"The Internet is a funny thing.Then and now, it has been a thing: an infrastructural backbone of immeasurable complexity, a scaffolding over modern life that has grown stronger than the building itself, which seems to have crumbled under its weight. And yet despite its inherent physicality -- the routers, the interchanges, the telephone poles strung with wires, and the fiber optic cables crossing the sea -- we persist in our belief that the Internet is inchoate, a cloud. The phenomenon can be traced back to its origins, to Jake's time. The hardware was built with a purpose, to share computing resources across universities and labs. But the Internet as a communications medium practically willed itself into being, transforming the computer fro ma calculator to a box full of voices. Jake, catching up on emails from the very beginning, could only perceive the future as it was: an information age.
pp. 199 - 200, Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet.
it's altered my life to a significant extent, that's for sure... i value greatly the friendships i've stirred up, roiling around here in the mud...
ReplyDeleteI've been online since middle school, so most of my life is unimaginable WITHOUT it. I could adapt back if I had to, I think, but would count myself much poorer..
DeleteThis is such an interesting quotation. The internet is so ubiquitous and has had such an impact upon us. To understand it better, And learn its history, is not just fascinating, but important In order to understand the world.
ReplyDeleteThis book is like that -- it's mostly biography and history, but then the author makes these thoughtful and sometimes poetic musings.
Delete