The last yard

2006-04-11

There's been various writings about the Internet as a place - for better or for worse. Nothing new, yada yada yada. It may be true that the kids of today are growing up in a world where chat is preferable to phone, and MySpace discussion boards are a valid hang-out. As my son would say, "fine, whatever!"

To me however, there's a fatal flaw in this "place" thing. First, at the moment the dream of virtuality is encased in a couple of kilos of tin with a 17" screen. Of course, I could carry this around the house with me but that's not the point - I generally don't, and nor does anyone else. This is the last yard - between the screen and my eyeballs. If I want to "jack in", the last yard requires me to go perch at a desk somewhere, much as I'm doing right now. Indeed, let's work through my last ten minutes:

• - in the kitchen, I am thinking over something discussed last Friday. I decide it would be worth writing about.
• - I head upstairs to my computer and forget what it was I was going to do
• - back downstairs, I make myself a coffee and it comes back to me
• - I decide its not worth the effort, so I sit and read the paper
• - I return upstairs to check my email
• - when at my computer, I think, "oh sod it, might as well post"

Its hardly communications at the speed of light, is it? My own foibles aside, I don't believe we are even one degree out of 360 towards really integrating the Internet with daily life. The whole process above is neither natural nor practical, nor particularly inspiring towards seeing computers, and even our darling Internet, as anything more than a distant haven that we can visit from time to time. This is the Internet as a place, but its a place we have to go, rather than the place we are in - adequate for now perhaps, but not even scratching the surface of what should be possible.