The Next 5000 Days of the Web

At the conclusion of his Frontline documentary Digital Nation, Douglas Rushkoff remarks that he loves technology, "but most of all [he] loves being able to turn it off." Frankly, that is my favorite part too. I love my laptop and I love my iPhone. Having access to the entirety of the web at any given time is fantastic and I am even willing to accept that, when I choose to access the web, Google, and practically every other site, will be watching. I understand that the openness of the web is built on this economy: "free" services are exchanged for data. This system, though not ideal, is acceptable.

Unfortunately. my tolerance for the Internet peepshow has a limit.

Having a smartphone with GPS locating services teaters on the brink of unacceptable but I am willing to compromise in return for the services I receive through my phone. Kevin Kelly's concept of the browser functioning as a portal to the vast singular entity, which is the Internet, is quite interesting and perhaps quite accurate as well. But what happens when the web begins extending its tentacles beyond the browser?

Believe it or not that time has already come. A French company, called Withings, recently release a bathroom scale, which can connect to a wireless network to share weight and fat information on the internet. It can even post the information as a tweet for all of your friends to read! Now people won't even have to look at a picture to see how overweight I am... thank god. Next there will be a bed that provides targeted ads either for condoms, based on how often it entertains visitors, or substitutes for visitors, if there is a noticeable lack of company; of course, it would also post all new developments directly to Twitter.

All sarcasm aside, as the web begins to permeate browser-less devices we are no longer peering through a oneway portal; the machine is looking right back. Kelly suggests that McLuhan had it backwards when he proposed that media is a sensory extension of human beings; instead, perhaps human beings are becoming merely an extension of the machine. It's becoming hard to escape it and harder to turn it off. The most unnerving part is Kelly's blissful smile as he ponders the possibility that every human being on the planet is like a moth flocking to the big, shiny Internet lightbulb. I love the near limitless possibilities of the web but I would sooner boycott the Internet entirely than let them take away the power button.