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RE: ALARM CLOCK DAWN (An Original Novel - Episode 39)
Another great episode. It got me thinking ... what would we find if we looked 100 years into the future? If someone from 1916 looked into our present, would they understand Steemit? With no knowledge of social media, crypto-currency or attention economy, how could they begin to make sense of it all?
Thanks, @gregory-f. That's one of the things I love about fiction, how it opens up our minds to these kinds of possibilities. It's funny, I never appreciated the power of fiction fully until I wrote this novel.
If presented with this all at once, I think people from 1916 wouldn't really have the ability to grasp the concepts of social media or crypto-currency. I think many of them would dismiss it as nonsense and a big waste of time. What people would really be mystified by are how many people have their full attention on their mobile devices while out in public. They would view us as zombies, I think. I remember seeing old black and white footage of the occasional person walking down the street in a major city reading a newspaper but today I venture a guess that nearly half of people in public are actively using their devices.
What strikes me about people of all times is how similar we probably are at the core once the technological differences and customs of the day are stripped away. With the coming advancements in virtual reality there will no doubt be programs that allow us to immerse ourselves in recreations of different times. This is one of the things I’m really looking forward to.