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We Are the Web

Kevin Kelly, Wired, Jul 28, 2005

Kevin Kelly looks back on the emergence of the web, the launch of Netscape, and how his magazine - Wired - took it all in. "Wired offered a vision nearly identical to that of Internet wannabes in the broadcast, publishing, software, and movie industries: basically, TV that worked." Something very different happened, though. "What we all failed to see was how much of this new world would be manufactured by users, not corporate interests." Kelly maybe didn't see it, but many of writers did, creating a vision of the future that was eventually expunged from the pages of Wired by the time it was sold to Conde Nast. The vision was always there. But maybe, now, Kelly sees this. "Every few centuries, the steady march of change meets a discontinuity, and history hinges on that moment... Three thousand years from now, when keen minds review the past, I believe that our ancient time, here at the cusp of the third millennium, will be seen as another such era." I believe this. I really do. Via Couros.

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