Daddy, did they have chat rooms when you were a kid?

My 12 (going on 19) year old daughter asked me this amazing question over the dinner table last night.  Putting aside the rather worrying undercurrent for any parent, it meant I launched in to an impromptu history lesson of computing.  I explained to her that most of what she understands as the Internet has really only developed in to the public phenomenon that it now is during her own lifetime.  I told her that the closest I got to a computer when I was growing up in the 50s and 60s was in one of my science fiction books.  I didn't tell her that my first contact with a computer was at University in the 70s typing 80 column cards on an IBM 029 card punch - that would make me sound like a dinosaur rather than the cool Dad I try to be.  I did tell her that in the late 70s and early 80s when my, then, employer (IBM) developed a company wide e-mail system we found it fantastically useful, but didn't seem to mind that we couldn't use it to communicate with anyone in the outside world.  I remember, in 1986, cancelling my order for an Amstrad PC because I was fed up with waiting for it, and buying an IBM PC for myself instead for around £3,000 (including the printer) - it sounds such a ridiculously vast sum of money if you take in to account the value of the pound in your pocket back then.

It seems amazing that Tim Berners-Lee only came up with the term World Wide Web and developed the first browser around 1990. 

During some sessions in the CERN cafeteria, Tim and I try to find a catching name for the system. I was determined that the name should not yet again be taken from Greek mythology. Tim proposes 'World-Wide Web'. I like this very much, except that it is difficult to pronounce in French.

- Robert Cailliau, A Short History of the Web, 2 November 1995.

To put a different perspective on this, I often think about the world of Star Trek.  A 1966 TV programme set in 2263, where people carried personal communicators and hand held computers that they could write on.  Doors opened when you got close to them, and you could communicate with the computer by voice commands, as well typing on a keyboard.  That computer gave them access to all of the combined knowledge, history, and literature of the world.  If you plucked someone from 1966 and brought them to 2005 they would be staggered by how much of that vision exists today, but confused by the fact that we haven't already got a manned base on Mars. 

Just as I've been writing this piece I've received a research release from the Center for Media Research.  It is a US study, but it says:

About 21 million, or 87% of kids ages 12-17, use the Internet. According to a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, half of all teens and 57% of teens who use the Internet have created a blog or webpage, posted original artwork, photography, stories or videos online or remixed online content into their own new creations. The study considers them "Content Creators."

Also, while I've been writing this I've been having an IM conversation simultaneously with my friend Dennis in Spain.  He just told me:

We won't see our kids or grandchildren this Xmas so I'll do a podcast mashup - they understand that!

So it is only since the early 90s, when my daughter was born, that most of us have been using the Internet and the web, and the rate of change is truly amazing.  Use of Skype, IM, and the Internet arriving on my mobile phone have all really only got off the ground in a mainstream way in the last year or two.  The blogosphere and podcasts are upon us, changing the worlds of media, marketing and business, as well as personal life.  I expect even greater changes in 2006, which is all very, very exciting.

Right… now I have to go and investigate if some bloke called Jason, who lives near Gatwick, that my daughter met on an Internet game called Runescape is a potential threat or not!
Technorati Tags : Internet, chat, IM, Berners-Lee, history, Star Trek

 

Powered By Qumana