One of the great promises of the Internet and mobile technologie in the 1990’s was that it would bring about the ideal of the “global village” by leveling down all the physical, geopolitical and cultural bariers, so that all human beings would finally be able to share a common space of expression and exchange. Such institutions as the supranational organisations (UN, WTO, IMF, etc.), industrial multinationals (Coca-Cola, Walt Disney, Sony, etc.), international social or humanitarian movements (ATTAC, ICFTU, Greenpeace, ICRC, etc.) have been considered as the concrete manifestation of political, economic and social globalization and their innovative use of the NICT’s (New Information and Communication Technologies) as the basis of the construction of a new world of communication and information. All of this supported by an unfettered innovating industry that churns out revolutionary tools every 6 months, making it nearly impossible for individuals to actually keep pace with the dazzling increase in number of hardwares and softwares. However, as pointed out by the article I’m copying below, it seems that the now well-installed Web 2.0 is bringing people back home. Many observers of the online life have noticed that social platforms, such as Facebook or MySpace have contributed to favorise what some call “clans”, that is homogeneous groups, gathered around a common set of specific interests, practices or values. Although they also allow for communications beyond geographical barriers, the underlying tendency is to associate with one’s kind, thus reproducing the old social, political, religious and artistic class distinctions. By offering interfaces on which mobile peripheral platforms and Internet content can merge together, the focus has even more shifted from an all-embracing perspective (the world at the tip of your fingers), that was the motto of the first version of the Web, before the 2000 Internet bubble burst, to a narrow-beamed spotlight on the individual as a red dot on Google Map. The idea isn’t anymore to gather all information, knowledge and know-how in one place and make it accessible to all through one portal, but rather to multiply their copies in various forms and the points of access, shaped according to the identified needs of individuals. Although portals still exist, they are now becoming Internet-based and individually parametered equivalent of the local computer desktop, accessible with any mobile peripheral technologies, such as cellphones, PDA’s, portable game consoles, etc. The combination of Web-based map tagging, portable devices and physical electronic relays connected to what the author of the article calls the geobrowser means not only an increase in the trackability of individuals, but also the extreme localization of information and communication.
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Filed under: Academics, English, Globalization, Researches | Tagged: digital networks, geobrowser, geospatial Web, Google Map, GPS, NTICS, web 2.0 | 1 Comment »