Читать книгу Driving Eureka! - Doug Hall - Страница 35

The internet really is the biggest innovation in history. It’s more important than the computer, even more important than the transistor. The internet came and everything became for everyone. We were set free.

—Steve Wozniak, cofounder

of Apple Computer Company

Today, around 40% of the world’s population has an internet connection. In 1995, it was less than 1%. Today, there are 250 million registered domain names. The impact of the internet is greater than simply the ability to text or look up information. It’s igniting new infrastructures and systems.

As an example, having something shipped to my rural farmhouse on the north shore of Prince Edward Island, Canada, historically took up to two weeks. Today, I can have almost anything I want shipped to me by Amazon Prime with free delivery in two days. For the first time, there are even UPS brown trucks and FedEx trucks traveling the island.

I think Prince Edward Island will find, in time, that the exchange of information and infrastructure systems like shipping will have a greater impact on the economy of the island than the 12.9-kilometer bridge to the mainland that opened in 1997. The impact will be positive when they learn that, like the bridge, change goes both ways. The new marketplace makes it possible to live in a paradise like Prince Edward Island and do business across planet Earth.

David Carr wrote in The New York Times, “Change comes very slowly, but then happens all at once. The future, as it always does, sets its own schedule.”