My information age

Now that the undergrads have (mostly) gone home for Easter, Durham is a quite, tranquil place. I have more time to walk around looking for more photo opportunities (I've just ordered a Canon A620 which should hopefully help get some better shots) and I have more time to think. One of the things I think about is stuff to write on here that might be interesting. One of the more things I think about is the growing importance of the internet.

In mid 1999, as I sat with friends at my school's speech day, we got onto the subject of information and my friend remarked that we were living in the information age. I didn't really think about that phrase until a year or so ago. Six months later, we had an internet connection via dial-up at home (something I never thought I'd see). The internet at uni was still something I only browsed occassionally between lectures as I didn't have my own computer and I mostly used it for buying stuff (finding CD-Wow was amazing) and downloading music (Ahh - how wonderful was Audiogalaxy?). Finally in 2002, we moved onto 24/7 net access at home and then broadband in 2003 and I began to use MSN and the web more now that I was free from the worries of large phone bills.

"The information superhighway showed the average person what some nerd thinks about Star Trek" - the musings of Homer J. Simpson on social progression in the 90s. Now however, the geeky ramblings of Trekkies and nerds the world over was being outnumbered by people who had visions for the net. Now, with the ready availability of broadband and the (reletive) cheapness of net-ready PCs (our first mediocre PC cost over £1000 in 1994) means that the internet has become ever more prevalent. Google brought acurate websearching to us, causing Yahoo! and MSN to create better search algorhythms. Stores like CD-Wow and Play helped a generation of people find films and CDs at far lower prices than "conventional stores" like HMV and Virgin - £15.99 for a back catalogue CD> Are they joking?!?. Wikipedia meant that anyone could find out about anything - to the extent that science journal Nature recently proclaimed that Wikipedia was as accurate as the Encyclopedia Britanica (despite protests). Blogs have helped keep friends in touch and help spread different points of view. IMs such as MSN have enabled people to communicate across the globe for free and of course news is delivered minute by minute - not just from the BBC/ITN/Sky as we're used to, but Reuters, Al-Jazeera and the New York Times and many other previously untapped sources. I remember the best lesson my GCSE history teacher, Mr Milton, ever taught us; never accept at face value what is written by man. Instead of sticking with the biased newspapers, why not sample a range of views via the web?

The internet has shrunk the world down and we are at the juncture now where it will become indispensible within the next 5 years and will have radically changed the world. Look at what's happening now; The music and movie industry are under pressure to change from their antiquated business models - instead of adapting to the internet and using it as a new tool, they seem to fear it and are spending millions on developing systems to stop us from importing discs (so much for free trade), ripping discs so we can play them on our iPods and suing their own customers for stealing music when they themselves "lobby" poliaticians to get favorable laws passed. It doesn't matter how advanced the protection is - someone will break it and then, thanks to the internet, everyone will find out how to do it. Mobile phone companies are under pressure as the new generation of WiFi-enabled mobiles come out. Why pay through the nose to call another network/country from your home phone/mobile, when you can use Skype or another SIP based protocol and do it for 1p/min? Why bother to buy magazines? All the information is usually several weeks old and the reviews are just the opinion of one person - the internet has a never ending stream of latest minute news and more opinions via forums and blogs then you would think possible.
Even television is under threat from the internet. Personal video recorders (PVRs) allow you to time shift what you watch so you can watch programmes when you want to, but they still rely on the programmes being recorded on broadcast. Several companies in the UK are about to roll out ipTV solutions where you simply select what programme you want to watch and is is streamed to your screen over the net. Plans by Microsoft and Google to start digitising books means that with the arrival of e-ink solutions, books may become outdated as novels become stored on flash cards. Quite simply, I believe that by 2015, the internet will be a utility as common and neccessary as water, gas and electricity. Already councils are talking about rolling out WiFi networks across cities and new technologies like WiMAX promise ubiquitous net access for all.

The dangers are of course that people become too reliant on it. The college bar definately became quieter when Trevs' rooms became cabled as more people stayed in on MSN instead of meeting up in the bar. Also, there is the danger of having too much knowledge. Once something has been put "out there" it's nigh on impossible to stop its spread. It seems strange to think that when The Empire Strikes Back came out in 1980, even after weeks of playing in cinemas, people seeing it for the first time still didn't know the plot twist. These days it seems like can find out the plot of 24 or scrubs almost a season in advance. Finally, the last hinderance is something I've never really seen much comment on - firmwares. What, you may ask, are firmwares? Well, every piece of electronic equipment has software written for it telling it how to react to our commands and how to make the hardware work. This is known as firmware and it used to be that when you bought, say, a TV, a camera or a DVD player, they just worked and for the rest of the time you owned it, it performed exactly the same as it did on the first day. Now however, with the advent of the internet, companies are more than happy to release products with unfinished or buggy firmwares and then release updates over the internet later. Great, if you keep upto date wit these things, but most people won't do this and can end up with an early version of the software which, at best misses out features and at worst leads to the item being buggy and prone to crashing.

So there you have it - the internet's potential is about to be realised. As an example I'll give you a guide to how I go about buying DVDs. First, I look at Rewind to find out which country has the best version and if any versions are cut, then I look at DVD Price Check to see where I can get it from cheapest. Other sites like Kelkoo and pricerunner often help you find things much cheaper. For example, if I had bought my A620 from Argos it would have set me back £318, however, just by buying from Amazon, it would have only been £195! I actually bought it for £160 from the Canon outlet on eBay though.