A thought has within the last 5 years turned into a quote for me.  “We are the first generation to know the Internet, and we are the last generation to not know the Internet.”

When I first started working with computers I really recall it being 1996 and I was a freshman in college.  This was not my first experience with computers, it was simply the first time I ever approached computers with a serious and fascinating perspective that was beyond simple play.  My first computers that I remember were the Apple IIe’s at the elementary school library.  Hours of my youth poured into traveling the nation via The Oregon Trail.  Often I got dysentery.  I wasn’t the greatest hunter but I survived a few times. 

Prior to the Apple’s was the home Atari.  Atari 2600 was my babysitter.  There were plenty of shows on TV and hardly enough time to watch them all.  But no matter what we wanted to play 2600 after dinner.  Atari was a strange and mystifying force that had an uncanny ability to have the five glowing faces of my family glued to the television.  Whether it was Bowling or Berserk we were hooked.  I became a digital citizen.  My future was defined very early by the incredibly magical presence of the Atari.  It was love and it was the beginning of not only my future, but everyone’s  future.

At the same time that Atari was becoming so popular, other strange new devices were entering people’s minds and homes.  I’ve heard of many of my friends getting their futures read to them through the screen of a Commodore 64.  Some people in my general age range remember the 8081. I was lucky when I was younger to receive my first x86 around 1991.  It was several years past its prime but it was the exact start I needed to break away from the Nintendo and expand my mind to something far more functional.

By the time I entered into my first college classes, I had learned how to program in Basic, play Civilization for days, play Doom for what seemed like forever, and to diagnose, troubleshoot, and understand the basic logic that made up my computer.  I was able to physically interact with my computer  such as repair it, or upgrade it.  I was able to create and represent my thoughts and ideas through a new medium, that few of my peers were doing in the same way.  And for the first time I was able to share my thoughts and creativity by using the Internet.

Although 1996 was the defining year for me when the Internet forever took hold in my consciousness, I know it happened at different times for different people. Perhaps a better way to frame my quote is :  “We are the first people in history to experience life without the Internet, and the last people in history to experience life without it.”  People alive today remember life with rotary phones, information booths, and having to read maps on paper.  There was a time when the Internet did not exist in the conscious majority.  But never again will this time pass.  The Internet has caused a revolution of our societies and our selves.  We will not ever experience a global mass of people without constant access.

What does this bode to our future?  Will we completely be dependent on technology and constant access?  Will anyone remember the virtue of ’slowing-down’ and unplugging?  When our children, or our children’s children experience their youth, the Internet in whatever form; will be present and constant.  It will be unthinkable for many people as to what would happen should their access be unavailable for a day or two.  This experience must be similar to the initial spread of publicly available electricity.  The discovery that electricity could be produced resulted in the same cataclysmic shift in the future of society.  At the time production of electricity was just spreading, that period of human existence was the first to experience man generated electricity, and the last period of human existence to live with out it.

What will a future with that lack of first-hand experience of life before the internet be like?  How much will it matter?  What responsibility to the future do we have?  Is it important to record or document what society defined as modern living immediately before the Internet?  What will the documentaries of 50 or 100 years from now be like?  Will they interview someone to ask what it was like?  What goals do we need to have and achieve to ensure that the Internet can benefit humanity and the individuals it pertains?

It is our generation and our time in history that will shape the Internet and the direction of humanity for the rest of human existence.  We have the ability and opportunity stand for good-research and global-standards.  I hope to do my best in the future to promote the Internet and all technologies as ways to secure the integrity of justice, truth, and freedom for the future of all humanity.