I had some banking business to do this week, so I was sitting with a banker while he did some stuff on his computer. As you know, things at the bank always take twice as long as you expect. So, I am sitting there, thinking about things, looking for details to focus on as a way to occupy my mind while I waited.
The banker apologized for how long things were taking. He said that the connection was just running slow today. And, that got me thinking about dial-up connections which lead to memories of accessing the Internet in the early 1990s and then I started thinking about life with early AOL. I love that sound the modem used to make, the electronic handshake as the computer logged onto the phone connection.
The Internet is a miracle, an absolute flat-out miracle. In future centuries, people will look back on the creation of the Internet as being a fundamental shift in culture, a dramatic and radical change in the way we all live. It is as dramatic and life-altering as the creation of electric light. Imagine for a minute what it was like to live without electric light, in a world lit only by fire. Those two worlds are as different as the world before the Internet and the world afterward.
Then I took a good look at the banker. I realized that he was somewhere between 27 and 32. I asked him if he remembered a time when we didn't have the internet. Nope. My banker has never known a world that didn't have the internet. It is one of the basic assumptions he makes about how things should operate. We should always have fast connections. And, of course, we should.....
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