What do you think of when you hear the words "the internet"

[npor]

I think of a bunch of men and women sitting infront of a HUGE switchboard 1940's style, switching stuff around constantly.

Like a switchboard the size of...a mall or something.


Or according to this picture, just a bunch of women.



Or ghosts?

[CB7_213]

LMAO!

[JoshM]

Serious business.

[Flatline]

Serious business.

i hate you.... i was just thinking this....

GET OUT OF MY HEAD!

[coletrain]

The internet is a weird concept.

All the information you could ever want, right at your finger tips. You just plug a wire into the wall and voila!

Like...where does all this information come from? Is there a huge "internet" building somewhere in Nevada that supplies the Earth with knowledge? I can use advanced communication to talk to you guys and never have to meet you.

Just think about how amazing the telephone was or Morse Code during invention...

Think about how much we rely on the internet. There used to be things like the "Phone Book" lol, or how about a Map. When was the last time you used a Map...I sure can't remember.

What will information / communication technology be like in 100 years. It boggles my mind



Think about all that invisible information buzzing around our heads...passing through us and into a device.



It reminds me of Louis C.K's joke about technology going to Space. But seriously...think about how amazing texting is. It's such a simple concept now, but really think about what it's doing. Your sending a written message to a set of numbers...and somehow that message can be received to a single device, half way around the world. And this happens with-in seconds.

[TypeG]

later.

[cp[mike]]

its more amazing if you think of the way that it is made up. any information transmission medium you can imagine works, and ultimately, somewhere, will be a path between your node and the node you are trying to reach, as it utilizes anything from fiber trunks to copper lines to radio waves to reach the other side. at the computational speed of electricity. built on a structure that was specifically designed to be scalable from a few computers in a room, to many millions across the globe.

when i think of "the internet" i think mainly of the idea of a generalized medium for transmission of information, interconnecting every device (and in turn person) across the world. it allows for unrestricted communication and spread and collection of information.

like coletrain said, its mind blowing to imagine what sort of world is going to develop out of this enormous creation? however many thousands of years ago, communication between isolated groups was severely limited - now we are basically living during the birth of a world where all corners of the globe are reachable by anybody, and any resource of documented knowledge can be accessible by anybody curious. the internet is allowing us to tie our transportation systems together. our economic systems. our social systems. everything.

and now that its here, its own development is helping accelerate its own development, which makes it entirely impossible to even imagine what might come out of this within the next 100 years. will it plateau, or continue beyond what we can fathom? granted people are still people, but itll be a whole different world.

[Makaveli2k]

[Tippey764]

Porn.

[deevergote]

Al Gore.










Seriously, though... the speed at which this world changed as the internet became increasingly accessible is astounding.

I got my first internet-capable computer in 1997. I was 17 years old. Before then, I had never used it. Never had a cell phone. Never had a pager. I called people from a phone wired to the wall.

Now, I can go on the internet anytime I want. On my phone. In my car. Driving.
Yesterday, I was driving at 45mph on the back roads of Princeton NJ, and I was being followed by a BMW X3. Now, this truck had never before interested me... but at that moment, I found myself curious to see how much they sell for. So, what did I do? Pulled out the iphone, at 45mph, and carefully typed in www.cars.com.
I searched for used cars while driving.


It's normal. Totally normal. Without stopping to think about it like this, I don't even realize how truly exceptional such a thing is! 12 years ago, before I experienced the internet, my life was totally different.



The internet is responsible for much of my life right now. I fuel my passions with the internet (music, video games, cartoons, cars). I got my job on the internet, and my job is made possible largely because of the internet (I search tax records and phone records... which would take forever to do with actual paper files... I submit my reports, get my assignments, and communicate with my "boss" through email). I've gone on dates arranged through the internet.
Anything I want to know... anything I want to buy... can be found on the internet.
Did you know you can go grocery shopping on the internet? They'll deliver your food.

[GHOST 2.2]

if this was possible, this would put alot of pilots out of business.

the next step after internet, molecular transportation.

[deevergote]

I wonder how far away from matter transfer we really are...

I suppose the concept is that matter is broken down into microscopic particles that can be transported by one method or another (light, perhaps?), and then re-assembled. Which essentially is saying that one could take raw matter particles and make anything they wanted... You could disassemble 4 medium sized dogs and build yourself a gorgeous girlfriend.

[skilzz]

its one of those things i try not to think about (like if god created us who created him) bcuz it CAN drive u crazy

[wed3k]

i think about the amount of money ive made off the internet.

[npor]

I wonder how far away from matter transfer we really are...

I suppose the concept is that matter is broken down into microscopic particles that can be transported by one method or another (light, perhaps?), and then re-assembled. Which essentially is saying that one could take raw matter particles and make anything they wanted... You could disassemble 4 medium sized dogs and build yourself a gorgeous girlfriend.

I remember reading an article about matter transfer actually.

The amount of matter that was transferred was minuscule, and the distance traveled was less than a foot away, but I guess the task completed was a big step.

That was over two years ago, and I haven't heard of anything since, though.