The fiercest critics of technology still focus on the ephemeral have-and-have-not divide, but that flimsy border is a distraction. The significant threshold of technological development lies at the boundary between commonplace and ubiquity, between the “have-laters” and the “all have.”
When critics asked us champions of the internet what we were going to do about the digital divide and I said “nothing,” I added a challenge: “If you want to worry about something, don’t worry about the folks who are currently offline. They’ll stampede on faster than you think. Instead you should worry about what we are going to do when everyone is online. When the internet has six billion people, and they are all e-mailing at once, when no one is disconnected and always on day and night, when everything is digital and nothing offline, when the internet is ubiquitous. That will produce unintended consequences worth worrying about.”
Kevin Kelly – What Technology Wants
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Some questions around ubiquity:
What happens when everyone can read?
When everyone is living longer?
When everyone consumes like I do?
When everyone uses google/facebook/UBER/airbnb?
When everyone moves to the city?
If everyone acts this way?**
A caveat
The caveat is that everyone never means everyone.
What happens to those last people who aren’t connected – the ones who desperately want to be, and those who desperately don’t?
What happens to the people left behind?
If everyone is – is it okay if you’re not?
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** Hat-tip: Immanuel Kant ***
*** with special thanks to WordPress’s autocorrect for suggesting “Semi-Annual Kant” as an alternative.