We struggle to keep up with the changes in technology. Just about the same time that we think we have mastered one thing, it’s been replaced. Nowhere is this as true as on the internet.

Technology can take a long time to develop and get traction. The internet itself was first developed in the 1969 as a Cold War project to create a communication network, ARPANET, that was protected from nuclear attack. By 1971, the number of nodes was 23. By 1994 there were 4 million. And today, there are well over a billion users.

An interesting aspect of technology is that first we shape it, and then it shapes us. We develop technology often to do better or faster or cheaper what we are already doing. But then the technology itself begins to develop and open the doors to opportunities and uses that we couldn’t have imagined.

The internet is demonstrating this very dynamic. It has evolved from a tool to communicate more quickly with each other (think email) to communicating instantly with each other – with text, voice, and video. And it does so much more.

You might, sometimes, not see the point of the internet at all, aside from the convenience. And you might be wary of the hype that the internet “changes everything!” You might still be focused on using the internet to just improve the way you’ve always done things rather than seeing it as a completely new way to do things.

A new way? That’s what’s happening today. Many organizations are seeing that the internet enables them to create totally new business models, to create completely new ways of interacting with customers, creating products, developing knowledge, leading and managing.

Recently our colleague, Jim Hancock, sent us this link to a brilliant little video by Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University, called Web 2.0…The Machine is Us/ing Us. It traces the evolutionary path from writing on paper to Web 2.0 today. View it and see where on the path you are!

Click on the image below to play the video: