Truer words have never been spoken. I don’t think anyone can look back on their actions and have no regrets, unless you have the strongest self-confidence in yourself. Or if you have a 4.0 GPA.

To me, what this quote says about the future of social media is spot on. What, indeed, does the future hold for us, who can truly tell what will work as the next big wire that manages to connect everyone together? I did some research on the Internet, and here are some of the more interesting findings.

Mind-Reading Technology

From images in your mind to images on the computer screen

Invented by the people who brought you anime, ninjas, and sushi. Using a fMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) machine, volunteers were supposed to think of alphabets manually to form sentences and words, which the computer reproduced in black-and-white.

Granted, this technology may still be in it’s infant stages, but the possibilities are limitless in the future. For example, handicapped people unable to use their arms – they can use the technology to tweet in the future. Physical limitations would no longer be an issue in a digital, social, world.

Optical Pattern Recognition

Optical Pattern Recognition - The future is upon us

The film, Minority Report, could have been on to something. The police are now using biometric face recognition technology to identify criminals, much like how the eyes hold the entirety of a person’s identity.

Now, Google uses Nevan Vision for its Picasa site, a similar technology that organizes and tags photos for users without any hassle. It definitely isn’t a stretch to say that popular social networking sites like Facebook, Flickr, or similar site would eventually pick up the technology to save their users the hassle.

OpenID/Universal Password Systems

Already starting to gain acceptance by smaller websites and even Facebook, this system allows users to use a universal password and fill in registration details in online forms automatically, without the need to register individually for each website.

How cool is that? Imagine a future where all you need to do is use a OpenID user/pass to register for workshops, bootcamps, or whatever floats your boat.

In conclusion, we are looking towards a very, very lazy future. And to think that films like Minority Report were right about some of these technologies that we have currently.

Valve lies. There is no Half Life 2 : Episode 3. Or lupus.

Which is to say, very very not likely. Nil, Nada, Zilch. 0.00000001% chance.

Flash forward to the present. Piracy has donned a new disguise, or rather, an flashy and eye-catching outfit, in which everyone has at some point in his or her life, gazed upon and cursed, exalted, mourned, or felt some semblance of emotion towards. Indeed, torrents have been the face of piracy ever since the Bittorrent protocol was released in 2001. A startling 27-55% of all Internet traffic is accounted for by torrents.

Now, one may ask, what does social media have to do with piracy? It would be the equivalent of comparing apples to, say, sirloin steaks, if you take it at face value. Both are edible, tasty (damn, Angus steak house), were once living things…and the similarities just about end there.

But not if you look at the bigger picture, or so to speak.

With the advent of social media, sharing anything has become ridiculously easy. Don’t know where to torrent that awesome song you just heard? Ask about it on Twitter. Need a torrent for that latest video game? Oh sure, ask your gamer friends on Facebook.

Oh dear.

My point is, social media actually encourages piracy by making it even more accessible. If you can’t find something that you need, all you need to do is merely ask. There’s a 99.9% chance someone out there has what you’re looking for, which makes piracy and social media as compatible as chilli and fries.

Of course, it can’t be denied that more stringent measures are likely to show up on social media sites with regards to file-sharing and the like, but i truly doubt piracy will ever die out, especially in today’s interconnected world.

Now, I’m not going to debate whether this is good or bad, but all i can say is that piracy is in a golden age right now.

I’m sure I heard a musician sighing somewhere.

And to think people in the Middle Ages were using swords and bows for a millennium.

Call me easily impressed, but wow, just look at that figure. Don’t you think it’s mind-blowing how quickly technology is evolving in our lives? I guess this is also in large part due to our ‘everything better and faster’ society nowadays.

You'll be missed. By me, at least.

Very recently, Geocities was shut down. Some of us old-timers (hey who am I kidding, I’m not even 20) might remember the site way back in the late 90′s, where users set up their pages on things they found interesting, funny, cool, sexy, et cetera. This was, perhaps in part due to the sharp decline in visitors – 15.1 million unique visitors in March 2008 to 11.5 million unique visitors in March 2009, representing a 24% decline. Not to mention the ugly ‘UNDER CONSTRUCTION’ banners that every other page had.

A relic of the past.

I suppose it’s also noteworthy that most Geocities site were built on a Web 1.0 interface, very clunky and unfriendly by today’s standards. Which is probably another huge factor why it died.

The Now.

Almost every other site you see nowadays is built on a Web 2.0 interface. Like Youtube. Twitter. Facebook. This very blog. The Korean website your mother goes to. You get the idea.

You can check out the differences between web 1.0 and 2.0 here, which is kind of neat to know so you can show off to your friends/colleagues/boss/the hot geeky guy or girl you want to impress.

Still, i don’t suppose web 2.0 is here to stay for long. It took a grand total of 8 years (1996 – 2004) for web 1.0 to be declared irrelevant. And if trends are any indication, web 3.0 is going to be upon us soon. And it’s going to be able to READ YOUR MIND. No, seriously.

The future is upon us. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry in glee. Perhaps I shall do both. Or will the computer do that for me in the future?

Twitter is a fascinating tool.

On one hand, I suppose it’s easy to appreciate the straightforwardness that friends, strangers, squirrels cats, and what-have-you manage to share over the internet, brought about by the dandy 140 character limit that tweets are restricted to. Tweets with news about new technologies, oddities and various other topics can be both informative and interesting, making it a huge plus.

The various applications and relative ease of use of the platform also make it easy to pick up for anyone to use right off the bat. It probably won’t be surprising to see your mum or dad tweeting at you to come home for dinner, do the laundry, feed the dog…you get the idea.

On the other hand, merely thinking about keeping up with legions of followers doesn’t seem so hot – I don’t see how people with their tens of thousands of followers manage to build any kind of meaningful relationship with their peers, making the connections built in Twitter rather shallow, as opposed to say, other social networking sites like Facebook.

Also, the massive ego-stoking that goes on with some twitterers(am i spelling it right?) is particularly annoying if they feel like everyone has to know about everything that goes on in their life, like – “OH I R EATING APPEL NAO, OM NOM NOM, DISCUZ PLZ” – that’s just nasty and flat out annoying.

What I find really interesting about Twitter is how people get so attached to just limiting their conversations to 140 characters or less – the meteoric increase in the number of users from 475k to 7 million from February ’08 to ’09 (http://bit.ly/m8SOJ) – is insane. It’s mind blowing. It’s scientology-esque. It’s proof that everyone wants to ‘share their life’ in every way possible.

For all of Twitter’s flaws, I’m pretty sure the user base will continue to grow and flourish. Be it social marketers, used car salesmen, bungee jumpers, basement dwellers, or whoever, Twitter has the potential to become bigger and better, and will probably become an integral part of our digital and physical lives in the foreseeable future .

And my fascination with this little social media device will probably continue.