In chapters 8, 9, and 10, we start to see the internet be used by the public at large. With the help of the world wide web and web browsers, internet usage began to become more of a common thing in society, though it would still be a while before it reached the level of use it has today. Mainly because many people still didn’t really see the practical use of the service.
I’ve already talked about how I thought it was interesting that AT&T had little interest on the digital tool that was the early internet, but to see so many companies as well as most people not see how powerful and practical it could be is staggering! It could be that AT&T others just didn’t see an immediate benefit from supporting such a service, but so many people were uninterested in it that I can’t help but think there’s more to it. Maybe people weren’t to sure on how the service worked and didn’t want to spend time to learn how to use it? Or maybe it could just be people becoming resistant to change since so much technology was advancing at the time; to the point that by the time a person purchased or learned how to use a then new tool, an updated version of it was already becoming popular?
I know I must sound like a broken record at this point, seeing as I’ve covered this obliviousness to the web for the 3rd time now, but I’m just so surprised that people didn’t pick up on the digital revolution for as long as this book has stated. Inevitably stuff like JenniCam and the general dot-com boom was what seemed to get the public onboard, and good thing to. With the launch of the Web 2.0, the internet as we know it finally started to appear.
With that, I leave you with the video below, which covers one of the few times that the internet was covered publically back then. It doesn’t exactly line up with the time period we are currently in, but it does show what the general environment was like for “internet engineers” in the early days of the internet.
Click to view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7hIQhkzgyc&feature=youtu.be
Questions
- What other reasons could there be for people to resist adopting the internet?
- If the U of M had continued progress of the Gopher browser proper, do you think the university’s focus on digital technology would be more prominent?
Image from: http://www.internet-history.info/communications-revolutions/arpanet-internet.html
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