The Internet

I saved a copy of a special Time magazine edition dedicated to the Internet. That was in 1994 and the "World Wide Web," "cyberspace," and "the information super-highway" were the hot new buzz words. I bought my first computer that year as well and was all prepared to join the legions of net surfers. I was in Japan at the time and was pleased to discover that the city of Kyoto had a dedicated internet service at a flat fee of about $12 per month. Although I had trouble figuring out how to set everything up, in time I was making contact with people in Japan and around the world and managed to put up my own homepage.

Some 10 years later, the Internet is as much a part of daily life as all the early hyperbole said it would be, probably even more. Not as essential as electricity but extremely useful all the same--perhaps more analogous to the telephone--it is rather interesting that there were no predictions about anything like it despite years of futurologists and science fiction writers speculating about what the future would be like. That is one of the beauties of the Internet. It is at once something so useful and practical, yet no one really had the vision or insight to actually plan it. It seems to have evolved out of the growing role that computers began to play in society, a need for a super military power to develop the most sophisticated communications network possible and the needs of a world growing more and more integrated in terms of business and commerce, information and travel. I would presume that all three elements were essential for the evolution of a worldwide multimedia communications network such as the internet has become, but I believe it was the emergence and popularity of personal computers that really made the Internet happen with the speed and breadth that it did. In only a few years it became a network that covered the planet and it has steadily become more dense through the years.

In line with the growth of personal computer use, what makes the internet most fascinating is its use as a personal tool. It seems to have replaced in large part letter writing and to a lesser degree phone calls. It is becoming the preferred medium for enjoying music and photographs and has made serious in-roads into the world of video. These are but a few of its common uses at the personal level. A new addition to this panoply is the phenomenon of blogging. Where email was a way to communicate with individuals or groups of individuals instantaneously, blogging provides a way for the ordinary man to broadcast to the world whatever he so chooses.

I will save blogging for a future topic. Of course I share these very words through the medium of the blog. Whomever and whenever one happens to read a posted message, it is the ability to express oneself that seems to provide the blogger with the most sense of satisfaction. It is enough that there is the potential for an audience whether or not it actually materializes.

Like the emergence of the Internet itself, its uses seem to naturally evolve, evading efforts to predict. After email, online music downloading and now blogging, what will emerge next? My guess is that the growing wireless connectivity for the Internet will result in its use for even more fundamental and wide-ranging tasks. Beyond that, I dare not offer any predictions.