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Today I’m going to talk about something I have no qualifications whatsoever to talk about, but that’s what blogs are for right? It seems that the rate at which technology advances grows exponentially each year. We are now swimming in a sea of information, data is everywhere. The internet is literally working itself into the very fabric of our beings. How far will it go, we now have “smart” phones. “smart” glasses, “smart” appliances and even “Smart” watches. I for one love smart devices, maybe is because I’m a techie at heart, maybe I’m just lazy but no matter what anyone might think, this is to be our future. People have always felt the need to share information, in the beginning it was by stories passed down from one generation to the next, soon these stories would be transcribed to a variety of mediums, eventually transcending physical media at the speed of light into the digital realm.

Information cannot be contained, the internet has proven this to us over and over again, people will always seek answers to their questions, whether practical or otherwise an answer will always be available.  In the past, a person may have had to attend top schools to attain the level of knowledge that would allow them to be considered as being educated, but today the same information that could only be afforded to the fortunate few is now accessible by anyone with a browser and a keyboard. Does this mean that anyone can be a “scholar”. I think not, from my own experience, just because you have the answers to any question you possibly can and will ever have does not mean that you will actually become smarter. It may be the complete opposite. The downside to having access to a never-ending stream of “knowledge” is that we lose the need to store this information in our brains, so as a result most of us don’t. We may store the methods used to access the data, but the information it self resides in the location where we found it.

One of my favorite movies enlightened me on the direction that we may be heading as a species. That movie is the Matrix and its pre/sequels The Matrix that everyone was a part of could very well be a manifestation of what our internet could become in the not too distant future. We may not be anywhere close to a true neural interface, but is that even necessary. With the advancement of VR technologies and the fact that we are now a fully connected society the only thing left is to create a digital environment that closely mimics our own. We could then literally live a second life online. I love technology and I look forward to the direction that we’re heading in regards to the accessibility of information but how far will be go, history always repeats itself, but only the future holds the answers to the questions we have now.