Thinking about the Internet

[cdybedahl]

I first felt that the Internet was something new and special in 1991. Sitting in my small flat, using a dial-up connection to an Internet-connected machine I was running IRC. For you newbies, you can think of it as a chat line. Several thousand other people was on the same channel, and we were all reading in realtime what was being written by a bunch of computer geeks and radio amateurs in Israel. They were telling us what their government was telling them, about SCUD missiles heading for them, and (by way of the radio amateurs) what they gathered from the coalition forces’ radio communications over Iraq.

Two things struck me at the time. First, that when those guys had to go down to their bomb shelters because of incoming missiles, I actually worried about them. Because of the chat connection, they were real people to me, not just statistics. Second, I got news about what was happing quickly. Very quickly. The first time a coalition aircraft was shot down, I knew about within a couple of minutes, and more than an hour before it came as “breaking news” on CNN.

I remember sitting there in front of my computer thinking “This is going to be big”. I had no idea at the time how big. I suspect I still don’t.

Fast-forward to the end of 1992. I’ve become hooked on an old British science fiction TV series called Blake’s 7. The other B7 fans I know of number in the low single digits. I turn to the Internet. I find a few more there, and encouraged by them I start a mailing list. Not so very long after, I’m in daily contact with hundreds of other B7 fans.

I could go on telling you about things like that for a pretty long time, but I won’t. Undoubtedly, you who read this have stories of your own exactly like it. How, over the net, you came into contact with other humans and to a greater or lesser degree it changed your life for the better.

That feeling I had back in 1991 after I’d logged out from IRC has stayed with me ever since. It’s bugged me, actually. Because I have not been able to put my finger on exactly what it was about this Internet thing so new, so big. In the years that’s passed, we’ve seen the Net transform things we’d never have guessed. CD and book shops are being killed by online stores selling the same things. An uncontrolled volunteer effort is kicking the arse of the Encyclopedia Brittannica (and all other encyclopedias). The entire music industry is fighting for its life. In general, it’s become obvious that the power of the Internet is significant.

A couple of days ago I started reading a book. A paper one. Yes, that is ironic. It’s called “Here Comes Everybody” and it’s written by a guy by the name of Clay Shirky. It’s basically about how the Internet has made it easier for people to organise. And while reading it something finally, after almost eighteen years, clicked in my head. I’ve not finished it yet, so it’s possible that at some point it says what I’m going to say in the next paragraph or so, but from the chapter headings I don’t think so. Anyway, here it is:

Machines amplify human physical capacity.

Computers amplify human mental capacity.

The net amplifies human social capacity.

Someone with an axe can cut down a tree many times faster than someone without. Someone with a computer can do calculations orders of magnitude faster than someone without. And a group of people connected by the Internet can organise and cooperate in ways that aren’t possible for a group without.

If you’re now going “Amplified social capacity? What’s the big deal with that?”, then you’re not thinking things through. Primitive tools and good social organisation gave us the Egyptian pyramids, which still awe and impress almost five thousand years later. Or take just about anything else really large and impressive. The Great Wall of China. The big cathedrals spread all over Europe. The Roman Empire. What made them all possible was, more than anything else, social structures that supported them.

And now we’ve built us a tool that aids social organisation.

This is a huge change. The kind of change that transforms a society utterly, from the ground up. We’ve already seen things happen that were plain impossible ten years ago. Protesters in Belarus organising via Facebook and causing their government far more trouble than they traditionally should’ve been able to. Dissidents in Egypt communicating via Twitter and being able to do a far better job of resisting their government than they could before.

I suspect that the tools we have now, LiveJournal, Wikipedia, flickr, Myspace and what have you, are the rough equivalent of someone strapping a steam engine to a horsecart. I’m trying to imagine what’s going to be the counterpart of a Boeing 747, and I just can’t. I have absolutely no idea.

But damn, do I ever want to be there to help build the Model T Ford.

Comments

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Increased social capacity. Yes, that makes sense. I'm still in regular touch with friends I made on the Lyst. I owe you a lot for starting it.

Thank you.

[slamaina.livejournal.com]

This was well said. I went to University of Delaware in the early 80's and we used CSNET http://www.livinginternet.com/i/ii_csnet.htm and we thought, wow, this can't get any better, it's so advanced. When I think about what we had to do just to send what we now call email, I am amazed.

Slam