Look its blue… Must be futuristic
People may remember that I am fascinated by the future of data storage. Don’t ask why… not even I know. Technology, however, and the possible directions it can take fascinate me.
A few months ago I remember writing that the future of data storage was going to involve a vast repository of interactive information that could be ported down for any use required. The encyclopedia galatica is what I thought it could be called.
Today I realised that this already exists, not wikipedia, thought closely tied to that. Instead it is the repository of information underlying wikipedia – Wikidata. Called it?
You didn’t know this but wikimedia foundation is working on a data repository which you can edit and the changes will be syndicated out to all the outlying and different language wikipedia sites.
This is wonderful, especially as they are allowing access to the database to developers who want to use the information contained within to make decisions within programs, and the possibilities once this database keeps expanding are boundless.
I envisage a future where people have memory implants which are linked to this cyber encyclopedia and facts are no longer the medium by which we compare intelligence. Studying for exams will not exist in terms of memorisation, instead you are judged by how you brain utilises the network available to you.
That is a long way off, and might even seem a bit matrix like, think like this, but for everything…
i know EVERYTHING…
The question is, if that was available to you, would you plug in? Or would you remain pure? One of the things that has defined the human learning experience since the beginning is the ability to recall and interpret facts. If in a debate you could wheel out 15 different academic theories to debate each point, who would win?
It would be a change, but that is what technology is supposed to do, truly innovative technology, not the iPhone Whatever(S), but like the original smartphone. It is supposed to change the operation of day to day life in a way that makes it unrecognisable to the generation that came before. It is supposed to burn through the mundane fog that has begun to rust the pistons of society and scorch the rust from ancient cogs and get them whirring again, and leave not a nook or cranny untouched by its radiant flame.
There will always be dangers, like children aged 4 being treated for iPad addiction, but there are positives to – like any of these things. Also it gives scope for brilliant creativeness to come out and enable random stuff that only one person could think of.
Like this guy – he made an iPhone shoe – who does that? 
