Next: A Vision of Our Lives in the Future. Marian Salzman

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       [5] Living in the Digital Age

      ‘There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.’ Ken Olson, then chairman of Digital Equipment, in an address to the World Future Society, Boston, 1977

      A couple of years ago, Richard Eastman of Billerica, Massachusetts, who managed a genealogy forum on online access provider CompuServe, noticed some odd messages from one of about twenty computer users during a regular weekly gathering of their ‘cybercommunity’. A message from the Reverend Kenneth Walker indicated that he wasn’t feeling terribly well, and the reverend soon began transmitting messages with gross typographical errors. Another member of the cybercommunity, a nurse from Long Island, New York, immediately began asking Reverend Walker for his symptoms. At one point, according to a report from Reuters, Walker wrote, ‘By keyboard it melting … I jest nuut.’ Minutes later, he typed, ‘Helo … have broblemd … thimk I am waying stroke.’ Eastman then started asking him for his phone number. After six attempts, he finally got the number, called a telephone operator, and found himself talking to a police officer in Scotland. The police forced their way into Walker’s home minutes after Eastman called, and took Walker to a hospital.

      Walker, who said doctors believe he may have suffered an epileptic attack, called Eastman to thank him. ‘This wasn’t any great heroism,’ Eastman said. ‘The only thing different in this case is that it was online.’ Eastman, who has written a book about genealogy, and Walker, considered an expert on Scottish records and archives, have since found they have many things in common. ‘It’s kind of an interesting thing how two lives 3,000 miles apart get wrapped up,’ Eastman said. ‘Obviously, we share a common interest. There is a kinship, if you will.’

      Welcome to the global neighbourhood.

       The Human Faces of Change

      For those who have become ‘plugged in’, the Internet offers a world of new people, new ideas and new information. It opens up avenues of communication that allow us access to places we otherwise might never have gone. It’s becoming increasingly evident that the Net also will alter the path that trends take around the world. Today, online communication is taking place primarily in English (an estimated three-quarters of all Internet sites are located in English-speaking countries.) As the Internet attracts a more global audience, however, there is a mounting effort to broaden the appeal and usefulness of the Net by taking down the ‘English only’ signs, thereby enabling and encouraging people to communicate and collaborate in their native languages.

      The number of multilingual Websites is growing. The Internet Society and Montreal-based Alis Technologies have established Babel (http://babel.alis.com:8080/), a site aimed at internationalizing the Web by promoting the use of languages other than English. Babel will eventually be available in approximately ten languages. Dynalab (http: www.dynalab.com.), a Taiwanese font manufacturer, is marketing GlobalSurf, a utility that provides fonts in twenty-three languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Hebrew and most European languages. The product solves the common problem of garbled type resulting from double-byte Asian characters by using fonts that support Unicode. Web pages can now correctly display these foreign language characters on any browser that supports Unicode.

      As the online population gradually falls more closely in line with global realities, we can be sure that cross-cultural influences will no longer emanate primarily from Western trend capitals. In the past few years, the online community has evolved beyond ‘technogeeks’ to encompass the thought and opinion leaders who – with close, smart tracking – can serve as important barometers of how, when and whether particular fads, trends and styles will evolve from the ‘mindspace’ of the Internet to the ‘marketplace’ of the face2face world. It’s these pioneers of next who will reshape the world of marketing communications and commerce for the future.

       Cybercommunication

      In watching the evolution of communication online, it’s been interesting to note how cybernauts have resolved the problem of the lack of body language in this medium. As any Internet user can tell you, an entire code has been developed to convey the human emotions that one cannot see in cyberspace. These typed symbols – most commonly called emoticons or smileys – give a degree of life and individuality to online expression.

      To view a Western smiley, tilt your head to the left. Among the most common examples:

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