What is the Internet c/o Derek
“I think as time goes on, and more people who’ve grown up with the Net spread out into the power roles in society, we’ll all understand it more as a place than a medium. While e-mail goes through the Internet to get from me in Vancouver to my friends and relatives in all sorts of other places, I never think of the Web as something to go through. It’s always a place to be on, or in. When I’m instant-messaging with someone, even my wife when she’s at work, we seem to be sharing a virtual place that is neither here nor there, but of itself.
That’s why the old “information superhighway” metaphor seems out of date now. Highways aren’t places you hang out. For those of us who use the Internet all the time, it’s more like a village (or sometimes, sadly, a mall), or a city, or a country or continent. There are parts of it that we know intimately, like the streets we rode our bikes on as kids, and other parts that are unfamiliar and foreign, and sometimes scary or repulsive. We tend to stay near home, but most of us go off on an adventure sometimes.”