The Internet, it has changed so much in the last 10 years. This is my mini-rant, there is so much ground to cover, maybe this is part one, i may write more later

How its used, and what its used for is very different to when i first started using it, almost 10 years ago. It became popular and in peoples homes around that time, the very late 90′s or early 00′s, and it was in peoples lives rather than being part of peoples lives.

The early days it was simply used by people as a resource, if you wanted to find out about things you could turn on your computer, ‘dial up’ your Internet connection and you could connect. In the UK it was popular when 56.6k speeds were the standard, there were slower speeds such as 28.8 and 14.4k but that was before the days the Internet was widely used.

All people used the Internet for was to visit a website, to look at information. Then a short time later people would interact, using chat rooms. People talked to complete strangers, from anywhere in the world, which is one of the differences of today. You could also check emails, although email was pretty useless, because many people didnt have it. In fact, in 2000, i was the only person i knew who had email.

Internet connections were terrible aswell. Its pretty hard to think of how bad they were when we compare them to today. I am talking about having to dial up your connection, using the phoneline, so you could not have the phone in use aswell as being online. waiting until 6pm to get the cheap rate 1p/minute which in fact wasnt really cheap, 60p/hour, if you think about how long you are online for these days, and bear in mind things took longer to download. an mp3 could take 15 minutes, and that would be pretty quick. Go back to the cost, 60p/hour, so 5 hours a day is £5/day, x 30 days in a month, £150 a month!!! Just for being online for 1 night a week for a month.

Then came “Internet packages” from companies, you could go online as much as you liked off peak for £x/month. I think it was something like £30/month for off peak access which included weekends which was amazing at the time!

Fast forward a little and we saw the start of the hi-speed Internet with ADSL. BT ADSL cost £40/month and you got 512kbit if you lived in a good area. But it was never plug and play in the old days, the engineer had to come to the house and install it for you.

Internet then got faster and faster until we get to todays technology. ADSL2 and cable, which can get upto 50Mbit in some areas, which is more than fast enough to do anything you’d care to do (at least for now).

As for the usage, today we watch tv, videos, shop, talk to our friends and so much more. I think the social aspect has been the biggest change in the Internet so far. The old days we talked to nobody in particular, had “Internet friends” who we had no intention of ever meeting, used chat rooms and forums, and never spoke to people we know, or see on a regular basis.

Now the whole social networking thing is in control. With sites like Twitter, Facebook and Myspace, we talk only to people we know, and some of the fun has been taken out of the Internet. Before if you talked to someone you know online you were stupid, now if you talk to someone you dont you are weird.

Its strange to think, if you used the Internet like you do today you would be a geek, but today, if you arent online you are a freak.

I wonder what web 3.0 will have in store?

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