The Future Now

I almost didn't realize that it's already Sunday and another week has passed. Time for me to blog again. To me the biggest news this week is the one about Twitter being hacked. Around 130 accounts have been hacked, including those of Joe Biden, Obama, Bill Gates and Elon Musks.

False tweets were sent out from some of these accounts encouraging people to send Bitcoins. But to me this is considered benign, the scary thing is that they could have done a lot more damage. With so many of our leaders using social media like Twitter as their main communication channel, a single misguided tweet could have led to very serious consequences: pandemonium, stock market crash or even a nuclear war.

Social media has become so intertwined with our lives that it is almost like an extension of our nervous system. Celebrities and leaders often get into trouble by tweeting things that they shouldn't and once broadcasted, that single indiscretion lives on forever in the akasha of cyberspace. Social media is like the most efficient transmission medium for karma. Its effect are magnified and felt instantly.

Social media has brought great good to humanity by connecting us together globally. But at the same time, it has accentuated our differences and polarized us to an extend never seen in history before. Our connectedness has enabled us to find our like-minded kind and each of us end up huddling together in our closed little opinion bubbles--the Whatsapp groups, Facebook pages and Twitter accounts that we follow. Everyone is emboldened because of anonymity and a feeling of safety in numbers.

The Dark Web has also given shelter to criminals, scammers, drug peddlers and paedophiles, allowing them to conduct their activities under a cloak cryptographic secrecy. We have an entire underworld lurking beneath the seemingly innocent facade of silly icons and idyllic wallpapers. The viruses that live in cyberspace are as dangerous as the one that is causing havoc across the world now.

Have we sold our soul to technology? Will we end up in a cyberpunk dystopia where machines rule the roost? At the rate that we are going, it doesn't look unlikely. But I also know that the universe always has something up its sleeves. There could another technological revolution that changes the game entirely and make us reevaluate our priorities anew.

Despite my apparent bleak assessment, I still find the future exciting. I look forward to its unfoldment with the wonder and excitement of a child reading the latest issue of his favourite comic book. And the Future is the most exciting book that one could ever read, even though we could only read the the page opened before us. Read it now, read it well. Tomorrow there will be a new one.