So the writing was on the wall?

How haven't things changed? Perhaps I could count the ways. More than a year before that somewhat depressing fifth celebratory column that focused on the information superhighway I wrote:

The internet today is business. E-commerce is what makes the wheels of innovation and development turn. Even the possible educational uses of the internet are becoming concentrated more and more in the hands of companies that put profit first and knowledge at best a poor second.

But if that was true then, how do I explain Lisa Lane's comment? Lane is an established edu-blogger whom I followed, and with whom I corresponded a bit. After a long hiatus she recently returned to blogging and only two months ago, wrote:

I now declare that the Information Superhighway is closed. This is no longer about information. It's about manipulation.

So while the internet, even thirty years later, is still able to surprise us, rather than it being the surprise of the new, it's the surprise of yet another disappointment. We're now a long way away from the digital optimism of way back then.

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Go to: It was thirty years ago today