for ten years now we've been on our own

[gfish]

I just offhandedly mentioned how it won't be too many years until we have the bandwidth and storage to constantly upload video from where ever we are, and the processing power to do some really amazing analysis on it. All of it, every single frame. Geocoded, timestamped, indexed, searchable, linked into a constantly evolving composite of reality. Available for the rest of human history.

15 years? 10 years? Maybe not even that.

10 years ago today I had just moved into the dorms, basically the only place in the world with a wired network and highspeed internet access. Seeing URLs in commercials was starting to seem normal and instant messaging had just been invented. The family had 2 cellphones -- one in my dad's truck, one the rest of us shared (and having that many was unusual). I wouldn't get my own for another 3 years. My brand new, completely tricked out going-away-to-college computer was 166Mhz with 3G of storage. It had a 28.8k modem, a 10Mbps ethernet card and it was just shy of the bleeding edge.

Goddamn but things are starting to get interesting. And happy 10 year Seattle anniversary to me.

Comments

[grinninfoole.livejournal.com]

Available for the rest of human history? Either you have a very pessimistic view of the future of our species, or a very optimistic view of the longevity of digitial data. After all, the technological changes that will make this scan and catalog everything future possible will lead to changes in format that will make today's media and software as inaccessible as the Notabene files on 5&1/2" floppies from when I was an undergrad, lo these 15 years agone.