Well that's sort of a misleading subject line I put since of course change is a good thing. Societies need change to grow. Well actually not everyone might agree, but that's a discussion more suited right now for a Sociology class. Speaking of which I really need to make a post on the discussion board over there.....wait getting distracted again.
The internet has progressed a long way since I was a child and first began to explore it. My earliest memory of using the internet was spending time at my Dad's house downloading "themes" onto his computer. For those who don't know themes originally were a compilation of icons, mouse pointers, a background and overall art style used by Microsoft Plus to change the look of your desktop and assorted folders. The reason I remember this is because back then it took around 3-5+ hours to download one theme pack for something as simple as the Coca-Cola Polar Bears. These files for reference were never more than 1-3mb usually as well. Fast forward to today and most of us are downloading single pictures, music, or videos that are double, triple, or quadruple the size, and even bigger in a fraction of a fraction of the time.
This to me is the biggest difference between the internet of then and the internet of today. It incorporates actually so well into the world's slide into heavy impatience. The whole I want it now motif of life has become so wide spread in that.
The heightened download speeds are also important though because it facilitates every aspect of internet relations, and no not that version of relations. For someone like me who spends anywhere from 6-16 hours a day gaming online, while simultaneously reading forums, doing homework/research, and watching videos this is an amazing things. The amount of power required to do all that is staggering by the standards of 10-15 years ago; especially when you take into account that I live with 2 people who are usually doing the exact same things as I am.
When you get right down to it though I'm sure in another 10 years, assuming the world has that long left to live, we'll be looking back and feeling surprised that we were not always able to download 5tb files in 42 seconds on a "slow" connection.
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I think that the internet is a huge part of the reason that we've become such a I-want-it-now culture--it's made that desire available. And the product or company or site or channel or show that offers it to fastest gets our business, our interest, our attention. It's sad, but it's true. Television and radio can harldy compete--for example, just look at some of the tactics that radio stations resort to to compete for our business. The Bud Bowl? all the fines stations pay if they go over a certain number of curse words? Radio is totally free...but that's not good enough. Now you can listen to the radio for free, online, streaming live. It's like a radio...only it glows?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I think that the internet and techno-junkies who have spurned it are the ones taking us for a ride. Think of it like this: we're a civilization, led by kings and lords with money. We are not our own people. But we feel alone and individual. People who are truly individual, unburdened with culture and society's constraints? Those are homeless people.
Well I, for one, am looking forward to those "slow" 5tb downloads. It'll be freaking awesome. But right now we must be content with the few hundred kilobytes that we have now. *sigh* 5tb really would be nice.
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