I’ve always wanted technology to just work, like a car. You get in, turn the key and you’re off. You don’t have to crank the engine up or fret about tappet settings. Am I being an idealist? Not according to a recent programme on BBC Radio 4.
Buried amid a welter of programmes on the wobbling global economy, fighting in Libya, and ivory inlay on 16th century church organs (I made that one up), there was a programme about the post-digital age.
The participants included Tom Uglow, Director of Creative Labs at Google. Uglow was pushing the point that the internet revolution has been so far reaching that we are heading beyond the digital landscape to a post-digital age.
His rationale was based on the fact that admiration for technology has now been superseded by the collaboration, interaction and participation that people engage in when using technology. He summed this up neatly by saying that when we’re driving in a car we don’t talk about the marvels of the combustion engine. Similarly when we use technology we no longer talk about the technology.
So in this sense the post-digital age is defined by the unconscious ease with which we use technology. But ease is not a word that you would associate with all technology. Some software for example, is designed with all the grace of a family of hippopotami wallowing in mud. And we’ll talk about it, but usually in loud and less than flattering tones.
And when Facebook makes a change to its software you can bet your latest smartphone that there will be an Internet-based outpouring of… (insert you own word: rage, grief, angst etc). Are these the signs of a post-digital age?
Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media lab, put his cards on the table some time ago when he said: “Like air and drinking water, being digital will be noticed only by its absence, not its presence.” He was saying that digital becomes post-digital when technology becomes the norm.
By this definition we’re already in a post-digital world. If the digital plug was pulled on our world stock markets would collapse, infrastructure services wouldn’t function and business would just grind to a crushing halt.
Our dependence on digital, in the Western hemisphere at least, is complete but whether we’ve entered the post-digital age as defined by Uglow and others is another question. For a large part we’re still acutely aware of the technology we use – think of the finger-drumming boot up time when you turn on a computer, or the smartphone that’s received a few inadvertent knocks and starts doing unrequested and random things at odd times.
My own feeling is we’ve still got some way to go before we slide into the true post-digital era when computing and digi-ness is simple – you don’t have to think about it.
But that said a signpost has just been planted by the blue-chip giant Intel. I’m not blowing trumpets here but the new range of Ultrabooks features instant-on boot up from sleep – and security that’s embedded into the hardware. You just jab your finger at the start button and it comes on. You don’t have to fiddle with anti-virus software, and video/music/image downloads are almost instantaneous.
In the great computing sphere these may be relatively small steps but they do signify how we’re gradually moving away from having to think about technology, for example, tinkering with security, to a position where we engage with it almost as effortlessly as breathing. And perhaps this will be the hall mark of a post-digital era.