As I finish packing and organizing for my forthcoming train trip, I’ve been thinking about the changes in my life over the last few months. I’ve returned to a point of idealism I don’t recall having had since my late teens. I am seeing so many of my ingrained viewpoints slowly stripping themselves away as I “grow up” and look at the world through still idealistic eyes; while at the same time, I am more mindful of the pain and unfairness inherent to this crazy thing called life.
This idealism is reflected in the imagery I chose for this new version of my site. I noticed that while “organic” was important, I also picked a picture that showed renewed growth on the rust of the past. Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but in so many ways, my life seems to be going in a wholly new direction. I’ve rejoiced at the fact that people world wide are questioning themselves and the status quo in completely new ways. In addition, I’ve discovered a renewing hope and ideology of many internet developers, designers and users in general. Plus, the sense of community is growing like wildfire via social networking tools. Those tools are helping to expand my ideas about art and expression. All of this idealism has made me take a look back to see what’s happened in the environment - that pays my bills - and where it and I lost our hopeful exuberance.
Look at where the internet was 4 years ago, when the scars from the first attempt at cashing in on the ‘net were still fresh, compared to the environment of today. We have a massive amount of completely free tools that enhance and add value to our day to day interaction with the internet and with each other. Companies like google, 37 signals, adaptive path, ludicorp, and others are endeavoring to offer very clean simple tools that aren’t encased in overly large loud “art”, but instead are tailor made to be easy to customize.
Tools such as:
It seems that many of the newer tools and applications like those listed above are an online version of the “convergence” concept that marketers worldwide grew obsessed with a few years back. “Your cell phone will also be your calculator, pda, camera, music player and can cook eggs!!!” This was was a nice idea, however, it never seemed to address the ‘why’… it only addressed the ‘how’. Now, everything is pointing to giving us better abilities to communicate socially. In the past, the idea was to communicate with our friends via IM clients, yahoo groups and more. The one thing that was never addressed very well (that I know of) was the ongoing popularity of usenet and irc. While both had a rather high spam exposure, it was the social aspect that continued to draw people into a plaintext environment that allowed social discourse.
I suppose that just like with anything else, we’re going to be experiencing a lot of changes. The first generation that “grew up” with the internet will be leaving college soon, and many will begin to work on emerging technologies and creations alongside of those who have spent years evangelizing this tech-centered world to friends, colleagues and clients. I think that the next two years are going to be unfathomably unique in the ways that we view technology and how convergence will mean a very different thing than just how our gadgets are combined. Instead, it will be more about how our tools are combining with our lives.
It’s quite exciting really.
