The Internet Really Has Changed Communication – Amazing
I'm sitting on the couch this morning, reading my news, the feeds, etc. - just like I do every day and I got a chat from a guy I chatted with yesterday in the ZeroMQ chat room on freenode. He was chatting me about some questions he'd had on ZeroMQ usage and I was helping him. We talked for about half an hour - until I had to leave to catch the train, and then we finished things up when I got to work.
The amazing thing is that this took place at 3:30 am my time. This guy is clearly in Europe, and we're chatting like he's in the next room. Sure, you can do this all with phones, and this technology isn't new, it's just become so pervasive. Everyone has a chat client. Everyone has an IM client. And everyone uses them.
The world has become a much smaller place. Neighborhoods are now really places of common interest, in addition to the physical street you live on. It's really just stunning to me sometimes. I can remember ARPAnet getting going. I can remember the cool tools of ftp and telnet. I can remember seeing all this grow. It's inspiring, it really is.
I can remember my Dad once saying that his Dad saw the invention of radio and lived to see it used to talk to a man on the moon. I feel just as awestruck. We live in amazing times.