Internet: The Cities of the Technology Age

One of the most interesting concepts I took away from William Gibson’s interview in No Maps for These Territories, was the way the Internet has fundamentally and inextricably become part of our world, our reality. Gibson compared the invention of the Internet to the invention of cities. He suggests that the Internet has begun to change our lives in the same way that cities completely changed the way people lived ten thousand years ago. It will infuse the most basic parts of our lives. The way we take in information has already changed dramatically – I think this is what the stylistic form of the documentary was commenting on. Television and subsequently the Internet have made the shear amount of available information increase exponentially; the faster we can digest it, the better. The flashing images, the car constantly moving forward, people moving backwards and forwards out of the frame of the window – all reflected the vast amounts of information we experience everyday, whizzing past us.