I believe the internet is one of the greatest inventions since electricity. It has changed the way we live, communicate , buy and has dramatically changed the way we acquire knowledge. I still remember when I was doing my post graduation (this is not very long ago), internet was still at a nascent stage. All we had access to was a dial-up internet connection, a DOS based email program, and a very slow browser with a search engine called Altavista (which no longer exists and has been bought over by Yahoo). When preparing for our assignments we would spend hours and days at the college library trying to find the information we were looking for. Finally after months of researching we would have gained enough information to translate it into good quality content. I still remember carrying all the books to college for an entire day of lectures. I sometimes felt like a construction worker carrying loads of weight on my shoulders.
Life has changed so much in the last 15 years. With the internet, information is at our fingertips. All it needs is a push of a button and voilà, you have everything you need. While a lot of the information is good, it’s often difficult to find all the information you need quickly. The internet is a supermarket of people’s views and opinions, often based on limited knowledge or any meaningful experience. Having said that I still find books to be a very good companion. What the internet has done is enabled us to have these books available wherever we go and read them when we want. Ebooks have changed the way we receive information and most publishers are now publishing books for Kindle, Nook, iPad, tablets, and many other e-book readers. 15 years ago if someone told me that I would be able to carry more than 1000 books with me when I travelled and they would weigh less than 250 grams, I would have thought he was out of his mind. But that’s what internet and technology can do.
If this was not enough, companies like Ideo want to take books to the next level. The technology in the video below is nothing short of mind-blowing.
I believe the internet is one of the greatest inventions since electricity. It has changed the way we live, communicate , buy and has dramatically changed the way we acquire knowledge. I still remember when I was doing my post graduation (this is not very long ago), internet was still at a nascent stage. All we had access to was a dial-up internet connection, a DOS based email program, and a very slow browser with a search engine called Altavista (which no longer exists and has been bought over by Yahoo). When preparing for our assignments we would spend hours and days at the college library trying to find the information we were looking for. Finally after months of researching we would have gained enough information to translate it into good quality content. I still remember carrying all the books to college for an entire day of lectures. I sometimes felt like a construction worker carrying loads of weight on my shoulders.
Life has changed so much in the last 15 years. With the internet, information is at our fingertips. All it needs is a push of a button and voilà, you have everything you need. While a lot of the information is good, it’s often difficult to find all the information you need quickly. The internet is a supermarket of people’s views and opinions, often based on limited knowledge or any meaningful experience. Having said that I still find books to be a very good companion. What the internet has done is enabled us to have these books available wherever we go and read them when we want. Ebooks have changed the way we receive information and most publishers are now publishing books for Kindle, Nook, iPad, tablets, and many other e-book readers. 15 years ago if someone told me that I would be able to carry more than 1000 books with me when I travelled and they would weigh less than 250 grams, I would have thought he was out of his mind. But that’s what internet and technology can do.
If this was not enough, companies like Ideo want to take books to the next level. The technology in the video below is nothing short of mind-blowing.
[vimeo 15142335 w=500&h=280]
I truly believe that we are not far away from the day when we will no more be restricted to physical devices to view information. Very soon any information we need will be available out of thin air at the swoosh of a hand. So all of us will be like the characters of Star Trek and Keeanu Reaves in Matrix violently moving our hands to view one page after another. My grandmother if alive would have thought that we had all gone crazy.
I truly believe that we are not far away from the day when we will no more be restricted to physical devices to view information. Very soon any information we need will be available out of thin air at the swoosh of a hand. So all of us will be like the characters of Star Trek and Keeanu Reaves in Matrix violently moving our hands to view one page after another. My grandmother if alive would have thought that we had all gone crazy.
