Living In the Future

[billroper]

One of the big advantages of living in the future is the access to data provided by the Internet and search engines. When I was discussing Supreme Court decisions with tigertoy the other day, I was able to type a few words into Google and get back the text of the decisions so that I could comment on them in a more intelligent fashion. A few years ago, I would have needed to have access to specialized data sources to look these things up. Now, I can do it without leaving my desk.

This sort of thing doesn't make people more intelligent, but it does have the possibility of making them better informed. You take your victories where you can find them.

Now if beamjockey could just do something about the appalling lack of aircars...

Comments

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

The downside to it being so easy to get to information that is searchable on the Internet is that people seem to forget that other information exists. There's a lot of information on the Internet, but there is a staggering amount that's not there, either because it's older than the Internet, or because someone doesn't want it to be easy to get to. When everyone expects to be able to find everything they care about with Google, governments or others who want to hide information that people really should be able to get to need only pull it off of their searchable web sites to keep ordinary people from knowing it.

As to the aircars, I head a bit on As It Happens last night about someone who was claiming to have a serious business plan for an air taxi service for large cities. Not quite a personal aircar -- the "cabbie" would be specially trained and presumably a licensed pilot -- but his jet cabs would supposedly be able to find landing sites in existing cities. I wasn't paying close attention; it sounded a bit far out to me, but we can wait and see if he gets investors and governments to buy it.

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

The subtler and longer-lasting change is the notion of free (as in widely available) information. Whether that information is accurate is a different question!

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Now if beamjockey could just do something about the appalling lack of aircars...

My minions are working on it. They, in turn, complain about an apalling lack of money for developing aircars.

(Any sign of auroras yet?)

[billroper]

No auroras yet. But I'll take another look later.