Notwithstanding Moore’s Law that the powers of computer chips will double every eighteen months, if not less, the fact remains that computers are changing the world faster than they can change themselves.
Yet, Kevin Kelly noted, computers and the internet were around in 1991. In fact, they were created in the mid-1960s, to prevent the possibility of a nuclear meltdown and a shutdown of the whole communications infrastructure. After that, computers would remain the most viable objects of communication.
More surprisingly, commercialization has been chafed at since the dawn of the internet. Many attempts were made to prevent commercialization of the internet, especially by coders and programmers, but by 2000, all the taboos and prohibitions on commerce and trade were gone.
The internet now is a ubiquitous trading machine with apps running as parallel universes to support each other in creating a seamless experience on the computers and the hand-held smartphones. According to Kevin Kelly, the first rule to understanding the impact of computers is that their processes will not change. In fact, it will head not to utopia or protopia. In the latter, tomorrow is always marginally better than the day before.
A computer world, with or without the aid of artificial intelligence robotics,wifi orother devices is built to create a protopia. Of course, due to the high probability of hacking and counter hacking, this protopia can be a dysfunctional dystopia, too. Using a series of verbs, such as becoming or beginning, Kevin Kelly was able to explain why in a world driven by computers, those computers will evolve to become better and that there are will always be people around to maintain and make them better, hence, a perpetual upgrade. An average app, indeed, does not last more than a month, before the codes begin to degrade and the performance begins to erode.
All of that points to a world that will change beyond redemption. Anyone who doesn’t read this book from page to page will find themselves struggling in a vastly difficult, challenging, in many cases, dangerous world. The US was the pivotal democracy. Yet, its presidential election was mired in a hacking controversy to rival Watergates many times over. This alone is a warning sign that not all things are quiet on the Western front.