"2 U (under the sea)
Mark how the telegraph motions to me,
2 U (under the sea)
Signals are coming along
With a wag, wag, wag;
The telegraph needle is vibrating free
And every vibration is telling to me
How they drag,drag,drag
the telegraph cable along."
James Clerk Maxwell The father of modern physics (written when the transatlantic cable was laid.)
I was talking with my wife about technology and convergence, and the conversation began with the political change in the 1700's with The American Romantic Movement, the industrialization of the 1800's, and the scientific convergence in mid 1900's of the atomic era trains,plains, and autos, and how relative that is to the latest convergence of computing and communications. I have been pondering my suspicion that these are becoming accelerated from 100, 50, 25, year intervals to what appears to be 15,10 and 5 year intervals. In this process industry and investors are quick to translate new technology into the last great benchmark. Going back to the Revolution 1 E-litterati like Ross Mayfield have picked up on the social and political ramifications of convergence, (though decidedly left). So I wonder about the new genomic era which appears to be realized in the next 5-10 years, and what that will entail. This leads me to comment on the networking process that would be potentially realized with a Whuffie system. Imagine being able to quickly locate, and contact multiple human resources on a global level without all the time and expense, and constraint of today's networking systems. To date I have discussed the trust measurement, currency or unit value, and network value factors of a literal Whuffie system. In the vein of left handed and right handed Whuffie, what would the political ramifications be? While finding someone's political affiliations is often dubious, or done after the fact, as in the case of a dating relationship, business partnering, or hobbyist/enthusiast- How would it affect relationships if you knew of someone's political affiliation ahead of time, would that not attend to polarize and isolate groups. Or worse would this have the affect of compromising our democracy , with potentially entire state and federal agencies, corporations, and groups sifting whuffie databases and cherry picking. But then again would that not just be an acceleration of a process already in place with unions, voter registrations, districting? Would legislation be imposed to keep this from happening? What type of positive effects on politics could Whuffie have?
