Where will tomorrow’s iGeneration look to learn about us as a species?
If you wanted to see a dinosaur fossil where would you look? If you wanted to see the first turtle submarine where would you go? If you wanted to see the first computer where would you find it? If you wanted to find out your ex-friend’s current “status” where would you look? You catch the drift, don’t you?
We have been progressively evolving as an online generation, a far cry from the Flintstones in the Stone Age! Just looking back at our contemporary historical periods since the past few decades, we have made major strides through the years.
We’ve evolved from the Machine Age dealing with gigantic mass production machinery to the Information Age which has been about digitizing our economy, dispelling volumes of information using technology. This era also brought the onset of computers – a game changer in the way modern society started communicating. The rapid evolution of computers and the web in our daily life meant dissolving boundaries. It meant faster and more real-time communication, international knowledge exchange and learning, exploring and tapping into personalized needs, changing how we do business via e-commerce.
The Information Age gave birth to a digitized world mimicking and surpassing all that transpires through our physical interactions. What we see, hear, learn, who we befriend, share with, communicate and collaborate with have been made available electronically.
You can like, dislike, comment, poke, vote, buy, sell, promote, recommend..and much more digitally! This led to the metamorphosis of our Social Age. An era that has humanized technology focusing on the many forms of societal interactions and amplifying our inherent need to communicate, express, show and tell.
You can now make a new friend on Facebook, date online via Match.com, look for a job on Monster, connect with a business associate on LinkedIn, buy your latest book on Amazon, share your vacation pictures on Flickr, tweet about what you ate for lunch on Twitter, look up your ancestors on Ancestry.com or even publish your life history on Blogger.
The World Wide Web has made us a closely knit modern society leaving behind a huge digital footprint of our lives. So while my generation might still make a trip to the Smithsonian museum to look at the first species of dinosaurs, there’s no telling where the future generations might look to learn about us a species!
Standing on the bridge of Big Dinosaurs to Big Data the future landscape appears infinite! There’s no telling what this new era will bring with it, and the potential implications of Big Data for our future?
So what archaeological finds do you think your great, great great grandchildren will find, while digging for your information? What’s your prediction?!
Photos by JD Hancock and algogenius
