Forty years ago, on Oct. 29, 1969, a UCLA team sent the very first message over the ARPANET, the computer network that later became known as the Internet. That event ushered in a technological revolution that has changed the way people think, act and interact, says a Duke University professor who studies digital interactive learning.
"A few decades ago, no one imagined the transformation that loomed ahead. The experts didn't even see it coming," says Cathy N. Davidson, the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke. "Checking our Facebook page before making the morning coffee? Googling our symptoms to decide whether or not to call a doctor? Any 20th-century expert viewing this future in a crystal ball would have declared it pure science fiction.
"And it isn't the technology that would have shocked them. It's our changed behavior."
Unlike the Industrial Revolution, which revolved around the assembly line model of human progress, the Internet age represents the antithesis of the hardwired, Machine Age paradigm, says Davidson, co-founder of HASTAC (the Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory).
"Interactive process -- - not linear progress - -- is now the highest form of human endeavor," she notes. "The Internet Age teaches us that we must be able to change, adapt and collaborate in situations where the end result is unpredictable."
"In the 21st century, the only constant is change," Davidson adds. "In the blink of an eye, we have changed our most basic ways of proceeding in the world. Now is the time to understand what these changes mean for us and to learn how our capacity for change shapes our future."