The End of the World As We Knew It

Reginald Patterson, copyright 2001

The recent transition into the third millennium AD was the subject of numerous predictions. Some forecasts were centuries old, while others were more recent. Many of the predictions were quite fanciful and benign, and included such visions as cities in the sky, wrist watch radios and a flying car in every garage. Others were much gloomier and foretold of great disasters, including the timeless classic, – the end of the world.

But as the new millennium approached, the prediction that garnered the most notoriety was based on a technology gaffe that came to be known as the Year 2000 or Y2K bug. For whatever reasons, be it to save time, or to compensate for hardware limitations, many early computer programmers used only the last two digits to designate a particular year in the software and hardware they were producing. As a consequence, such hardware and software could not tell the difference between, for instance, the year 1901 and the year 2001.

Since many of those two-digit-year-based systems were still in service as the year 2000 neared, there was great concern that these “compromised” technological tools would fail, based on their inability to distinguish new millennium dates. Left unchecked, it was widely held that numerous disasters, from the failure of common appliances, the crash of the world monetary system, and even the unintentional launch of nuclear weapons were possible. In the end, whether a result of outstanding preparation or the inevitable letdown of false alarm, the much-hyped Y2K bug did not bite.

However lost in the hoopla of Y2K, was a historic event that did occur around the millennium change, and which in a very real sense did indeed signal the end of the world, or at least the end of the world as we knew it. That occurrence was the loss-of-information-control. The loss-of-information-control refers to man’s arrival at a point in time beyond which data, facts, and information can no longer be strictly controlled by anyone, not even by those (people, institutions, etc.) in positions of status or power. 

The loss-of-information-control is the result of thousands of years of advances in information, transportation, and communications technologies that created the following outcomes:

1. Tangible Thoughts and Secrets:
   There is an old joke about keeping secrets that goes, “It’s not that you can’t keep a secret, it’s that the people you tell can’t keep a secret.” Indeed, everyone understands that the best way to keep a secret is to keep it to yourself. But while information kept in one’s head is highly secure from theft, it is also more susceptible to being lost to the world. Because when it comes to unshared information or knowledge, the adage “You can’t take it with you” does not apply.
   However, the moment you write down a secret, or any other information, you double the number of places from which that information can be obtained, from the single source that was you, to you and the paper on which you wrote. And if this information is something that you do not want openly distributed, then you have also created for yourself the burden of protecting that record. 
   By its physical nature, recorded information became a tangible commodity which could be immensely valuable, depending on its contents. Consequently, entities wishing to retain exclusive control of information they deemed valuable or important to their aims, had to invest in methods and practices to ensure and enforce access restrictions. Thus keeping secrets is a burden that is made more difficult and expensive as the actual or perceived value of what is being protected increases.
   The task of maintaining control of physical information was also being made more difficult by advancing technologies. Over several millennia recorded information went from the unmovable media of cave walls to the portable formats of stone tablets, paper, compact discs, and digital drives. And again, each of these advances made information control efforts more likely to fail.
   
2. Transportable Thoughts and Secrets:
   While each advance in media format made information more compact and thus more easily transported, transportation means themselves also greatly advanced. People went from walking, to riding animals, ships, trains, automobiles, and airplanes.
   So in addition to information becoming easier to carry, it could more quickly and farther be spread, as journeys that once took years or months, were reduced to days or hours. So the second critical technological element leading to the loss-of-information-control was transportation advancement.

3. Transmittable Thoughts and Secrets:
   Over time, advances in communications evolved that made it possible to move information without it having to be carried by a person at all. Communicating over distance went from shouting, to smoke signals, telegraph, telephone, radio, and then from analog to digital.
   Information that even today would take minutes or hours to be carried by a human via modern transportation means, could be sent around the world in fractions of a second.
   This technological evolution that all but ensured the global proliferation of information.

Combined the above three areas of advancements served to gradually expand and accelerate the spread of information across boundaries of class, economics, and geography.

Accordingly, the loss-of-information-control (LIC) was the result of many generations of technological advances, along with societal developments like schools, newspapers, and libraries.

It was not the result of any singular modern event – not the development of the personal computer, and not even the Internet. Instead it The personal computer, Internet, and cellular phones were however, the final back-breaking straws.

And with all of that, the creation, sharing, and spreading of information became an unstoppable stream of revelations, figures, facts, and lies. 

But unlike the media of yore, in which content flowed one-way, digital technologies like the Internet offered a multi-directional stream. In the past someone reading a physical book or newspaper was taking something from that book or article anonymously (as far as the book’s author or publisher was concerned). Conversely, cell phone and Internet users created a trail of what books or papers they read, what subjects they liked, who they contacted, what products they bought, and more. 

Eventually even our everyday tools were made capable of independently capturing and reporting information about their owners, as embedded chips and software tracking made our phones, our cars, and many other items “snitches” for big business, criminal elements, and governments. Each year more and more products, technologies, and services are being developed to expand that digital exchange of data to people and organizations in almost any and every location and situation. And depending on one’s perspective or intentions, that is either a feature or flaw representing the opening of an opportunity or a can of worms. 

That difference in perspective is due to the fact that opportunities to take advantage of this “information rush” are somewhat openly distributed. So unlike the many “rushes” of the past, which tended to favor the well-off or better-off, the multidirectional nature of our digital connections has created vulnerabilities and opportunities for entities rich, poor, small, or large. 

This democratization of power potential (information) is certainly not viewed as a “feature” by those entities that prefer to maintain the existing dynamics of power and wealth distribution. Yet leaks in the information pipelines of those same powerful entities (governmental, corporate, and private), have contributed to the increasingly open dissemination of information. 

Thus while every millisecond an unimaginably large and constantly growing amount of information is being created, used, and circulated everywhere on the globe, so too is secret, sensitive and proprietary information finding its way into the public domain. This has proven true, whether the information is copyrighted materials such as movies, music or software, plans for making a bomb, or details about the personal and private lives of ordinary individuals and even dignitaries like the President of the United States. 

In short our global society is being reshaped by Openly Available and Equally Accessible information. Thus far the most apparent reaction to Open and Equalized (O&E) information has been an onslaught of activities, tools, and endeavors aimed at monetizing or otherwise taking advantage of the expansive flows of information. And indeed the technological fruits of those efforts (e.g. websites, smart devices, behavior tracking schemes, and apps of all kinds) have come to permeate, and arguably dominate, our lives. 

Yet while massive and extremely lucrative, the information economy is but a minor aside to the awesome implications and historic significance of the loss-of-information-control. The loss-of-information-control is an occurrence which at once:

• brings a close to a half-million year plus period of human existence in which competition as man’s dominant societal ethic was a survivable condition;
• shatters the foundation of civilization as we had known it since its inception and renders obsolete many of the behaviors and entities that were built upon that foundation; 
• offers humanity both our best and our last opportunity to move toward the achievement of global collectivism, and thereby avoid extinction. 

A natural and understandable reaction to the implications listed above is to question how such a supposedly monumental happening could possibly occur without it being widely recognized by the global masses? To answer that query I offer the tale (The Frogmen of Aquaria) as an allegory for how mankind arrived at this point in our journey.

Copyright 2024. Reginald Patterson. All rights reserved.