Interactive Internet

My mobile phone buzzes and I see it light up in the corner of my eye. I can’t take my eyes from the computer monitor for a moment so my brain begins to consider the different reasons why my phone would request my attention. It could be a text message, maybe someone has sent me a photo, perhaps an email I have received or it could even be notifying me that a blog I am subscribed to has been updated.

I suddenly realise after listing a dozen more reasons of what it could be that my mobile phone is no longer just a phone, it is a powerful communication device.

Think back 15 years and if you arrived home from work an hour late there weren’t too many concerns that no one knew your whereabouts. Step back into today, and if I can’t be contacted within 5 minutes I will have received missed calls, text messages and emails requesting my attention. Communication and connectivity are the key requirements of the emerging generation.

Whether it be the cause or a parallel adaptation, it all comes back to the evolution of the internet into what is termed in the world of geekery as Web 2.0.

My first introduction to the Internet as a young teenager was standing in my neighbour’s house watching very plain and simple web pages load on the screen. We didn’t have the ease of functionality there is for search today, but rather waited until a domain address was found by us in magazines or other forms of advertisement.

It was the good old days, where you would visit a website and make yourself a coffee while it loaded, and if you were lucky by the time you finished your second cup the page would be ready to view.

The Internet became a world full of online brochures and a source of information. If you needed to know it you could find it somewhere online. We had traded the physical page for a static digital page of graphics and text that was updated occasionally, if at all.

The term Web 2.0 summarises the change from the seek and find to the internet that comes to you and with you. No longer are we locked to sitting at a desktop computer visiting websites, but we can now interact with businesses, organisations and individuals from anywhere at any time.

I reach for my phone and see I’ve received a text message from the online service called Twitter. Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send “updates” (text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) via SMS, instant messaging, the Twitter website or a third party software application.

Too confusing? I just used my mobile phone to send an update ‘telling the world about Twitter’. Hundreds of people who have chosen to follow my updates from all over the world now know what I am doing. At the same time I know that a friend in the US is being dragged around the shops by his girlfriend, an associate in England is at a football game and a friend from right here in the Hunter Valley is in a meeting with a client.

The internet is all about interaction. It is no longer a one way conversation but is now a live, buzzing mess of conversation and connection to every part of the globe, and anyone of any age can join in and take part.