Almost half the world will be online by end of 2016

My first thought: what? Only 50%?

I mean, it feels like the entire world is on-line, but the truth is, that's only less than half of it. There's almost 4 billion people who don't participate in this important aspect of human life.

> "In 2016, people no longer go online, they are online. The spread of 3G and 4G networks across the world had brought the internet to more and more people,"

True, and this is cool. I still remember the times of "going on-line" - phone modems, Internet cafes, etc. Being on-line is a huge qualitative difference over going on-line.

There's a lot of work to be done. Work, I fear, not many want to do. I'd like to see a clean separation between data, code and compute. The data would belong to users, code would be a commodity we run on data instead of sending our data to code vendors. Compute is pretty abstracted away already on a technical level, but it's chosen by the code vendors instead of users. I think it would be ultimately worth it to decouple the two.

"this important aspect of human life."

No denying the importance. But let's keep things in perspective too. Steve Jobs put it rather well: "Historical precedent shows that we can turn out amazing human beings without technology. Precedent also shows that we can turn out very uninteresting human beings with technology."

Full quote here: "The problem is I’m older now, I’m 40 years old, and this stuff doesn’t change the world. It really doesn’t. That’s going to break people’s hearts.

I’m sorry, it’s true. Having children really changes your view on these things. We’re born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It’s been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much – if at all.

These technologies can make life easier, can let us touch people we might not otherwise. You may have a child with a birth defect and be able to get in touch with other parents and support groups, get medical information, the latest experimental drugs. These things can profoundly influence life. I’m not downplaying that. But it’s a disservice to constantly put things in this radical new light – that it’s going to change everything. Things don’t have to change the world to be important.

[…]

Lincoln did not have a Web site at the log cabin where his parents home-schooled him, and he turned out pretty interesting. Historical precedent shows that we can turn out amazing human beings without technology. Precedent also shows that we can turn out very uninteresting human beings with technology."

I signed on in 1996 when I was 12. There were ~36 million people. In 1998 that quadrupled. And now 20 years later we're at 3.75 billion. From cowboy land to megatropolis. Things feel more crowded, more busy, and more annoying.

But the internet is still magical. Sometimes you jump around and next thing you know you're up at 2 in the morning wondering what's the big deal about pizza shops and Wikileaks and Hillary Clinton or why this girl is smooshing her face into bread.

God bless the internet.

Using the internet is like moving from the city to the suburbs. You have complete control over the news you read, the videos you watch, and the music you listen to.

It's also a very lonely place. Human beings are reduced to casual stimulation. No amount of information is ever enough. We don't know our neighbors.

I try as hard as I can to stay away from the internet, especially social media. Hacker News is the only exception, the only drug that I can't quit.

I sometimes wonder how the tobacco executives feel as they promote a harmful product, even while many of them do not smoke.

Detached consumerism is a disease. It is hard to cure because we are all complicit in this ailment. The internet, with its stimulating advertising and glossy social media perceptions of a flawless moment in time, is a vector for this disease. I'm not sure the internet is helping us. It may be instrumental in us hurting ourselves, and each other, instead.

I spent my last years of high school in Las Vegas. My school was downtown, just blocks from the Fremont Street Experience. We were surrounded by people who were impoverished by gambling. A lot of the people running and working in casinos don't gamble themselves (smart). And those who opposed gambling on moral grounds but participated in the gambling economy justified it with statements like, "Gambling is a sin, but I'm not gambling, so I'm ok." Neglecting the negative impact they had on many people.

They slept just fine at night. Most people seem to be quite capable of this sort of detachment from the impact of their choices.