Rhymes of History

Rhymes of History as stated by Oritt Hirsh (2011) that “Dr. Thornburg similarly describes one of the forces that drive emerging technology as “Rhymes of History”, which is a term he uses to define new technology which has emerged due to impact felt many years before from another technology or when technology rekindles something from the past”(Hirsh, 2011).  As a teenager I was really mesmerized by possibilities of having video phone and be able to see and communicate with people in real time and be able to see the person you are able to communicate as seen in Dick Tracy cartoon, in newspapers.  Hirsh (2011) mentioned that development of Skype could be viewed as being rhymes of history which includes embodiment, restructuring and codependency.  As stated by Hirsh (2011) scenes from Jetson’s and James Bond, Star Trek movies rekindled live conferencing from the past.  At the present time development of smart phones, development from telegraph, including voice, and video along with development of wide bandwidth Internet connection provides that an opportunity for development of watch communication including video and audio. 

Three ideas raised by Kelly(2008) includes, embodiment, restructuring and codependency.  

According to Kelly Humans will be extensions of machines rather than machines being extensions of humans.  Kelly also states that the web is restructuring the way Data is organized and grouped for Internet users.  Kelly goes on to state that its back to an old idea of centralized computing. 

Greater connection provides more opportunities to have access to more information but also provides less privacy.  Will this turn out to be another Space Odyssey 2001?

References

Hirsh, O. (2011) Technology Education January 4, 2011 accessed from; http://orithirsh.blogspot.ca/2011/01/rhymes-of-history.html

Kelly, K. (2007, December). Kevin Kelly on the next 5,000 days of the Web [Speech]. Speech 

         delivered at the EG 2007 Conference, Los Angeles. Retrieved from 

         http://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_kelly_on_the_next_5_000_days_of_the_web.html