Do you need to know? This is part of my conundrum. It is my duty to provide content to the great beast but what is right to share? Dare I say something I wouldn’t shout in the street?
The topic I have been contemplating lately is the future of the human culture and how it relates to the Internet. I suspect that I am one of those kinds of people who rely on an innate sense of being able to recognize patterns in a field of abundant data. This ability is at the essential core of what it means to be a functioning human being in an absolute reality – but most people do not use their faculties beyond recognizing the shapes of the different combo-meals on the McDonalds drive-thru menu (ok, that is a totally unfair characterization, but on the up side, I have a really hard time with those stupid “picture menu” style signs. Give me a list of items with corresponding prices any day).
Yeah, pattern recognition. Almost everybody has it. Lots of people use it to a higher degree than most. Some of us like to unfix our gaze and let the information wash over us. It is from this bath of data (part of which we are contributors) that our subconscious (or whatever you want to call that part of us that can be so precise and unwavering yet seemingly just out of our firm grasp) plucks with nimble chopsticks the buzzing flies of “zeitgeist” that most can not see directly but only vaguely sense on the periphery of their internal movie lives.
Woh – getting a little metaphoric there. I think Bill Gibson said it better.
Yeah, convergence.
