Whilst working on the latest series of seminars for Netdata and HIE Moray I've been designing a quick 2 minute presentation to sum up the entire history of the web. Of course I made it doubly diffcult by going right back to the invention of the telephone. Well I had to start somewhere, and being as I live in Edinburgh, where better than with Alexander Graham Bell. But when he uttered the famous words "Mr Watson. Come here. I need you" in 1876, he obviously knew he had made a great invention, but just how great he couldn't have known.
Humans love to communicate and time after time any invention that involves communication (even one-way) becomes all pervasive. The postal system, morse code, the telegraph, telephone, radio, TV and the mobile phone have all had a huge effect in bridging the physical gap between one human and another.
But the internet was also born out of post-war paranoia and justified fear. Paranoia over mother Russia's space exploration and the justified fear of the atomic bomb. And from these negative emotions was born the idea of a communication system which had no hub, no centre point, no 'Achilles Heel' . A self-replicating network of nodes. Destroy one and another takes its place.Thus the internet slowly, amorphously developed and continues to sprout forth its digital tentacles into every aspect of our lives.
Parasitical? Viral? Maybe. But it is more a reflection of your own particular world vision .
I prefer to believe that it creates more than it degrades and that my Edinburgh born fellow citizen, Mr Bell, would have been chuffed indeed.
By the way, what did he need Watson for anyway?
Wednesday, February 8, 2006
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