Keeping up with no one

by Brandon Mayer

The world is everchanging. Sometimes this is for the better, and sometimes it is not. But whether we love the world we currently live in, or have a nostalgic yearning for a simpler era, we cannot deny that the world of today is vastly different from the world 50 years ago, or even 20 years ago.

One of the most fascinating advances in technology is the internet. All things being relative, the internet is still “new” to many people. Some may not even fully understand what it is. Simply put, the internet is a “network of networks” that connects computers and devices all around the world. Many scientists, programmers, and engineers worked to “invent” the internet, which officially came to be on January 1, 1983. However, it wasn’t until 1993 that the internet because a tool for the public. This is when “web browsers” (what we know today as Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, etc.) became available to access the so-called “World Wide Web”, meaning content on websites could be accessed and edited. The fact that 1993 was only 30 years ago shows just how quickly the internet has grown.

The internet existed when I was a child, but it was nothing like the powerful and pervasive tool that it is today. Most people around my age will share humorous memories of “dial up” internet, which essentially meant that your computer had to make a call via your phone line to connect to the internet. It took a while, and once you were online, your parents seemed obsessed with getting you off as soon as possible. This is because bandwidth limits existed, and were very tiny. Using too much internet really was a thing, and so screen time limits for kids were not so much about protecting brains as they were about protecting parents’ finances – a bandwidth overage could get very expensive. Some home internet plans still have bandwidth limits (which are reasonably large anyway), but most plans are now unlimited. A bandwidth limit is the