The internet will change everything. (Any questions?)

I’d like to take this opportunity to abandon my usual spaz-tastic personality and become a little bit more sophisticatified (Although, make no mistake, that’s not some fake me that only comes out during iEye, that’s what I’m really like, in fact my questionably sane Coke consumption makes it impossible to be anything but spazzy, not that I’d want to be anything other than spazzy, it’s actually really fun, you should try it some time. I digress). Maybe it’s the sleep deprivation, but I suddenly got a thought in my head while doing my usual 5-7 different things at once. In an effort to make this more my personal blog (the tech stuff is going over to the iEye blog), I’ve decided to share it. Also, I’m really tired, which makes me extra special cynical, so this should be interesting.

The internet has changed the course of history forever, it’s changed the planet in 10 years more than it had changed in the 100 years before it, and in the next 100, it could change us more than we’ve changed since the beginning of civilization. Seriously, read on and I’ll explain more. I know many people think of the internet as a cesspool of people who can’t be bothered to spell out actual words and instead save themselves a couple hundredths of a second by butchering language so much so that it makes them seem like the mental equivalents of 7 year olds, but really the internet is an amazing tool for connecting billions of people in a way that has never been done before. And yeah, some people are gonna be idiots, trolls, bullies, and just bad people in general, but you know what, I know a lot of really great people who are online too (you’re welcome, by the way). The point is, even the biggest luddite has to take note of this as something REALLY REALLY big. I think it’s bigger than anybody ever imagined though. The internet has already caused many industries to be re-designed and re-thought, such as the music industry and the gaming industry, but in the end, almost every industry will be affected in some way or another.

The global economy will have to change entirely to be, well, I hate to say it, but more communist, in a way. You see, on the internet, many many things are free, there is no physical material cost, no shipping costs, and no having to go through retail stores. The only cost left is paying the developer, which, because free things get a lot more users than commercial things, can be paid for with ads. As we are seeing with piracy, people don’t want to pay for things anymore. In communism, people don’t have to pay for things. You see where I’m going here? Take, for example, JamLegend, a free, online version of Guitar Hero. I actually like it better than Guitar Hero because of it’s ever-expanding set-list and it’s web 2.0 style community. Yeah, that’s right, the free online version is better than the commercial console version. Let me say that again for impact: THE FREE THING IS BETTER THAN THE NOT FREE THING. Or for you math nerds out there: 0$ > 1$! Yeah, you know what that means? People are gonna stop buying stuff. The entire economy of the world is gonna have to be turned upside-down, and somehow the world is gonna have to adapt. It’s so astounding and unlikely, it’s mathematically impossible, unless $ = 0, which, in the future, it might be.

Now, what about the governments of the world, what will become of them? Well, on the internet, the concept of a hierarchy of power does not really exist. Sure, there are people who have more influence than others, but there is no king of the internet, technically, everybody has equal power, to a point anyway. That’s called anarchy, which is usually a bad term used as a synonym for chaos, but it is an actual form of government where all of the citizens are relied on to police themselves, and on the internet, for the first time ever, it’s actually working. Wikipedia is total anarchy, it works great! Digg, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, all pretty much governed by users (not entirely of course, there are people who work at those companies who are payed to police, but they really can’t do everything themselves, and so in a lot of cases the community really does most of the work, ‘burrying’ on digg for example). Could the future see that form of government spreading into the real world until there is no more government? Maybe, although the real world is a much different place from the internet in that there is much more as stake if something goes wrong, so maybe not. Still, a complete change of how the people communicate, learn, play, work, and buy things has got to change something in the government, well, unless people like, dare I say this, alright, here goes: McCain, take over, in which case, nothing will change. SORRY. I couldn’t resist, although the thought of a president who can’t operate a computer has got to scare every geek just a little bit.

So yes, the internet seems like a fad, a silly little thing the kids do, but if you take a step back and look at what it is, and what it’s doing, it’s so much more. I think these next few years are crucial, and the adaptation to a completely new way of doing things will be rocky at best, but I really think that this could be a huge turning point in human civilization. This is where we ditch thousands of years of systems, structures, and traditions in favor of new ones. This is where we all come together to accomplish greater things than we’ve ever done before. And now that you think about it that way, those people who write poorly seem insignificant, don’t they?

iEye #23: Nothing of importance

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iEye #22: Should be 52

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Two years of Mac

Today (August First) marks the second anniversary of my first, and to this day, only, mac. In those two years I have become what some would call an ‘avid user’ and others would call a ‘lunatic obsessive fanboy’. I have gone from not knowing who Steve Jobs is, to believing he is the supreme ruler of all things worth having (To prevent an onslaught of angry comments, I would like to take this time to mention that that was a joke, and that I am fully aware that Steve Jobs is no more than a visionary CEO). In these past two years, I’ve started writing software, making videos, blogging, 3D animating, and designing, not to mention becoming a part of the mac community. Regardless of how very geeky is sounds, I admit that the mac has changed my life.

There is a never-ending battle between Mac enthusiasts and Windows enthusiasts on the Internet (Which, for some strange reason, occupies about 99.748% of comments on digg*). This battle will never end, there will never be a definite winner, and nobody will ever switch platforms because of it. Honestly, Windows is great for a certain type of person, and Mac is great for a different type of person. People who game a lot, or who only use their computers to surf the internet, will be just fine with Windows. People who want to be more creative, or want an elegant, pretty (let’s not forget shiny) computer, will want a Mac. Oh, and let’s not leave Linux out of this, Linux is for people who believe technology should be completely open, or who just want to show off their geekiness (Again, to prevent an onslaught of angry comments, I would like to take this time to point out that these days linux is actually no more geeky than Windows or Mac, distros like Ubuntu and Suse are very polished and starting to become mainstream). So, why do I bring all of this up? To show that Apple fanboyism is, in fact, deeper than just a love of all things shiny. It’s about who you are and what you want to do with your computer. So why does mac have such a community of fanboys while windows really doesn’t? It’s because, for the most part, the people who use Windows use it because, well, that’s what everybody uses. Most people who use Macs had to make a decision to switch from Windows to Mac, so Mac users chose to use a Mac while most Windows users just sort of have to use Windows.

So why do I bring this up? Really I’ve just been thinking about it a lot. All of the bad press that Apple has received about Microsoft-esque screw ups, DRM, and closed environments have forced me to step back and consider why I like them so much while loathing Microsoft. Maybe the answer is best summed up in Apples motto: “Think Different”. They “Think Different” and create innovations, the key to their success, they tend to be the leader, while others follow. They “Think Different” about how a computer should look and work, and what it should do, and so their users are the ones who “Think Different” from normal users. Maybe this is all over-analyzing, but I figured on the second anniversary of my fanboy-ship, I’d share some of my thoughts.

Now to be kind of hypocritical. I’d like to share some of the great things I’ve noticed about mac, aside from the general look and feel of it (which could be seen as trying to convert Windows users to Mac, which would pretty much go against what I just got through saying, also it goes against my theory that I just like it because it does the stuff I want it to do, I would like to point out that A: I am not trying to convert a Windows fanboy into a mac fanboy, I’m trying to convert people who are thinking of switching to a mac but aren’t quite sure and B: These are not the reasons I switched to mac, or why I love it, just some nice things I noticed. In other news, this has been this biggest statement I’ve ever put in parenthesis on my blog. Yay for me. Now for the reasons:).

1. In this entire 2 year period, there has only been one occasion where I had to use a Windows computer, and that was to program my old Lego Mindstorms set. That problem has since been fixed with Lego Mindstorms NXT, who’s software supports Mac.
2. This sounds obvious, but in this entire 2 year period I have never gotten a virus of any sort.
3. I have never had to contact Apple support about anything, the transition was incredibly easy and I picked up the basics of the OS in minutes.
4. I have never had to have my machine repaired in any way, it’s been running perfectly smoothly for 2 years.
5. I have only re-installed my Operating system twice, and one was to upgrade to Leopard, I re-installed Windows about once every 3-6 months.
6. My mac has run smoothly for almost a month without re-starting, not all that impressive until you consider that I pretty much never actually close programs once their open, by the end of a month I might have as many as 60 apps running.
7. This is more an observation than a fact, but I’ve noticed far more free Mac apps than free Windows apps.

*Statistics are completely made up.