I was recently in San Diego, jet-lagged and too tired to do anything other than stay in my hotel suite. It had taken 22 hours to get there on a thin seat next to a fat man and an in-flight system that had been built by Noah’s dad.
Enough of screens, it was time to find a bookshop and fall into a novel for an afternoon before the upcoming trade show madness. But there wasn’t a single book shop downtown, Borders had crushed all opposition a few years before and now Borders had gone down, so no books for me.
The rise of the digital book has destroyed bookshops in the same way that downloadable music has wiped out record shops and I still find it utterly unbelievable that’s happened. So, if I found that change incredible, what other societal transformations are next? What is it that now sounds stupid and inane that will be the norm for my son when he’s had a decade or so as an adult?
IN MY HUMBLE OPINION, I think it is us; the human race. We are becoming digital downloadable beings that have nothing to do with pain and sex and flesh. If you think about it, the change has already started.
Digital personalities and reputations through social networks are being built now. I can’t remember how many times people have told me that they knew I was at an event (tweeting or whatever) and didn’t know what I looked like, all they had was my Twitter avatar to go by… strangely when they do find out they go away again.
We are always looking at screens. Live advertising screens at termini, banks of smaller screens on the Tube/Metro and the small mobile screen that sits in your inside pocket or nestled against your arse. That’s before including TV and the cinema. We are becoming the machine.
I am two-thirds of the way through Murakawi’s 1Q84 trilogy, a book so modern that I almost thinks it’s true. Parallel moons, routes to death, the Little People and the air chrysalis where your other self is born. It’s so believable and I’m beginning to sound like a fucking Trekky or one of those Matrix freaks.
But my new interest in magic-realism-sci-fi is a natural conduit to the digital creep of my being. I can well believe it because I’m already a slave to the machine, and so are you. I’m still resisting SatNav because I like getting lost but I’m in the minority.
The pace of change is staggering. For somebody who was brought up in the Cold War and who found Raymond Briggs terrifying, as well as Orwell’s 1984, it’s Murakami’s take on that book with 1Q84 that’s tipped me over the edge.
The only difference is that it’s not the Little People are coming, it’s the Big Machine2Machines and while I thought before they were the enemy, I now realise they’re not the enemy, they’re us.
It’s enough to make you want to get drunk. But can soon-to-be-machines get drunk, can they? I bet they can…
Monty Munford has more than 15 years' experience in mobile, digital media, web and journalism. He is the founder of Mob76, a company that helps tech companies raise money and exit. He speaks regularly at global media events with a focus on Africa, writes a weekly column for The Telegraph, is a regular contributor to The Economist, Wired, Mashable and speaks regularly on the BBC World Service.
