The Descent into a Digital Culture

The Descent into a Digital Culture

In this century our culture is changing rapidly. Just in the last 30 years alone our scientific understanding, technological achievements, and fragmentation of values has transformed faster than in the previous 100 years alone. With our express style culture change, one has to wonder what will be said about our culture another hundred years in the future. What is the one thing that has defined us as who we are? A section on our slow ascent into socialism may be in order, or maybe a chapter on our obsession with going green. However, I would suggest that the first chapter in a humanities book of 2113 on our culture title “The Descent into a Digital Culture”.

Our culture is most defined by the digital lifestyle that the majority of us live. In this day and age one does not leave the bedroom let alone their home without a mini computer. It has become almost unfathomable to the greater of our numbers as to how we lived our lives before the iPhone; let alone the internet. Our culture and lives revolve around a digital sphere. We live in a world where every answer to every question we would ever have, right or wrong, is a tap away. This is also a place where the use of our vocal cords is utilized less than ever as we would rather text at each other. Our descent into a digital culture has made us unlike any culture in the history of mankind, with the exception of maybe ancient Rome.

One of the side effects of this digital culture on our humanity is our new need for instant gratification. This trend places it roots way back in the dark ages of the early 1980’s. This is when the World Wide Web (internet) started to resemble what we know today. The internet gave people the ability to access scores of in...

... middle of paper ...

...ulture is changing rapidly. It would be difficult speculate what our culture would be like in the future. In the next 100 years our scientific understanding, technological achievements, and fragmentation of values will progress even further. When future generations look back at who we are as a people how will they define us. Are we the beginning of the end to a powerful nation or the one that sparks the life back into a fading power? The one thing that their humanities text files should have a section about how we started and lived in a Digital Culture. Our Descent into a Digital Culture is one of the most important things that defines us as who we are. However defining of us it may it can still be seen as a descent like that of the fall of ancient Rome. On the other hand it could be end in the same manner as in the “Pitt and the pendulum”, saved at the last second.