Has it really only been 5000 days?

[evil_genius]

I was watching a Sam Harris interview just a moment ago. When he mentioned that we've only had cellphones and the Internet for something like 5000 days. So I looked it up. "When did the internet start?" is really a rather vague question to ask. If I was forced to answer such a question though I would argue that the internet, at least as we know it

Comments

5,000

[fdmts]

My experience is that I have a terrible gut feel for numbers above about 100. I can glance at a pile of stuff, a group of people, whatever ... and very rapidly and accurately deal with the concept of 5, 10, even 50. However, if you ask me to visualize two groups of people - 500 and 700 strong - I got nothing. One group is bigger than the other by 40% ... and I can mentally lay them out on some sort of grid ... it doesn't mean much to me at a gut level.

I've got a few other reference points: 1,000 is my high school graduating class, filling half a basketball court in neat little rows of chairs. 100,000 is the Michigan stadium, full.

I guess that what I'm saying is that until I do the math and break it down (as you did) into "about 13 years," 5,000 days means much the same to me as 7,000 days.

Interesting point though.

[tcpip]

If I was forced to answer such a question though I would argue that the internet, at least as we know it today, effectively began on August 6, 1991 with the public release of the World Wide Web project by CERN.

But... before the web we did the same thing with USENET.

[thunderballs]

USENET ruled!