Today, March 15 is the 26th birthday of the internet as we know it. The first domain name, Symbolics.com, was registered on March 15 1985, and still exists.
From this humble beginning, just a generation ago has risen the greatest force for change since people realised that steam could be used to drive machines, and that idea took 150 years to filter through the world.
Sitting on the train today coming back from a meeting in the CBD, it appeared that every second person was using a smartphone for a seemingly wide range of things that had little to do with talking on the phone, and there were a number of tablet computers and e-readers going. Just a generation ago, phones were large black things with rotary dials that enabled you to talk to only one person at a time, and most households had only one! Newspapers were the curators, editors and suppliers of the news, most peoples network of friends was limited to about 50 at most, divided ionto a couple of categories, school, work, and social (mostly met at the kids activities), the post was the only way to get documents from one place to another, and marketing was all about broadcast communication to a mass market, segmented only by demographics and geography.
How things have changed in 26 years, I cannot begin to conceive what it will all look like in another 26 years.
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