The Future of Personal Interaction
The Computer: The key that opens the door to the world or locks it?

Katelynn Reilly

When our grandparents predicted the world of the future they expected flying cars, robots and this mysterious thing they called the computer. Now, it’s my turn to predict the future of both computers and the Internet. By future I mean twenty-five years from now, so year 2033. Since the future of computer and Internet technology is so broad I chose to focus on personal interaction within work life and private lives and how it is affected by the increasing prevalence of the Internet. In the future personal interaction will be done online, friendships and relationships like we currently know them will be changed into public computer based relationships.

Currently personal blogging is still in its beginning stages. Since currently only a small portion of the population blogs, I predict that in twenty-five years over 75% of the population will have a personal blog. I believe the definition of personal blog will change to include such web pages as twitter. Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. For example a typically blog would have entries every hour or so saying such things as “Joe is at the gym”, “Joe is cooking chicken for dinner”, “Joe is doing his statistics homework”. A blog like this will be essential in the future because the future will be very invasive into our personal lives. In the future, blogging will be a way of constantly monitoring what your friends and families and even complete strangers are doing. Blogs will not be password protected so essentially you can look at anyone’s blog. In the past this would feel like snooping but because blogging will turn mainstream it will become a social norm. This brings me into my next point, I believe the definition of personnel and private will change drastically in the future.

My belief is that the largest change over the next twenty-five years will be the loss of a private life. Right now in 2008, people are starting to give up some of the privacy, but I believe in twenty-five years from now there will be no such thing as privacy. People of the future will find it normal to list all of their daily activities online, photos they take of both family and friends even their medical records. Let’s stick with our example of Joe; he is a 25-year-old male, married with one child. Joe wakes up in the morning goes online, updates his “status”, makes his coffee, showers and updates again. He updates constantly, even during work where he updates five to six times, stating his mood, what he is doing for lunch and just general information about his workday. When Joe stops working for the day, he posts some photos of his day, then he completes some online banking and updates his daily journals online. The person of the future will see no problem with writing their whole life on the Internet and posting photos that in the past remained private. Additionally, these people of the future will no longer keep files such as bills, credit card statements, private files and medical information private anymore. These files will be loaded to a central server that controls of their information. The fear of hacking or online fraud does not exist in the future. People of the future will feel confident that what they store online is secure; putting banking information online will be as common as using a physical bank such as SunTrust.

This new future has us posting every moment of our lives online, which will cut down on the time we interact with others. It will no longer be necessary to call and catch up with friends since you are able to see everything that your friend is up to on their blog. High school reunions can be done digitally, instead of in person. There will no longer be a question of what people you knew in the past are doing, you will be able to keep up with people’s daily lives without them knowing. Phone conversations will most likely be cut down and face-to-face contact will likely be obsolete. The future will be filled with video web cam chats that make personnel interaction no longer necessary. Companies can conduct all business on web cams; there will no longer be a need to travel to business meetings, which will help cut company costs. Important international business meetings can be done digital, essentially the handshake will be obsolete and replaced by the virtual greeting.

Although my view of the future seems rather dark and isolated, there are several advantages to this new digital world. People will be able to interact via web cam and other Internet technologies with long lost friends or family that is far away. It will now be possible for grandparents living far from their grandchildren to read them a bedtime story over web cam. These increases in Internet video technology will help cut down the cost and frustrations of travel and hopefully strengthen some relationships that have been strained by distance.

Additionally, I believe the use of the Internet will greatly change the way day-to-day business it conducted. In the future there will no longer be offices, all work will be done at home and submitted electronically. Essentially there will be no need for coworkers or even the physical building. People who work at the same company will only know each other on a virtual level. The days of company picnics are over, in this new futuristic world, employees with have no contact with each other expect via the computer. Again, this new form of workplace interactions can be both negative and positive. Parents will be able to spend more time in the home with their families. Additionally, companies will be able to hire people from anywhere in the world since the work is completed online. And the fact that there are no offices will cut down on expensive and essentially allow companies to expand and new companies to develop.

Thinking about the future both scares me and gives me hope. The more I think about the role of the computer in the future, the more questions I have regarding social interaction. The computer was created to make it easier to communicate with others but sometimes I feel that the computer has turned into a form of isolation. We can only wait and see what the future will bring!


Sources

Solove, Daniel J. The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet. New York: Yale UP, 2007.

"Twitter". <http://twitter.com/>.