They're all still down there, out of sight and all but out of mind -- hundreds of millions of miles of hair-thin strands of glass, strung beneath the streets of every city, under farm fields, suburbs, deserts, and strewn across the ocean floor. It's enough optical fibre to wrap around the earth 4,000 times, with each strand capable of blasting library stacks of information across the globe at the speed of light. And almost all of it sits empty, dark and idle -- an unseen monument to every unfulfilled promise of the Internet.
The experts said we needed all of it and more because once we discovered the power of the World Wide Web, there would be no stopping it. Billions would flood into cyberspace, changing everything about the way we communicate, educate and entertain.
They're still selling the same old line. On Oct. 9, Google bought YouTube -- an Internet site used primarily for the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material and minute-long clips of people singing karaoke in their basements. This titan of new media, we're told, is worth US$1.65 billion. It's just the latest step in our long descent into cyber-madness. After 15 years and a trillion dollars of investment, just about everything we've been told about the Internet and what the information age would mean has come up short.
when would you say was the internet in its prime?
been sitting lovely since MU died
