Some meandering thoughts about nothing special

I have a dream. A dream where everyone is connected by various equal sized pipes such that at any given time amount of information that can flow between any two entities is equal, only restricted by the enthusiasm of the entity to use the pipe. Noone is preferred over anybody when it comes to information access. Everyone has equal access to the pertinent information.



Problem of the world stemmed from unequal access to information. In hindu society, women didn't have access to various religious texts. This was after the ancient times and before the modern era. Such restriction resulted their having to follow various rites that were especially formulated to keep them out of other worldly matters. As information access has become easier, now hindu women are fighting for their right of equal access.



Geographical expanse makes equal information access a daunting task that everybody likes to not heed to, of course except when talking about 'digital divide'. But 'digital divide' is simply a very tiny part of the bigger issue. Digital divide acts over the concept of national boundaries and economic boundaries. Whereas issue of access to information is an micro-sized issue.



Inside a family, a husband buys a gift to his ex-girlfriend without his wife knowing where the money from tax return went. That is lack of information access from wife's point of view. There is a fight between a nymphomaniac wife and a cheating husband that the neighbor is unaware of. A teenage daughter is sleeping with a gangster that parents' are unknown about.



A new library is opened in one county that another county is unaware of. A country is researching about developing a new nuclear weapon that rest of the world do not know anything about. There are simply too many broken or blocked information pipes that hinder the proper flow of information both ways. I have a dream of fixing those pipes so that everyone will have equal access to the information.



There are questions of privacy. There are questions of familial and national security. There are questions of personal security itself at the forefront. But by having proper protocol in place in the pipes that guide the flow of information, a proper information network can be designed. Whatever information is needed and whenever it is needed, it can be garnered without the current restriction imposed by access to the pipes themselves. Restrictions will only be imposed by the willingness of the concerned party.



One day, we will have a world where everyone will be connected by equal sized pipes with each other, every house, every town, every village, every country, and the entire world will be connected. Then we will not have to organize conferences on 'digital divide'. We will then live happily everafter.

I have this feeling that an individual now is not smarter than any other individual thousand or may be ten thousand years ago. Capability of individual brain has not increased at all. Only the interconnection made possible by all the communication technologies has enabled us to share experiences and knowledge. Such sharing has created a sense of superiority over human beings of bygone times.



Geographical expanse hindered the communication among people living in different places. Lingual difference accentuated that hindrance. Both of them are caving in front of the technological advances in communication and computational technologies. Emergence of English as a standard language of the world is also reducing the hindrance caused by the difference in languages.



From language to culture, everything has become globalized. There is almost nothing that is local anymore. Even the local problems have global manifestations due pervasive interconnectivity, either via youtube, google, facebook, terrorism, television, internet, email. There are simply too many ways of such manifestations.



There is another explanation to it. In stead of saying globalization, we can say we all have become localized now. There is no 'here' and 'there' anymore. Everything is 'here'. We are simply a part of a bigger whole, the World. The World operates because we as individual parts do our jobs and we interact with other parts using certain rules and share results of our jobs. This way, in stead of saying that 'local problems have global manifestations' we can say 'local problems are no longer local. In stead they can be solved by global participation'.