Sunday, January 30, 2011
289) What is the Internet?
My friend Evan sent me this amazing video a couple days ago. It's a must-watch. To see Katie Couric and Bryant Gumbel asking what the Internet is back in 1994 is too good. It reminds us of an inconceivable time - a time without the Internet. We feel like we can't live without it, and that it's such a huge part of all aspects of our lives. And yet, here is proof of a time before Google, before email, IMs, and Facebook. It's akin to seeing footage or images of life before automobiles or electricity.
Couric and Gumbel clearly weren't on the cutting edge of technology when this video was shot. But can we really define what the Internet is, even today? If you were trying to explain the Internet to an alien, what would you say? The explanation of, "it's a giant computer network," just doesn't cut it anymore. Unlike cars or light bulbs, the Internet is this nebulous concept that encompasses so much. And now add apps, the cloud, and opensource. The video reminded me of the Can you draw the Internet? project I wrote about in the past. See creatives and kids' artistic interpretations of the Internet here.
It's amazing that something so vital to our lives can be so slippery to define.
1 comments:
I like how our language around the Internet has changed as well.
We add the article "the" to it whereas they didn't - which I think adds credibility to your claim that it's a nebulous concept. Kind of like how we say "The Universe" instead of "Universe" to represent this huge abstract singular entity. Same thing with California Freeways ("The 10", "The 405", etc.). No one can fully tell how expansive any of those things are.
Bryant Gumbel also skipped saying "dot" in his reading of the "violence(a)nbc.ge.com" which was hilarious to me because:
1) it sounded so weird, since it's such a regular part of our language today
2) the @ sign was totally represented as an 'a' with a circle around it
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