Here are selections from readers' reactions to last Sunday's third installment of On the Edge of the Digital Age. In the interest of public discussion, we've selected some of the more provocative thoughts. We've also incorporated some readers' ideas into the remaining installment of the series.
To be sure, the coming Digital Age will allow our lives to be more "personalized," from the products we buy to the information we process, but this is essentially a consumerist approach with heavy doses of libertarianism. But what will the effects of this be on our social fabric?
The advent of television brought hopes for a boom in democracy, with information being more easily [disseminated]. Instead, it led to the sound bite, public impatience with government and other factors that have contributed to the current level of political discontent.
The Digital Age will allow people to be educated uniquely, meaning that they will be able to tailor the news they receive so that it is at least very narrowly focused and most likely in line with beliefs to which they already subscribe. (This assumes that people will not spend all of their time on a "Melrose Place" news group debating whom Amanda will sleep with next.)
This may make reading the news easier on the psyche, but it will hardly foster democratic debate or an often-lamented-over sense of community because people will both lack a common foundation upon which to build and be so ensconced in their own beliefs that they will not be open to the opinions of others. . . .
Given the opportunity, human beings have often shown the willingness and desire to isolate themselves from each other. The Digital Age will carry this opportunity to never-before-imagined extremes.
-- Ryan Fortson, Minneapolis
While I've personally encountered thousands of people who are considering self-employment, I have been repeatedly disturbed by the lack of urgency to get the ball rolling. There is a lingering fear about going it alone, a fear that stems, I believe, from the fact that most of us have not grown up in a culture that even mentions -- much less encourages -- working solo. Consequently, anyone who embarks on this path has a great deal of catching up to do.
-- Barbara J. Winter
Your utopian vision echoes similar sentiments for past technological leaps. Consider the dawn of the Industrial Revolution and the birth of modern art. Society believed that the automation of physical labor would free us to become an enlightened society of artists and philosophers. The advent of film, radio and TV each brought their own predictions of an enlightened information age. In every case, while technology took leaps, society only made strides.
Computers have, are and will continue to change the face of the globe. While we must prepare for the future, we must never forget two basic facts:
1) The futurists are wrong as often as they are right.
2) We need to deal with today as much as we need to deal with tomorrow. As my parents always told me: "Life is what happens while you are preparing for the future."
-- John Pack, wired GenXer
Lifelong learning, not schools, will be the emphasis. Schools will be more a time of life than a place in the future. Students will learn about any topic any time they wish from the world's databases. . . . Today's schools represent Industrial-Age design. Students want to learn and to be excellent. They learn rapidly through real experience related to living. Our students are already far ahead of us in the electronic age. Schools must be totally redesigned, and some are well underway.
-- Wayne B. Jennings
Your focus is definitely on microprocessors. It seems to me that this revolution hinges on more technology than just microprocessors. How about advances in storage, networking and software?
I am the electronic communications manager at Quantum Corp., the largest supplier of hard-disk drives. We obviously have storage on our minds and see storage as a key enabling technology in this revolution. The size and price of storage has decreased, and the capacity and performance has increased just as rapidly as microprocessors. We would not be able to provide, manage or store the amount of data that is out there now without tremendous advances in storage technology.
How do you envision storage going forward? If we all eventually have 50 or so microprocessors around the house, how many storage devices will we have? Soon every home will have a server, I'm sure. Do you think storage will be centralized, or will there also be multiple storage devices in the home to manage multiple storage needs?
-- Barbara Fagan Smith
The Digital Age will require people to be more independent and disciplined, much like the early settlers of this country. I'm afraid that our society has removed these characteristics for its people by putting them into large organizations with the necessary management and support infrastructure to minimize these "outside" concerns. This has allowed people to concentrate on specific tasks but has also created a sense of entitlement with respect to such concerns. . .
Are we, as a society, ready to take on the responsibility of really providing for ourselves? I don't think most people have the mental makeup to be "independent." I agree that our citizens are some of the most creative people on Earth. But creativity alone does not guarantee a future in the Digital Age. We tend to be naturally lazy -- only doing what is necessary to get by. Most of the truly "successful" people in this country got there through hard work and sound judgment. I don't see that enough in the young people of this country.
-- Mark Heuer
One thing your Digital Age series has failed to mention at all is the environment. Without a functional planet Earth, where are we going to put all this fancy-shmancy digital technology? An economic system based on technology is what is now destroying the earth. We can't just up and forget about the Earth. An economics based on sustainability is the only hope.
Point two: Troubles going on in Washington and in governments around the world are not about leaving the Industrial Age but are a reflection of the unheard-of concentration of power and wealth of which multinational corporations and the gargantuan financial industries and the global economy are the main players. The politicians have become knowingly or unknowingly the agents of the rich and powerful who don't give a damn about the rest of us. The creed of unbridled competition means more and more losers over time and fewer winners. The rich end up with all the power, which is the situation we're in the midst of now.
The mainstream media themselves, which are becoming more and more consolidated in ownership, reflect the views of cadres of conservative rich guys. A citizen who really wants to know what's really going on must read alternative publications. The central issue of our time is really the worldwide crisis of capitalism and worker rights, the right to a living wage, the right to some sense of job security, the right not to be overworked or speeded up or emotionally stressed or physically injury, and the right to be considered a human being and not just a consumer or a worker.
-- Anonymous woman
Doppler noise from the edge of what's happening out there . . .
Remember that cathode-ray tube in the den, the bedroom, the kitchen, the family room? It used to be a television. Now, it's a cash register. Actually, it's an electronic debit device. At the tone, swipe your card and enter your PIN number, followed by the pound sign, #.
At the other end of the toll-free 800 number is an airplane ticket, a pizza, a pair of pants, a carburetor, a CD collection, a new car, a magazine subscription, medical advice, sex, cash, a movie, anything you want, 24 hours a day . . .
Or, for something completely different. Here's a moneymaking idea 180 degrees in the other direction: We could offer the world freedom from information. People really hate all that noise. Don't they?
Let's open a rest stop with no information. No access codes. No telephones. No feedback. A cul-de-sac on the edge of the information highway. A dead end. A place to sit on the mental beach and listen to the waves. A spa for the informationally abused.
After all, in a digital world, there are only two possibilities: on and off.
Pick one.
-- Bill Miller, Minneapolis
The very nature of the digital information is also biological. What we are now dealing with is at the core of the human cell (DNA). Therefore, what happens now in the computer (chip) world, will, of necessity, impact not only the business and industrial world, but will force us to redefine the nature of life itself. . . .
What frightens me as I read your articles is that we are somehow imagining that computer technology is another water wheel or steam engine making it possible for fewer people to produce more goods, which will enhance our wealth. And that the way to grab on to this new cycle is to go out and "buy a computer" to get started -- lest one be left in the dust! Fear is a wonderful sales technique, but sadly is wanting when it comes to the vast challenge the human race must now face.
The computer is only the application of an idea -- the idea being that nature processes the entire universe in two modes: on and/or off. This makes the binary system and the byte. The computer apes and externalizes what is at the very core of nature. We have discovered a beautiful truth about how the universe operates. It is that truth must guide our Information Age. . . .
Information is not knowledge, nor wisdom, nor learning. We have to be governed and led by people who appreciate that. What the computer has revealed to us is much deeper, if we allow ourselves to see beyond the monitor.
-- Robert E. Hankey, Minneapolis
Your suggestion that Americans might only have to work 20 hours a week in the future due to our high productivity and to "redistribute time" is sheer utopian dreaming from the 1930s and '40s. There are several billion people around the globe who are quite willing to work 60-80 hours a week for very little pay to do our work for us. That means that we will probably be working more hours in order to remain competitive.
-- Robert D. Johnson, Minneapolis
Been following with interest the series of articles called On the Edge. I am close to 50 years old and, of course, have been witness to the rise of television and the satellites. I am somewhat computer illiterate, in that, during the period of time you discuss, I have been an inmate in the federal penitentiary. Computers as such are strictly forbidden . . .
You portray a futuristic society of mainly educated middle- and upper-middle-class individuals [with] such things as a home, a family and freedoms to move about or indulge in the successful pursuit of their talents. This may be so, but this will truly be a decreasing number of people. . . .
Ever-increasing numbers who fall though the cracks will be in prisons like I am here . . . I can foresee, for instance, massive electronically monitored jails in every community. Prisons in Minneapolis of the look and holding capacity of Cook County in Chicago, holding 40,000 Minneapolitans. Outlying communities building detention centers to hold the ever-increasing underclass for revenue, such as Anoka County increasing its inmate holding capacity to 1,000 on a contract basis. Take such towns as Bethel or Waseca, which will become prison communities.
This is the trend of the future: 1 percent of the U.S. population is in jail now; this will soon rise to 5 percent, then to 10 percent, and with advances in prison industries, such as Unicore, inmates will be the ones delegated to perform the outmoded work. All that is taught in here are outdated skills, like making license plates or cleaning toilets or hand-preparing food.
-- Steve Blumberg, #03989-030, Milan, Mich.
It's not often I write anything, but would like to convey my thoughts regarding computers, etc.
First of all, I see (my grandkids) the schools are putting a silly idea that they (the kids) can make a living by running a computer. Maybe a few can, but what about the rest? Can a computer drive a truck or a tractor, or teach kids, or butcher steer or a hog and process it? I think not. . . .
As for all these "chips": fine when they work, i.e., the car with all these electronic gadgets on them. The more moving parts you have, the more problems. I would like to get ahold of the guy who invented the chip in a car, and I'd personally strangle him to death with my hands. . . .
Still have a round-dial phone: It works -- no problem. Got a call one evening and the man on the other end said we had a dial phone. Yes, I said. He wanted to sell a press-number phone. I said no, thank you. Without it, he said, I would be out of the "loop." I said, what loop? He hung up.
-- Bob Olson, New Richland, Minn.
