I first got the internet at home in 1995. I remember this because it was before Quake came out, and it was some time before I started using OPENSTEP in 1996. I used some 2.x version of FreeBSD, and Windows 95 was the world’s choice of operating system.
The internet changed my life immediately. I used to wake up early to play Quakeworld (for hours) before I went to work. You could spend entire days surfing. The whole web was new and unknown. Even in the early days socialization was an aspect of the web. Long before anyone dreamed of Facebook or social networking I was using IRC as a social tool and a means for retrieving information. Before blog comments and web forums we used usenet and mailing lists for all of our trolling and flaming online communication.
Here it is 15 years later, and how would we function without the web? On my days off I spend a good chunk of my day plugged in to some extent or other. Information, communication, and entertainment have all to one degree or other become dependent on the web. You don’t have to be a techie to have the web be a crucial part of your life, it’s permeated almost everyone’s life. How many people do you know that don’t use Facebook or Last.fm or YouTube or Wikipedia, etc.?
Yet, it seems to me with all this change the internet has brought to how we communicate, receive information, and enjoy entertainment, it’s also destroying some of the traditional ways we received the same content.
The media in danger of extinction because of the internet includes newspapers, magazines, comic books, movie rental businesses and physical media for music and film. You only need to Google “newspaper closings” to see that it’s a dire time for print media. I don’t personally read a lot of magazines unless I’m sitting in my doctor’s office, but I do know that in 1996 there were a lot more gaming magazines than there are today. (R.I.P. EGM, Next Generation and Intelligent Gamer)
I am more apt to get a movie via on demand, through Netflix or through the 360 or PS3 than I am to drive to the movie rental place down the street. You can see the result with all the Blockbuster and Hollywood Video closings. For that matter, how many mom and pop video stores are left?
How many of you are old enough to lament the death of vinyl? CDs are nice. They sound good. They’re small. We lost something when the CD replaced the record. I never got the same feeling opening a new CD that I did with a record. All of a sudden album art and liner notes became a lot less important. We lost something. Not to mention that the dope smokers had to look for a new medium to de-seed their marijuana now that the double album was extinct. Not that I would know, I’m just guessing…
My grandmother died in the early 90s, and she took almost a century of culture with her. My family gatherings never were the same. This was a woman whose grandparents had immigrated to this country, and you knew you were in a Norwegian-American home when you visited. Meals at her table were like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Every meal. In cooler weather her back porch served as a cold pantry, and there you would find cookies and pies and lemon bars and any variety of delicious treats. At age 8 it was the next best thing to visiting Santa Claus at the North Pole.
In my family we’ve done our best to keep her legacy alive. My mom took it upon herself to make pies that are at least close to grandmas, and I make my grandma’s macaroni and cheese. We have big, elaborate holiday dinners with all the kids and I hope that they will have the kind of great family memories that I have from my childhood.
I’m not rambling. The last two paragraphs prove a point; that no matter how far forward you go you should never fail to look back. There are things about the analog world that our modern, digital world can never, ever replace, and we need to hang on to those things.
I like the Kindle and the Nook. I am excited about the flood of tablets we’re going to get buried under next year. I appreciate everything that the internet has introduced to my life to make it easier for me to communicate and get the information I want.
I just never want to live in a world where I can’t take my four year old to the library to get a Dr. Seuss book.
I never want to forget how picking up a book that is older than I am, licking my index finger to turn the page and smelling that old book smell feels.
I don’t want my grandchildren to not know what a comic book is.
I don’t want to have to remember what it was like to sort through a newspaper on Sunday morning.
That’s one of the reasons I am so against Google Chrome OS. Despite the fact that I am an operating system enthusiast, there just isn’t any substance to Chrome. It’s the bare minimum to boot your hardware and use a web browser. That is just not enough. Chrome represents a world with no local apps. Chrome represents a world with no local storage. Chrome represents a world where EVERYTHING resides in the cloud. Chrome represents a world where we are all using dumb terminals and let the cloud dictate what we do on a computer. It means complete reliance on the cloud, and unlimited power for Google. I hate it. If you have any stake in a free internet and the freedom to do what you want with your computer you should hate it too. I still think Google is a smart company that makes good products, but I am vehemently against the direction they have gone with Chrome OS. It represents the user giving up freedom and control and trusting others to make up your mind for you. It’s communism. Let’s just hope they don’t screw up Android while they’re at it.
Ok, that last paragraph was a ramble.
Today’s point is, the web is great, technology is great and we’re better off with every change this stuff has made in our lives than without it. Just remember that not everything we’re leaving behind really needs to be or should be left behind.
What I don’t want is a world where we abandon things of substance for convenience and ease of use.
