Throwback Weekend and the Future of The Internet

No Google maps, no GPS, no weather app - a weekend at a ski cabin demonstrated just how much the author depends on her smartphone to navigate the modern world.

By Kim Tarasiewicz

I recently spent a weekend in a ski cabin that had no Internet, cable TV or cell service, which I thought I would enjoy. I do love unplugging every once in a while, and I loved the idea that the kids had to find my kind of “old fashioned” fun, like jumping into 5-foot snowdrifts. But there was a snowstorm coming and I realized that I needed a weather report so we knew when to pack up and leave before it hit.

So my challenges?

• No GPS or Google Maps to use on my phone – I had to use a paper map.
• No weather app or weather channel for the storm – I panicked and called my cousin (on a landline, to my horror) to check her TV weather station.
• I needed more food (I had nine teen boys with me) and couldn’t Google a grocery store location – I asked one of the reps at the ski resort for directions to one close by.

Of course, I use technology daily; most people do in today’s world. And while there is always much debate on how this generation of young people uses technology, I thought about how integrated into my life it has also become over the past 15 years.

Then I drove home to watch the Advertising bowl (I mean the Superbowl) and I saw the BMW i3 Electric Car commercial with a throwback clip from the Today Show where they talk about “What the Internet is” from 20 years ago. I began to wonder what the Internet would be like 20 years from now.

Everyone has a prediction on how technology will evolve and where it will help or hurt humanity. Technology will certainly continue to change the labor industry, with changes in manufacturing and production lessening the need for human jobs. On the other hand, it may increase positions in new areas such as robotics and Internet security; either way, it will result in a shift in the workforce for the next generation.

We already have online classes for colleges and some charter schools, but there may be virtual learning opportunities for students with the possibility of staying home and taking classes while recovering from a contagious disease such as the flu, making schools safer and healthier.

Our technology will certainly change in size, which we can see happening already with the Apple iWatch coming and phones becoming lighter and more manageable. We now have smartphones that react to speech, but will we be speaking to our computers? Chances are the answer is yes, and they will be smarter, too, saving our preferences and using this to make our lives easier. Marketers are already using this - if you have ever clicked on an ad while on a website, notice every time you open a tab on the Internet, you are “fed” a similar advertisement.

So will the future be like living in a Star Trek movie? Maybe, maybe not, but I do have faith that society will learn to adapt to any new technologies, just as we have done in the past 20 years.

What Happens On The Internet, Stays On The Internet

By Kim Tarasiewicz

Some days, I find the news difficult to watch, with the barrage of bad news we are faced with on a daily basis. But one of the things I look forward to is the fascinating bits of trivia that come toward the end of the news segments. Recently, I saw a segment about the Library of Congress' National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Virginia. It showed how they are taking old videos and filing them into an archive system along with restoring old films and adding them to “the vault," a former bomb shelter that is now home to more than 1.4 million films, television shows and other videos that "tell America's story."

Each year, the Librarian of Congress selects 25 movies to be added to the National Film Registry. Some of us from the 80s era will be pleased to know that Ferris Bueller’s Day Off  (1986) and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) were added in 2014. The self-proclaimed “film geeks” who work at the Conservation Center even save television commercials, to show the changing evolution of attitudes during certain eras or cultures in America.

The item that caught my attention, though, is that they are also archiving today’s media in real time, including radio, television and Internet content - even YouTube videos. To store that volume of data, they use petabytes; one petabyte can store up to 13 years of TV videos at a time. The reason for archiving YouTube videos? According to the Moving Section Director, “It is for future generations to decide what is important and what is not.”

It is that same desire to capture history-in-the-making that has led organizations and businesses nationwide to turn to web archiving services such as Archive-It from companies like Reed Tech. I doubt many of us thought that those corporate presentations, video games or family videos we uploaded to YouTube would ever be a part of the Library of Congress, but now they may be, as the preservation of digital content becomes more common.

For me, this is a perfect illustration for my teens to explain the need for online responsibility and confirming that what you post out there, stays out there. I can now point to a government agency that is collecting their information and archiving it.

Companies need to be aware of this, too, when sharing items on the Internet and social media. We’ve shared blog posts here on having a corporate social media policy and a crisis management plan, but it’s important to know that your Internet items may be captured in an archive program, too. 

Each time I upload a video presentation, TV commercial or news coverage interview for our clients, I will enjoy thinking about how we are creating history and wonder how those future generations will judge us. Will our YouTube posts seem antiquated? Will the news stories seem trivial? Will the films become classics like so many of those 80s movies I love to watch? I guess we need a crystal ball to see into the future to know for sure, but if we want to look at the past, evidently there is plenty being stored in Culpeper, Virginia waiting to be seen.

Newsweek Ceases Print Publication – Going All-Digital

Media icon Newsweek has decided to cease printing and convert to an all-digital format. Its last edition will be on Dec. 31, 2012.

Founded 80 years-ago, Newsweek was once one of the nation's top-selling news weekly publications. However, it has seen a significant drop in audience – 51 percent since 2007 – and a resulting decline in advertising revenue.

Perhaps this shouldn’t come as a surprise though. The Internet, blogs, social media and mobile technology have fundamentally changed the way that we secure, consume, publish and interact with news, opinion and analysis.

Personally, I hope that Newsweek remains an influential source of news and analysis. In today’s communication environment, we need the insight and professionalism that legacy media like Newsweek provide. For more, read the full Philadelphia Inquirer article.