Google is too slow, RSS is too slow, traditional media is too slow, printed media is waaaay to slow. Now it seems that anything that has happened more than 20 seconds ago is old. The first sentence of this post is old (depending on how fast you read… wait… now it’s old). We are now on the verge of real time information (on the verge or already in there?). A process that started centuries ago is finally reaching its destination. Since Julius Caesar’s announcements bulletins or the chinese Tipao, we’ve been racing against time. We’ve been trying to stay on top of it, some to beat it. Our thirst for immediacy grew stronger until nowadays, when waiting is no longer an option (check a related and previous post here).
So what’s next? Future news? It will be odd to check your Fuwitter stream to see what you are gonna be doing in 30 seconds. Of course a new race will start in the direction of the arrow of time. “What’s gonna be in your mind in 2 hours?”, “What are you doing next summer?” or “What are you up to at the end of time” will be the tag lines you’ll see at the top of every popular site.
Now seriously, once we reach the goal of achieving really, really, real time we’ll have to pick a new fight. Building around it with social networks and other distribution methods? Cool, but what’s next? Is it going to work like the way fashion trends do, where certain memes come back in cycles? In that scenario we can expect to go back to something not as fast paced. Let’s say, a feng shui era of the internet. Or simply the spotlight will turn away from the time factor and focus on something else.
In many other facets of life we are still ages away from achieving what we have in information technology and speed of distribution. Fortunately, the internet is an always surprising beast that can give birth to the least expected “monsters” when less expected. There’s always going to be something new and innovative. On the internet darwinism rules. If you don’t grow fast enough, you are lunch. We’ve gotten impatient. If something does not fulfill our deep and anxious expectations we ditch it. If you don’t believe so ask Wolfram Alfa, that didn’t live up to the hype it created and look at the reaction of the crowds.
The big question that the post asks is “What’s next?”. And that question bounced in my brain a couple of times until it striked me that I didn’t stay back from this real time and accelerated roller coaster ride. One one hand, I’m saying that everything is going faster and that we have become impatient, and on the other one I’m already asking about what’s next. This hurry (the Zeitgeist) is so ubiquitous that we don’t realize how deep we are in it. Can you feel it in the air? Do you agree?
Edit: I just found a very related post in Louisgray.com
Article by Fernando
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