Soon enough, nobody will remember life before the Internet.
Technology is neither good nor evil, certain is that: It has not really come yet. For future generations, it won’t mean anything very obvious. They will be so immersed in online life that questions about the Internet’s basic purpose or meaning will vanish.
As a member of the last generation to remember life before the internet, I suggest you should read The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We've Lost in a World of Constant Connection by Michael Harris.
Michael Harris is exploring what we've gained-and lost-in the bargain. In this eloquent and thought-provoking book, Harris argues that our greatest loss has been that of absence itself-of silence, wonder and solitude.
Michael scans the flotsam of our everyday, tech-addled lives and pulls it all together to create a convincing new way to talk about our relationship with the Internet. He helps us remember which parts of that earlier world we don’t want to lose forever.
Trithemius was concerned by the mass produced volumes proliferating thanks to Gutenberg's innovation. He wrote in 1492: "strength to words, memory to things, vigor to time." If book printing were to replace religious scribes, "faith would weaken, law would perish, scripture fall into oblivion." Are we living in our own Gutenberg Momentum? My kids still reads books but have never seen a typewriter...
