I think I've grown to love the internet simply because it is information on demand. Those of you who have Tivo or any kind of DVR know how great On Demand content is.
To give you an example of what I'm talking about, when I'm just "surfing" the internet, I'm primarily doing it through Google Reader. Google Reader is like my Tivo menu for the internet. There I have thousands of articles from sites, blogs or twitterers that I like all compiled into one nice menu for me to look through. Then, as I'm going through my Reader list, I will be reading something interesting that has a link to something else interesting. From there I build my reader list and using my Reader analytics I can view my reading/interest trends and weed out those feeds that I seldom read and replace them with feeds I reed a lot. It is like a wonderful, almost perfectly efficient market of information.
To illustrate the power of this democratization of ideas, consider that right now I'm subscribed to Greg Mankiw's blog. Greg Mankiw is a world-renown professor of ecomonics at Harvard University. The reason he stands out to me is because he wrote the economics book that I bought (and still have) for my Econ 110 class at BYU. I liked the book, and figured I would also like his blog so that's why I subscribed. Now, back in the days before blogs and Google Reader, the only way I could know about Greg Mankiws thoughts on economics was through buying and reading his book. Well, now that he has a blog and I'm subscribed to it, I get to read his thoughts as they pertain to current economic conditions. It's awesome! And this is just one example of thousands that I've experienced as I've used Google Reader for surfing.
It makes me think that the internet with its immediate proliferation of ideas to people worldwide is as significant (if not exponentially more significant) as the invention of the Gutenburg Printing Press which brought books to the masses and helped jump start the reformation.
The internet can be an enabler of a societal good that is of enormous proportions. I feel privileged to be alive at this time to experience it.
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