The revolution will not be revolting
22 February 2010

We’ve watched a couple of episodes of The Virtual Revolution, presented by Aleks Krotoski. Neil is slightly cynical and scornful of what’s been said, but as my mum likes to say, stuff on the telly needs to be pitched at the lowest common denominator (hence the series Snog Marry Avoid?, which is an abomination). We spend a lot of time online and we’re a bit older, so I like to think we’re a bit wiser about the whole Ingterneck thing than the yoof today.

For starters, it was really refreshing (or super geeky) to watch a documentary on the Beeb and recognise the names of almost all the people being interviewed. It’s really amazing to think that the Web is 20 years old. I’ve been using it regularly for about 15 years!

This final episode about Homo Interneticus was very interesting, because I can’t imagine not knowing what life was like without being connected to a digital network 100% of the time, while 12-18 year olds can’t imagine their lives without the always-on nature of the web network. I do agree that if you spend a huge amount of time online, like I do, you’re in danger of forgetting that it’s only a tool that enhances our real lives. That’s what the yoof need to learn and understand.

What I’ve noticed that’s changed in me over the last five or six years is my already-short attention span is getting shorter. I continue to read books, which is probably the only thing that’s preventing me from having the memory of a brain-damaged goldfish, but I zip in and out of things much more quickly — as described in the interview above. I find the Internet invaluable when I’m researching something in depth (especially if it puts me in contact with an expert), but if I’m just browsing, I pick up a hell of a lot of shallow information.

(Plus I really liked the empirical proof that having lots of ‘friends’ on Facebook means bugger all because we still, in reality, have an upper limit of around 150.)

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