Geek Stuff

To see a World in a Grain of Sand and a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand and Eternity in an hour. – William Blake

This morning Matt Drudge linked to a story about the Webby Awards, the so-called “the leading international award honoring excellence in web design, creativity, usability and functionality.”

The Drudge Report’s breaking story about married president Slick Willie’s sexual romps with a woman not his wife was chosen as the second most influential Internet moment in the past 10 years (see Blogging Matt Drudge for background).

The decade’s most influential moment was the dot com booms and busts:

Launched by Netscape’s IPO in 1995, the boom spurred billions of dollars in private investment in the Internet, new technologies, marketing, and fiber optic cable and led to the development of such landmark sites as Google.

“Though now often synonymous with failures … the dotcom boom and bust was critical to fast-tracking the spread and popularity of the Internet,” the Webby committee said.

In 1995, there were 16 million people online, compared to the current estimate of 957 million.

I imagine that few of us take time to think about the importance of that occasion. In our lifetimes, we’ve seen a paradigm shift of dramatic proportions. The Internet, for better or worse, has changed the way we live, think, and view the world.

The globe is still a vast expanse in reality, but the world in our minds, shaped by the Internet, seems smaller. Yet it’s a growing collection of interlinking ideas, thoughts, documents, people, projects, locations — almost beyond comprehension. You couldn’t overstate it if you tried.

[click to continue…]