In the Stone Age of Multimedia there was just one TV, one Radio, one Phone and one Record Player for the whole family.

Today’s multi-channel multimedia families have multiple entertainment and data devices for each family member. Plus everyone has many different online-personalities all over the intranets.

Instead of living and experiencing a "unified family reality" today we spread ourselves over several planes of virtual existence.

So it’s no surprise that so many families are feeling disconnected, hardly share mutual experiences or participate in each other’s lives. They are connected somewhere else with a million strangers …

The Single-Device-Family was certainly less sophisticated, but they actually had more time on their hands. They didn’t need to learn to handle complex devices, configure their computers, VCRs, cell phones, cameras, digicams, Facebook & MySpace pages, update their operating systems …

Their head were less stuffed with following a gazillion TV shows, celebrities, events in remote places, horrors and hysterias unreported or not yet invented.

Less sometimes really is more.

So CompuServe officially died this week – it was the first big online service here in Germany and allowed newbie’s like to go "on" for huge amounts of money.

Sometimes I spent about 1.000 or 3.000 Deutschmarks per month for that bloody service. If I remember correctly my ID was 10015,1352 – it’s almost exactly the amount of money CompuServe ripped off me.

I loved the service and it’s text based interface – and worked quite well with my speedy 12.800 modem.

On CompuServe I discovered all the basics of online lifestyle and communities: forums, eMail, Chat, user profiles and downloads.

CompuServe died a long and miserable death – like AOL (who actually deserved it). But both actually were victims of the openness and their own ignorance to adapt to it.

Sure life has changed in the last twenty years a lot. But apart from the obvious technological change and all these gadgets around us – there are far more dramatic changes in our social, economical and political behavior.

Statistics and mathematical problem solving has been around for ages – but with today’s huge databases, networks and extremely cheap processing power suddenly “smart” computer advice is shaping our everyday life …

Read the rest of this entry »