Victor Keegan: Making the global village a reality (original) (raw)
Governments keep worrying about immigration and how they can prevent people from entering their countries. But while they are doing this a subtle form of exodus is taking place. People, especially early adopters, are spending more of their time conversing or doing things with people abroad, a kind of virtual migration. This is because of the explosion of social networks and a parallel phenomenon, the seemingly insatiable desire of people to spread details of their personal lives on the web to be devoured by a global audience.
At one stage it looked as though the movement might be stopped in its tracks when it was revealed that potential employers and university admission staff were combing Facebook, MySpace and other social sites to learn what candidates were really like. But there has been hardly any adverse reaction and it hasn't stopped people unburdening themselves one jot. If anything, the opposite might happen: employers are more likely to say, "What sort of introvert have we got here who hasn't joined a social site?"
There is no sign of it stopping. Recently I have been looking at a pre-production version of Seesmic.com, brainchild of French entrepreneur Loic Le Meur, which is a kind of instant diary or blog, but using video rather than words. You record a video (dead easy now with the built-in webcams in most new laptops) then press a button and hey presto, anyone in the world can see it and respond.
The interesting point is that, unlike blogs, there is no hiding behind nicknames. This is literally in-your-face communication. It is a near-live film of you. Anonymity is strictly for the birds. Already users are making new friends across the globe and its 20,000 early testers (and 70,000 viewers a month) are becoming part-citizens of a space beyond the geography of their own country.
It reminded me that of all the new friends I have acquired in the past year (with whom I have ongoing conversations in areas of mutual interest), the majority have been in another country. I suspect this is a growing trend as a global village arrives in which people congregate on the basis of mutual interests rather than the accidental geography of where they live.
Where is all this heading? I think we can already see the parameters. A lot has already been written about Apple's new devices. They are interesting because they weren't designed by a phone company so didn't presume to provide traditional baggage such as a keyboard. For Christmas I got an iPod touch (the iPhone without the camera and phone but with a host of other functions from MP3 player to easy web-access). I am still smitten by its usability - particularly, as has been noted by others, its automatic access to the nearest Wi-Fi network. At the moment this is of limited use because - quite ludicrously - most cafes and hotels charge for Wi-Fi rather than counting it as part of the infrastructure they offer (like electricity). But that will soon change. There is an Ofcom auction later this year of spectrum suitable for WiMax that will provide fast countrywide mobile broadband at speeds of up to 20 megabits per second, or even faster. That is four times faster than current computers at home and will be revolutionary not least in offering free phone calls anywhere in the world to other WiMax users.
Put these two things together - an iPod touch-like screen and ubiquitous broadband Wi-Fi - and suddenly everyone in the world is linked to everyone else. For nothing. You will be able to do anything from reading your paper to meeting friends from Australia in your virtual world, from the top of a 19 bus. A hint of this convergence came this week when the childrens' virtual world, gaiaonline.com, linked up with Facebook. Will we soon be spending more of our disposable time online than we do communicating with people in real life? I wouldn't bet against it.