The Internet is the New Computer

Most denizens of the Internet often fail to realize that, compared to the many machines we run the Internet on, the Internet is very young.  To give a fair analogy- the Internet in human age could be the child or the grandchild of the first computer, the Zuse Z3, made in 1941.  The Internet, in comparison was at its earliest born in 1969, when the first two packet switches of DARPA came alive, and at its latest, by 1972, where there was the first real application between all of these computers on DARPA, email.

While both were co-evolving with each other, most forget that the original idea of packet-switching technology never really broke out into th public until 1979, with the invention of publicly available email and bulletin board systems.  By this time, businesses and individuals were regularly interacting with the green and black terminals of yore.  These very same black terminals, however, were becoming fully mainstreamed into the public eye with the introduction of VisiCalc.  A huge amount of programs would be written during that time for computers.  The modern conception of a computer for the everyday individual would being roughly around 1980.   In the time frame since then, up until fairly recently, many different types of programs were written to run on individual computers.  The biggest issues for its use during that time-frame was how to protect one computer at a time, and how back its data up and keep its information that it stored in line with other computers that processed similar of the same information.  The idea of very networked computers had yet to take off as a social concept, even though the beginning of backbones were still there even on a local level, for issues such as printing.

In that same period of time, beyond a few boards, the Internet languished.  The forms we remember the Internet in its modern conception really did not take off in the US without the introduction of commercial ISPs and without the US finally stopping the National Science Foundation from lending sponsorship to the Internet b over a long tumultuous battle with major research universities about what is the purpose of the Internet.  The introduction out of UI-Urbana-Champaign of Mosaic also helped the the rapid spread of what we think is the Internet, despite the fact that hypertext was already in existence by that point.  The ability to buy one’s own webspace also allowed the public to rapidly get online quickly.  Names like AOL and Geocities dominated.

Comparing a fully fledged program on a computer at the beginning of the breakthrough moment of the Internet into the public sphere is frightening.   Whereas in the early days of the Internet in public life, most people might never have left the User Interface of their ISP, today, most people never even see the ISP’s name involved in their interface.  Most pages on the web were closer in form to VisiCalc- a great way to display oneself, some information, and perhaps do some basic tasks.  In comparison, the tools used directly on an OS were very powerful.

That world was a world of clarity.  It was clear what one did on the computer.  It ran your programs.  The Internet was too new in the public eye to know what it did.

That was about fifteen years ago.  Since then, there has been one dot-com boom and bust cycle, and a rise of a totally different Internet.

While neither have the feeling of full maturity (how many individuals recognize the full power of computing implied by a very simple cell phone, let alone a complex PDA, with a wireless data plan?), the Internet feels like a young child next when compared to a

computer standing alone.

Because of its innate ability to distribute data, information and processing power, the mechanisms that run the Internetand the forms on which we view it have allowed us to conceive a world  where we do not need to actually be tied down to any one kind of machine, of any given form, in order to use that information.  As a result, the idea of a program is starting to shift away from exclusively a system of  very complex yet static input/output boxes with screens and symbols designed to interact with humans, to  a world where it isn’t so clear where or what the box, the screen, the input, the output, and the symbols are.

This world is heavily dynamic, and in some ways is almost, but not quite, human.  It looks almost pre-born, as if it is in the process of creating the language it needs to speak.  We flock to it because it echos us, up to a point, because we built it as a group, with our collective souls.  As humans, our knowledge keeps changing.  So does the Internet.  It will never be fully finished, just very advanced, because as long as we can keep the price of involving individuals low, we can pour more and more of our knowledge into it.

The Internet is becoming the new computer.  It’s unfinished quality, of where dreams may be born, of where new signs may be found, continually gives it the same feeling that was once beholden to that of computers- a space where individuals, as they find new uses for the tool, continually try to innovate.

We find ourselves with one major difference: The Internet’s evolution depends on its massive size.  It’s mass is what draws us in, and keeps us close by.  As we cause it to grow by pouring ourselves into it, we let it bore down deeper into the fabric of our everyday.  The very pull of its weight, its gravity, will force us to innovate against it, just to maintain space.  Unlike a computer, the Internet is never “off.”

We now are in a society where we are forced to understand our tools, and are forced to innovate at an ever quickening pace.

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