Shifting Expectations

Interesting post from Chris Brogan today. Chris writes about the future direction of online gaming, second life and the like, prompting the reader to contemplate where these technlogies may be heading in 2008 and urging us all to participate and organisations to get involved. It is interesting to see how someone more involved in the world of trade and commerce is thinking along the same lines as someone like Ewan MacIntosh is thinking in education with use of the Wii remote , and games consoles supporting creative writing . It seems to me that there are a lot of people who are excited by the technology, have explored a few possibilities but are not really sure where it is going. Perhaps that is what will be the big new thing in 2008. Not more new technology, though of course it's not going to stand still, but rather that someone, or some people, will come up with some really cracking ideas for REALLY effective use of this technology in a universally accepted way with outstanding...

...but what do you do when it breaks??? I've just come home from a hard day's labour, followed by a fun, friendly evening class, sat down with my laptop, logged on to Netvibes, to be met with...well, a message telling me how much better it's going to become! Which is no good to me right now, as I want to see what's going on in the world. All my carefully collected feeds and blogs, wikis and social networking connections are contained therein, and I can't get to them. Well, that's not strictly true, I could get at most, eventually, going through them one by one, tracking them down, logging on etc etc, but that's no good to me, that's not how I want things to present themselves to me. It was almost a panicky moment, which is ludicrous of course, but I hope I'm not alone in that. Makes me think about backups, plan B's etc. Maybe I should use i-Google after all. I'm sure it never goes down. Their server cloud model probably means this never...

People are scared of technology. Not all, but many. People feel they don't know what's going on, they don't know what they can and can't do and they don't know where it is all leading. We're always being told that things are getting simpler to use and easier to work with, but alongside that is that it is the feeling that it is getting easier to break the law, or that maybe the law doesn't apply online or.... It is little wonder people are confused when they go to a webpage such as the Times Online Technology and Web News section. Copyright is dead, but illegal downloaders will be banned and anyway you're using obsolete new technology so you might as well not bother! All part of the fun I guess!