The End of the Information Age?
Based on our modelling of current research and thinking we believe humanity has now entered a new ‘Age of Personal Informed Reality’ and that we are witnessing the rapid death of the ‘Information Age’.
Our thinking begins from the premise of ‘Personal Informed Reality’ (PIR), the clustering of information around the individual. Today this is facilitated by smartphones, tablets and other personal devices, held close to the body and ever-present, that provide rich access to the internet irrespective of time and place, in the future other generations of devices will take this forward. We posit a world where data is both pushed and pulled to the individual, is increasingly displayed visually, often having an immersive game-like feel, is real-time and is highly socialised and interactive. A world in which there are vast flows of data to and from the individual, to others and most importantly to an increasingly intelligent or ‘smart’ environment. Non-human intervention or device-to-device (machine-to-machine) data traffic will dwarf direct human initiated traffic, yet the individual remains, indeed becomes increasingly at the heart of everything.
We will look back on the late 20th /early 21st century as the equivalent of the ‘steam age’ of digital connectivity, a time when we ‘manually shovelled’ so much of our information/communication. The age we are leaving, the ‘Information Age’ collated and stored information. However such information was separate from the everyday lives of people; the individual went, as supplicant, to the place of access or storage, say a computer terminal/screen, attention and life was suspended to facilitate this diversion! In the age of PIR information primarily emanates from ‘things’, constantly making itself available to the individual without diversion, there is little distinction between what today we would call the ‘physical’ and the ‘virtual’.
Flows of information already vast, today in many ways unmanageable (the recent financial crash could at least be attributed to this in part), are set to become even more enriching yet even more problematic. The next decade will need to be dominated by attempts to create and deploy technologies that allow each individual full access to information based opportunity whilst ‘augmenting’ the individual through releasing them from the burden and impossibility of routine physical intervention. In other words to make sense of what we are creating we are going to need some form/forms of personal digital ‘management engine’ or ‘ discerning virtual personality’ to in effect ‘be us’ within the connected world, to manage, control and enact our futures. If this analysis holds to be even partially true the implications for us all, individuals or organisations, are immense, significantly reframing many of our social and commercial norms of presence and engagement.
To learn more of our thinking about PIR and its implications for you please contact info@socialfuturesobservatory.co.uk.
Our thinking begins from the premise of ‘Personal Informed Reality’ (PIR), the clustering of information around the individual. Today this is facilitated by smartphones, tablets and other personal devices, held close to the body and ever-present, that provide rich access to the internet irrespective of time and place, in the future other generations of devices will take this forward. We posit a world where data is both pushed and pulled to the individual, is increasingly displayed visually, often having an immersive game-like feel, is real-time and is highly socialised and interactive. A world in which there are vast flows of data to and from the individual, to others and most importantly to an increasingly intelligent or ‘smart’ environment. Non-human intervention or device-to-device (machine-to-machine) data traffic will dwarf direct human initiated traffic, yet the individual remains, indeed becomes increasingly at the heart of everything.
We will look back on the late 20th /early 21st century as the equivalent of the ‘steam age’ of digital connectivity, a time when we ‘manually shovelled’ so much of our information/communication. The age we are leaving, the ‘Information Age’ collated and stored information. However such information was separate from the everyday lives of people; the individual went, as supplicant, to the place of access or storage, say a computer terminal/screen, attention and life was suspended to facilitate this diversion! In the age of PIR information primarily emanates from ‘things’, constantly making itself available to the individual without diversion, there is little distinction between what today we would call the ‘physical’ and the ‘virtual’.
Flows of information already vast, today in many ways unmanageable (the recent financial crash could at least be attributed to this in part), are set to become even more enriching yet even more problematic. The next decade will need to be dominated by attempts to create and deploy technologies that allow each individual full access to information based opportunity whilst ‘augmenting’ the individual through releasing them from the burden and impossibility of routine physical intervention. In other words to make sense of what we are creating we are going to need some form/forms of personal digital ‘management engine’ or ‘ discerning virtual personality’ to in effect ‘be us’ within the connected world, to manage, control and enact our futures. If this analysis holds to be even partially true the implications for us all, individuals or organisations, are immense, significantly reframing many of our social and commercial norms of presence and engagement.
To learn more of our thinking about PIR and its implications for you please contact info@socialfuturesobservatory.co.uk.