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Living digitally: Then, now and tomorrow
Thirty years ago, Nicholas Negroponte, one of the founders of MITâs Media Lab, renowned for its âOne Laptop Per Childâ initiative, published Being Digital
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hirty years ago, Nicholas Negroponte, one of the founders of MIT's Media Lab, renowned for its 'One Laptop Per Child' initiative, published Being Digital.
In this book, he explored aspects of future digital living based on the technologies available in 1985 and their social implications. For digital natives born when the world started living half-digital lives, Being Digital is a history book, showing a world leaving behind its analog past.
The fascinating comparisons between what Negroponte saw in the future back in 1985 and what we have today shows that technology is always a story half-told, with the other half left to be written by future users yet unborn.
Just this month, Uber, the ride-sharing app, announced an investment update in Indonesia, ending the controversy over its legality. Uber does not own any vehicles and yet it rules over fleets of cars in cities around the globe. As Negroponte wrote: 'The change from atoms to bits is irrevocable and unstoppable.'
The view from 1985: the changing role of media
'¢ On bits and atoms
Negroponte realized the irony of writing about a digital future in a paperback book and he pointed out that the current interface was a primitive one. Twenty-five years later, cellphones became readers, followed by iPad and Kindle.
Book readers haven't all made the switch, but as the new habit of reading fast-breaking news on cellphones has set in, more will get used to the idea of accessing content on a screen rather than on paper. More readers continue to purchase, download and read e-magazines and e-books on their tablets and smartphones.
Negroponte highlighted another advantage of bits over atoms: Go as deep and as broad as you wish. 'In the digital world, the depth/breadth problem disappears [...] readers and authors move freely between generalities and specifics,' he wrote, referring to hypertext that expands and enriches online content.
'¢ On mass media and the media's new role as content aggregator
Negroponte sensed that technology would enable individuals to curate content and that is now happening in our world today. 'Mass media will be redefined by systems for transmitting and receiving personalized information and entertainment,' he wrote.
With web and Twitter-based personal publishing services, we have more than news flowing through social media channels; we have
also become news aggregators and publishers.
This year saw online platforms like Facebook grow their power by determining which articles were attention-worthy.
'¢ On media business models
Negroponte sensed that the business model of TV and other media would have to change following the digital shift and in 2015, TV stations and newspapers experimented with new business models.
'The economic models of media today are based almost exclusively on 'pushing' information and entertainment out into the public. Tomorrow's will have more to do with 'pulling', where you and I reach into the network and check out something the way we do in a library today,' Negroponte wrote.
'¢ On the audience
'In the information age, mass media got bigger and smaller ['¦] Niche magazines, cable services were examples of narrowcasting, catering to small demographics groups. In the post-information age, we often have an audience the size of one.
Everything is made to order ['¦]' With that, Negroponte was basically describing the 'long-tail' effect that technologies allow as applied to the media industry.
'¢ On journalism and content creation
Negroponte posed the question that 'if moving these bits around is so effortless, what advantage would the large media companies have over you and me?' More and more news organizations are welcoming individuals, the audience, to submit reports as 'citizen journalists'. These news organizations also provide blogging space in which people can write and publish.
For the need for accuracy, journalism will always be necessary since it is still the only profession that practices standards of fact gathering and verification. Yet it cannot avoid the necessity of self-transformation.
'¢ On social environments
Negroponte sheds a light on communities all over the world that use the internet and are, in turn, changed by it: 'We will socialize in digital neighborhoods [...]' Platforms like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook draw in millions and organize interactions around similar interests, forging virtual relationships. Members of communities use online platforms to discuss and exchange information on centuries-old discussions related to faith, family, politics and sports.
2015 was the year when Indonesian 'netizens' amplified their voices online to control public institutions over a number of issues, the most prominent being the anti-corruption agenda and the haze crisis.
These netizens, in carrying out digital action, including online petitions, collaborated with the press to push their influence further.
Hardwares, technologies, and users
'¢ On hardware
Thirty years ago, Negroponte envisioned e-readers like Kindle. 'Today, multimedia is a desktop or living-room experience [...] media will become more book-like, something with which you can curl up in bed.'
Since Being Digital did not mention mobile technology, a platform powered with apps, it missed some elements of digital living that have become a part of people's lives today. Some of these apps are enablers of other elements of digital living, making itself a platform for commerce, communication or social media.
'¢ On usability
Negroponte lamented 'Why do computers have to be so needlessly complicated?' Today, millions rely on their relatively easy to operate touchscreen smartphones to navigate their half-digital lives.
As a big believer in providing common people with access to technology, Negroponte noted that the idea of an interactive computer graphics started long before Apple introduced the mouse. Douglas Englebart, who invented the mouse in 1964, did so for pointing, he wrote.
'Personal computers almost never have your finger meet the display, which is quite startling when you consider that the human finger is a pointing device and we have ten
of them.'
'¢ On wearable media
'Instead of carrying your laptop, wear it. The wristwatch is the most obvious. It is certain to migrate from a mere timepiece today to a mobile command-and-control center tomorrow.'
Manipulated photographs and imageries will be part of the accepted artistic landscape [...]
Even before the Apple watch stole the show and before Google glasses fell off the mass-appeal trajectory, the sports industry led the way with GPS-enabled wristwatches that monitored how far you had run and measured the impact on your body.
'¢ On smart cars
Negroponte was on the right track when he wrote: 'Cars will have information displays [...] they will know where they are. A much better way to deliver navigational assistance is by voice.' We presently have crowd-supported apps such as Waze that help us navigate and collect from us information on the streets that we are traversing.
Changing societies
'¢ On arts and music
'Composers, performers and audience can all have digital control,' Negroponte wrote.
Manipulated photographs and imageries will be part of the accepted artistic landscape, just as musicians use synthesized sounds and digital processing.
Photographers and audiences have accepted digital manipulation as part of the industry process, although this year World Press Photo issued a statement about its rules disallowing the digital alteration of submitted works.
Legal issues follow what Negroponte saw as 'digital control', yet his vision came true, also in relation to the 'channeling' aspect of
digital technology: 'Artists will come to see the internet as a means of disseminating their work directly to people.'
Any musician can now share and sell their work directly, using online platforms.
'¢ On privacy and censorship
Negroponte understood both sides of the coin. He wrote that 'the internet provides a worldwide channel of communication that flies in the face of any censorship and thrives especially in places like Singapore, where freedom of the
press is marginal and networking ubiquitous.' And also: 'Every technology has a dark side. Being digital is no exception. The next decade will see cases of intellectual-property abuse and invasion of our privacy [...] digital vandalism, software piracy and data thievery.'
We now know, post Wikileaks, that governments and corporations monitor this free-flow of information. 'The only hazard [...] politicians who want to control it. Usually under the banner of sanitizing the Net for children, people are trying to censor its content.'
Sound familiar?
'¢ The digital divide
The world is torn between those without access to the internet and those who have too much of it. Being Digital claimed that the gap between the information-rich and the information-poor would be inter-generational.
The term 'digital native' was not yet coined at that time, but Negroponte already envisioned a young generation who would take for granted all the digital aspects of living because it would be inseparable from their lives.
'While the politicians struggle with the baggage of history, a new generation is emerging from the digital landscape free of old prejudices. Digital technology can be a natural force drawing people into greater world harmony.'
Some of the digital natives have driven the revolution further by creating new ventures and new collaborations that were not possible without the technology.
What the future holds
Should we be worried about the future? Negroponte was bullish about it.
'My optimism comes from the empowering nature of being digital. The access, the mobility and the ability to effect change are what will make the future so different from the present. We are not waiting on any invention. It is here. It is now in the hands of the young.'
Another source of Negroponte's optimism was the promise of the growth of commerce, especially for small and medium enterprises.
'The Net is becoming a place for entrepreneurs who are building 'global cottage industries'. To be a multinational company in the past, you had to be huge, with offices around the world capable not only of handling your corporate atoms but dealing with local laws. Today, three people in three different cities can form a company and access a global marketplace.'
Digital entrepreneurs built and grew their companies into multi-million dollar empires in less than a decade. Although his book missed the explosion of e-commerce, Negroponte correctly envisioned how empowering online marketplaces could be for small and medium-sized companies.
A milestone in a rapidly changing world
No one can escape the transformation. The digital realm has entered almost all aspects of human life and Negroponte embraced it. The digital age 'has four powerful qualities that will result in its ultimate triumph: Decentralizing, globalizing, harmonizing and empowering.'
Being Digital captured a milestone in humanity, capturing issues that we struggled with during this transformation. Or, as Negroponte wrote, 'The medium is not the message in a digital world. It is an embodiment of it.'
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The writer is a media watcher and communications strategist working on multiple digital projects and businesses. This article is the short version of an essay with the same title.
