V Bit Set

Arthur Salm, columnist for SDNN, argues that after a period of rapid growth from the early 1800s until 1955 we haven’t made any forward progress. Computers he says, “hadn’t altered the way we live all that much”. Arthur unfortunately appears to have missed that we transitioned from the industrial age to the information age.

He does add a postscript to the story recognizing the societal change that has occurred in that time. I would like to make an argument that computers have had a massive effect on our everyday lives in many different ways. And in fact provided some of the very underpinnings that fomented the changes he does recognize.

Healthcare: Computer modeling is used discover causes and cures of many diseases. We now have access to computer based diagnostic tools such as CAT scans, MRIs, ultrasound. We have reporting systems that allow us to create flu vaccines that get it mostly right months in advance of the flu season. We have sequenced the human genome and should start reaping the rewards of both genetic and stem cell research very soon. Two of the biggest problems we face currently are directly related. Our population is living longer and our healthcare costs are skyrocketing.

Finance: Black Tuesday in 1987 has been blamed on computerized trading. And indeed it probably played a partial role. Computers allowed a massive expansion of our stock markets allowing individuals to become a greater part of the stakeholders in the ownership of business than ever before. Arthur pooh-poohs the move from paper to electronic currency, but that change allowed a wide array of financial products to be created that vastly change the way we work and play.

Media: My sons, born in 2002 and 2003, have never known life without TiVo. Arthur dismisses the progress in television from several channels of black and white to color, three digit channel numbered, high definition TV. But DVRs, and TiVo in particular, offer something different. They supply access to media from multiple sources, on demand, filtered for appropriate content. When we stay in a hotel my son, who was able to work a TiVo at two and a half, can not grasp the concept of traditional television. He has only recently accepted that I have no ability to replay a song when I am listening to it on the radio. The choice and selection of media affects us greatly. From a young age the programming shapes our views and values and when we are grown we can limit our exposure to just the views and opinions we want to hear.

Communication: The near free, instantaneous video communication offered by the Internet has released a generation of knowledge workers from the bonds of family and freed them to travel the world, most often to arrive here, to make their fortune. Those that stayed behind or who are returning are shaping the most significant change of our generation, globalization. Business began to be able to send faxes in the mid-1970s. Now just in time delivery systems make construction of the 777 a worldwide team effort.

Turning the world into a single close knit community is perhaps the single biggest advance, and the single largest challenge that still awaits us. Today’s newspapers are failing and are starting to rally around cries of hyperlocalism and geographic community. Unfortunately they continue to show how, even at a supposedly technologically forward outlet like SDNN, they just don’t get it. Yes, I am interested in local stories, but my geographic community is just one definition of local. Things that happen in my workplace, even if it is global, are local to me. The same goes for my family and my friends from high school and college all now spread across a continent, they are a local community to me. There are past coworkers and people who I meet at professional meetings who form yet another local community.

All of these local communities are served by today’s social media technology. Whether it is video conferencing, social networks, blogging or micro-blogging. There is a place for the local geographic media in all of this too, however don’t try to define for me what community is. Just offer me the tools and content and allow me to assemble my community as I see fit.