for ten years now we've been on our own

[gfish]

I just offhandedly mentioned how it won't be too many years until we have the bandwidth and storage to constantly upload video from where ever we are, and the processing power to do some really amazing analysis on it. All of it, every single frame. Geocoded, timestamped, indexed, searchable, linked into a constantly evolving composite of reality. Available for the rest of human history.

15 years? 10 years? Maybe not even that.

10 years ago today I had just moved into the dorms, basically the only place in the world with a wired network and highspeed internet access. Seeing URLs in commercials was starting to seem normal and instant messaging had just been invented. The family had 2 cellphones -- one in my dad's truck, one the rest of us shared (and having that many was unusual). I wouldn't get my own for another 3 years. My brand new, completely tricked out going-away-to-college computer was 166Mhz with 3G of storage. It had a 28.8k modem, a 10Mbps ethernet card and it was just shy of the bleeding edge.

Goddamn but things are starting to get interesting. And happy 10 year Seattle anniversary to me.

Comments

[tylik.livejournal.com]

"...basically the only place in the world with a wired network and highspeed internet access."

Er?

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Hyperbole, yes. Though not entirely, and certainly not for home connections.

[tylik.livejournal.com]

Hmm. By the mid ninties there were plenty of geek households with internal networks sharing out external highspeed connections, often with their own domains and servers and such. Especially in high rent high nerdity areas (like Boston and the Bay Area).

Not *common*, but not at all rare in the right circles. Craig and I had a home network but a lousy connection in 1996 (they promised us DSL in six months when we bought the house, and it continued to be "in six months" for the next few years). But we were also in the boonies where such amenities were less available.