Why are we not amazed?
I remember the first job I had after graduating from college was for a company called Dakota Print. As the name might suggest, it was a printing factory, but as the name might also suggest, it wasn’t in the central United States, but rather on Botanic Road in Glasnevin, Dublin. As I recall, the day I started I wore a luminous orange shirt with a luminous green tie that my mother & sister had convinced me we quite the rage in early nineties, pre celtic-tiger Ireland. They were of course wrong, and it clashed terribly not only with the psyche of the company, but also with the early eighties decor of chocolate brown carpets, cream painted walls and mock-mahogany desks. We had computers, but no real network to speak of, and I certainly don’t remember sharing any files across it. Tucked away in a dark corner, surrounded by shelves that ran from floor to ceiling bursting with cardboard folders, that in turn burst with computer printouts on pin-stripped green and white paper, was a rather unimpressive looking dumb terminal. The green CRT tube would singe and tarnish the air around it and doubtless emitted an array of electrons to make even the most experienced radiographer a bit nervous. The huge chunky pieces of plastic on the keyboard had a reassuring click akin to a light switch when you pressed them. It was on this majestic beast, and only here, that one could send electronic mail.
I think only myself and Cormac ever used it, being the only two people under the age of thirty in a clear two mile radius. It could only display text, and in a single unchangeable font and a single unchangeable green. I had a friend that was traveling in Australia at the time and we used to correspond semi-regulalrly on it. He once attached a photograph, which was sufficient to cause the whole system to come crashing down around our ears. We had to call an engineer to fix it. And I mean a proper engineer, with a blue boiler suit and a set of orange screwdrivers that swept in a neat row across his breast pocket. As he passed and disappeared into a room somewhere at the back of the factory, he cast a disapproving eye in my direction over the top of his bottle-bottom glasses. That, to me, was the internet. I used to think “Well, it’s all very nice for keeping in touch with Colm, but it’ll never take off”.
I have to give a presentation to management next week on an internet related subject, and as a consequence I’ve been sort of forced into thinking about what the internet is to me now. So where do you start? Available to me now is a satellite image of more or less the entire surface of the planet. I can zoom in and see my own house. I can look at a 360 degree photographic view from a good proportion of the earth. There’s a 3D rendering that makes it possible for me to fly through the Grand Canyon or walk down the Las Vegas strip. This is all over-layed by every motor-way, road, street and lane name and number. I have at my fingertips a encyclopedia more detailed and vast than the very best leather bound edition of Britannica ever, and it changes and updates constantly. That same friend is back in Australia now, and he can turn on his computer and time and see me sitting at my desk and chat as if he were beside me. He only has to think to do it and he can. I’m constantly updated on what my friends and family do and where they are doing it. I can get any song I can think of, that’s ever been recorded and achieved some modicum of popularity, and have to keep forever in a matter of seconds. Films. News. Books. Opinions. Videos. Education. Politics. Communication.
Stephen Fry is one of the best human beings alive for reasons too obvious to go into. He’s one of those people that if you could have any four people to dinner… He’s a keen user of technology, has an amazing blog and fantastic podcasts. He’s also a dedicated and regular user of Twitter, and I follow his tweets. If I were to go into my local coffee shop this morning and see him there, I imagine the conversation would go something like this; ‘Oh, hi Stephen. How are you? Fine thanks, all fine. So just back from Madagascar then? Saw the video of the baby chimps. Very cute. And the photos of the spiders. Arrrgh! How did the speech go at the V&A last night? Good, good. Well, they would, wouldn’t they?! So you’re out to dinner with your producer tonight, right? At The Ivy? Excellent. Well do enjoy. Must dash. Up to my eyes at the minute. Toodles!.’ Because of the internet, I think I’m mates with Stephen Fry. Ridiculous.
If someone had told me all this as I sat there having my head x-rayed some twelve odd years ago, I would have laughed in their face. The internet is unbelieveable, incredible and amazing. And yet we find in believeable, credible and are continually not amazed by it. The phenomenal is normal.
Why is that?
