we’ve come a long way baby
forgive the tounge-in-cheek title, but in this case it seemed VERY appropriate. earlier today my colleague, and co-nerd Jana, you know the one with the IMPOSSIBLY long category name (did she read our website?) sent me a link to a “website” for a business that had a copyright date of 1996. now, i will spare the business from any more humiliation and will not link to or display the address here. I am sure you all have seen the type though, looks like it was put together in Microsoft Publisher (now there i will name names because it is VERY DESERVED, but i will withhold the rest of my vitriol towards microsoft for a day when they really get me steamed) it has a repeating tile background, and more than a handful of animated gifs, rainbow bars and the default settings for all the text and links on the page. that lead to a brief discussion about AOL, online chatting, and angelfire which could be considered the precursor to social networking websites.
it just lead me to think about how far the technology has come in just the past few years. hopefully i will not date myself too much, but i remember a time without the internet, i remember when it was practically useless for information gathering, and now i am constantly using it for fact checking, directions, event research, and a whole list of additional activities that used to be done through some hard copy method.
so without getting too technical i would like to thank technology a little bit for the list of things the web has brought us and invite everyone to do the same (if i forgot anything just add it on to the list)
- phone numbers
- maps
- wikipedia
- IMDb
- google (followed by all other search engines)
- blogs (too many for me to list but feel free to name your favorites)
- online video games
I know there is more, and I will edit this post as i come up with more, but for now, its your turn!