New Communication Technologies - 13-3-08

Am I nothing more than a vagrant on the super information highway?
What makes my opinions valid and worthy of consideration? Decades ago it would seem that anything that was given the attention to warrant being published and distributed to the masses was important. But its 2008 now and here I am on a blog with the potential to say whatever I like, the strange part being that I feel like lying to start an odd social experiment - Do people really believe everything they read on the internet?

The best part about this though is we can all be journalists. You, your lover, your adversary and the scattered guy that hassles you out for money everytime you're at the train station, can exhibit their wildest perceptions of any situation imaginable - lives can become 'press' all with the beauty of the 'publish post' button.

I'll admit I am infactuated with this...Although as I heard on Spiderman

'With great power comes great responsibility'

The power struggle continues...Do I use this for Good or Evil?

'Spam', telemarketing for the internet.

I've had the same email address for nearly seven years. Due to this my email has been passed around more than a strange smelling cigarette at a Snoop Dogg concert, which means I recieve spam that is so consistent its impossible to continually delete. Infact, today my inbox tells me I have 4096 unread emails and although unsure of the exact percentage, I estimate atleast 95% of that to be spam.

I understand the notion of 'spam' is based on probability. I think of it like fishing, the obvious bait is a sex associated product that is cast out into the sea of the world wide web and the fisherman wait for a bite. Who bites though? alot of the fish are aware of the scam that comes with this bait but some bite anyway, either that or they are oblivious to the scam - newcomers to the internet. Once they have taken the bait, the fisherman reel John Smith 53 years old and curious about penis enlargement into the boat and systematically de-scale him or con him into forfeiting a large sum of money.

In my inbox right now I have an email from 'Naughty Girl' asking if I 'Need a friend? ;) ' ...atleast I'm aware there are always plenty of fish in the sea.

Hyperreality & Second Life

The concept is interesting, imagine having a 'Second Life'. Better still, imagine partaking in an alternate reality, one in which you can abandon the limitations of human kind. Yeah, I mean being able to fly, morph into the physical form of some animal-human hybrid and engage in fornication through a video game like perspective, in which the perception of space and time appear distored due to the instantaneous abilities of the internet. Thank god sexually transmitted diseases dont exist in Second Life, although you may want to ask your cyber lover to wear protection, you know a firewall or something.

I see the success of Second Life being that it intergrates physical reality with virtual reality and human intelligence with artifical intelligence in a fashion that appears seamless. Similar to a mannequin that looks more real than a human, Second Life is the authentic fake...this is hyperreality.

So is it a game? Is it a reality? Is this the future for mankind? I can imagine human civilisation centuries from now, we just abandon all previous notions of taking to the stars and log on to say "WTF?"