People whose lives have been transformed by the internet
At the local school recently, attending an Open Day for prospective new parents (Barney will be starting school this time next year - how quick is that??), the head teacher made a fascinating point.
He said that the school's ethos is not to train kids for a career, but to train them to learn anything that comes along.
"After all," he said, "how many of you parents now do a job that didn't even exist when you were at school?"
Kate and I looked at eachother. That's both of us. And many of our friends.
Loads of people I know have had their lives completely changed by the internet and their interaction with it.
People like Dan Hon, who joined a multiplayer game and ended up making new friends, a new career, almost a whole new life out of the people he met as a result.
Or Joel Veitch, who I interviewed years ago about some crappy 'web soap opera' that never came to anything; but his stupid animations, and those of his stupid mate Rob Manuel (who made me a custom CMS once, years ago; in return I bought him some fags and a four-pack of lager) helped him carve a path to being a professional animator and director.
Or me. My own life has revolved around the net since 1997. I got a job, I moved from Cambridge to London, I earned a (reasonably paid) living for four years, purely because I knew fractionally more about the internet than my colleagues. Since going freelance, I have done the majority of my professional work for online publications, not print ones.
And that's just three people I can think of while sitting in my living room, listening to Talk Talk and sipping beer on a lonely wet Monday night. There are dozens more that I know, millions of others elsewhere.
The net. Gawd bless 'er.
