VogelWorks

The Future of the Digital Space Theme Outline:

• I. The Definition of the Digital Space.
• II. The Framework.
• III. Our Digital Spider-Sense

The Importance of Awareness

A few months ago, I was in downtown Atlanta, late on a Monday night, walking back to my car after meeting up with some friends.

Suddenly, with a screech of tires a dark blue sports car came tearing up the wrong direction of the road parallel to the sidewalk where I stood.  “Good lord, who is this nut job…,” I thought to myself.

The car came to an abrupt halt about 50 yards ahead of me near the outdoor patio of a bar where a group of people were sitting at round tables.  With music blaring,  and arms in the air, he began making erratic movements as he thrashed about in his car.

Then something happened that I’d never experienced before: I got hit with a wall of fear and angst.

I’m not sure how, but I felt it move through the crowd.  It started with the people sitting at the tables closest to the crazed driver.  I remember people craning their heads, turning nervously, some went inside.  Then it made its way to the hotel attendants standing on the sidewalk closer to me.  They looked at each other, peered down the street, and then one said, “shit, it’s the Russian” and ducked inside.

It then hit me.

I didn’t understand the situation, but in an instant, I became aware that I could be endangered, and I hurriedly exited the scene.

~

Survival demands that we be sensitive to our environment.  It’s hardwired into our bodies.  By sensing our environment, we’re able to be aware of how we should react.

Evolution says Awareness is important to us, and the desire for heightened Awareness will have vast influence on our digital future.

Our Digital Spider-Sense

Without digressing into a theory of mind, we need a simple definition of Awareness.

Awareness describes the state of being conscious of some form of “information” (an object, action, event, etc).  However, gaining Awareness does not require engaging in a conscious process–understanding of the information is not a necessary prerequisite for gaining Awareness.

Vast amounts of information fill our immediate environment that our senses and intellect detect and process.  However, we’ve created a digital atmosphere that pervades our environment and provides potential for greatly Enhanced Awareness.

When we talk about Enhanced Awareness, we imply two distinct concepts: Expanded Information and Enhanced Senses.

Expanded Information refers to an expansion in the types of information in our environment.  For instance, information regarding crime rates in your city exist on the internet that you aren’t able to sense.  The existence of more information about our environment enables greater awareness, if delivered effectively.

With expanded information sets pervading our environment, we’ll need enhanced senses in order to gain Awareness of this new information.

Enhanced Senses refers to the augmentation of our senses to perform as inputs for information from our environment.  Enhanced Senses could be an enhancement of degree (superman-like telescopic vision) or of capability (eyes that can act as an input for new types of information).

We’ll explore both sides of this coin in the forthcoming essays.

Kevin
10.8.2009

I moved VogelWorks because I had the feeling that it needed its own domain to grow.  It’s time that I gave VogelWorks a direction so it can begin its journey.

The Danger

We’re inundated with news stories, headlines, and the barrage of noise on the internet.  The danger is that we take our eye off the real value and don’t give proper attention to the important trends and ideas that will shape our perceivable future.

The One Value

A defining characteristic of any entity are the values it upholds, whether it be a company, an individual, or a something else.  As of now, VogelWorks only has one: understanding the world.

Real values aren’t fluff, they’re functional.  Focus on understanding the world delivers real value to the VogelWorks audience:

• Understanding the world is key for personal growth.
• Gaining a deeper understanding of the world increases appreciation for the world’s beauty.
• Understanding the world leads to heightened sense of the world, which, quite simply, creates greater opportunity to do good.  With heightened senses, you’re able to make better decisions for yourself, others, and the future.

Admittedly, understanding the world is quite broad, but for a value, I see no reason to impose narrower limits.

A particularly special implication of this value exists.  The most rigorous exercise in understanding the world is the attempt to understand the perceivable future.  Therefore by association, a perspective on the future is also valued here.

The Content

The world turns upon three pillars: institutions, technology, and people.  Each is distinct; each is its own animal.  People discover technologies that are already written into the fabric of the universe.  Institutions are not the sum of the people who comprise them.

These three pillars provide a framework; the content of VogelWorks falls within the space bounded by these pillars.  And from within this framework, specific themes will be chosen to focus on.

The VogelWorks Framework

VogelWorks is here to key in on significant issues, trends, and ideas–things that matter.

The Methodology

While this provides a conceptual framework, unless reduced to practice, this all means nothing.  VogelWorks needs a methodology for understanding the world to be effective.

An epidemiology professor once told me, “There’s a big difference between someone who just teaches thermodynamics, and someone who does research in thermodynamics.”  He knew what he was talking about. If you want to become educated deeply on a subject, you should tune into the community of people who are as intimately involved as you can find.

If you want to study the world, you should go to the people at the forefront of the world’s bleeding edge–people who are passionate about a subject, that ponder it deeply, that are involved, that push forward in spite of the risks, and that understand their responsibility to share their insight with the rest of us.

The Coda

I think this provides a clear understanding of the purpose of VogelWorks:

Provide a platform to further understanding  of the world.  Publish content and incite discussion on things that matter.  Engage the people intimately involved with defining the future.

Kevin
9.30.2009

The future of the web and other digital technologies are extremely fascinating with a number of exciting trends showing face (globalization, language translation, wireless data transfer, mobile innovation, quantum computing, etc.)   But, it’s not really just about the future of the Digital Space.  It’s the future of how humans will interact with each other and their environments.

thoughts on thinking about the future

The future is vast and unknowable, but I believe it is perceivable as packets of insight trickle in like the first rays of sunrise.  When thinking about the future, it is important to create a framework based on concepts we understand in order to begin thinking about the future in a methodical way.  Otherwise, it becomes difficult to reach overarching insight from the thought exercise due to the limitations imposed by our random creativities and personal experiences.

Put another way, you could say I prefer to begin with a top-down constraint that answers the questions, “What is unchanging and how will this influence us?” as opposed to starting with “what are the limited set of observances I see and where might these go?”  I do think it’s important to use both, particularly when talking about the perceivable future.

the framework

But let’s get to it.  I’d like to frame the future of the Digital Space within the context of our own evolution.  Why?  We are products of evolution, and consequently, the Digital Space is a product of our evolved needs and propensities.  To make this point clear, think of the internet in terms of basic needs it fulfills (what’s the statistic of time spent looking for porn online?).  As the Digital Space continues to develop, it will continue to meet more of these intrinsic human needs.  Again, it’s not just about the future of the Digital World.  It’s the future of how humans will interact with each other and their environments.

It’s important to be aware that this is a thought experiment that ideally leads to expanded insight.  To state the experimental question directly, “if we were to view the Digital Space as a product of our own evolution, what might this mean for its future?”

In the forthcoming posts in this series, I’ll focus on some of these evolved behaviors and propensities, talk about them in terms of “bottom-up” observations, and offer thoughts on where they could take us. I’m not completely sure where it’ll lead, although I know there is value in the approach.  Your own thoughts and input will help guide the journey.

Kevin Vogelsang
6.20.2009

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