We're all geeks these days.
1. "Murmuren vívoras" ("Whisper, you snakes") is a phrase I've always enjoyed seeing on bumper stickers on Mexico City buses. I'm not exactly sure what it means, but I imagine truckers are referring to the fact that, regardless of what people say about them (that they drive like assholes, that they pick their noses), they are the best.
2. "Murmuren vívoras" is what I imagine Steve Jobs would be thinking these days if he were a Mexican trucker. Whisper, say that the iPad doesn't support flash, that it's only a big phone, that it doesn't have a camera. The truth is within the next couple of years, the iPad will be an indispensable gadget for everyone, and you will have one.
3. I remember when I first started exploring the internet, almost ten years ago. I used an IBM computer running Windows 95, and I used Netscape as my browser. I used a dial-up modem and it would sometimes take me ten tries to connect. Although the web had been up for a few years, the browsing experience was very different from today's. There were a lot less pages (you could not find anything you could possibly imagine online), content was much less dynamic (and slower... remember GeoCities' predetermined CSS?) and ads were much more annoying and intrusive, appearing through pop-ups and pop-unders. Also, consumers were much less informed and more prone to be scammed, get viruses or get into a collective panic.
4. The small internet was an interesting community, at least in my age range (I used to talk to people 10-18 years old). There was a lot of curiosity about kids in other parts of the world, and communication was clumsy and very, very nerdy. The internet was crucial for me in learning English, and one of my first nicknames was Chaos (because my sentences were confusing and hard to understand). In order to avoid culture shock, we would talk about things like video games and Digimon. Especially Digimon. It would take me days to download new episodes in Japanese, and I would often watch them with no subtitles. Long before Facebook or Twitter, we communicated through Java chatrooms or forums like ezBoard.
5. At that time, geek jokes and memes (such as All Your Base Are Belong To Us) already existed, and new technological and web developments caused great excitement.
6. When I first started using the web, my mom would not let me spend more than one hour a day online. These days I am at the computer for no less than six hours a day, and I'm permanently connected through my iPhone. I am completely addicted to the internet, and experience withdrawal syndrome when I can't connect.
7. In the December issue of Wired magazine, long time geek columnist GeekDad claimed that "geeks have finally won", and I believe this is absolutely true. In the last ten years, being a geek has gone from a point of ridicule, to not only acceptable but actually cool. Geek glasses are the new sunglasses, and rappers collaborate with comic book artists. Steve Jobs' (a strong contender for Leader of the geeks) announcement of the iPad had more mentions in the media than Obama's State of the Union address.
8. The internet has completely revolutionized every single media industry: music, journalism, video, print and video games. 250,000,000 iPods have been sold since its release in 2001. That's 57 iPods per minute, for 9 years. Millions of people care about whether the new Apple device has Flash support, or what data network it can connect to.
9. Technology news and social networks have evolved greatly and have become part of everyday life. The web is a constantly evolving organism, and its growth is still accelerating.
10. These days, we are all geeks. Geeks have quickly but quietly taken over the world. I wonder if sometime in the future, the internet revolution will be replaced by something else, and human interaction will go back to the real world.
2. "Murmuren vívoras" is what I imagine Steve Jobs would be thinking these days if he were a Mexican trucker. Whisper, say that the iPad doesn't support flash, that it's only a big phone, that it doesn't have a camera. The truth is within the next couple of years, the iPad will be an indispensable gadget for everyone, and you will have one.
3. I remember when I first started exploring the internet, almost ten years ago. I used an IBM computer running Windows 95, and I used Netscape as my browser. I used a dial-up modem and it would sometimes take me ten tries to connect. Although the web had been up for a few years, the browsing experience was very different from today's. There were a lot less pages (you could not find anything you could possibly imagine online), content was much less dynamic (and slower... remember GeoCities' predetermined CSS?) and ads were much more annoying and intrusive, appearing through pop-ups and pop-unders. Also, consumers were much less informed and more prone to be scammed, get viruses or get into a collective panic.
4. The small internet was an interesting community, at least in my age range (I used to talk to people 10-18 years old). There was a lot of curiosity about kids in other parts of the world, and communication was clumsy and very, very nerdy. The internet was crucial for me in learning English, and one of my first nicknames was Chaos (because my sentences were confusing and hard to understand). In order to avoid culture shock, we would talk about things like video games and Digimon. Especially Digimon. It would take me days to download new episodes in Japanese, and I would often watch them with no subtitles. Long before Facebook or Twitter, we communicated through Java chatrooms or forums like ezBoard.
5. At that time, geek jokes and memes (such as All Your Base Are Belong To Us) already existed, and new technological and web developments caused great excitement.
6. When I first started using the web, my mom would not let me spend more than one hour a day online. These days I am at the computer for no less than six hours a day, and I'm permanently connected through my iPhone. I am completely addicted to the internet, and experience withdrawal syndrome when I can't connect.
7. In the December issue of Wired magazine, long time geek columnist GeekDad claimed that "geeks have finally won", and I believe this is absolutely true. In the last ten years, being a geek has gone from a point of ridicule, to not only acceptable but actually cool. Geek glasses are the new sunglasses, and rappers collaborate with comic book artists. Steve Jobs' (a strong contender for Leader of the geeks) announcement of the iPad had more mentions in the media than Obama's State of the Union address.
8. The internet has completely revolutionized every single media industry: music, journalism, video, print and video games. 250,000,000 iPods have been sold since its release in 2001. That's 57 iPods per minute, for 9 years. Millions of people care about whether the new Apple device has Flash support, or what data network it can connect to.
9. Technology news and social networks have evolved greatly and have become part of everyday life. The web is a constantly evolving organism, and its growth is still accelerating.
10. These days, we are all geeks. Geeks have quickly but quietly taken over the world. I wonder if sometime in the future, the internet revolution will be replaced by something else, and human interaction will go back to the real world.