It’s hard to imagine but as a kid, the internet didn’t really exist for us common folk. We still had to write letters the old-fashioned way and played with sticks and rocks for entertainment (slight exaggeration here). It’s hard to imagine what it would be like growing up nowadays where your social life’s fate hangs in the balance on closed social network platforms designed to encourage exposing every aspect of your private life so that companies can data mine and monetize you for stock holders. (Yes, I’m getting old and cynical) We now live in a world where a single wrong tweet or photo on facebook can ruin your job prospects or even land you in jail.
But we ain’t seen nothing yet. Governments want to monitor our formerly private but now online lives and intrude on people’s privacy more than ever before and in secret. Massive cyber wars and espionage are now taking place online domestically and abroad. 3D printers are able to print guns and high security keys. Glasses with video cameras will able to record what we see at any time. Shit is going to get real.
You know, I was looking forward to colonizing stuff in outer space, self-driving cars, and cheap, renewable energy, not this social media crap. Yes, all those are being worked on but I doubt I’ll see it in my lifetime. At least I have the Oculus Rift to look forward to.
Yeah, future didn’t turn out the way we expected. The stick and rock mention wasn’t that exaggerated, and we can be proud of it.
But we still hope the Oculus Rift will be awesome 🙂
Thanks for your hard work.
Only 2 more years away from Back to the Future 2 future and no flying cars or hoverboards. Though really, flying cars is a bad idea given how people drive currently.
Not going to lie, the future is getting scarier and scarier.
Yeah, I’m on the same page as you. I’m only 18 years old, so I was born around the beginning of this sudden explosion of social media. There was a short period in my life when I played with sticks and rocks, too!
I was introduced to computers around my sixth birthday, though. However, I never really got into all the social stuff like MySpace, Facebook, or Twitter. At best, I use only a couple of them on rare occasions.
I guess I could be called a gamer because I mainly got into computers because I loved the technical side of them along with some awesome gaming. I love to read and study language using them, too. (Weird combo, perhaps?)
But, some crazy stuff is going down as technology advances since it’s only opening more and more opportunities to expand these social medias. Now, I’m not saying expanding technology is a bad thing because it’s really not; it’s great. However, it’s causing a whole new rain of terror since no one’s going to be like-minded on the whole situation. There’s always chaos before everyone can come to some sort of resolution.
I mean, look how far technology has jumped in only the past two decades. Your phone can do everything your 50 lb Windows 3.1 computer could do plus more. (This also means as technology advances even more, there’s an even greater chance of very deadly technology getting in the hands of incredibly stupid people.)
At the rate everything is going right now, I have a feeling some crap is going to go down during my lifetime.
Now, forgive me as I post a comment that’s longer than the length of your blog post.
True, though no one is required to have facebook/twitter (yet). Deactivated my facebook a few months ago, never looked back. We can all live without social medias, as in the past.
Think the underlying solution is and always has been choice. Don’t like something, vote against or don’t buy into – or buy/vote for an alternate choice.
Anyways, will stop myself before I start ranting, good post Tae.
Social media will affect us regardless of whether you use it or not. There are no privacy law in the US regarding posting of images/videos of other people. Also, I shudder to think about the teen social life looks like nowadays. They are affected by everybody else at school regardless of whether they are online or not.