Module 1 | The Platform of Tomorrow

During the first module in RL 408, we tackled the current migration our society is taking, to a more digital-based platform. This subject has given rise to several key issues about our metadata, our online identities, and our dependence on specific technologies. The solutions to these issues will lay the foundation for how our society moving forward, and how we deal with cases of online crime and interactions. To some, like Frank Abagnale, they believe that the future has already written itself and, “… [our identities have] already been stolen”. He sees our shift to this new media-based interactivity as a real threat to how we shape our identities and form our opinions. Although we might not want to think about the repercussions of our online activity, the reality exists: a huge number of companies have gained access to our data and use it to manipulate our habits and interactions.

To others, this new form of interaction has allowed them to create multiple identities, ones that don’t fully represent their views, but rather compartmentalize and fragmentize their beings across the cyberspace. We have created situations, where we must adequately read a situation and address it the way we think will gain the most support or validation.

We increasingly get lost in the romantic conception, about how the future will be better and solve all our problems once we create an intelligent AI. But the reality is that we can’t solely rely on technology’s autonomous features to dictate our future, because we lose sight of the possible biases and errors that can come with them. The possible results of technology will be up to a handful of programmers to decide what is worth preparing for, they carry their own priorities and ideologies.

Ultimately, our world is progressing at an ever-quicker pace; one where the generation after our own, might not ever hold a book, go to an actual store, or even leave their homes for work and school. Books, a medium that has reigned for 500 years, might be eclipsed in a fraction of its ascension time. Yet if/when/how they are overtaken is not clear, it will happen; but that isn’t to say that they’ll depart without giving the basis on which we create our next chapter.

We have been taught that ‘innovation is remediation’, a concept that questions whether there is truly anything that is lost when a message is changed between mediums. Yet it is our own actions that determine our progress, we never truly eclipse a medium or technology: we reapply it, re-work the internal factors, and create a new version of the medium that carries the same feeling or nostalgia in a new form or shape, that preserves the best impressions of the previous one.