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The failure of the Third Industrial Revolution
( Digital Convergence
)
Historians tell us that the first and second Industrial Revolution took place
from the early 1800's to around 1930. The third Industrial Revolution started
around 1974. The popular name for this period is called the information age. The
promise of computers and the information highway have slowly evaporated into the
apparent reality we are faced with today. Computers have had some very good
positive impact, but that is mainly for businesses. Have computers taken any of
the burden from the common man so he may live more of a life of leisure. Word
processing, sending emails and web surfing can hardly be considered as burden
lifting. Computer hardware and software technology has advanced in leaps and
bounds every year but this doesn't really change much on the balance sheet of
burden. Despite some of these advances we still conduct our lives the same way
we did before the computer and the internet/web. For goodness sake, why are
millions of us still commuting back and forth to work after having the internet
around for 38 years and the web for 18 years? So what is holding us back.
Computers are faster, smaller and more efficient than they've ever been. It
would seem that they could literally run the world.
So what is the problem? Many scientist and developers think we need to fix the
internet or the web to get the information age back on track. This is far from
the truth as I will demonstrate later. The information revolution is predicated
on one and only one very important principal technology and that is
digitization. Everything comes down to this one simple point. Most of the
technologies we use today are digital. The problem is they don't work
together very well because of our old habits. They are non convergent or
digitally divergent.
To drive home this point I must turn to the father of the information age, Alec
Reeves. His work on PCM was the final piece that gave birth to the information
age. Without it, there would be no Internet, no digital radio or digital
television, no digital land-line or mobile telephones, no CDs, DVDs or CD-ROMs.
So digitization has to be the key. Alec laid out the road map for digitizing
which left the process of integrating digitization into our society to us. So
how do we change a world that is based on digital divergence to a world that is
based on digital convergence. This is the holy grail to Computer Science and
this whole planet. There is nothing more important
than this. It allows us to shatter that seemingly impossible barriers. The very
nature of digitization allows itself to take many forms and to be separated into
an infinite number of peaces. The peaces are the many different types of
software, hardward, data, people, places, organizations, governments etc. Our
world is fragmented into billions of little unconnected pieces. How can you
possibly transform this whole mess into a form that computers can process? The
internet is the only way to fix the problem. Ironically the internet is not the
problem, it is the solution. It is the only thing that has the ability to
connect all the peaces together. Our problem stems from doing things the way we
have done them for thousands of years in a non covergant fashion mainly because
computers and digitization where not around for us to care otherwise. That's how
we got here. If we intend to move in a digital direction we can no
longer think and act analog. It will tear us apart. A point that I emphasize
with great detail in a compainion article -
"Death by Technology". We
mistakely presume that by simply using digital thechnology that we must be
moving in a digital direction, but we are not. We are only using digital
technology with an analog mindset. This is only digital dressing if we don't
change the what, why and how we do things. Obviously this
situation negates the full benefits of digital technology. Alec changed the
technological polarity of our world with digitization. Technology moved from
having no base to having a base or a foundation if you may
The digital age is totally opposite from the age that preceded it. It is
important we take note of that fact so we can thoroughly understand the failure
of the revolution to allow us to understand the solution. The pre
digital age wich spans the first and second industrial revolution thrived in an
environment that was divergent in almost every way. Just for the sake of this
discussion we will call this peariod analog. Everything is based on separation
and division. Technologically this is fine because the technology/inventions of
this period did not have to work together nor where they bound together by some
common thread (a base or foundation). So for the age of analog, techniligical
divergence worked perfectly. In fact, divergence was the method of problem
solving of the day and still is. Divergence simplified bigger problems with a
divide and conquer approach. It is the old break big problems down into ever
smaller peaces until a resolution can be achieved.
In the digital age the divide
and conquer paradigm is not congruent to digitization
except on a micro level, which gives us the best of both worlds. Divergence does
not work for digitization because the technologies/inventions of the digital age
are based on one important fundamental technology at its' core, digitization.
Digitization thrives in an environment of intergration, commincation and
interacation. Divergence means death to all these things. Digitization of course
is a huge step forward because now the technologies work together and talk to
each other. Which is a must to achieve the ultimate promise of the third
industrial revolution.
The problem is that the fabric of our whole being is based on hundreds of years
of building an analog world wich is technologically fragmented into billions of
littile peaces. We have done what has come natural to us for hundreds to
thousands of years. Because the polarity has been changed we are now facing
backwards, thinking we are moving forward when in reality we are moving forward
in the opposite direction. We don't have hundreds of years to deconstruct this
problem. So what we are doing today is applying digital technology to a world
that is digitally divergent (against digitization). There really is no easy fix
to erase hundreds of years of divergence. We are not going to stumble our way
into digital convergence. The problem is much to complicated for that.
So how do we fix the problem? There is only one way. The answer is in a paradigm
shift (P3 = Ph4O6). Paradigm shifting is like the
"speed of light" compared to our old process of evolving. Paradigm shifting
will allow us to do the impossible with the help of the internet. The paradigm
shift will make it possible to build a foundation and infrastructure on the
internet. This gives us the ability to use the internet far more affectively
than before. The internet in this enhanced form is the only thing powerful
enough to correct our situation (hundreds of years of divergence). Because the
paradigm shift in itself is a fundamental technological change ( in
the what, why and how ), it will produce a superior environment that makes
the analog mindset prohibitive and non viable. From that point on our world
transforms from digitally divergent to a world that is digitally convergent. I
will go even farther. The internet in this enhanced form is a Super Technology.
It will be a more powerful force for change then any other technology that has
ever existed. I call it a Super Technology because no major technology of the
past or present can come close to what a Super Technology is capable of. It is
the NeXus that has eluded us for so long right in front of our faces. So how do
we change a world that is based on digital divergence to a world that is based
on digital convergence? It is up to you - you will have to
see it for yourself...
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