Larry and sergey = schemantic web Jon and vint cerf=tcp/ip Tim and philippkhaune=mosoic!!
Web2.0 ???
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> Want to hear a few songs off the new CD I just bought? I’ll make > MP3s and email them right off.
Ooh, I don't think Charles and Caroline would approve of that, even if the RIAA Marshall was a day's ride away.
> But we become insulated from the rest of society. The surging > advancement of technology tends to dehumanize culture at the very > same time it enhances it.
Yep, we're not in Kansas any more.
> Google is a terrific example. Two grad students at Stanford > cobble some PCs together, and the end result is a business that > literally has changed the way the world operates. What a stunning > achievement – one that ranks up with Alexander Graham Bell, > Thomas Edison, and the like.
Steady on Brinke, the Internet and/or the Web has changed the way the world operates, just like the telephone and electric light (which is what I guess you're getting at, 'true' inventor quibbles aside). I suppose a shaky case might even be made for 'search' itself. But Google? Really?
> There are other landmark companies of the Net Age, to be sure. > Companies like eBay, Amazon, and Yahoo! have all made enormous > cultural and technological advances that have shifted the way we > talk, eat, sleep, and interact.
I'm pretty sure my sleep is unaffected by any of those, and an occasional nudge describes the rest better than a shift.
> Social, political, and > geographical boundaries have blurred to create a true global > community, at least from a techno-standpoint.
From a techno-standpoint, about 85% of the global community[1] can't use the Net (i.e they don't have both access and sufficient knowledge to do so), let alone have their sleep shifted by Google.
> China, though, still has issues, as Larry and Sergey have noted.
Or Google now has collaboration 'issues', as some of China's global community have noted. Presumably most of the 90%+ of China's population not yet using the Net don't yet worry much about Google's effect on how their world operates. And let's not forget the dozens of other countries and regimes[2] with similar social and political boundary 'issues' (most of which are apparently not big enough potential markets to trouble Google's ethics ganglion).
> I am definitely a Net fan.
Me too. But you're a little long in the tooth to be a Google fanboy[3], surely? ;)
> But with all the inherent coolness of being able to [...] I still > think the simple life back on the prairie might be the way to go. > Talk about peace and quiet. Pa plays the fiddle, Ma does some > sewing, while Laura and Mary do their homework by candlelight > with a tablet and pencil, and Carrie does...well, whatever it was > she did.
Not me, I like it here in the Emerald City[4]. And all of my modern miracles have off/pause/mute buttons ...
[1] http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm [2] http://hrw.org/doc/?t=internet [3] http://www.google.com/search?q=define:fanboy [4] Erm, I may be mixing my folklore here ... |
So I read your article and thought to myself, I wonder what Laura Ingalls really looked like. I bet she didn't look like Melissa Gilbert. So I went to google and found a picture... |
Sigh. The Web and search engines do not replace libraries. At least not yet. They're a great help to get started, though, and even sufficient for some tasks. |