What's the biggest change the world has seen in your lifetime?

[d000hg]

As someone just turning 30, I suppose I'd plump for how it's not only so easy to contact anyone, but socially expected that you BE contactable.

I happened to be right on the cusp of two big shifts in communication - I started university just as mobile phones became ubiquitous, and I graduated just as Facebook was kicking off.

What would you nominate, and roughly how old are you?

[TimberWolf]

Anyone use Google Latitude?

[Support Monkey]

Channel 4

Before then there were only 3 channels, yes I know hard to believe only 3 channels, and they shut down at midnight

[eek]

Surely it has to be the internet for everyone especially if for the internet you mean the Worldwide web.

Unfortunately it will end up being a new Dark Ages when history investigates this era. As someone (MF?) commented yesterday the quality of our paper is such that nothing lasts 50 years, and now everything is electronic most things will eventually just bitrot away.

So when for the first time ever knowledge is easily available and free (even if Wikipedia is only half accurate) the chances are that 200 years from now we'll know nothing about the early 21st century.

[doodab]

Widespread digital information storage, processing and communication.

[Gonzo]

It has to be the internet for me.

All the services that you can now do from home compared to 'the olden days' when you used to have to physically turn up at a shop / bank / post office etc to get them done.

I remember going into a travel agent in 1999 with the girlfriend of the time to book a holiday (something that I hadn't done before then). The agent got 10% for basically making a phone call and as we walked out of the office I said to the girlfriend that that was the sort of job the internet would make redundant.

[milanbenes]

internet from a hand held wireless device

when we hear the word wireless we think of internet

when my grandmother says wireless she means the radio !

Milan.

[shaunbhoy]

[Meldrew Mode]

The fact that kids, many of whom would not even have been put forward to sit O Levels in the 1970s, are now leaving school with multiple A* A-Level results.

[/Meldrew Mode]


Harrumphh!!

[milanbenes]

Happy new year Shaun old chap

everything ok at the dirt box cottage ?

Milan.

[OwlHoot]

On the political front, the EU and the end of communism in the USSR & China.

Other than that, the Internet.