According to Hindu cosmology, the Kali Yuga began some thirty thousand years ago and is set to last three hundred and sixty thousand years. We are living in this age, one that is characterised by violence, suffering, discontent and generally messed up as a species.
A golden age will follow – if we can hold out that long. Did those early Hindu sages take into account the advent of a digital age based on zero and one? The speed of technological progress is increasing exponentially like the grains of rice on a chessboard
It took thousands of years to invent the wheel and a thousand more to invent the spoke. We are now launching hundred of satellites into low-orbit space every year, and global communication coverage even in the most remote places on the planet is only a few years away.
The internet age began in 1969 when Arpanet transmitted LO – the system was trying to say LOGIN but crashed. LOL. In a single press of a button, Arpanet relegated morse code and the telegraph to the age of the technological dinosaurs. Hello world has been a basic I/O outout since the first programes. Hardly five decades later we are where we are today – and we all know where that is. But where are we going as a species?
The internt is currently like electricity which is a force that we can’t see and relies on wires to conduct its effect. Likewise keyboards, the mouse, routers, hi fibre cables define the internet. Withoiut hardware there is no internet. But hardware – as we know it today – will be redundant, a relic of a superceded technology like the telex and the fax machine. Soon speeds will soar, measured in gigabits. terabytes will be standard.
a terabyte (tb) is a unit of digital data that is equal to about 1 trillion bytes. in decimal notation (base 10), a terabyte is exactly 1 trillion bytes. in binary notation, a terabyte is equal to 240 bytes, or 1,099,511,627,776 bytes.
With this massive uplift in digital capacity the world is going to change. Some future pundits imagine that we will experience the world through VR glasses. We will have an audio relationship with the environment. And the terminology will change – is changing.We don’t say virtual but augmented – and expanded reality. It will be reality max.
This new way of engaging with and experiencing reality will reduce human disability. Autism will be less of a burden as will be the physical disabilities and the limitations that come with ageing. Interaction with the physical environment will be measured by eye contact with retina identity and control the smallest gestures. The internet will be both software and hardware, indistinguishable. Commands such as open door will programmed into the house. Buildings will be networks, plugged into a larger network of a town, city, country, continent, and finally the world.
The body itself will be a network, monitored for genetic mutations, cancer, and viral intrusions. Our bodies will be more than a temple: more a network of information, from the little toe to the amygdala in the brain. Eventually, the contents of the brain will be extracted and stored on a multi-terabyte memory chip which can then be reuploaded into a new body – with any psychoses or bad memories removed, allowing another crack at this thing called life.
Books will no longer be written or read but spoken and heard. The new Leo Tolstoys of the world will dictate their books in a continuous flow throughout the day. Journalists and bloggers will stylise AI content rather than write original material. Your devices will be networked and monetarised. Kettles will display ads, your doorbell will remind you of your purchase preferences, and the wall will transmit visual WhatsApp messages.
Wealth will no longer be measured in terms of money but rather in access to the networks. Crypto is the embryonic form of a new model for possession of wealth. Household appliances will no longer be sold but available on subscription. You don’t pay, they cease to function. Many goods will be given away free on the premise that if you pay for it, you become the product.
This future could be a digital golden age but the downside is surveillance and lack of privacy, in a dystopian society where you are bombarded with choices made by the network based on your previous decisions, continuously subjected to conditioning. You bought this so you will like that.
There will be extreme completion between economic blocks to control the new global network and this will result in conflict before a peaceful resolution is reached. China, USA, India and the EU (with Britain back in the EU bloc) will compete aggressively for control of the network. Warfare cannot be excluded. If humanity can survive this conflict then a golden age foretold by the Hindu cosmologists may be on its way, just a little earlier than originally predicted.
