That the Internet is a radical innovation, on a par with the Printing Press, is an oft-repeated mantra, and with good reason. It excites me to think of these decades as a time that profoundly changes society, like the Industrial Revolution of the 19th Century.
Jeremy Clarkson, of all people, made a very pertinent point on last week’s edition of Who Do You Think You Are? while he was slagging off enviornomentalists. Admiring the architecture in Huddersfield, he remarked that the industrial revoluton could not have occurred, had the environmental constraints we have today been in place 150 years ago.
So it is with other regulations such as town planning. I was in Glenrothes earlier this week, where the post-war new town atmosophere seems soulless and homogenised. Its all roundabouts. What a relief to return to the mangle of buildings that make up Edinburgh’s Old Town, where ancient buildings, subjected to countless ad hoc modifications and uses, give it charatcter and keep it alive. I would never seek to now abolish town planning or building regulations… but part of me yearns for a time of rapid change and progress.
This is why I am drawn online. It is interesting to watch new online societies, like The Committee To Protect Bloggers, at their fledgeling stage, and to see blogging standards and web ethics evolve. We are still in the innovating, barnstorming phase of this technology, and the rules for its proper use, its ‘best practice’ are being hastily scribbled out. I am glad I am here, and participating. In 150 years, will the codes of practice now being devised be entrenched? Will the standards and methodologies be codified and fixed? Perhaps our sites will need a licence, planning permission, and a signature from the ever-so-expensive Institute of Chartered Web Designers?