My story will be about my affair with internet. In fact, from day one this relationship was very passionate... The day it came I was truly hating it. As most of us, my introduction to internet started with use of e-mail, which replaced traditional mail and letters. Yes, it was easier/quicker to write an e-mail than a letter, but to receive an e-mail was so commodity-feel, whereas letter made your heart beat faster... Then, as a part of corporate heritage, all the wisdom of corporation was put on the web, so that not a spill of wisdom is lost, and is accessible to those willing to contribute to corporate dreams. As a fan of libraries and reading, initially I jumped on this idea, but then realized, that unlike books, materials that are posted on internet are not edited, so you may bump into junk frequently... Then came the social networking, and I was already big boss, and I was the bad guy to ban access to all social networks and all "sex" related items via proxies. Then I found "Linkedin" a great place to find old chaps. Then I realized, that if you do not update your profile on "LInkedin", 95% of your friends do not know about your career change even 3 month after the change...
So I took a pause and tried to understand my attitude towards this beast, and here are the main points of love and hate that I discovered..:
1) Time eater. Average american spends on internet 3 hours a day. Add that to average 2 hours driving, 8 hours sleeping, 2 hours eating, 8 hours working and you end up with not much for LIFE. I hate it.
2) Global reach. Good and bad, world is getting smaller with internet, and reaching out for anyone in the world is really possible. Another day I got in touch with Disney company about copyrights on one of their heroes, and it is amazing how business communication speeds up these days. I love it.
3) Library of ideas. Ideas travel fast over the internet, and this nurtures idea generation and creativity. www.wikihow.com is in a way a collection of global wisdom, while surely, quality of materials available on the net goes down with lack of editing behind.. I hate and love it.
4) Huge business. They calculated that digital economy is worth now 25 trillion bucks, while real economy of bricks and stones around 120 trillion, so already 1/6 of global economy is in bytes.. I hate it and love it.
5) Danger of hacker attacks on strategically important objects. Stealing your credit card details is one thing.. Unpleasant, costly, but not deadly.. If hackers attack some nuclear stations, water dambs, airports via some viruses over the internet and companies are not ready - that is really unpleasant. Today, I would not consider to drive Google car (without driver), not because I do not trust their software, but because safety of such system is in diapers for "new-born"... Connectivity attracts different military and political groups to make wars without bombs and guns, but make similar impact. I am only hoping that governements around the world are putting cybersecurity high on the agenda of state and businesses. I hate it..
In a nutshell, internet becomes that unavoidable virtual reality, where hate and love will be present in the same proportions as in our real lives... I just will have to accept that...