Modern Life

Rendering of a three-data center campus Facebook is currently building in New Albany, Ohio

Whenever I bother to think about my computerized life I am astounded by the plethora of amazing computer applications that we have at our fingertips. For starters, lets look at Google Maps. There are nearly 300 million vehicles in the USA. If only one percent of the drivers are using Google Maps at any one time, that's still three million smart phones connected by the cellular telephone network to a server farm that is collecting location data and sending back map information.

Then there's spoken voice programs that can turn your spoken words into text in your language, or another language. Meanwhile another zillion or so other smartphone users are receiving music over the air, another zillion are having telephone conversations, another zillion are sending text messages, and another zillion are playing games.

The people who organized the development and deployment of these computer applications and the electronic infrastructure needed to support them are making a ton of money. This has distorted our society a bit, but that is always happening. Somebody comes up with a new idea and those who latch onto it prosper (or fall) and everyone else complains about the disruption.

Some people like to complain about the way things are, the way things are being run, the way the people in charge are handling things, but that's just the nature of people. People can always find something to complain about, some people enjoy complaining so much that they make complaining into a career.

Generally speaking, people will latch onto whatever will help them prosper. How well one is integrated into society will determine how successful you will be. If you have a family that supports you, encourages education and teaches you to be responsible, you can be more successful. People without that support can still succeed if they are smart and driven. That's still going to leave some people in a hole, which is how our modern welfare state got started. It's also how criminal gangs get started.

P. S. New Albany (site of Facebook data center shown at top) has appeared here before.