Twelve years ago, I knew exactly two buildings that were connected to the internet, household wireless internet connections were non-existent and at certain times of the day, your internet connection detectably slowed down as the server loads increased.
By 2005, in less then a decade, internet connections had become cheap, wireless routers are common, not only in the home but in cafes, shops and bars and phones had become more powerful then my first Windows 95 desktop system.
Along with the incredibly rapid technological advancement, which continues to move forward at a rate that is unprecedented in human history, the internet has moved forward as well.
In the 70s and 80s, interfaces relied on text commands, by the 90s, graphic hyperlink based systems had taken over, the mouse now the input device of choice. The period from 1993 to 1998 also saw the rise of the search engines, first Lycos, then Yahoo and Altavista and finally Google, all of which helped to change the internet’s navigation structure, making it more accessible and user-friendly.
Finally, in the last few years we have had the Web 2.0 revolution – forums, usenet, IRC are all old hat now, replaced by blogs, wikis and social networking sites. Instead of content being generated by a few individuals for the use of many, or for specific groups of scientists and academics, content is now being generated by anyone with an internet connection.
For the majority, you don’t even have to pay to host content or have any skill in web-design – Youtube, WordPress, Blogger, Google Pages, 12Seconds.TV, flickr, divientart and thousands of other sites allow users to post any content they wish, with few restrictions and little prior knowledge beyond that needed to operate a computer.
At the same time, we are becoming more free with out personal information – a look round people’s myspace, bebo, facebook and forum profiles can reveal reams of information that, ten years ago, would only have been known by friends and your bank manager.
Even the existence of these sites is a massive step forward from a century ago – my great-grandmother, like many others of that time, spent her entire life living in one village and met only a few hundred people in her entire life. In comparison, your average English-speaking Westerner can talk to a few hundred people in one day.
It’s mind-boggling to contemplate where this is could be leading, although also sadding as the gap between developed and undeveloped, and rich and poor increases by the day.