Email...what was that all about!

Walled gardens... again...come on team...



It must have been ten years ago when the web was an unknown frontier where many people felt safest in special places created by the likes of AOL or have to plunge into the fearful unknown. Some even tried to map the web world and produce posters showing where all the paths led. It was a surreal place which many business kept well clear of.

But now in the recession hit world of 2009 has anything changed? The corporate world sits tight in their safe world of outlook and email. Our children become brand heroes of Facebook ,Bebo and Twitter.

Suddenly we are back to 1998, I think! Each social group defined by the placespace/world they go to swap information. At home you have your text friends, how quaint. Your Linkedin buddies ibn the office, how boring. Your twitter anonymous out there people and your in box interlopers.(you still use email!)

Danger lurks, never let them meet. If they did your double, triple or quadruple life would be blown apart in an instance and what would you do with all the extra time you had?

But how long can all this continue, how green are all these servers in the cloud, how many passwords, how many logins, why must we have an email address as well?

Suddenly a few ideas pop up, what about entering information directly into any browers that links to the 'cloud', what about everyone having just one unique name that if typed into any device linked to the 'cloud' would link to your stream of consciousness. You could add information at will in any format and choose the way it was delivered. It's a merging of everything into a ' twitflickfacelinkedyammerbebo'.

Ha Ha you all cry it will never work. Its a nasty controlling Orwellian orgy of madness and we will never be free again.

But hold on, think for a moment, if it were intelligent and learnt your needs and began to track your habits, it would begin to feed you the information you wanted, screen out the people who you had not interest in and provide you with comparisons and aids to travel, shopping, learning and work wouldn't we all want it, especially if it gave us a competitive advantage, in a social and business context.

Then the more it were used and the bigger it became the more difficult it would be to infiltrate and control. Sheer scale would mean that it became impenetrable. The fundamentals apply; all information is just organised data, if there is so much date that it is impossible to organise 'big brother' would have a tough job to follow you and if he did you would know, because he would have to use the same system, because that's all there is. Do you get my drift? So if we are all identifiable then we are all anonymous arn't we...???

So goodbye to email goodbye to facebook and twitter...well sometime soon I guess? Now all we need to do is work out how to pay for it.