Has the Internet Lost Its Charm?

[CAM]

I use the internet every day...email, research, LF, Facebook, the news and weather, what do the ex-gfs look like now? (pictures say a 1,000 words).......but....it is getting a bit "late 20th century" on me. I mean....been using email for nearly 20 years....been surfing the web for 14+ years...yeah, I know, where has the time gone?

So, do I find myself using the darned thing just because it is a habitual? Yeah, a bit. Losing its charm? Yeah, a bit.

Discuss among yourselves? What are your thoughts on this issue?

[Cbrider]

The world would literally fall to pieces without it? It's losing its charm because its no longer a luxury, but an integrated part of life. Computers use to be the same way, now you don't think twice about it. Granted it took longer for computers to become an everyday fixture, but technology is progressing much faster presently.

I have heard talk about landlines becoming obsolete. They are close to making cell signals as powerful as landlines which will move the internet to a wireless signal worldwide.

[the_robot]

You can find charm by finding new things to do in the internet

[SirWagginston]

The Internet loses it's charm every few months. Then some new idea, craze or innovation is discovered, and its cool again. Once we have fiber-optic cable laid everywhere, the Internet will be so fast that we will be able to do new things that were unheard of, before. Download any game, movie, or archive of games and movies in less than a minute, for example. Websites will be able to have significantly more complex features, online games will be able to have bigger servers with more people, streamed content will all be in high-definition, etcetera. Don't even get me started on the possibilities once 3D glasses are commonly integrated.

[the_robot]

Don't even get me started on the possibilities once 3D glasses are commonly integrated.

I sincerely hope that never happens. It would be a step backwards.

[SirWagginston]

Think about it. The possibilities go far beyond streaming 3D movies and playing 3D first-person games. Because the Internet allows for user input, a user could control the 3D orientation of the objects on his screen. This would simplify browsing via mechanisms such as lowering the relative "height" of windows that are tabbed, or whenever else it is convenient to make one piece of content more prominent than another. The ability of the user to organize and control what he or she is doing would markedly increase.

Moreover, one could create a server on which one user is permitted to alter the orientation of another's screen. This would mean an entirely new genre of online games. I can't even begin to imagine what the guys who made Portal would do with it.

[the_robot]

^^ I'm not talking about using 3D tech being a step backwards, but using those glasses is. 3D without those glasses is possible and it's starting to be marketed now, I just hope the public doesn't go for the crappy glasses or I'm done.

[SirWagginston]

I didn't understand that having 3D without the glasses could be possible. I'm reading about how it works, now.

[CAM]

I didn't understand that having 3D without the glasses could be possible. I'm reading about how it works, now.

Of course....not to put too fine a point on it, but....you've been seeing 3D without glasses all your life...we were born with 3D capability. Humanity invents it for a machine and we think it is "new." We really are in Socrates "Cave" (read Myth of Er in The Republic).

[CAM]

BTW: Plato's "The Republic" is written in 2D...old technology, books, etc. Those poor dumb bastards. They invented civilisation but they didn't invent the Internet. Mongo smarter than Plato.

[CAM]

The world would literally fall to pieces without it? It's losing its charm because its no longer a luxury, but an integrated part of life. Computers use to be the same way, now you don't think twice about it. Granted it took longer for computers to become an everyday fixture, but technology is progressing much faster presently.

I have heard talk about landlines becoming obsolete. They are close to making cell signals as powerful as landlines which will move the internet to a wireless signal worldwide.

Most of the world doesn't even use it in their daily lives. The developed world is reliant on it to get product to market. That's all it is. Information and services are products, of course. Not just material items.

Ultimately, it is about markets. It used to be, ultimately, about getting warheads to targets, should there be a need for a hardwired solution to communication (used to be entirely hardwired...at least that's what Al Gore told me when he invented it...)

[SirWagginston]

Of course....not to put too fine a point on it, but....you've been seeing 3D without glasses all your life...we were born with 3D capability. Humanity invents it for a machine and we think it is "new." We really are in Socrates "Cave" (read Myth of Er in The Republic).

Well the technical points of doing that are more complicated. You have to be able to send one image to one eye and another image to the other eye. The glasses can do this by simply having two images sent and applying a different filter to each eye. Without them, it's much more complicated.

[warriormaiden]

I have noticed that it's not as exciting? I go online when I'm bored, but I usually find something else to do because everything is so DEAD.

[Gribble]

Bit like saying television has lost its charm. Sure, it ain't as exciting as it was in those days of tiny monochrome screens, but who doesn't have one? How many would go nuts without theirs? Internets the same. Its' a part of our every day lives now.

[IndiReloaded]

BTW: Plato's "The Republic" is written in 2D...old technology, books, etc. Those poor dumb bastards. They invented civilisation but they didn't invent the Internet. Mongo smarter than Plato.

That's one of my favourite 'old' books. I read it at an age where the ideas, esp. allegory of the cave, made my brain go "whoa". That, and Flatland.