It’s funny how we can enjoy watching another person react to just as must as we can enjoy (or not) an experience ourselves. Ben and Rafi Fine, also known as ‘TheFineBros,’ are the creators of the ‘React’ webseries’ on Youtube. It all began with ‘Kids React,’ in which children are shown viral videos and are then asked questions about what they just saw. Due to the shows immense success, Ben and Rafi expanded the series and created a multitude of different versions – ‘Teens React,’ ‘Elders React,’ ‘Youtubers React’ and more recently the special edition ‘Celebrities React.’ To date, TheFineBros Youtube channel has close to 10 million subscribers.
A relatively new feature of the show is that instead of watching a video, participants react to unfamiliar technologies. I thought the following episode was very appropriate to this week’s reading – also very entertaining and cute!
This weeks reading by Theodor Nelson is really quite astounding. Published in 1992, Nelson proposes a stream of theories and predictions based on hypertext and computer technologies for the future. Although some concepts raised were quite difficult to comprehend, it is very interesting to compare his speculations to our current means of technology and usage.
Seemingly, during the period of authorship, the entire field of technology and computing systems was a bit of a mess. The design and functional properties of computers at the time was extremely disorganised and opened ‘whole new realms of disorder, difficulty and complication for humanity.’ Whilst some attempted to embrace the new technology, many others were hateful towards it and were hopeful that the notion wouldn’t take off.
Nelson however developed his own approach to the matter. He claimed that these problems would be solved if attention was directed to the re-design and simplification of the technology. This, in turn, would create a more user-friendly experience and provide knowledge across platforms via hypertext.
He then delves into is the concept of ‘Project Xanadu,’ which was something I’d never heard of. He explains the project as a ‘hyper-text system to support all the features of these other systems.’ Xanalogical structure was based upon one pool of storage that can be shared and simultaneously organised in many different ways. This ideal sounds much like the fundamentals of the Internet, which makes me wonder if the later birth of the Internet in 1989 was an expansion off Xanadu Sytem or if the Internet instead dominated the idea of Xanadu out of the picture.
The section that struck me the most was ‘The 2020 Vision.’ The following excerpt is particularly remarkable:
“Forty years from now (if the human species survives), there will be hundreds of thousands of file servers—machines storing and dishing out materials. And there will be hundreds of millions of simultaneous users, able to read from billions of stored documents, with trillions of links among them”
Nelson is scarily accurate. For one, the human species have survived – hooray! But we are also living within this digital age, surrounded by these ‘machines’ that offer us a world of information at our fingertips. According to Internet World Stats, the system is an infinite resource containing almost a billion websites (not to mention pages) and there are currently seven billion avid Internet users across the globe. It is amazing to consider the dramatic proliferation that technology has undergone in such a short span of time, and how on Earth Nelson was able to predict this with such accuracy almost forty years prior. It is hard to imagine how much more advanced it can get in the next forty years, but I am so curious and excited to find out!
Technology is awesome. That is all.
So currently I’m sitting on a bus en route to uni this morning. Instead of falling asleep like I usually would, I’m doing my best to stay awake so I can squeeze in a blog post. If that’s not dedication, I don’t know what is!
Looking around me, I would say that about 80% of my fellow bus riders are looking down at an electronic screen in front of them. This got me thinking about how our phones, tablets and laptops are influencing our social nature in public situations.
Many people passionately argue that these devices are making us anti-social and isolated as they cause us to miss out on life and reality around us. They might have a point, as yes, no one on this bus is having a conversation with the passenger that sits next to them, and yes, the vast majority are somewhat oblivious to their surroundings. I too sit here with my eyes fixated on a screen, ignoring the fellow that sits beside me. But honestly, before these devices came to exist, was it really so different?
There are many more logical ways of explaining this ‘lack of social interaction’ instead of just jumping to the conclusion that technology is swallowing our souls. For example, before we carried phones or tablets on public transport, it was a book or a newspaper that grasped our attention. It is by no means a new notion that we wish find more productive and engaging things to do whilst on the commute. Furthermore, one of the very first lessons we are taught as kids is ‘do not talk to strangers’. We didn’t do it in the past, and we’re not about to start now. Thus, I do not think that new technologies are the blame.
Whilst travelling, these devices enable us to be a lot more fruitful with our time and lives. Instead of awkwardly talking to the stranger next to you, you can engage in a meaningful conversation with actual friends and family via Facebook. Instead of aimlessly watching the cars go by, you could catch up on your emails and take care of last minute work. In my case, instead of passing out and going to sleep on this cold and early morning, I can write a blog post!
Something for any technophobes out there to think about.
