Ordering Breakfast in Future World- Toffler Style

“ The Alvin Toffler, Please”
I said to the waiter, and turned back to my Droid to watch the stream of posts across G+. Was this really what Toffler meant? Or, was his future more sinister? The books felt sinister when I read Future Shock and Third Wave in the 1982. Mr. Toffler’s world seemed far away from my new passive solar home in the woods and the family centered around two young sons. We were, so to speak, “off the grid.”
Google+ started the Toffler speak rumbling in my head again. The concept has blown through periodically as I watched my own access to technology explode over the last decade. Google+ is a new animal. But, then aren’t they all when their born- bright, shiny and full of potential and promise. Could anyone imagine Facebook would become not much more than a place to share photos, play games or cruise for sex. Will Google+ be corrupted by the endless stream of self promoting whores now filling the streams on Twitter?
I’ve threatened to opt out of it all, but I continue much as the moth to the flame. Am I afraid I will miss something, or, is it that I see the potential. Not just for Google+, but, for a world welded back together through individualism. That might be far beyond the concept of “big thinkers” who lead the parades of wanna-bees, but, Google+ offers humanity a chance to exit the mainstream and return to self sustaining humans. The operative word here- “offers.”
Stay with me on this. What drives us? Greed, hunger, sex? Debate as to the actual driving force of individuals will rage far beyond my time, but, entertain the opportunity that we are all on a journey. We have a life path to tread, or sprint. If we choose we can do it as individuals, thinking, believing, feeling, being people, who may also have family, friends, pets, and lives independent of the mainstream concept.
What is it, we need as people? You can show me a graph of Maslow’s heirarchy of needs. if you like. But, I’ve always wondered if maybe the “touchy feely” types didn’t have the pyramid turned on its head- wanting us to be self actualized before we cooked all the way through. Life colors us, shapes us, gives us value and perspective that as a 20 year old just does not compute. Google+ today, right now in time, gives us what we want, information free of coloration. When the politics arrive Google+ will be as dead as Twitter for feeding us unadulterated information.
Sexpot or Politbot?
Let me re-phrase it- what drives people? Hunger, greed, sex, ego? For many, the base needs will never be more than the driving force in their lives. But, what if, they woke up one day, and, just maybe, they saw a stream on Google+ which discussed something which triggered interest beyond eating breakfast and having sex before work? If it was really something which started their brain for the first time, would that be earth changing? It could launch that person from being an eating, mating, excreting being to an individual with a purpose.
I’ve blogged about Google’s potential for world dominance. And, I’m not kidding, as the basis, I point you back to Toffler’s Future Shock and Third Wave. The one saving grace to Google– their model. They sell advertising. At the moment, they give away everything else. The open source community creates massive amounts of stuff for Google because it’s passed on the user for free. Google as a conduit is about as close as it gets to the free flow of information in a society. Do not take this as a full faith endorsement of Google. It’s a snapshot in time.
The conduit created which allows individuals to pass information without looking for financial gain offers us a chance to expand our personal worlds. But, that’s you and me. We have laptops, desktops, smart phones, tablets, we are connected and mobile. Most of the world has no access to Google nor do they care. Until the masses connect with a Google+ conduit, the free flow of information will be worthless for change. Change is an individual thing, not a mass marketing gimmick.
Gateway to Third Wave
Introduce a tablet with connectivity everyone can afford and Alvin Toffler’s world arrives at the doorsteps and fingertips of the world. Change becomes inevitable. Mass marketed politics can corrupt it, driving away most. Politicians can restrict and reshape access and content to keep people in line. But, given time and a conduit which provides the free flow of information, untainted information, the genie will be out of the bottle.
More than politics, more than convention, untainted information offers the individual an opportunity to be more than just living for a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats and an orgasm before work. That is the future of information and freedom. In my opinion, freedom is about being able to make choices. That future may be within months, a fact. The day the mobile tablet market becomes affordable for the masses is the day our world changes.
When people across the world have access to information, things change. In my opinion, only for the better if the information remains untainted. You, nor I even I, do not possess “THE” truth. Information, untainted, possesses truth. Give the masses tablets and limit them to the “correct political message” and we’ve opened the door to the world not of Alvin Toffler, but, George Orwell.