Point of View
The Internet--linking us to our past and future
The glory days may be gone, but it's made life much easier
By Carl Heintze
The glory days of the Internet are slipping away.
I guess that's no secret. Dot.coms of all kinds, from Webvan to many less profitable companies, have gone bankrupt. Venture capital is no longer venturing much--the return is too small. Ad revenues, which never were much on the Internet, are today even less.
What's most discouraging is the end of the grandiose schemes the wonderful potential pundits were dishing out about this new form of communication. One no longer hears much about how the world is going to be revolutionized by email and websites, instant worldwide communication and other fantasies the Internet promised but has never quite delivered.
Like all new media, mediocrity is as much a part of its development as the fulfillment of promise.
But maybe this isn't the point we should be pursuing. Maybe instead of worrying about how the Internet hasn't made us instantly into one world, we ought to consider what it has done for us.
I can't know what the Internet has done for you--if it has given you opportunities and information, if it has made your life easier and better.
I know it has mine.
It means I can sit here in my office and tap out the words you are reading without having to go near the place where they are put into type and printed. In an earlier day, that certainly would not have been the case.
At the least, I would have been able to get my words to you only by mail, by dictating them over the telephone to someone else or by actually going to the place where the press was and writing on a typewriter.
If I need to look up something to be sure I am giving you the correct information, all I have to do is log on and do a search and chances are I'll find what I was looking for without having even to get up from my desk and keyboard.
Of course, I also can get lost in this maze of facts and figures. In the days when the Internet first became popular, this happened frequently. We called it surfing. I could start from one point and, by following links, I could soon be far, far away from where I started. It was fun. It was interesting, but, in the end, it wasn't very productive.
I don't do this much anymore, but I do spend a lot of time using email. I've found old friends I haven't seen for years; I am updated daily on what's going on in my scattered family; and I get email letters from you, the readers, on occasion--most of them complimentary.
Except for bills, I seldom use "snail mail" anymore--and if I really tried, I probably could pay most of my bills without leaving my home office. No wonder the Postal Service is suffering a deficit.
I've even been able to indulge in a little genealogy research, although I'm far from tracking down my ancestors. I found out, though, when my father returned from his job on the Panama Canal on the good ship Colon, landing at Ellis Island in 1910. It's all there on the Internet.
Of course, there are disadvantages to our new media, too. A large amount of the Internet seems devoted to pornography. Spam--unsolicited marketing emails--is dumped into email in boxes every day. There is far too much of it and it is too difficult to get rid of. And there are viruses and worms wandering up and down the electronic alleyways, ready to wreck my computer and means of communication if I am not careful.
But no form of media is perfect. Newspapers have gotten duller and duller; television has sunk to mediocrity; and radio has too much rock-and-roll music and not enough of anything else.
The future of the Internet is at this moment imponderable. But I suspect the days of free email are fast coming to an end. On the other hand, email is going to continue to grow and grow, whether it is free or not. E-commerce is probably going to continue to increase. And using the Internet probably will become much easier and faster in the future than it is now.
Beyond that I can't guess, but I don't think we have seen the Internet's full potential, by any means. I think we're just beginning to realize it.
Saratoga, California Since 1955
