Workmen are resurfacing the road in front of my house, and it is a mess. They have been at it for two weeks, but I think they will finish today. Finally. It will be nice to have a new road.
photo credit: Allie_Caulfield
It did get me thinking about new roads. In ancient times, the Romans were famous for building new roads. It was estimated at one point that they had built 50,000 miles of roads. Those roads solved lots of problems. They made for easier movement between cities, more commerce, faster communications and more effective control of the world by Rome. Those roads enabled the Romans to change the world.
The Internet is today’s new road. In its way, it solves the same problems involved in connecting people, communications, commerce and control. Even though these are not new ideas for me, when I stop and think about the Internet it always amazes me. Just as new roads in ancient times made it possible for the Romans to change their world, the Internet give us the chance to change ours.
The question is really how can we use the new road to change the world. The new Internet roads let us communicate instantly, get information instantly, connect with others that we could not connect with, do commerce in an entirely new ways, and who knows what else. Are we taking advantage of those new roads to make good changes?
What changes do you see in our world that are enabled by this new road?
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I like to solve problems with technology. In this blog, I'd like to share some of my ideas and also tell you about solutions I am currently working on. Welcome, and please share your own ideas with me by leaving a comment.
When we encode something and later decode it, we create an encoded space. Encoding and decoding constitute a codec.
Transportation and communications were codec problems. Building a road encodes place.
Building a container port to handle encoded content eliminated the costs of traditional ports. Those costs included money, time, and a social structure to support the economics of traditional ports.
One of the chef-centric shows on the cooking channel once traveled from one town to the next on the Mediterranean Sea. Each town was geographically isolated. They had no roads. Travel was by sea. The woman fixed foods grown, shot, or caught within the confines of their valley and local seas. From one adjacent town to the next, the food was different. The culture was different. Meaning was different. Yes, we all sat down to eat.
So the internet is likewise a codec. Looking beyond the internet, what spaces can we open, and what technology can we use to open them? What will the next new economy be based on? Culture maybe?
Thanks for the interesting perspecitve. It is interesting to me the different ways we can think about the Internet.