The Digital Big Bang

One of the things I like to do is to occasionally zoom the lens way back, and look at things from as broad a perspective as possible.

It helps me create context, and with context, I can connect the dots in a better way, make better decisions and generally feel that I’ve figured out a thing or two.

I’d like to take this post and try and do this for what we are all going through with the current hyper-expansion of digital information. 

I think it’s creating fundamental ripples in the fabric of society that we’re just now starting to realize, let alone deal with.

The Analogy

I like reading books on cosmology, string theory and all that.  I’m not saying I understand it all, it’s just fun mind-expanding reading.

Current scientific theory about where the universe started points to the “big bang” model. 

Out of indescribable nothingness, a single point of singularity rapidly hyper-inflated into a quark soup, that eventually condensed into all that we see around us: baryonic matter, galaxies, etc.   

Talk about a fundamental phase shift. 

But one thing is clear: something big happened that’s responsible for everything around us. 

And, sitting here post-big-bang, it’s very hard for us to imagine what things might have looked like before it happened, or what might have caused it. 

All we see is the aftermath.

I like to use the phrase “digital big bang” to describe what we’re going through right now. 

In a relatively short period of time, we've seen a dramatic hyper-expansion in the amount of information we have, and the different ways we use it, is growing exponentially, not linearly.

We’re somewhere in the middle of it.  Don’t know how long we’re going to be in this period of hyper-inflation.  Don’t really know what it’s going to look like on the other side.

But things are changing pretty damn fast.

Sure, we’ve been going through a growing use of digital and information technology for a few decades now, but taken against the backdrop of tens of thousands of years of human history, culture and society, it looks like a digital big bang to me.

Ripples In The Fabric

Every time there’s been a phase shift in human society, it’s created far-reaching ripples that took decades to understand and react to.

The shift from hunter/gatherer to agrarian society was profound and substantial.  New social institutions, new cultural standards – hard to imagine being there as it happened.

Same as when we moved from an agrarian society to an industrial one.  Big changes up and down the line that took decades – or centuries – to play out.

And now we’ve entered the digital big bang – what fundamental societal impacts are we going to see?  And, more importantly, how do we prepare ourselves for the journey?

Who Owns Information?

Much of modern societal behavior (and legal principles) are based on the concept of ownership of tangible things: property, ideas, real estate, money and so on.

Underneath that is a basic physical property.  If I own something, you don’t.  I can grant you rights, privileges, etc. in a structured relationship, but it all stems from the concepts found in the physical world.

Information creates a problem – it can be copied cheaply and easily.  And, as a result, our society is battling with this fundamental game-changer on multiple fronts.

Copyright law. 
Personal information security. 
Corporate information security. 
Information re-use and repurposing in different contexts.

And so on.

We haven’t come to terms – as a society -- with the new reality on who really owns information, what rights can be granted, what rights can be retained, what are the terms of the relationship, and more. 

All of our concepts are based in a physical world, and I’d offer that this is ultimately holding us back in several, subtle ways. 

We’ll need quite a while to get to a consensus on what the new principles might be.

What Does Education Mean?

We, as a society, invest a lot of resources and effort in educating the next generation of citizens, also known as “our kids”.

But, once again, we have a model based on a world that doesn’t exist anymore.  Many of our educational precepts are built on learning and memorizing facts, putting them to work in very applied, simplistic ways, and so on.

We live in a world where facts (and opinions, and interpretations) are now freely available, instantaneously, anywhere in the world.  And I see that education is struggling to define and validate the new forms of learning and education that we’ll need as a society.

We’re not just talking about using computers in the classroom, or teaching kids how to use the web to do research.  We’re talking about a fundamental shift to a world where information is freely available, and critical thinking skills are in short supply.

To me, it looks like a big societal start-over that’ll take decades to play out, and we’ve only just begun.

On a related note, I’m watching with fascination the project to build $100 laptops and give them away to less developed nations.  If it happens, wait a generation, and I’ll think you’ll see a whole new generation of info-citizens who play the game at a whole new level.

Who Is The Information Authority?

I grew up in a world where there were clear authorities for information. 

You went to the Encyclopedia Britannica. 
You saw network news. 
You read a newspaper. 
You read somber textbooks that told you what the facts were, and how to interpret them.

Fast forward to 2007.  It ain’t so clear anymore. 

You’d tend to look at wikipedia.com rather than track down a reference book.  You google to see what everyone else says.  Journalism has pretty much re-defined itself around infotainment and narrowcasting. 

I’m beginning to wonder why bothers to print textbooks anymore – especially for areas of the hard sciences that are moving so damn fast.   Books are entertainment, not references.

We, as individuals, have to learn the skills to think for ourselves, and not necessarily believe what a supposed authority might tell us.  And, for many of us, that might be a new skill.

Who’s Preserving All Of This?

We all want to preserve history for future generations – not only our own personal histories, but that of our society.

OK, I digitized my photos, home movies, tax returns, insurance policies, etc.  And promptly lost them in either a disk crash, or a botched upgrade, or who knows what. 

Bummer, man. 

Most of us aren’t skilled in taking the steps we need to preserve digital artifacts the way we’ve learned to buy fireproof safes and lockboxes for the physical world.

On a broader note, we’re generating enormous amounts of digital information on important societal events that’ll be invaluable for future generations. 

Just think for a moment how much digital information has been generated around the Iraq war, for an example.

Or that NASA couldn’t find the footage from the first moonwalk – a crowning moment in human achievement.

Our traditional method (send a copy of whatever to the Library of Congress), won’t keep up in this new world, will it?   Or will we use service providers?

Or – the real scary question – what media and file formats should we be using so that things are readable ten, twenty, fifty years from now?

I don’t even want to think about that one.

Will The Nature of Work Change?

I’ve already seen the shift from process work to collaborative work in just the last few years.  I’ve even offered a few thoughts on what that means for the IT guys.

But many of our work processes and behaviors are rooted in the physical world of making things, meeting people, reviewing events, and so on.

Sure, we’ve seen big changes in how we work in just the last ten years (smart phones, email, virtual conferences, etc.), but – keep in mind – the party has just begun here.

As workers (you do work, don’t you?) we’ll have to learn an entirely new set of behaviors and customs to work in this new world, while – ahem – keeping some semblance of work/life balance. 

I’ve already learned to turn off my BlackBerry on the weekend.  Well, for most of the weekend anyway.

So Where Does That Leave Us?

Feeling a bit unsure about the future, and what it means, to be sure.

But understanding that something big is going on all around you helps you to make a bit more sense of everything that is going on, and – hopefully – be looking one step ahead at what might happen next.

The good news is we’re all very adaptable. 

If you’ve got modern-age kids, they seem to be very comfortable with multi-tasking and multi-communicating – and still get their homework done.   The web has always been there.  As has cell phones, hundreds of cable TV channels, and the whole lot.

I can only hope I’m that adaptable.

Comments

[Richard]

Chuck,
You say..
"Or – the real scary question – what media and file formats should we be using so that things are readable ten, twenty, fifty years from now?"

Scary is right... All that digitized data needs to "float" forever... in Data centers... ready to be converted to (then) prevailing formats.

It is like H2O cycling through different flavors ... and now and then changing media ...vapor, ice, rain.

[Richard]

Chuck,
Congratulations… on this great & intellectually stimulating post.

[Michelle]

Wow did'nt think of it that way. Have lots of info I need to put to paper. Thank You will have to get to work.

[Chuck Hollis]

Hi Richard and Michelle ...

Richard, your analogy about information needing to "flow" from format to format is quite correct.

But, unlike information, water won't de-materialize into nothingness if we turn our backs on it for a few years. Information will.

Michelle, I seem to remember a few years back an initiative to code digital information on specialized paper using special formats and codes, kind of like a giant bar code on plasticized paper. I don't think it got anywhere, but it was intrigung at the time.

Both of you focused on the impermanence of digital information, which I found to be interesting.

Thanks for reading and commenting!

[tom foremski]

Yes, there are tremendous amounts of information that could be mined by future generations. And some of it might be false, a way to rewrite history, or muddy the waters by current generations...it might be difficult to distinguish between true and false, just as information today can be difficult to source properly.

Also, do we have to keep everything? Are we a pack rat civilisation? It certainly seems that way...