Bandwidth

continued from Information technology

Bandwidth is a function of hardware, skill, and very likely financial access.   Whether the FCC will be around to monitor this new frontier, and if so to what extent will be interesting to watch.    Until the technology reaches critical mass, the majority of people may be oblivious to the chatter which is going on around them.    Others will dive in head first and attempt to master the mechanics and tools of this new media.  Whether the highest bandwidth will be allowed to simply overpower others in its sphere of influence, or whether sophisticated filters will emerge over time is impossible to determine.

Technology and Privacy

Questions of personal space and privacy are just the tip of the technological iceberg. 

   The raw data flow may provide a very personalized experience, or a more consensual and interactive experience may emerge.   When a projected reality overlaps another will they merge to create a composite, consensual space, or will the strongest reality with the highest resolution and bandwidth simply overtake the other.

As we begin to assemble the new reality, data is just part of the picture.  The eversion of physical space will become highly customizable as well. The point where information merges with physical space will become an increasingly blurry line in the web that reality built.

The Future

The future is always uncertain.   We have moved rapidly from our ancestral roots as hierarchical pack animals to modern technological beings, but we are still tied very close to our animal nature and its demand for territorial control structures.   While our new technological languages have enabled us to communicate our primitive screams for power in more refined ways, the nature of the animal remains.    Will technology free us from our roots in the dna based social structures and allow us more freedom to express our unique individual wills, or will the heavy forces of tradition bring us deeper and deeper into complex social games to determine primacy at all costs.

image source ustr.gov