2nd post internet stuff

It's strange. Now everyone uses the internet (who I know professionally at least). Ten years ago they didn't. Stef from 3form has been fulfilling his 'create something new everyday' thing and come up with this t-shirt. Take a look it's kind of funny. And made me think of some stuff.

I am reminded of a number of things. This has been on my mind a lot recently. The Internet seriously assists collective conciousness. I have been feeling very aware of the power of the internet and the changes it makes to our lives as we all share contacts, links and knowledge. Trying to imagine how things will develop, how everyone will adapt, how flat will things become is in someways hard to imagine - for me at least. I suppose it's because I have always been an advocate of the internet, seen it as positive and something to embrace. Afterall it is only really a mirror of our actual lives isn't it? but recently getting a little freaked out with all the facebook action - where will it all go? Seeing peoples lives unfold in parallel to your own though their flickr pics regardless of whether or not you've seen them in years - I kind of love it but it freaks me out.

Still I am not an internet or technologies commentator at least not at the moment. But I am reminded about a series of mini conferences we organised on behalf of Birmingham's first internet business association: CUBIT - club for user of business internet technology, sounds soooo dated now - in fact I think it did at the time. Still we managed to organise some pretty interesting events: one that sticks is: 'Is content still king?' - it was 1998 I remember it well as a big learning point for me never run an event and set it the same time as the world cup final - still I did - but we had a fullish house, Hexagon Theatre in the MAC. Not sure where I am going with this smattering of nostalgia only to say really this future speculation is interesting, futile, impossible, possibly useful. Can we remember what was talked about that evening? I think we were suggesting that transactions micro and other were the future of money making online and that content for its own sake was dead? did we anticipate this? I can't recall right now. And it's interesting that something less than 10 years ago is like a little bit of local internet history already. Did we write about it? did we blog it? updated our website, wrote a press release for sure but blogs weren't invented then were they?

It's amazing to me how the momentum and cycle of knowledge, ideas locally etc has taken off and that it's kind of nearly everyone not just the industry people. But were does it go are we saying anything? is it making us more creative? are we having the same conversations we would have anyway? or are we just documenting our lives, thoughts, relationships?