If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW (1856-1950)
What would you say is the best thing about the internet?
How about this?
You’re telling someone about a youtube video you saw the day before and they’re looking at you like a dog hearing a high pitched noise, because it’s one of those “had to be there” moments, and the fact that you’ve just said “you kinda had to be there” is just making things worse…and you’re afraid that if you swallow your words any faster you’ll need a laxative to get them out later…you can pull out your smart phone and there it is. Watermelon to the face. Everybody loves it. Social suicide avoided.
So it’s pretty neat that you can look up anything at any time.
What about this?
Your friend is vacationing in Cuba while you scrape icicles from your eyelashes, and you’re totally jealous. The only thing that could possibly make you feel better is if she got a third degree sunburn and you think you’d look better in her swimsuit. Luckily, she posted 349 photos yesterday.
So it’s kinda cool how everyone you know is on it.
How about this?
There’s a microbiologist in Hong Kong and a geneticist in California…and a chemist in Germany and a student in New York and a guy in his basement and two billion other people on the internet. They’re all free to talk to eachother. Anytime. Well maybe not the guy in Chengdu, but the rest of us are. It’s the only place on Earth with millions of new ideas every minute. Granted, that’s quantity not quality, but I believe in laws of large numbers.
The fact that anybody can put up an iphone app, provide any service they can think of for five bucks (if you haven’t already, check out fiverr.com), or write a mediocre blog means the unlimited proliferation of ideas, services, processes, information.
Open sourced innovation is the most magnificent thing that the internet is giving us.
To live in this age, where for the time being the forces that will try to regulate and muzzle the internet can’t keep up with it, is nothing less than spectacular.
