Lo and behold: The Internet!

the history of the internet and my unsolicited opinions

I imported old posts from an old newsletter, but oddly, not all of them drifted over, so those stragglers are going be posted occasionally as new posts, but you’ve already read them if you’ve been with she’s my rushmore for years. If you’re newish here, and a bit bored, have a looksy around my updated archive. Maybe there’s something relatable there.

The following was originally posted May 21, 2021. Edited. And it’s pretty comical how I dis the internet a bit and yet here I am, online, eating my words.

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If we take a moment to stop and think about just how vast the internet has become in such a short span of time (50-some-odd years), it’s staggering. It’s become part of our daily lives and its integration into the modern world is practically seamless and feels like it all evolved in the blink of an eye.

Answers to questions are received within moments. You no longer have to make that special trip to the library 30 minutes away to use microfilm readers for research. You aren’t even required to be logged in to your computer to do these things. It can all be done from your handy-dandy micro-computer, the smartphone.

The internet gives us access to fast communication platforms, diverse forms of entertainment from games to streaming networks and feeds us news and a wealth of information happening in real-time.

Basically, it’s become omnipotent.

If the internet shut down today, perhaps riots and mass chaos would ensue because we’ve forgotten how to live before it — before the life of instant gratification.

What will be the existential impact of the internet on humans?

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In the 2016 documentary, Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World, filmmaker and Director Werner Herzog followed the life of the internet from its past to present and questionable future. Along the way, he talks with experts and amateurs about it and other avenues of technology such as robotics, artificial intelligence, self-driving vehicles, etc., and questions its impact on humans.

I was engrossed by the investigation and history of it all.

The Past: The Revolution

The University of California, Los Angeles.

Ground Zero.

IEEE MILESTONE IN ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING AND COMPUTING

Birthplace of the Internet, 1969

At 10:30 p.m., 29 October 1969, the first ARPANET message was sent from this UCLA site to the Standford Research Institute. Based on packet switching and dynamic resource allocation, the sharing of information digitally from this first node of ARPANET launched the Internet revolution.

The message sent that night in 1969 was from the UCLA campus and the recipient the Standford Research Institute in Menlo Park 400 miles away. The goal was to log in from one computer to another. To do so, they needed to type in “LOG” and the computer would finish with “IN” automatically.

The data entry for this momentous hour is, funnily enough, written on a paper notepad and it states that the first message sent through the internet is “LO” because the computer at SRI crashed before getting to the “G.”

“Lo” and behold: The Internet!

A decade later, the entirety of people on and using the internet was kept in a directory about an inch thick, disclosing the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of each person. Keeping an internet directory today wouldn’t be feasible with its abundance of users.

It wasn’t until the early ‘90s, though, that the internet became groundbreaking when the World Wide Web was invented and everybody could go online and “be connected.”

Even though this newfangled, innovative technology had started to weave itself into our existence, these were slower times — so they felt. Computers had slower processors and hustle culture didn’t exist. There was never a felt rush. Maybe I perceived life this way because I was simply a kid at the time, but I wouldn’t trade that mindset for anything.

The internet was on the verge of changing our existence and the virtual world was coming to the forefront.

The Present: The Disputed Darkness

“In any frontier, before the law gets there, there’s always people seeking to take advantage of the system.”

—Sam Curry, Security Analyst

Nobody is held accountable and this shows true character.

We’ve arrived in the timeline when it’s become easier to be cruel to others because words and actions can be said and done anonymously from behind a screen with no subsequent repercussions.

There has always been evil in the world. The internet just gave it a bigger platform.

The internet has become a safe-haven for some and a Hell for others. Hiding behind its walls has brought out the worst in some and the best in others. One man’s tool is another man’s weapon. So it goes.

But not only have human emotions been impacted, physical and mental needs have been neglected.

In 2016, more than 1.9 billion adults worldwide were overweight, making that 39% of the adult population. Yes, food is a huge factor, but so is the internet. These statistics are alarming and considering this was 7 years ago, I’m betting the numbers have only increased due to more jobs having moved online thus causing more inactive lifestyles.

Leading such unhealthy physical lifestyles can cause unhealthy and inactive mental lifestyles. We’ve become lazy in our critical, independent, and creative thinking skills. Our finesse is deteriorating because the internet does our bidding for us.

“I deeply regret the fact that deep critical thinking and imaginative thinking, that creative thinking is lost. In my opinion, computers and, in some sense, the internet are the worst enemy of deep critical thinking. Youth of today are using machines to basically replace their examination of the things they’re observing. They don’t understand what they’re looking at or what they’re hearing or what they’re learning. They depend upon the internet to tell them and decipher it. They look at numbers instead of ideas. They fail to understand concepts, and this is a problem.”

—Leonard Kleinrock, Internet Pioneer, UCLA

Society has begun to blur the line between virtual and real life. Awareness in the world of reality has become abnormal. Common sense is no longer common.

The Future: The Paradox

What will be the existential impact of the internet on humans?

Maybe we’ll be more connected than ever in an optimistic respect.

Maybe the death of privacy will be the demise of us.

Maybe we’ll have computer screens ingrained in our hands by the year 2073 like in the film What Happened to Monday.

Who knows, but I fear once it’s capable of dreaming, we’ll have reached a Borg society.

Resist while you still can.

Slow down and make conscious decisions about your needs because these decisions determine your life.

“The internet is a reflection of our society and that mirror is going to be reflecting what we see. If we do not like what we see in that mirror the problem is not to fix the mirror, we have to fix society.”

—Vint Cerf, a.k.a “Father of the Internet”