Is the Internet The Start of History?

November 11, 2008 - 9:39am — by birdie

Philosophically inclined to view the arrival of the internet as the 'beginning of history'? Here's a column by Calvin Ross of the Napa Valley Register which views the internet as a critical mileage marker of civilization.

From the article: "I’d like to propose my own theory that the Internet may in fact be a kind of new beginning of history, if one thinks of history as the chronicling of human events and accomplishments.

I marvel that we know anything at all about history and even prehistory — that period before writing was developed — and I have the greatest respect for historians, archeologists, anthropologists and librarians who have built and maintained the public records and archives that comprise our knowledge of human and natural events.

I am, however, suggesting that since the advent of the Internet the record of human events is extraordinarily more dense and complete than ever before, and there’s every reason to believe that from now on the record of human achievement will be chronicled on a massive scale. Until the end of time we will have access to more ways of learning about who we are and where we have been."