Every year the progress of advanced capitalist society makes our population consist of more and more isolates. This is because of the infrastructure of the economy, especially electronic communications.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Even in developing markets, we're seeing the growth of digital communication is proceeding at a very rapid pace.
I am still cautiously hopeful about the potential of the Internet. But it seems that the greatest revolution in communication has been hijacked by commercial values.
We have more media than ever and more technology in our lives. It's supposed to help us communicate, but it has the opposite effect of isolating us.
For every step forward in electronic communications, we've taken two steps back in humanity. People know how to use a computer and answering machines but have forgotten how to connect with one another. Our society is unraveling. We're too self-obsessed.
Look at electricity in human history - it took a few decades for electricity to really revolutionize the American economy. And the Internet will be the same. At some point in the future, we will arrive at a new era of low-hanging fruit.
By 2007, we were finally living in a culture where people get what networks are and what technology can do to connect people.
People live longer today than they ever have. They live happier lives, have more knowledge, more information. All this is the result of communications technology. How is any of that bad?
If we want technology to serve society rather than enslave it, we have to build systems accessible to all people - be they male or female, young, old, disabled, computer wizards or technophobes.
The new information technology... Internet and e-mail... have practically eliminated the physical costs of communications.
And once you get instantaneous communication with everybody, you have economic activity that's far more advanced, far more liquid, far more distributed than ever before.