The Internet is not our tea maker: February 17, 1997 issue of New Thinking

February 17, 1997 New Thinking:
The Internet is not our tea maker

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February 17, 1997

The Internet is not our tea maker

By Gerry McGovern

Some people overestimate the Internet as much as others underestimate it.

All the time we’re hearing about streaming video, streaming audio, push technology and web television. I’m wondering just where the bandwidth is going to come from. I mean, it’s okay to prove in a specific test environment that streaming video works on the web. But what happens when a million people think that streaming video is a good idea? What sort of stress is the Internet’s network going to be under then?

We have been brought up in an age when the visual has dominated. There is film and there is Toy Story and Terminator. There is television and OJ in the courtroom and MTV. There are corporate videos with animation. There is print where design has gone wild. There are color photocopiers. Everywhere visual possibilities abound.

That is why it is so hard for us to accept the Internet as a minimal visual medium. Our common sense tells us that if everywhere else the visual is on the rise, then surely it must also rise on the Internet too.

The phenomenal success of the Internet has also led to another false assumption: that soon everyone who is anyone will have an Internet connection. We feel that because it has grown faster than probably any other modern technology, it will inevitably continue that growth. Not so, I say.

Maybe in 20 years, the Internet will be the hub of a truly networked world where everything we need is accessible through one central interface. But not today, and not for the next five years, at least.

We should not expect the mad graphics of MTV on the Internet anytime soon. We should not fall into the trap of sticking jumping animations on our websites because we feel that that is what people expect.

There is so much talk about push technology today. Used properly, it is indeed a good thing. But back away from the hype a little, and remember that the first and still by far the greatest push technology is EMAIL.

Step back from MTV expectations for a moment and remember that the Internet is at its most revolutionary when it allows simple textual communication and collaboration for the price of a local call between people living all over the world (or for that matter, between people working a corridor away from each other). The Internet is at its most revolutionary when it allows us access information within minutes, if not seconds, where using, for example, the phone, fax or post, would have taken hours, if not days.

Don’t expect the Internet to entertain us. Rather, be amazed at how well it can help to educate us, how it can help us do our work better, how it allows us to collaborate as never before.

This is the age of the knowledge worker. It is the age of life-long learning. The Internet can connect us to the learning sources that we need to become better knowledge workers. The Internet can help us move from the city and still do the same job in a beautiful rural area.

The Internet will not make our tea. It is not our MTV. Nor should we expect it to be.

By Gerry McGovern

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Don’t expect the Internet to entertain us. Rather, be amazed at how well it can help to educate us.