The world wide web is 15yearsold today. I guess that makes it a petulant teenager, which seems appropriate - it's irresponsible, it's untidy and it spends a lot of its time hunting for pornography. But in those fifteen years the internet has undoubtedly changed the world. It certainly changed my life.
I keep a diary so I know exactly what I was doing on Tuesday 6th August 1991 - the day the world wide web went public. I was woken (thanks Mum) by the arrival of a letter from my solicitor. I was attempting to buy a flat at the time - something I eventually managed without searching for property online or sending a single email. It would never happen today. I read through the newspaper and then, just in case something important had happened since the paper was printed, I checked the latest news on Ceefax. It would never happen today. In the afternoon my brother told me he'd heard that one of his best mates at school had since transformed into a multi-earringed peroxide-haired jazz player. We wanted to check, but there was nowhere to look. It would never happen today. And then I spent the evening at my keyboard playing a very long game of Repton. My computer was plugged into the mains but not the telephone socket, so all that could appear on my screen were words I'd written or software I'd bought. It was all so very insular and, thankfully, it would never happen today.
My life now is very different, and a lot of that is thanks to the internet. I get more emails in a day than I used to get letters in a month. I can check the news whenever I want, rather than waiting for the TV or a newspaper to tell me. I can do instant research without once having to visit a library. I can fill my spare time online without ever needing to leave the house and meet people in real life. And I can communicate with you and you can communicate with me because we're connected, which we never were before. Hurrah!
The day the internet really changed my life was Tuesday 3rd November 1998. That was the evening when I used my fledgling internet connection to check a recruitment website in a county 50 miles away and, hey presto, discovered a particularly appropriate job. I'd never have noticed the post otherwise, not anywhere paper-based and certainly not before the closing date. I got the job a month later, uprooted myself from comfortable normality and took an enormously big risk... which promptly backfired spectacularly. But without that risk I'd never have got the job I'm in now and I'd probably never have moved to London. And I doubt you'd be reading this blog today because in my old job I'd never have found the time to write it. Who'd have thought so much could hinge on one single 1998 webpage?
I owe the internet a lot, because I'd not be where I am today without it. How about you?
I keep a diary so I know exactly what I was doing on Tuesday 6th August 1991 - the day the world wide web went public. I was woken (thanks Mum) by the arrival of a letter from my solicitor. I was attempting to buy a flat at the time - something I eventually managed without searching for property online or sending a single email. It would never happen today. I read through the newspaper and then, just in case something important had happened since the paper was printed, I checked the latest news on Ceefax. It would never happen today. In the afternoon my brother told me he'd heard that one of his best mates at school had since transformed into a multi-earringed peroxide-haired jazz player. We wanted to check, but there was nowhere to look. It would never happen today. And then I spent the evening at my keyboard playing a very long game of Repton. My computer was plugged into the mains but not the telephone socket, so all that could appear on my screen were words I'd written or software I'd bought. It was all so very insular and, thankfully, it would never happen today.
