AntoineRJWright.com

Compared to many people I know, I have not been on the Internet very long. My first experience was with the Netscape browser on a Mac OS 8.something device in my junior year of highschool. Since that time, I've done the Netscape to Internet Exploer to Firefox move; the all in one desktop to a tower to the mini tower to the laptop to the PDA to the smarpthone move; and several other notes of evolving as the Internet too has grown.

However, there is one thing that has not changed much since I got involved with cyberspace; fear and faith drives a lot of what is done and read here.

The Fears

Even when I graduated from college in 2002, there were professors saying that "you cannot trust the Internet unless a person with a Ph.D. wrote it. People spoke about being afraid that the Internet would take over ever aspect of life and that the next world war would be a digial one. Churches shunned the Internet because of that old '666' thought. And don't be a person that wears glasses that knows how to fix these things; a woman was bound to run away from you for fear that she too would become "one of them."

We shouldn't be surprised though. Things that are new rarely evoke feelings of security in the minds of those used to the way things are. Every day that I walk out the the apartment and "take my office with me" I am reminded that innovation is marked by discomfort. Its not a bad thing, and there is a right to be apprehensive towards change, but to outright fear it for misunderstanding - well that is not something that I expect from anyone, let alone an academic.

The Faith

Then there are those "true believers." Every move the Internet has had them. The latest is probably those that are using mobile devices to access the Internet and finding that the world is a lot more accessible than it seems. Sure, outside of the iPhone you rarely hear anyone except those pioneers talking about it, but its true that the mobile web has done a lot to restore the faith that there is still much to discover about the Internet and its interaction in our lives.

Faith without direction though is something to be noted. Faith can drive you to do some amazing things; without direction it leads the fear to grow faster than the faith that preceeded it. Faith is saying "ooh, I can talk to another computer by just typing this." Fear happens when talking to another computer becomes "hey, my idenity is stolen, and its the carrier's fault." Both fear and faith need to be respected, but for such a new paradigm, the faith in the Internet needed to be pushed more than its fears.

The Critique

And this is where I have an issue with this article recently published at Reuters. A professor has rightly acertained that there are more people and more ways to access the Internet than ever before. However, he makes the wrong conclusion on the matter by blaming the devices, specifically mobile devices, where he should be pointing them to do something more than what they are doing. Mobile devices are no more locked down, virus laden/producing, or restrictive than computers ever were. But to say that the innovative spirit that created the personal computing genre is dimished because of them reaks of a person who's paradigm for doing life has just been rocked. He's afraid that the Internet will change before he's gotten used to it. I get that; and I totally understand.

And yet as much as I understand, I stand on the point that mobile devices, the Internet, and innovation will continue to evolve. Just as ever mass media element has done before it. Things will evolve and then something new will happen. There's no reason to be afraid of change, only to have faith that the lessons from past innovations will go into making the world around us something worth interacting more with.

Labels: commentary, mobility