Thursday, November 17, 2011

The evolution of Humanity through Computing, Software and Web! – Part I [Humor/Satire]




Disclaimer: This article is a piece of humor/satire on the impact of IT on humanity/society.  I have taken some creative liberties to make it interesting and to highlight some key aspects of our evolution with IT in a story telling format.  Idea is to see things in retrospect and provide some food for thought as we move ahead to define the future course.  Key point is that things certainly need to change and change for global good and sustainability.


Starring
H
Humanity
Big C
Capitalism/Capitalists
Huge M
Money
eC
Electronic Computer
S
Software
W
Web
I
Information
Social M
Social Media
C
Communication
oldE
Entertainment
New E
Earn
K
Knowledge
Real M
Mother Earth



The story so far

We as Humanity created a big CCapitalism whose basic premise was to create huge Money($$$).  More than half a century back H influenced by the big C created a new type of C – the eC (electronic Computer).  In older times computer used to be people who could compute complex things, as we wanted to compute at the level and scale not possible by humans, so a small part of H and decades of research and evolution created the eC, this minority of H were basically all big Cs

The eC could not work without Software, so a lot of H started creating S to use them across industries so that we as humans could do less work, do new things without thinking about their other effects and create a world run by machines that gets bigger and bigger.  We created many big Ss for the Enterprise (part of big C themselves) like OS, Office, ERP, CRM, SCM, KM, BI with multiple copies as open or proprietary and got them implemented in every organization. The rulers of S in Enterprise are Microsoft and Oracle.

S was just the start we then created Web(Internet), the mother platform that was fathered by Tim Berners Lee and it created something called as “Information/html pages”, in its first 10 years it started to become a clutter like a haystack due to rapid growth of I in the form of billions of webpages across millions of websites.

“The W caught the imagination of H”

Some people started working to bring order and many kept working on growing the haystack, but eventually Google mastered how to discover from it and Hotmail created a mass market that gave people the power to communicate/share with anyone, anywhere and anytime.
In the next 10 years it got influenced primarily by WikipediaBloggerYoutubeMyspace Linkedin and Twitter  which multiplied the power of H by giving yoU the power to publish I and connect globally as one Society and created a revolution called social Media. W is also powered by some S and is currently ruled by Google , and Facebook is the new challenger.

In the early stages of W, like kids we used W mainly for ICE (Information Communication and Entertainment(old E)) and most players again like kids went after mainly C&oldE because that is what motivated most users and could help big C make huge M

But now it is more like ICE TE (read iced tea), with added power to Transact and Earn (new E) from it.  C & old E still rule the W while the C evolved beyond old and grew to be “Collaboration” and “Collective” as well. It is still largely for the purpose of and focused on old E but many started to use it for the new E also.


“The W got enabled with the expression and participation of its consumers, as Users became prosUmers the W became Democratic.”

We had already put a lot of silo Ss in Enterprise but we were still not satisfied and also realized we wish to do even less as humans because while doing less work manually we created a new type of work involving eCs and W.  We further started integrating the silo Ss in companies and also use the W to run it and integrate as the power of eC multiplied following Uncle Moore’s law

W kinda revolutionized H by empowering it to connect and share I and possibly create meaningful Knowledge and drive global change for good, but we the H, overwhelmed ourselves with C & old E by giving in to big C.

The H is not yet satisfied with their blind following of the features in Ss and on W, it is working hard by killing precious productive time to make them a phenomenon and fad. In last 2 decades, H using the W made and burnt trillions of $$$, the big C grew business which gave us huge salaries to go and buy what we ourselves produced as a collective, in the process we screwed up ourselves by forgetting our real Mother (earth) and burning all the $$$ to make real M suffer more for our pleasures and laziness to work/compute. 

Majority of H did it without knowing that it will change our lifestyle in such a way that our new needs will make Healthcare, Insurance, Spirituality and Going Green as big industries which the big C will grab again and use the W and S to make huger M.

We created healthcare and insurance as big industries but again forgot that they will never be sufficient to save real M ever and with no real M there will be no H, then what will the big C do with the huge M? when there won’t be any A… left to use it even as a toilet paper.


----------to be continued----------


I hope you found it worth a read.  Do share your feedback in comments. Based on your suggestions I’ll improvise the Part II where I wish to share some thoughts on the future.



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