Some said it wouldn’t last, that it would never be able to sustain the amount of users; that eventually, it would crash. But despite doubt and scepticism, the Internet has changed the world as we know it; the way we communicate, find and share information, do business and proven- it is very much here to stay. From being a network of networks to becoming a medium; an information superhighway without geographic frontiers, the Internet has made distances shorter and the world much smaller.
McLuhan’s “Global Village” Becomes Reality
Referred to as the “Oracle of the Electronic Age” in the early 1960’s, Marshall McLuhan predicted that humankind would one day be connected through “electronic interdependence”. Shifting from individualism to a collective identity, what McLuhan coined the “Global Village” couldn’t be more accurate today, thanks to the World Wide Web.
Though McLuhan was far ahead of his time, it would take decades before his theories came close to fathomable. In a Newsweek article published in 1995: The Internet? Bah! Hype alert: Why cyberspace isn’t, and will never be, nirvana, Clifford Stroll argues that “the Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data”, “without any pretense of completeness”, “lacking editors, reviewers or critics”. Bold statements that were a little too quick to judge, (meanwhile, his article had at least two typos in it), Stroll’s main concern was that computers would actually work to isolate us from one another, not bring us together.
Companies were also worried about investing time and resources into the Web due to its perceived unreliability. In many respects, their concerns were valid. Had more companies gone to the web, the Internet almost certainly wouldn’t have been able to handle the influx of new users.
But the Internet has come along way since then. In December of 1995, a total 16 million people around the world were using the Internet. As of December 2009, that number rose to 1.6 billion.
The Impact of Social Media on Today’s Business
In earlier days, websites functioned as simple on-line brochures for organizations, with very little interaction or real value for customers. But as technology improved, so did websites. Over the years, websites have become more interactive and it’s common to see discussion forums, e-commerce for on-line retailing and a wide range of other features, which ties back to the idea of a Global Village. Social media networking is the name of the game now, with websites having to hook into social media websites and create communities. Though we are beginning to see more and more attempts by both businesses and governments to control the Internet, the trend will most likely lead to increasing transparency if they wish to thrive in our fast-paced Age of Information. “The greatest changes will occur in the arena of trust and human relations.”
Internet Predictions Through Time
Here are just a few videos that offer a glimpse into how the Internet has been perceived over the last 40 years.
Internet predictions in 1969
Shopping online, online banking, webcams, (but perhaps not exchange hosting services)- take a look at how remarkably accurate predictions of the future were in this 1969 video.
Internet 1981 from print to online
One of the first attempts at a newspaper going from print to online:
Peter Mansbridge on the Growing Phenomenon Called “Internet”
For $200 a year you could be logged on to a computer network called: INTERNET
Interview with an Internet Café owner in 1995
“Ranking up their in popularity with VCR’s, people are now paying their bills, balancing their chequebook, and playing games online with people on the other side of the globe.” Wonder what they would have thought about today’s web based crm software?
The internet both isolates and connects. It is still an individualist medium and face to face is different to virtual, coalition of interests is different to getting on with your neighbours – who may not be interested in the same things as us.
Web 2.0 is all about hyper interaction and connectivity, in some ways our social networks leave us even more connected than any other way we could think of. Odd collection of videos, but interesting to see the way it was.
I have used and enjoyed learning about new developments in the technology of computing, since my first use of a calculator in pre-Med Chemistry in college circa 1972. My Grandfather was a technical wizard of sorts, who designed many electronic patents early on in the conversion of computing and electronics, from vacuum tubes, to solid state. He worked for Cinch Manufacturing, or Cinch Connectors, which is now a part of TRW. I had a book of his line drawn designs, but I am afraid it has been lost or stolen. As for the interconnectivity of computers, I remember meeting Sally Liu from Taiwan in Lab Director Peter Koutrakis’ Harvard School of Public Health offices. She was a wizard when it came to use of TCP/IP “stacks” or protocols for communicating from one computer to another across a network. That was circa 1992. Just a few years later, I met the Inventor of what we now know as the Internet on a visit from C.E.R.N. – the European academic research group – while he visited at his newly established W3C industry financed web standards board of regulation. Tim Berners Lee and W3C offices happened to be located just around the corner from my own MIT office on the CTPID floor at MIT. I worked for Nick Ashford, an attorney and academic in the field of Toxicology. I told Lee he had no idea even then of the scope of what he had invented, which was simply a Graphical User Interface for that TCP/IP computer protocol for end users across the Internet. The development and explosion and popularity of Internet use, reminds me of the success of Microsoft, in moving from DOS operating systems, which like UNIX are line coding based, towards Windows, which mimicked previous operating systems found on Altos and the Apple MacIntosh computers, and which employs sophisticated Graphical User Interface stragems. So then, in conclusion, the power of the Internet derives from its friendliness and usability by the average person. This is where the money comes from, this is where the changing of the world comes from, and this is where the technological advancements are achieved. Those who would modify computing by tinkering with the empowerment of the ordinary End User, are killing the Goose that lays Golden Eggs.
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