These days, if you remember the pre-Internet world, you've probably got some gray hair.
My wife and I didn't exactly get in on the ground floor of the internets. It was 1995, if I remember right, when we bought our first computer, a gob-smackingly powerful 486/66 desktop with a big, beautiful 17" monitor and a massive 120 megabyte (yes, you read that right, megabyte) hard drive. I signed us up for an America Online account, and it was off to the races.
Three of our four kids don't remember a world without home computers and an internet connection. The oldest was 13 when we bought that 486. But folks like us were on the crest of a wave that would change everything, and the roots of all this, it may surprise you to know, go back to the 1960s. In 1964, there was a Project MAC, working on time-sharing on computers; in 1965 through 1967, a guy named Donald Davies came up with something called packet-switching, which enabled data communication in computer networks, Then, in 1967, work started on ARPANET, the first system intended to carry out data-sharing over a wide area network. In 1972, came InterNIC, the Network Information Center, which was for some years the primary authority handing out domain registrations.
In 1975 - 50 years ago - Telenet went online, the first American commercial packet-switching network, the first commercial public data network. This could, in some respects, be called the beginning of the Internet. USENET (Remember USENET? I miss USENET) came online in 1980. In 1985, the first .com domain was registered. In 1988, the first computer virus hit the internet, called the Morris Worm. In 1988, Archie, the first search engine, went live. The World Wide Web went live in 1991, and with that, the Internet was pretty much in its current form.
Along the way, we were treated to some interesting "firsts."
The first mention of a "flame war," a contest in which correspondents compete with insults, reportedly arose on ARPANET in 1981.
"Trolling," a term originally taken to mean fishing by trailing lines behind a slowly-moving boat, or a mythical beast known for living under bridges, was reportedly first seen on USENET in a December 1992 post in the Usenet group alt.folklore.urban.
The first use of "LOL" appears to have been on something called Fidonet in May, 1989.
Since then, the Internet has pervaded every aspect of our lives, and I'm not completely certain that's for the better. Time was, when you needed a new pair of jeans, a new shirt or hat, or a car part, you had to get up, get dressed, climb in your car or truck, and go off to a store. There, you had to interact with other people, who could be interesting and insightful, or they could be tacky and tedious. Now, you can buy all these things online, which is also frequently tacky and tedious, but it doesn't require you to put on pants, so there's that.
Read More: Is Our High-Tech Lifestyle Now Making Us Crazy?
Hot Takes: Internet Has a Ball Mocking Newsom’s Eyebrow-Raising Sitting Pose
But it's in the field of employment where things have really changed. In my line of work, not all that long ago, I would have had to have lived in a major city. Day in and day out, I would been required to schlep into the city, to work in a newsroom, or an office, or some other crowded, noisy environment. Now, thanks to the wonders of the internet, I can work from my quiet little corner of the Susitna Valley, where my commute consists of walking across the driveway. This has become the case for a lot of people, especially since the COVID-19 debacle punched the TURBO button on work-from-home arrangements.
Of course, there's a downside. The Internet is pretty much the definition of drinking from a fire hose. It's a non-stop stream of information, some of it thought-provoking, some of it informative, some of it pure horse squeeze; the trick is knowing the difference.
You're here, reading a column on RedState, so that speaks well for your abilities in this matter.
In the history of mankind, there have been three major cultural/societal/technological revolutions. The first was the Agricultural Revolution, when humans went from hunter-gatherers to farmers and drovers, enabling an explosion of separation of labor, of specialty trades, and the rise of the first governments and the first cities. Then came the Industrial Revolution, which drove more people into the cities to work in factories, and led to the mechanization and automation of so much of our lives.
Now we're in the third such revolution, the Information Revolution, and it's hard to say where this will all end up. The Internet has now been around for around half a century, which seems hard to believe. And it's still growing, still changing, still coming up with new stuff to play with. The latest thing is now the rise of Artificial Intelligence, or AI, which is probably more dangerous when in the hands of purely natural stupidity.
Who knows what will happen next?
