to 56k, and beyond!

The fun part of being an older person (I am 27) in a college environment is watching the 'kids' in my class look on in awe when the Professor discusses things like 'life before the internet' and 'reading a newspaper to get your news,' or 'Dial up internet.'

And by fun I mean it hurts me. I had a class with a kid who had no idea who Nirvana was. I mean, really? One of the most iconic bands of the 90's? Wow.

All that aside, life today is much faster and more hectic than ever before. I remember riding to the record store with my stepdad and buying the newest Metallica album on cassette. Nowadays there is no need to drive anywhere to get music. Even if you want to support an artist, you can buy a digital copy of their album on iTunes, or buy an actual CD  through Amazon. One would think that this drastic evolution of technology would equate to more leisure time, or that we would devote more time to bettering the Human condition.

Nope. The Internet has been fully functional (available to pretty much everyone in the U.S., loaded with all sorts of informational goodies, and providing cute pictures of kittens) for over twenty years. The idea of the Internet has been around longer than I have been alive, and we still rush around like ants on a hill. While we have more leisure time, more things are jockeying for our attention. We can play the newest video game online with people on the other side of the planet, all the while screaming obscenities into a wireless head set. We can stream movies right to our phone while sitting in class, and look up the lecture notes on LMS when we get home.

Even Everclear's AM Radio is behind the times. Portable CD player? Please, we now have phones with touch screens, more storage space than my first computer, and the Internet. The inclusion of the Internet alone has has transformed the way we work. Couple the Internet with surprisingly fast processors and full operating systems and you have a truly mobile office. My neighbor said he wrote every paper of his senior year (as a mechanical engineer) on his iPhone.

What's more, we are now restructuring our laws to suit the ever changing landscape that is the Internet. Unfortunately our laws are not as readily adapted to our new technological world as the Human element. We are still playing social catchup, we are figuring out how our laws marry into this techno-scape.

One day we will figure it all out, but by then we will have new problems to overcome. That is what sets us apart from those damn dirty apes (or is it?), we are infinitely adaptable and through our ingenuity we will thrive. How we thrive is still up for debate.

As a side note, I learned that 'Internet' is a proper noun. Thank you spell check, and I suppose Bill Gates and Steve Jobs as well.