August 02, 2004

If anyone out there thinks that the Internet is just a passing fancy and won't soon become ubiquitous I present a few facts.

Fact One: The case of Witold Heimbold age: quite young. Expectant parents have separate but somehow synchronized dreams of their soon to be born son calling himself Witold. The expectant parents google the name Witold and find Witold’s web presence. They email Witold asking about how he feels about his name. They start a conversation which results in a very fine post with the picture of Witold the younger. Young Witold is two days old and probably has a google ranking! There is no way we will be able to take that away from him.

Fact Two: One of my favorite exchanges in any James Bond movie is early in The Man with the Golden Gun. Q and another tech type are discussing the origins of the golden bullet that did in 002.

Colthorpe: Lazar?
Q: Lazar? Hmm, possible... Yes! I concur.
James Bond: Well what the hell is Lazar?
Colthorpe: Not "what", "who". Portuguese - lives in Macau.
Q: Chap who made the bullet, 007!

I never new the second man’s name was Colthorpe! Again an internet search (yeah, google again) comes to my rescue.

The reason I love the quote was the fact that in technical circles there are lots of these kinds of conversations as networks of people with the same passions begin to be able to recognize an author’s signature in his work. Colthorpe and Q, passionate about their work and passionate about others like them. The internet facilitates bringing together people with similar passions. If the internet was just the static home pages of major companies, if the internet was just the password protected domain of the major newspapers, we would not be moving forward. But its not just those things, it’s a lot of people having conversations, leaving their scent, networking their common interests, and finding out that there are large numbers of people just like them.

I can’t imagine what this connected world will be like when young Witold turns 18 but I hope he can still search for himself on the internet.