The Incredible Shrinking Internet

I ran Lil'BBS, a Wildcat Bulletin Board, for a number of years. That was in 1988 or so and continued until 1992-ish. In that day and age there were the really "big boys" (multi-line boards) or the mega-services of the age (CompuServe). Mostly it was prohibitive long-distance calls or monthly service changes that separated the digerati from the small town folks like me and mine. So I put up a one-line BBS - I was a big fish in a small town pond.

Then along came that "Internet" thing. Where people and companies had previously established their presence at the end of a phone line they now had to build these cumbersome "website" things. So the fearless started in with fancy fonts and graphics and everything - no more ASCII pictures or console text for them. Others simply opened a telnet port on their BBS system and didn't change a thing. No need to fix what ain't broken.

In the heady days that followed the vast and uncharted wilderness of the Internet would be likened to America's Wild West - vast and uncharted and lawless. Soon there would be thousands of sites - offering content about hundreds of things...oh yes, and sex. Then the following week there would be hundreds of thousands of sites offering content on thousands of topics...and sex. Earlier this morning there were millions of sites offering everything all the time everywhere.

Which is my exact point: now there is only one Internet. Sure, it is everything all the time everywhere but it has become one entity.

Let me offer a slightly different perspective of the same phenomena. In the course of about 20 minutes I can read my e-mail, scan my gReader feeds, double check my social sites and I am done. Then I sit in front of my computer and think that there should be more to this Internet experience. Where once I was enamored with the vast complexity of the net I am now sated by the handful of "feeds" that have distinguished themselves as important in my world (net) view.

It should be noted that my shrinking experience is not a case of 'turn-it-on, read for a bit and then turn-it-off. Rather the Internet is an integral part of my computing environment. I no longer differentiate between my computer and the Internet. To that end I find myself doing less real computing with my personal computer. All this brings me to what I think is a logical conclusion. I don't really need all of this Ghz horse power or the HD resolution to do my regularly scheduled digital interfacing. I could just as easily get by with a device specifically designed for the incredible shrinking Internet.

The preceding ramblings have been brought to you with the Palm Foleo in mind. Now before you good folks go all ballistic because I have lead you down the commercial prim rose path please note that I am not touting Palm. Rather I am acknowledging that to be most effective the tool 'must fit the hand'. If the tool doesn't fit the hand - don't pick it up.