How the internet changed everything
There's an idea that I keep coming back to, especially in light of all of the Web 2.0 hype: it's barely been 15 years since the worldwide web was established, and yet we've already taken it almost completely for granted. The internet has changed the way we do just about everything, so much so that I can barely remember how I found directions, kept in touch with friends, or shopped for products.On the one hand, we're all acutely aware that the rate of change in our society is constantly increasing, and yet, on the other hand, we seem to be forgetting the recent past ever more quickly. I'm 36 and was in graduate school when I really started using the internet, and yet I can't even fathom life before email. The business world talks about Google as if it's some sort of primal force, and yet the company is only a decade old. The dot-com bust was only six years ago, and we're throwing money at Web 2.0 like it never happened. Our lives are being fundamentally transformed at almost breakneck pace, and we barely even notice.
It makes me wonder how people perceived the Industrial Revolution, and I think the analogy is apt. We're really in the middle of a revolution, and I suspect that this is only the beginning. What's more, that revolution is happening faster than any other similar quantum shift in the history of the human race. Yet, somehow, we're all but oblivious to it.
Sorry, maybe I'm rambling, but this is an idea I can't get out of my head. I keep thinking it would make for a fascinating book, but I'm never sure where to start. So, I'm considering following the lead of other bloggers and publishing some thoughts on the subject from time to time. If those thoughts lead somewhere interesting, maybe I'll collect them and do something with them later.
Mike Maddaloni
· Tuesday, April 24I think for many people it is like the frog in the pot of water - they do not really notice the change if they are in it and it gradually forms and changes.
Three years ago I spoke to high school sophomores on the influence of the Internet, on a panel with TV and newspaper sportscasters. As I was preparing my thoughts, I realized that these kids did not know a time without email! That really narrowed the scope of what I said, so that I was not sounding like their parents or some crusty old man. And to think that then there was no YouTube... how that would have changed the discussion!
mp/m
Dr. Pete
· Tuesday, April 24It is a bit scary to realize that basically anyone in college right now (or younger) has never really known life without the internet.
Ron Denholm
· Tuesday, April 24And www.archive.org seems to be the one stop shop to track changes in everything internet, from clunky sites dating from the '90s to today's relative sophistication.
So, the race is on to take hold of the ephemeral and to assess its affect on human cultural changes, just like the famed library in ancient Alexandria.