Loko’s Domain You live and learn. At any rate, you live.

The Digital Age technology has been increasing at a very rapid rate. From the debut of the internet in the palm of our hands to the quarter inch thick LCD television set. The internet and other technologies such as carbon nanotubes and metal free transistors will allow a computer to be just about anywhere, even sewn onto clothing. There will be very few spots in this country where we will not be able to check our e-mail. With entire towns giving free wireless internet to the citizens tax free, there will be no reason why we cannot simply log on to check our mail at any given time of the day, regardless of the location. Technology will destroy all of our best excuses.

Even with the current and proposed technological breakthroughs, I still feel a little sad when I go through old photos, letters, and books. Everything has been digitized and in twenty years, no one will have any evidence that certain people existed because an email server in Texas went down taking all their precious memories with them. In snail mail, at least only fire or theft could truly destroy the memories, but with technology, we have many different factors that could wipe our memories including fire. It is sad that we will no longer have the amazing letters at our disposal to reminisce about when we are old and gray, only one worded or abbreviated responses in an old cell phone.

Perhaps it was the creation of e-shorthand that doomed our language for many years to come. When we receive a text message, the contents are usually rather brief and mangled. With letters replacing full words for speed, eventually, this quick-to-type language may replace our language in other mediums as well. Imagine that the 11 o’clock news no longer prattles on longer than twenty seconds per story because the amount of data and information they are being received is coming in faster than they can report. When an event happens, the world can know about it immediately. One man on a laptop in the middle of a war zone can perform podcasts telling the world of his or her thoughts and sights.

Digital transmission has become the absolute bane of our culture, yet, too convenient to not abuse. Eventually, it will be common for our digital picture frames to display incoming post cards and pictures on the fly by friends and family by them simply emailing them to a certain address. Imagine a digital camera that has the power to email without any additional software, it has an integrated wireless network card. With an entire town wireless, we will be able to send high resolution images by the gross within minutes the pictures were snapped. Future generations will be spoiled by not having to wait on the film to develop, but waiting on their current uploads because their ISP capped the bandwidth on their digital camera to a quarter of what it was for going over their monthly limit.

These are dark times and in the second Digital Age, it seems our hands are truly growing out of touch with reality and manual labor, which now includes hand writing messages instead of typing on a keyboard. I have to admit, writing more than a paragraph without it being homework related feels rather odd. Even then, majority of everything in college and late in high school was typed on a computer, unless, of course, detention is involved. Isn’t it funny how in the future, detention will be truly a grueling punishment because the punishment will not have changed? Children will groan at the idea they may have to hand write disciplinary statements with a pen and paper repeatedly until the end of the day.

There are many reasons why it is necessary to move quickly to the next Digital Age for the technology being withheld and developed to be released over the next ten years will make our lives even easier. Nanotechnology is our future and the applications are limitless. Imagine an entire country creating enough weapons to arm every citizen twice over in record time. Perhaps the day will come when nanotechnology is in the home, albeit limited, but will allow us to ask the computer to create articles of clothing, food, and other objects of desire in minutes or even seconds. Not only will we be able to receive merchandise from a machine, but we could customize it to our liking. Computer, I would like a pair of maroon tinted turtle sunglasses with a built in digital camera with zooming capabilities.

Speaking of such advanced features for a machine, Artificial Intelligence will be the first action taken by a foreign entity to the human race that is not extraterrestrial. As of now, we only know natural disasters, the occasional animal attack, and another human being with an agenda. It may be cynical to confess that by the year 2030, computers will definitely be able to not only think on their, but plot as well. Our children may have to enter into intense diplomatic discussions with a man made of steel with a brain created meticulously by human hands. With these ideas in mind, the future may not prove to be a scary place, but it will be depressing.