I was reading the a very interesting article by The Guardian the other day, “From the first email to the first YouTube video: a definitive internet history“, which gives a nice round up of all the milestone internet firsts. Specifically it talks about the first email, virus, online community, smiley, multiplayer game, search engine, browser, webcam, blog, cybercafe, eBay sale, Wikipedia entry, social networking site, major dotcom failure and YouTube video.
A 1977 TRS-80 Microcomputer (Source: www.trs-80.com)
Reading about how they all awkwardly started and where they are now, made me realize how far along we came since then, which is mind boggling when you think of how huge of a leap we’ve taken in just a few years. What’s even more mind boggling is thinking where we could be a few short years… I can already see the next generation, where kids are taught Interned History in school as a worldwide subject, where teachers will need to explain to their students what a ‘computer device’ was, what it was like to flip through a book, turning pages instead of scrolling down pages and having to ‘connect’ to the internet instead of being automatically online 24/7 (Minority Report, anybody?). You might argue that this sounds too futuristic and too far away, but don’t be so sure. I remember a dear MIS professor during my St. John’s University years who was already talking with arguments about the near future where our kids/ grandkids will be laughing at us when we tell them that we actually had to go out to buy a computer because by that time computer-like capabilities will be accessible through hypodermic microchips installed on each person.
Furthermore, take into consideration that it takes about 30 years for confidential military technology to trickle down to commercial use availability as it is being said and that they are already working on quantum computing in universities (as I have been told 3 years ago by a friend of mine who’s a PhD student). This makes you wonder how advanced military technology must be by now.
If you’re still not convinced, here’s some food for thought, a TED talk video on (mind blowing) sixth sense technology that’s already available for buying
and the Nokia Morph Phone Concept which explores telecom uses of nanotechnology, expected to be commercially released by 2012.
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