Before we mindless drones consumed hours on the Internet, we sat in front of the television set. Before the TV, there was radio. Before that, those who could afford it attended baseball games. Before that, etc.
There’s these new Internet-ready HD televisions coming out. I’m not saying those will be the wave of the future. It sounds more like television media desperately trying to win over Internet junkies because one day, one-way television media will go way of the printed paper press. Some predictions are that all televisions will be equipped with Internet access. I think it will be the other way around: big network television will eventually merge with live Internet video broadcasting. In essence, all personal computers will absorb television. Heck, the term “channel” carried over to the Internet quit well.
If technology as revolutionary as the television was when it made it’s way into homes way back when could see an end, imagine what the future holds for the Internet. Sure, the Internet isn’t as “aware” as SKYNET from the Terminator movies (yet), but eventually, the global network of servers are going to be bursting with clutter data so there would be no surprise if the Internet would come to life.
Internet users are spending so much damn time on the Internet on social networking sites that they don’t meet face to face anymore. I foresaw this trend with the advent of cellular phones. The texting and calling of friends just across the street, or even across the room. How impersonal has technology made communication? People want connections, but they want it through hardware, a physical or metaphorical wall between it.
As more people spend more time on the Internet, I foresee a similar world like the one portrayed in the Bruce Willis movie “Surrogates” where people will be lying in bed all day, but connected to the Internet via their minds wirelessly. It would be similar to a world consumed by an unbreakable addiction to opium, a sprawling epidemic opium parlor where junkies plug up and pass out from the real world.
I always saw the Internet like a public library (remember those?), a repository for information. All those books and videos and data you could access. You could meet up with friends or plan events. Sometimes, you just go there to have some solitude, to enjoy a book alone. But what happens when you spend all day in a library?
Tags: addiction, chat room, communication, drugs, forum, future, internet, messageboard, relationships, television, web 2.0