The Rise of the Interwebs
To help celebrate its 25th anniversary, USA Today is running 25 lists of 25, neat and tidy and concise, as Seinfeld famously once helped to drive home. How the Internet took over does a fun job of blasting through the Internet Age. I’m positive that we all could argue about what should and should not have made this particular list, but I think it’s more useful in this case to just kind of drink it in and realize how far and fast we’ve come in so short a time.
Bloggers rock in at #22, just after The Drudge Report, a site I tried to put somewhat in its place over the weekend. One surprise is no mention of YouTube or the rise of video, though broadband does check in at #5. Interesting to see the mention of Craigslist at #23, which I suppose is a stand-in for how powerful organic and grassroots-led efforts can be online.
“Gaming and virtual worlds” ends the list at #25, and that’s as good a place as any to lead off the edge to the next 25 years or so. The rise of MMOs (Massively Multiplayer Online) has already begun but has yet to penetrate the mainstream public. Avatars, virtual guides, and fully immersive and interactive 3D worlds where people get social, learn, flirt, play, and communicate will be the norm much sooner rather than later.
I just related earlier today to some colleagues about my first experience with what later became known as instant messaging. Down at the “computer pod” at Binghamton University, this would be circa 1992 or so, you could see who else was at one of the work stations and message them. The pod was the first place I can remember using e-mail as well, which I found to be a rather amazing thing to behold. Little did I know what would lie ahead!
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