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The world wide web has existed longer than the time between the inventions of the radio and television
(self.showerthoughts)
this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2024
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Interesting that there has yet to be a 'new' media to supplant internet. I wonder what it would look like, vr / ar doesn't seem to have any traction
First there were newspapers. Radio made it so that you didn’t have to read the newspaper yourself; someone would read it to you. And music! And drama! And line reporting on location! Radio encompassed everything that newspapers were, and added more.
Television added sight to sound. The visual layer increased the value of broadcast exponentially, while doing everything that radio and newspapers did.
The internet showed up. Now you could choose between all kinds of text, audio, video, interactive games, instant communication worldwide.
Then it became mobile. The portability of newspapers and transistor radios is widely available, but also for video and global communication.
There’s already been some hints at what might be the next step. Self driving cars build a digital representation of the world around them. Mapping software will give you arrow overlays as you walk, just from your having showed your phone the buildings around you. Google tried to put this on your face with Google Glass, but it was too early, not developed enough, maybe too interactive for its time.
The next thing is going to be an immersive digital representation of real things, created from sensors on the fly and also stored to be available to everyone. This will bring newspapers and radio and television and the mobile internet together, and add all real world objects, about which additional information can be easily accessed in real time.
And it will be exploitative as fuck.
Hyper-reality
That's terrifying. But not just because of how dystopian it was, but because I could envision a world with that same technology being so incredibly amazing, bordering on utopian.
As are newspapers, radio, television, and the mobile internet. As were chiseled stones and scribe-copied manuscripts. There is no means of communication that is immune from propaganda and exploitation.
Nothing has come along to replace the Internet because we didn't elect Al Gore, he hasn't had the platform to develop a replacement to his original invention of the Internet.
"The internet" is a > layer 2 technology, radio and TV transmission would all be layer 2 if you applied the OSI model. And layer 2 tech has rapidly changed since the initial creation of the internet.
ARPANET started off on dedicated phone lines essentially (and maybe microwaves). When normal people started using it it was mostly done on their actual phone line with a modem. Then we started getting tech like ISDN, T1, DSL, cable and, Fiber. Nevermind internal networking which went through a wild ride in the 90s before setting on the twisted pair that we have now.
https://youtu.be/Hvqv9QcTcfA?t=93 I mean just look at how comically large an original "thicknet" cable was. It was like an inch thick.
5G mesh stations in everyone’s backyard
It's funny. VR is AMAZING!!!!!!!!
I mean holy shit. Have you tried it? My first thought was "this is where software development is at, all else is weak". It's like LSD vs tapwater.
But it ain't convenient. I think that's the issue.
Until we have brainchips or video contacts or something.
Considering what STEMLords are like these days, I wouldn’t expect reasonable people to trust any of that brain implant shit ever. I will certainly be teaching my kids to say no to it.
I don’t know what kind of manipulation or mind control is even actually possible with current OR future tech, but to think it wouldn’t be used to the extent possible to exert control is via a brain implant is, at best, lacking “post-nut clarity” about the so-called Information Age.