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Although it is, as stated, 35 years old, it really is in its infancy still. When we think of how we are communicating via the internet vs. the innovations in other forms of communications, there is quite a distance to go.
Having said that, it amazes me still, after only 4 years of my being connected, how close into our own worlds we have brought the worlds of others. No longer do we only have relationships with the people in our own backyards, we have them from across oceans or over state lines.(Marriages and friendships made or broken by strokes on a keyboard).
We don't have shelves full of Funk and Wagnall's-we have thin discs and search engines for everything we need to know and some things we might be better off not knowing.
Free enterprise is taking off like never before. Businesses can fail or succeed just by their use of the net. No longer are we trapped by the offerings of our own home towns. But competition is necessarily cutthroat. No longer is being good enough, good enough.
Of course, for every yin there is a yang, and the balance has yet to favor complete security and foolproof applications by the users or enterprise. Whether that will ever happen can't be answered anytime soon. We have come so far but have so far yet to go.
For me personally, it's the train I have been waiting for longer than I would care to admit. It has introduced me to an ever-expanding world of people, art and experiences I would never have imagined even 10 years ago. Through the internet, I have formed relationships that brought me to a new understanding of myself I would never have thought possible and re-opened my mind to exploring the artist I had suppressed decades earlier and allowed me to express myself without preconceived ideas from the recipients of my deeds. I have travelled to places all over the country and met the people I had chatted with online-making new best, dear friends in other states. Some that don't have computers can't understand any of this-I kind of pity them. Their minds are still small-towned closed to the endless possibilities that, by being in here-are really out there in an expanding, yet more accessible world.
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