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Wireless
technology allows us to access information from everywhere. No
longer are we tethered to our information systems by umbilical
cables and keyboards and cathode ray tubes; we conduct our business
from wherever we please—from our offices, from our dwellings,
and from our stallions of steel.
As the
amount of available information increases--along with the number
of Rorschach-like systems for interpreting what it means—one
thing seems constant: we always need more. A lot has happened since
1965, when the steady increase in computer processing power was
foretold in Moore's Law. Perhaps it's time for a new law, something
like "The amount of available information on a given subject is
directly proportional to the amount of interest expressed, and inversely
proportional to the amount of time one has to study it."
So,
what's this about a digital lariat? The concept is made possible
by the very recent phenomenon of being able to access information
from everywhere, which is significantly different from how we have
accessed information over the course of the last 13,000 years or
so. It was approximately that long ago that developments in farming
and animal husbandry brought about humankind's shift from a hunter/gatherer
societal model to an agrarian one. Since then, societies have evolved
and flourished. People could settle in one place, cultivate their
own food, and barter the surplus amounts that they didn't need.
They established communities where information could be centralized,
and the concentrated essence of human beings within these communities
allowed culture and the arts to flourish. Communities also provided
the foundation upon which commercial, political, religious, and
various other types of systems were developed.
The
establishment of communities, commercial ventures, and money also
made it possible for people to accumulate wealth. Throughout most
of history, wealth was measured primarily by the amount of land
and precious metals that a family or person could amass. However,
modern technology has expanded the concept of wealth to include
machinery, raw materials that run the machinery and the corporations
that build or operate machinery.
Since
the Industrial Revolution, more of what is valuable to us—including
money and wealth—has become increasingly abstract, at least
in industrialized countries. The power that's afforded to wealth
has remained somewhat constant, but wealth itself—once represented
by piles of precious materials—is now measured more by pieces
of paper that represent abstract systems, structures, and machinery.
The
assets of corporations are also becoming increasingly abstract.
Until the latter part of this century, what was most valuable to
the majority of corporations? Usually, it was either their machinery
or their inventory. Now, most corporations will tell you that information
is their lifeblood. Some take the humanist approach and say that
it's their people, but this is really a thinly disguised nod to
the value of information within people's heads.
The
increasingly abstract nature of money and wealth is a significant
aspect of the Information Age, and is being fueled by various developments
in digital technology. For example, we've reached the point where
a single piece of plastic with a magnetic imprint is pretty much
all one needs to conduct personal business and meet one's physical
needs. I don't mean credit cards—although their development
may have paved the way for the concept of cash-less chits—because
credit cards still need to be paid off in a conventional manner.
Rather, I'm talking about debit transactions, check cards, and electronic
wallets, which actually transfer the purchase amount from a customer's
account to the merchant's account.
In a
sense, this Information Age in which we find ourselves is the ultimate
abstraction. We rely on computer hardware to actually perform our
endless calculations, but both logic and data are wonderfully, beautifully,
almost mystically abstract. Forty thousand widgets may have been
purchased to stop the leak (or the squeak) in forty thousand whatchamacallits—but
pay no attention to the widgets' function. Was it exactly forty
thousand? Because if it wasn't, the ratio of profit to cost may
make future manufacture of the widgets obsolete—unless, of
course, they can somehow be made more cheaply…
Information
technology has driven us to abstraction, and wireless communications
technology allows us to lasso the loot from anywhere. We are becoming
hunters and gatherers of information, much like our forebears became
hunters and gatherers of food. From the prairies of population centers
to the stretches of suburbia, we search for economic sustenance.
We ride to the ridge where the Web commences, and the range upon
which we roam consists of reason and cause and effect. And although
where we are may no longer be very important, we still need to know
where it's at.
Arts
and culture emerged from societies that shifted from the hunter/gatherer
model to an agrarian-based one. So riddle me this: What will emerge
from societies that become increasingly reliant on abstraction,
and whose technologies allow individuals to reorient themselves
to the hunt?
Copyright
© 2000 Stephen Wacker. All Rights Reserved.
Stephen
Wacker writes essays about relationships and songs about technology—or
is it the other way around?—from the upper left-hand corner
of the United States. Write to him at stephen@wackerwordsandmusic.com.
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