I just finished
watching
video of Eric Schmidt, Google Chairman
and CEO talking to the Economist
Club of Washington in a speech titled,
"The Future of the Internet: Engine for
Economic Growth".
Schmidt started
out his talk by showing images from
a modeling program using Google Earth
for the map that showed Washington DC
underwater. Obviously an indirect
reference to the nightmares of the
global warming Chicken Littles. He
called this modeling program a tool for
researchers of the future.. he didn't
mention that it was also an animation
generator for cartoons and movies. This
program could just as easily have shown
the ocean drying up, the Red Sea parting
and you walking on water. The thought
occurred to me that if this is the kind
of information that is being shown to
our legislators by industry lobbyists
who will make money on global warming -
then it's no wonder they are panicked (think
Ted Stevens - Internets - series of
tubes).
Then he went on
to talk about futuristic capabilities,
social networks and how we will all be
attached to the internet as if it were
our umbilical cord. It will deliver to
us - no matter where we are, exactly
what we need and want.
Earlier in the
day, I watched
Steve Balmer of Microsoft selling the
same vision.
I've been trying
to think of how to describe what Schmidt
and Balmer are selling. To say that
they were selling dreams is not
adequate. Even to say they are selling
illusions is not adequate. I don't know
what the origin of the term pipe dream
is, but if it a telescoped vision of a
utopian world, then that would be it. But as
I listened to Schmidt, the vision I got
was remembering an episode of the
Twilight Zone that I watched in the
1950's. It was the one where a guy or
woman - don't remember, found themselves
somehow transported inside their
television set as a character in a TV
program. Their reality completely
reversed. And I think that's what's
happened to people like Schmidt and Balmer. They are living in a virtual
world and they are seeing the virtual
reality that is possible when physical
reality is erased.