dystopia – encrusted words

Let me begin with a question this morning. When you think about the future, what do you imagine? When you think about the future, what do you feel or think or imagine? We could answer this question in terms of our own immediate future – in terms of what’s going to happen in my and your life in the next 5 to 10 years – what do I feel or think or imagine in terms of my own future. But this morning I’m inviting us to think more widely about the future – to think in terms of the future of our society.

Let’s think about Canada 100 years from now, in the year 2114. If you were to think about what Canadian society might look like in a hundred years, what do you imagine. On Canada day, July 1^st, 2114, what will Canadian society look like?

Maybe we can help ourselves think about this by doing so in terms of a question you might be asked for a poll, for a sondage. You might get a phone call at home, and be asked a series of questions – and one of the questions might be something like this. Are things in Canada getting: Much worse, worse, better, or much better? What would you say? When you think about the future, what do you imagine? Continue reading →

What happens when Facebook dies?

Of course it isn’t a question of whether Facebook will die – only when. It might happen slowly as users gradually migrate to other social media platforms, or suddenly in the wake of some technological or financial meltdown. Either way, Zuckerberg will probably be safe with his millions (billions?!). But what will happen to the digital acres we have tended with such care.

At one level it’s a basic question of data – are my personal artifacts safe? What will happen to the megabytes that make up that picture of me and my mom at Niagara Falls in 2007, or that conversation with a friend in Vancouver back in 2010? Will it all simply vanish? Be sold off to a social media competitor – an estate sale of framed photos and vintage movie posters and so many bric-a-brac bytes?

What happens when Facebook dies?

But this is also a question of our identity. With the loss of those carefully maintained digital landscapes, do we lose a part of ourselves? And if so, what part of ourselves will disappear? Or perhaps this is a better question: Is there anything of great value on Facebook, whose loss we might or should mourn? Continue reading →