Constantly connected

Companies are popping up everywhere. The tech space alone is overflowing with apps, bots, and services. Even the other sectors of business are more or less just tech companies anymore. Incumbent industries like farming are evolving into tech driven operations. What aspect do almost all of these “tech” companies share?

Connectivity.

The internet binds together billions of devices across the world and beyond. Whether its your Mac, tablet, phone, or fitness tracking watch, all manner of devices are connected. Entertainment comes almost entirely from the internet through social media and streaming services. Many of us, if not most of us, spend our time working connected to the internet.

With Google docs, is there a real need for a word processing program anymore?

Even our software continually becomes more connected. Socially connected apps, always online single player video games, and cloud based operating systems are all common place.

All of these devices and software could be viewed as different pieces of the same organism. The internet being the neural net, like our human brains, governing and listening to a world of devices, like our own bodies. Much like how our body sends signals to the brain, the brain responds with actions for the body to take.

When you google a question about how to do something, the internet provides you a way to accomplish your goal.

Scheduling apps, automated emails, and other always connect forms of reminders help us to structure our lives. By structuring our lives we feel more productive.

Productive doing what? Most likely: working on something that inherently improves upon technology. An app’s designers, users, and programmers are all putting energy into improving the app. The same can be said for products and services.

Thanks to the tracking of data, even users who don’t directly give feedback on an app (or product/service) still help improve it. By analyzing the data these silent users left behind, companies find more ways to improve upon technology.

We are all aiding in the improvement of technology in some way.

This has never been truer than now, in a world of constant connectivity. We are all improving technology in our own ways. Designing it, programming it, building it, or thanks to data analytics just using technology has benefit. Online code repositories, cloud storage, databases, and customer reviews are all constantly storing and updating themselves with information meant to make technology better.

Thanks to productivity apps, fitness trackers, and food journal apps we are even letting technology benefit us.

Not only do we adjust our habits for technology, we go out of our way to invent new ways for our habits to be facilitated by technology. We are in a sort of symbiotic relationship it seems, with technology. Always connected with it, always working with it, sometimes working on it, all while both sides benefit. There is one notable difference between us and technology though…

We humans are billions of individual organisms, and technology seems to be forming into one.

This was a fun little piece to write. Assuming you’re a fan of where technology is taking us.