Friday, August 26, 2011

Remember when?

My generation has seen some interesting developments. Remember when the internet was dial up? Do you remember your first email account? We never used our names, because this was the internet, people all over the world could see it, you made up something clever instead. Ah, the World Wide Web. Instantly, at the touch of a button your electronic mail was on the other side of the world. It was mind blowing.

Then came chat rooms. You scrolled through the yahoo topics, picked one, then joined a group of people all over the world giving your one line input on whatever you chose to think about for the 10 minutes you were in there – of course, that's only if your connection ran fast enough. Then came ethernet, and myspace, and google and “googling,” and facebook, and wireless, and blogs, and gchat, and skype. Are you going through the progression in your head? Then came the convergence: iphones, and ipads, and iphones with skype apps so we could video chat. Then there are those other things I don't even know anything about - twitter? The fact that our faces are out there in that book at all times so anyone around the world can look you up and add you as a friend. And... it's not even really mind blowing.

Then I was sitting in front of my TV and I had this idea that really did blow my mind, or maybe imploded my mind. Let me tell you where this whole post originated... I was watching a news program and thinking this is where connecting like-minded people around the world originated. The TV. Then all those technologies I listed above flashed before me. From AOL dial up to Wii to that laptop commercial with the kids who are talking on skype to their father who is working abroad (you know it, right?). Finally, I thought about the future and saw the merger of all of them:

I imagined virtual images of us people walking in and out of “chat” rooms speaking to strangers from all around the world on whatever topic for which the virtual room was formed. I thought, whoa that will be cool.

Then I thought: Remember when that was why we traveled?

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