The Guardian sent Oliver Burkeman to SxSW where he realized the Internet is over:
“If Web 2.0 was the moment when the collaborative promise of the internet seemed finally to be realized – with ordinary users creating instead of just consuming, on sites from Flickr to Facebook to Wikipedia – Web 3.0 is the moment they forget they’re doing it. When the GPS system in your phone or iPad can relay your location to any site or device you like, when Facebook uses facial recognition on photographs posted there, when your financial transactions are tracked, and when the location of your car can influence a constantly changing, sensor-driven congestion-charging scheme, all in real time, something has qualitatively changed.”
We can probably stop saying “digital” media since all media is digital. Same for “online identity.” We only have one identity and unless you’re hunkered down in a Montana cabin, it’s online.
As long predicted, the Internet/Net/Web is woven in to all that we do. Like electricity and indoor plumbing. We don’t think about it. It has become invisible. We’ll stop saying (as I did above) “online” because we’ll never be “off line.” (Yes, I realize there are lots of people in the world for whom this is not the case. It will be.)
I wonder if I will miss the Internet when it is no longer an identifiable thing? Something I can “get on?” A place to go.
I notice this phenomenon when I talk to my parents and they ask questions like, “how do you get the internet?” or “do you have the internet?” They still operate in a dial up—connect via modem mindset.
My kids, on the other hand, don’t think of “connecting” to the internet….it’s everywhere you need it.
Wi-fi changed it for me but the real game changer was my iPhone, I don’t have to go seek out the internet, it’s in my pocket all the time….”is that the internet in your pocket or are you just….”