The Internet Not Just A Toy For Elite
When talking about the Internet the global network of computers I tend to have wild mood swings. Sometimes I babble for hours about how on-line communication will change the world more than any invention since stone spearheads.
But then I remember that of all the 5.7 billion people on Earth, only a fraction of 1 percent have ever used the Internet. Even in the United States, a wealthy nation that loves to chat, less than 10 percent of the population is using the Internet. So is the Net just another electronic toy for the elite, or a revolutionary tool that will change the way the masses - at least in the industrialized world - work, communicate, educate and entertain?
At a recent conference at Harvard University, industry leaders met with professors, librarians, journalists and others to discuss “The Internet and Society.” Even the experts seemed hopelessly confused by the topic. The only sensible definition I heard of the Internet was “cooperative chaos.”
No one is sure yet how most people will gain access to the Internet in the next century - through the phone line or the television cable or some wireless system.
Fortunately, one man did provide some perspective. Harvard President Neil Rudenstine agreed most people are befuddled by this new source of information but said such bewilderment isn’t new. In the decades after the Civil War, for example, a publishing boom left university officials confused about how to handle all of the new books appearing. Rudenstine explained:
“In 1876, (Harvard) President Eliot reported the main library building had become completely inadequate to accommodate the sharp rise in acquisitions. Books, he said, ‘are piled upon the floors … alcoves are blocked up … Thousands of (volumes) have been placed in temporary positions … 42,000 volumes (are) scattered among 29 (locations) in 16 different buildings.”’
Rudenstine said the real challenges facing President Eliot “were not those of space and money. They were organizational and conceptual.” Once librarians developed cataloging systems and built appropriate shelves and stacks for books, professors and students were able to find what they needed.
Today, the Internet is at the same stage of development as Harvard’s library in the 1870s. Information is piling up and we don’t know quite how to organize or access it. Most people are too intimidated by the messiness of the Internet to spend much time wading through it.
Still, progress will be made faster than many may think today. Entrepreneurs and educators will figure out ways to tame the Internet. Within a few years, using the Net will be as routine as turning on the television or cranking up the stereo.
Some disagree with such predictions, arguing that personal computers will always be too complicated and expensive for the masses. But that’s what a lot of people said about video recorders back in the early 1980s. Today about 85 percent of all U.S. households have VCRs. In just the last 15 years, all sorts of devices that once seemed wildly expensive and sophisticated have become commonplace.
Middle-class Americans no longer hesitate to buy VCRs, camcorders, microwave ovens, compact disc players, beepers and cellular phones. Before long, a computer with an Internet connection will be just one more device in the family room.
Just how that device will be used by the family is still far from clear. But the Internet may end up changing society as much as the development of the printing press and libraries did in earlier centuries.
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