I didn’t see the birth of the World Wide Web, but given the amount of change it’s undergone since my first exposure, I might as well have. I was on the Web when there were merely tens of thousands of pages (instead of billions today), and almost all of it was black Times New Roman on a gray background. It was way uglier, way slower, and way smaller than what we have today.
Sometimes I think back to those early days in my first “real” job at Intergraph, in early 1994, and try to remember whether I had any notion of the eventual cultural significance of this little network that occupied some of my time. I don’t think I did. Most of what I enjoyed online predated the Web–email and Usenet, mainly, with an occasional telnet voyage–and the Web was an occasional sideline. I didn’t have a clue that nearly everyone would eventually say “the Internet” when they meant the World Wide Web.
When I stop to think about it, the Web still blows my mind. Ladies and gentlemen, we live in a world in which if something is known by the human race, and it’s not protected by a corporation, a government, or both, there’s about a 99% chance you can have your eyeballs on it in less than five minutes. Shoot, there’s probably a 75% chance you can have your eyeballs on it in 30 seconds.
Do you remember the world before that was true? I mean, I know most of you have specific memories of things you did before then, but do you remember what it felt like? I don’t. I received my degree in 1992, so I was one of the last college graduates to study without it. What a difference a mature Web would have made! On a lighter note, I remember riding with my mother to Panama City and for most of the trip, we tried to think of the name of the actor who played Agent 86 on Get Smart. I sat up in bed with the thought of Don Adams at 3 in the morning, and actually woke my mother up to tell her. Today it’s a quick trip to IMDB, and you’re done.
Huge swaths of wonder have died with the coming of age of the Web. For nearly any question, you don’t walk around chewing on what the answer might be for any length of time: you Google it, and it’s over. My children will never know a world in which that isn’t true. I think that’s one of the most incredible societal advances of my lifetime. I suspect it’s my generation’s “I walked to school uphill both ways” story to tell our children, actually.
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A MOMENT SO SO SAD !!!
A GIGANT THE SUPERAGENTE 86
The computer we had when I was young was one of those super fancy computers where you could change the color of the screen background by pushing the F1 button. My favorite color was the magenta screen.
Those were the days…
You know what else is dead? The phone book. Looking for numbers for the closest pizza joint? Google Maps. Need a neighbor’s phone number? You look online, assuming they even have a land line number you can look up to begin with.
Speaking of phones, it’s become more common amongst myself and my technogeek friends to have internet access on the phone. There have been a couple of times we’ve forgotten some actors name while out to lunch at work, and I’ve whipped out my phone and googled it lickity split. Geek out!
I can’t remember the last time I used a phone book. It had to be over a year ago.
Lesley, was that a Radio Shack Color Computer? Or perhaps a Commodore VIC-20 or 64?
I love having all this info at my fingertips. You used to have drag over to the library and spend hours looking for the data. When I was a kid encyclopedia sets were still a big deal. I believe that business is all but dead now.
I remember a few summers ago I at my father’s house sitting with him in the gazeebo. My then middle school age daughter was chatting on the cell phone with her friends. When she finished I commented that when I was a kid if you wanted to talk long distance to your friends you had to use a plastic walkie talkie. My dad chimed in that when he was a kid it was two tin cans with a string in between.
Bob230
Bo, I’m not sure….I think it may have been a Commodore.
Ya know what ‘they’ say about watches: Republicans wear digital. Democrats wear analog.
Me, I don’t wear no stinkin’ watch. Heh.
Suzie: 90+% of the time, I wear analog. But when I move to digital, I want it laden with cool toys.
Let’s call that the Libertarian behavior.
[...] partially satisfied me. In one sense, it’s true. I blogged about the Web’s nearly unfathomable utility once before, and proclaimed this the age of the death of wonder. We are talking about what is very close to [...]
[...] Isn’t it worth it, though? Technological advances are easy to miss because they’re gradual and ever-evolving, but take a snapshot of your life today and try to think back to a typical day of 20 years ago. There’s a hard drive in your iPod that wasn’t available for any computer at any price until very recently. When was the last time you considered how incredibly complex, yet freakishly reliable, your car is? Do you even remember what it feels like not to have access to a robust World Wide Web? I’ve written about that one before. [...]