Man, you gotta love how small the world is now....

[WildThing121675]

Youtube...

I love how I can find stuff from my childhood on there. I found tonight the pilot episode of afterMASH there and the aired, once on TV W*A*L*T*E*R, the two spinoffs of M*A*S*H.

I've found other things from my childhood online. WOW. You gotta love how the world has gotten so small.

When I was a kid, this was all a dream... The world is smaller now.

WildThing121675

I should edit this and say that I posted this because I remember watching those on network and I also love the fact I can find stuff I remember from when I was a kid and it makes me feel more like a kid when I see it.

 

[Dawes]

It really is small! Everything is there at our fingertips. While it's an amazing feeling, it's also a slightly defeating one, too.

I remember when I was thirteen and fourteen years old, exploring the Internet for the first time over a dial-up modem. I could sit there for hours on end, searching for whatever I needed or wanted to find, and while it sometimes took awhile, I appreciated the hunt. Made me feel like a detective. Now that the Internet itself is being constantly refined, everything truly is right at our fingertips. There's no adventure anymore. Makes the Internet feel like a tiny room with a bunch of shelves instead of a great, huge world full of different doors.

 

[WoodlandWanderer]

I think there as definitely two sides to this coin.
On one hand it has granted us the ability to talk face to face to someone on the other side of the world almost instantly, as well as having a wealth of information at our fingertips. It has also revalutionised social communications and networking, allowing groups of people to form who may have been to few and far between before (like us)

On the other hand, linking everything together means that we have very little privacy left, it has improved the ability of the security forces but it also means that we can be tracked almost anywhere we go in a public area.

I think this technological advancement is a good thing but as always it comes with a price.

 

[h3g3l]

I think there as definitely two sides to this coin.
On one hand it has granted us the ability to talk face to face to someone on the other side of the world almost instantly, as well as having a wealth of information at our fingertips. It has also revalutionised social communications and networking, allowing groups of people to form who may have been to few and far between before (like us)

Ah, but it may well favor contact over content. As a springboard to an actual friendship, It is an excellent tool. However, it is my observation and worry that many seem inclined to stop at a superficial level of knowing another and call them a "friend." This is fine, this may make folks happy, but it's not how I myself go about defining friendships.

On the other hand, linking everything together means that we have very little privacy left, it has improved the ability of the security forces but it also means that we can be tracked almost anywhere we go in a public area.

This is an interesting point. I think it's been largely detrimental to security forces, as the natural tension between HumInt folks and analysts has been engaged and the gulf between the two widened through use of electronic surveillance and SigInt.

I humbly submit that intelligence forces suffer from the same thing that we do on the 'net: they now have ALL information about EVERYBODY. So it becomes an overwhelming selection problem. So more analysts/SigInt folks are brought on to replace HumInt positions. And so we are suddenly missing local contacts and the like that agents "on-the-ground" give you.

And so when something happens, everyone is surprised--until they look back and find that, yes, we knew this was coming but had no way to categorize/classify/filter it and get it in the hands of the person who needed it.

A whole thread could be had on just this point alone, and it's a point worth exploring.

I think this technological advancement is a good thing but as always it comes with a price.

Absolutely.