Because geek is cool and clever

We’ve only just begun March 6, 2007

I stopped to think the other day and realised that March 2007 is something of a red letter month for me and this column as I’ve now been writing it for a full ten years.

Aside from the almost mandatory remarks such as “Gosh, doesn’t time fly?” and “Where have all the years gone?”, it is quite remarkable to look back over a decade that has seen the web evolve in such dramatic fashion.

1997 was my second year as an Internet user. 1996 saw me initiate my online life by surfing the ‘information super highway’ (remember that?) on an old 28kbps external modem that had been given to me by some crazy, bleeding edge futurist friend of mine who had recently made the jump to the light speed experience of 56kbps.

Of course, back in those days, web pages were considerably more simply in their layout (though Web 2.0 is returning us to the sane days of clear presentation and quality content, thankfully) and productivity wasn’t affected by the distraction of incoming emails as practically none of my colleagues, family and friends had one.

It would be easy to look back on those days with dewy eyes, breath out a sigh of contentment and mutter that ‘ah, those were the days’, but how great were they really?

On the positive side, the Internet had a pioneering feel about it and it did feel special to be a part of that, though I’m not sure I realised how much at the time.

I also felt part of a community, however geographically distant we were from each other. The Net wasn’t taken for granted. Instead it was a unique place you ‘went to’.

But a limited web where if something did exist it was difficult to find (Google was still a couple of years off) and incredibly slow to access just doesn’t hold a candle to today’s experience. Bulletin boards and chat rooms were fun but ultimately pointless and trivial.

I feel as though I’ve matured with the Internet and I hope this column has reflected that. Online innovations don’t only continue, they grow at a steadying pace and if we could hardly have imagined the impact it would have on today’s world ten years ago, imagining how things will be in another ten years is incredibly exciting.