On April 30, 1993 something happened that changed your life forever. The World Wide Web burst into existence. While the Internet technically existed, it wasn’t available to the average human being until all the rules we take for granted took place. It changed the way we work forever. Since that time coincides almost precisely with my entrance into the grown-up workplace, I thought it was a good time to focus on a couple of things that changed forever that day (even if we didn’t know it, or you weren’t born yet.)
Now that we are all too busy cursing email as the work of the devil, it’s important to stop and think about why it became what it did. Before the internet, we had to write things on paper, drop it in another piece of paper, put a third sticky piece of paper in the upper right-hand corner and hand it to a stranger for delivery that might take anywhere from 48 hours to a month, depending on where it was going and what the weather was like. Sure, there were fax machines if you had a machine, a modem, the right paper and infinite patience. It was really for business- individuals could create something and have it on the other side of the world in minutes.
Email allowed correspondence to move at the speed of light. It also changed how we communicate in more complicated ways. The role of “secretary” disappeared or shrunk in most organizations. Anyone could create correspondence and send it as soon as they thought about it, or reply instantly. Like everything, there was both a huge advantage to this and a giant dark side. (Did we really want Bob sending emails directly to customers without anyone looking at it first?)
Email changed how we wrote to each other. When we did the first email-writing course for our clients, the biggest problem was people were too wordy and unclear. They took the formal business writing format (Dear sir or madam, in reply to…) because that’s what “business writing” was. Now the biggest complaint is that people respond too quickly (Hint: “’Kay” is probably insufficient information).
Access to information at the push of a button
Quick: what is the average yearly rainfall in Singapore? Who invented the phrase “Where’s the beef?” What year did the movie Ben Hur come out? Finding answers used to take hours in a library, or pulling out the encyclopedia, spreading it on the floor and reading a lot of useless stuff before you found your answer. Now that knowledge is available in less time than it takes to type the question. People anywhere on the planet have access to knowledge at the push of a button. The fact that humans spend this precious resource looking for cat videos or naked pictures is not the technology’s fault. That’s on us.
Work became less geographically focused
Before the Web, it was hard for companies to truly become national without investing in offices, staff and equipment. Suddenly, you could hire a sales person in Denver who needed nothing more than an desk, a laptop and phone, and internet connection. People who were moving to new locations could keep working for their employer even if they didn’t come into the office every day. Of course, the big test for this (and what has pushed us across the Rubicon of home working forever) was COVID. Can you imagine how much more disruptive and destructive it would have been to business if that happened even ten years ago?
Entrepreneurial activity boomed
Whether it’s selling old teapots on Ebay or becoming an independent consultant to Fortune 500 companies, the Web allowed people to find customers and conduct business without many of the costs that kept people from starting their own businesses. No need for an office, warehouse, long distance telephone bills (remember those?) or anywhere near as many staff. Entire industries exist that weren’t even thought of 30 years ago. And a few have disappeared forever.
How we interact with each other has changed forever
Thirty years ago, a third of long-term relationships began in the workplace. (Sorry, not sorry, HR) Today at least a third of relationships begin on the internet. This number is much higher for LGBT relationships because people can meet people of similar interests over a larger geographic area.
One of the most seismic changes is that in the workplace, (and in the phones of anyone under 40) we now do the vast majority of our communication in writing. Phone calls, face to face meetings and business travel have largely been replaced with emails, chat, and text. As usual there are blessings like speed of communication and immediate access, along with challenges like limited context and constant interruptions.
Those of us who remember the early days of the World Wide Web literally couldn’t imagine how much it would change the world—and each of us. As we look at the impending boom in AI, it’s a good time to consider the uses of technology for good (or not) and ponder our relationship with it.
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