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Not all internet users are trouserless wankers.
No, indeed. As I said, some of the pictures, not all, will feature angry dinkles. However, most pictures of people using the Internet will involve a seated position and a computer.
Well, actually, that's not true. There are tablet PCs, Pocket PCs... these days, people using their mobile phones might be accessing the Internet. We're just at the start of the process whereby people will be able to use WIMAX to make VOIP calls in public places, which means that theoretically the cost of transmitting mobile voice data goes right down - so calling a friend in the US while you both sit in cafes becomes increasingly possible. Throw in laptops and webcams, and you can start thinking about intercontinental dating between people who may possibly never meet in the flesh, and know that from the start of the relationship.
That's futurology, of course, or rather stuff that is doable now but, following the curve, will be much more doable in future, assuming a general progression. So, how's the Internet changeed my life?
Well, it hasn't. What it has done is made my life operate differently from how it would have if breakthroughs had occurred on different schedules. If I'd grown up in one of the many places in the world where Internet connectivity has been and remains comparatively scarce, the way I understand and interact with the world would have been very different.
The democracy of the Internet as a research tool is patchy - it's very useful, but the use is distributed unevenly. In my areas of interest, its use value is perhaps more limited. As a source of news and information, the way Internet access pools more deeply in the west and among the middle classes is disquieting, but it can still be used as a great way to share and pool information quickly.
In fact, quickness and faithfulness of transmission of data. Compared to, say, the fax machine (the continuing existence of which seems increasingly bewildering), the Internet as a route for transmission of data is remarkable, and of course because a lot of that data is data on how to make the Internet more efficient as a means of transmitting data, that effect is exponential and forcing things to move in flatter and more ingenious ways.
So, with blogspot you no longer needed your own server space to have a textual presence on the Internet. Ludicorp and others did the same thing for photos. Youtube and google video, which I don't use - it seems video is the current edge of my utility nexus - are now doing the same thing for things which would ten years ago have taken hours to transmit. Which is throwing up its own issues and challenges about intellectual property and ownership, but frontiers are always tricky.
Base level, the Internet in private hands is primarily a mechanism for sharing experience. And, in letting me do that, it''s been good for me, if time-consuming. I've learned an awful lot of things I wanted to know, and a lot of things I didn't. When I first came to London, I was profoundly isolated, and over time the Internet became a key part of how I met people and found out about things. This was first through blogging - believe it or not, back then there were about thirty bloggers in London, and we all knew what we were all doing _all the time_ - and then through online communities, of which Barbelith has turned out to be the longest-lived. Oddly, I suspect that without a regular Internet connection I would probably have achieved far more, but the way in which I would have achieved it would be so different as to be unrecognisable, and I would not know many people I am very glad to have as friends. I'm still meeting new and interesting people through Barbelith and elsewhere.
Also on the social sphere, if it weren't for the Internet's ability to facilitate easy and non-location-based information storage, I'd lose important data far more often. I can see YouOS and Gmail increasingly becoming my OS and text editor of choice, because I can't drop them, lose them or set fire to them, or at least not without a lot more effort.
So, anyway. Without regular, daily access to the Internet I'd have fewer ulcers and probably more sleep. however, I would have far fewer mechanisms far staying in touch with people I care about. I wouldn't be able to show my friends photographs almost instantly. I'd have to spend more time in libraries. I wouldn't get the same rush of excitement as I do when Coates or Webb or Hammersley or Henderson go off on a flight of fancy about how to change the Interaction design of the world. I'd have to go to more effort to publish fiction, which means I probably wouldn't bother, or would have to have become an entirely different and probably much less easy-going person. I don't lose my diary or my address book the way I used to with paper. And I know that I am only doing a fraction of what even I, a relatively humble home user, could do with the technology and the money.
Case in point - I was over at a friend's the other day. He had hooked his hifi and his Powerbook together wirelessly through Airport, and then hooked up his mobile phone to control his Powerbook. So, he could control what music was playing from anywhere in the house, or buy new music, create a playlist - all quite simple functions, but combined to something that in many ways resembled witchcraft. The Internet's like that - it's just a way to exchange more or less meaningful data. It's the choice of what data you provide - what you give of yourself, in effect - that makes that a useful or harmful tool.
It's also a political tool, however. All that information is up there for a reason. Let's take OneWebDay. Susan Crawford has after a long period of relative independence as a legal commentator on Internet matters joined the board of ICANN. What's the angle here? Why is it important that we take a day to celebrate the Internet? What message is being sent out here? |
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