it allows near instant updates to what you are doing at this very instant! People will know at the exact instant you farted the moment you tweet it! If I could be bothered, I could make a tweet about writing this blog post right now. But what I think is, who CARES? Who cares that I am writing a blog right now! My answer is : no one. Or at least, they shouldn't. I do hope they are not stalkers.

Picture says it all.

Why do so many people use all these new social networking sites that allow minute to minute updates? Is it so important to let people know what you are doing at that very instant or at least on that day? Is it to fulfill some kind of psychological need to feel important and thus boost our egos? With these social networking sites, people can feel that they are all important. Lets all hear them roar! I am going to put write about this blog on my Facebook account and update my Twitter that I have finished my post, so please post your comments there! It helps me to feel that at least someone cares about what is happening in my otherwise mundane life!

Nope, I certainly don't care about your latest attempt in producing babies.

P.S. If you didn't realize, I do NOT have a Facebook or Twitter account so don't bother looking for one, though I couldn't care less if you were looking or not.