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Old 12-30-2012, 06:12 PM
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lisarea lisarea is offline
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Default Re: Ensign Steve waxes philosophical on the Singularity, a thrad by Ensign Steve

Oh, hi, Ensign Steve. I hope you don't mind if I put some things in your LONG ABANDONED GHOST THRAD ABOUT THE SINGULARITY, WHICH YOU DON'T EVEN CARE ABOUT AT ALL.

This isn't really directly singularity-related unless you stretch a bit, and TBH, it's not even really super-insightful, either, but it's true and it addresses a general thing that's been nagging at me of late:

All Journalism Is Tech Journalism Now | TechCrunch

The thing is that technology really isn't a separate topic anymore at all, not just in journalism. It is no longer an optional, niche subject that can be separated from everything else. It's already integrated into just about everything as it is, and has created new niches and channels that didn't exist before. And it's going to continue to do that, so that in coming decades, people will be dependent on things that don't even exist now.

So, as for why it's bugging me, for example, I have a friend with a teenaged son who doesn't care about computers, and I have a hard time impressing upon her that it's really not a subject he can safely ignore. It's not a discrete subject, it's not a discrete career path. It's a thing everyone depends on and uses. Being technically illiterate is rapidly approaching the point where it's like being actually illiterate. You'll be able to get by, but not well and not easily, and not without depending on others a lot, making you an easy mark.

And it's not just an individual thing, either. Technology has been advancing and more importantly integrating so quickly and so opaquely that technical knowledge of how things actually work and what they actually do is rapidly being concentrated into a smaller and smaller group of people. It seems that there's already been a turning point in technology adoption. It used to be that early adopters were mostly tinkerers and people who cared about the technology itself, but that seems to be turning around completely, so it's less technically literate people who are the bigger technology consumers and the ones really driving and defining demand in the consumer market.

And that worries me a whole lot, which is what I wanted to say.
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