Somewhere in Limbo

Even as a younger student in high school, I realized my unique position in history by having grown up during the dawn of the information age. I still remember the first computer my dad bought when I was 6 or 7 years old and the extremely primitive games and word processors. I remember typing up writing assignments on the computer in my 3rd grade class---the black background, green courier font, and big green rectangle that marked the end of the line of text. I essentially grew up with computers, and cannot imagine life without them or the Internet. It never ceases to amaze me how far technology has advanced in my short lifetime (from DOS to the iPhone 4, think about it).

What's even more interesting is having a grandmother who does not use the internet at all and could care less about it. It's amazing just how dependent on computers I am, but then looking at her life, completely computer-free, and realizing she's still alive. The Internet is actually not necessary for 21st century life forms---who knew? And this is the time frame we live in. My generation is somewhere smack-dab in the middle of a time when there is still a significant portion of the population not using computers, yet there is no doubt in my mind that in the future, everyone will be computer literate.

I do think access to the Internet will be a right in the coming decades. Other older methods of gaining access to information will be grossly inferior to new methods, and people will want the right to the best information, similar to how people want the right to better health care. It will simply become a necessity and a part of life. Despite reading all these statistics about who is not online, the fact is that all these numbers are shrinking. There are a variety of reasons people may not want to be online, but I don't think the amount of people logging on will ever slow or reverse. The economic reasons are dwindling with internet access being so affordable and widespread. The older generations, like my grandmother, who lived the majority of their lives without internet and don't need it now will also dwindle as time goes on---same with rural dwellers. Those born with it, starting with my generation and beyond, will have little to no reason not to use Internet; it will most likely be required starting in elementary school even. The various reasons people today are not online don't actually matter---all they reflect is the exciting time period we are in: directly between the Pre-Internet era and the Everywhere-Internet era. I wouldn't be surprised if people in the very far future looked back on this time period and wondered what the transition to the modern era was like; they will wonder just how the computer-literate and computer-illiterate could live side-by-side....