October 17th was the day that the web was officially born just 10 years ago.
That day a company called Spry introduced a product called
“Internet in a Box.” For the first time, you could trot down to
a store, buy a software package, take it home and have everything
you needed to connect to the Internet and the World Wide Web.
Spry later became a part of CompuServe, one of the first of the
online services. It was the biggest of them in 1994. Then
CompuServe was acquired by America Online (AOL) which then merged
with and was devoured by Time Warner.
Source: Wally Bock’s Postcard from the Digital Age.
Looking back, it would have been impossible to foresee the deep changes at all levels of society this would set in train. Try to remember life pre-email (offices were noisy places as everyone was on the phone!), pre-Amazon, pre-eBay, pre-Blogging and when you got your live news and weather on the hour from TV or radio. Industry news for your sector arrived once a week in a magazine. And job searching was done from hard copy too. Networking was done face to face or by phone and it was really tough to get hold of people.
Obviously, I’ve missed out loads of things in this brief analysis. But it’s staggering to think that this has all happened in just 10 years (OK 10 years and 3 days).
I wonder what the next 10 will hold for us?
Just as it would have been nearly impossible to speculate 10 years ago, it’s even more difficult now, as technology is changing something like 4 times faster than 10 years ago. As Bill says, you tend to overestimate change in the next 2 years and underestimate it in the next 10.
There is one thing I can be sure of. If 1994-2004 was the age on the PC and the web, 2005 – 2015 is going to be the age of the mobile phone and the web. The PC is ready to be packed off into retirement to make way for its rampant, vulgar young offspring and now we’ll really see some changes.
What a fascinating time to be alive!
Russell
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