CAMERON COLUMN: Future in the hands of nerds
Steve Cameron Staff Writer | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 8 years, 8 months AGO
It was the least surprising thing that occurred on a chilly Thursday in Coeur d’Alene.
A region-wide conference looking into the disappearance of civility in our daily lives latched immediately on to the Internet.
And rightfully so.
Just the concept that any single person, anywhere on the planet, can bully or bankrupt someone else — or perhaps ruin an entire institution — suggests that how we treat each other will never be the same.
That much we know... but what about the future?
Can the Golden Rule (“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”) be somehow resurrected, or are we all at the mercy of the rudest and least empathetic individuals in society?
Remember this before you answer: There are 7.4 billion people on Earth, and 6.8 billion cellphones.
HERE’S a quote that may give you a hint — while you’re hoping for general fair play from the rest of humanity.
Christopher Poole, founder of the media platform 4chan.org, was discussing Facebook (and its developer, Mark Zuckerberg), with Vanity Fair magazine.
Poole wanted to contrast his business model with Facebook, and said: “Mark’s vision of the world is that you should be comfortable sharing as your real self on the Internet.
“He thinks anonymity represents a lack of authenticity, almost a cowardice. Though I like Mark a lot as a person, I disagree with that...
“4chan, a site that’s anonymous and ephemeral, with wacky, Wild West-type stuff, has a lot to offer, and in Mark’s perfect world, it probably wouldn’t exist.
“He’s a very firm believer that his is the right way to go.”
THE REASON I know about Poole’s creepy business model is because of a book that everyone should read.
It’s called “The End of Big,” and was written by Nico Melle, a self-confessed nerd who teaches at Harvard, runs a technology consulting company and would be the smartest guy on your block, no matter where you lived.
Melle traces the foundation of the Internet and other tech devices — except that real nerds call it “radical connectivity” — from the crazy days of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs to the present and, admitting he’s not sure of the future, Melle wonders where Moore’s Law will take us.
Moore’s Law, you ask?
Ah, that’s one of the fantastic anecdotes with which Melle leads us on the journey from guys working in their mothers’ basements to creating massive companies of their own — all while diminishing the power of big government (say hello to Edward Snowden), big business, big media, and other institutions that basically ran the world for their own whim, power and profit.
Gordon Moore, the founder of Intel, made this prediction: “Every 18 months, computer chips will become twice as fast, half as expensive and half as big.”
Moore was off, but only marginally: It took 24 months for the chips to double their speed, while halving both their cost and size.
But the kicker is that Moore’s Law was stated in 1965, and you’ve seen what’s happened since.
IF YOU want to feel even more nervous about where all this technology might lead us, Melle wheels out another anecdote — this one from 1995 (fairly recent to most of us, ancient history to nerds).
Back in the day, like 40 years ago, serious leaps in computer effectiveness belonged to academia, with a nod to the military.
Even in the Gates/Jobs era of finding ways to personalize computers, it was unthinkable that the average sanitation worker might get off work and go watch a ballgame on his home computer.
Personal computers were cool in the workplace, but there was no real connectivity.
Yet in 1995, the whole world changed when the National Science Foundation turned control of the Internet over to the Department of Commerce, thus removing the final barrier against doing business online.
The Internet was free... free at last.
But how?
Mitch Kapor, another tech entrepreneur who founded Lotus, described it this way: “No one in Washington took the Internet seriously,” he said, “so it was allowed to happen.
“By the time anybody noticed, it had already won.”
AS YOU would expect, Melle is most often asked about what radical connectivity means for the future.
Anything so powerful that also has the ability to reinvent or streamline itself in just a few months carries almost indescribable potential — for good and otherwise.
Conferees at the NIC event were looking for ways to restore civility to society, and any nerd’s first response likely would be pretty bleak, indeed.
Melle concedes things could go very wrong. He admits he feared new darkness plausible in so many ways.
But then...
“As I spoke to people around the world,” Melle wrote, “and followed various threads to their conclusion, a different picture gradually took shape.
“Yes, our world is not prepared for the change technology is bringing. But some individuals ARE prepared, and they’re making a difference.
“Wherever in the world I’ve gone to talk about this book, I’ve found an inspired few who are taking the power technology has given them — and created something new, something better, something different.”
Melle concludes “The End of Big” by recalling the writer Thomas Hardy, who at the end of the 19th century worried that the institutions of his era were in decline.
“And yet,” Melle wrote, “Hardy was able to see evidence of hope that something better was out there, a future beyond even his wildest expectations.
“Right at the end of 1900, he published a poem about a small bird singing in a desolate landscape in the middle of winter. It was titled: “The Darkling Thrush.”
Melle then concludes one of the most remarkable, comprehensive looks at our galloping technology with Hardy’s final stanza:
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
• • •
Steve Cameron is a special assignment reporter for The Press. Reach Steve at scameron@cdapress.com.
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