The internet has changed everything. Like all monumental changes, the massive social upheaval caused by the web is barely discernible today. However, what we take for granted today was both unimaginable and unheard of just a short time ago.
If we were to go back 20 years, to 1997, what would we see in terms of information technology, dissemination, and architecture? To begin with, we'd see a much sparser landscape in terms of choice and variety. Today, there are well over a billion websites. Back in 1997, there were probably less than one million.
In 1997, there was no Google. The majority of people used Netscape Navigator to scan and choose between those one million websites. They also spent the majority of their time online parsing through the hundreds of false positive results that Netscape Navigator and its ilk returned with every search query.
Regarding connectivity, the average internet connection was via dial-up, with speeds ranging from 28.8 Kbps up to the then state of the art 56 Kbps. There was no high-speed connectivity. There were no mobile devices. If you wanted to connect to the internet, you sat at a desk and used a desktop computer.
All of this was state of the art technology 20 years ago. However, today this same technology would feel antiquated and inefficient. The difference is perspective. There's an old saying that age brings wisdom. That's not entirely accurate. What time does bring however is perspective. In other words, the more time that passes, the more you can "see" the effects, in this case, of technology on society as a whole.
