However, certainly towards the end of the Nineties, as email and mobile phones became accessible to the masses in the West, I think that there was a definite sense of empowerment and freedom.

Of course, in the past few years the rate of development has increased exponentially, and we look forward to the arrival of the latest software, or mobile phone, or digital camera with excitement. But this is coupled with the nagging feeling of always being ‘out of date’ – ‘My iPhone isn’t the latest model’, ‘There’s a faster internet connection available for the same price as I signed up for only three months ago’, and so on.

While there is no denying the endless possibilities of new technology, and the sense of empowerment it delivers, do we not now demand and expect the incredible power of said technology? Do we really feel lucky, or are we complacent. getting pissed off when Google Maps doesn’t work, or a given street doesn’t have Wi-Fi?

Furthermore. now, more than ever, we’re living in a two-tiered society. The haves, and the have nots. Those with access, and those behind a digital barrier as impregnable as the Berlin Wall.

For those of us on the ‘right’ side of the divide, we are lucky enough to have access to chat rooms, messageboards, online forums and so on.

In Jurgen Habermas’s work on the Public Sphere

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurgen_Habermas

, he detailed how the 18th Century European bourgoise would sit in coffee shops, and discuss the issues of the day, giving their opinions and listening to others’, and coming to a consensus. Whilst it was intended to be a ‘check’ on government, and a reaction to being force fed policy and passively listening to the representations of the state, it was mainly accessible to those with money, or access to the printing press (i.e. those who could read), rather than being open to all, as it was intended.

Now, more and more people have the opportunity via the mediums listed above, to discuss the issues of our day. Arguing, debating, coming to a consensus.

One of the biggest benefits of the Internet, in my mind.

But still the great majority of the people on the planet don’t have this access, and as great as it is for the fortunate few of us to be able to sit in a cyber ‘coffee shop’ and find out about the world we live in, and demand change on a raft of issues, and give our opinions and listening to others’, our network is still closed. The vast majority of people on earth do not have access, and won’t in our lifetimes.

I use the Internet for my news now, rarely buying a newspaper. Like you say, they’re out of date by the time you pick them up. I remember delivering newspapers one Sunday morning back in 1997, and the headlines screaming about Exclusive Princess Diana photos, of her in her bikini on Dodi Fayed’s boat. I’d already heard that she’d died before I left home that morning to stuff the first News of the World through someone’s letterbox.

While ‘traditional’ media is no doubt experiencing huge decline in terms of audience (on demand being so much more accessible nowadays), and the MySpaces and Facebooks and YouTubes and Pandoras are on the rise, this leads to another change in user habits, but one which is by no means (to my mind) entirely ‘better’.

From the invention of transistor and car radios in 1950s and 1960s America, where teenagers would drive their parents’ cars out late at night with their friends, or listen under their pillows to DJs such as ‘Wolfman’ Jack

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7307738.stm

or ‘Moondog’ Alan Freed

http://www.alanfreed.com/biography.html

, to the major sporting events on tv today, the main draw was and is its ‘liveness’ – of a sense of being part of something bigger, connecting with others who felt / feel the same, and wanted to experience something that they weren’t used to, something new (in the case of the rock and roll music first played in the 1950s, and which the teenagers listened to for the first time). Whilst MySpace and its ilk serve a similar same purpose today – the discovery of new music and not the usual pop-fare delivered by the major radio stations, there isn’t the same sense of ‘liveness’ and being truly ‘connected’ to others as there is with live media.

Why do old ladies who live alone have the radio on all day? Because they feel connected to the other listeners, who are experiencing the same event, at the same time. They don’t feel so lonely.

Why, when a film comes on TV that you own on DVD, do you sit down and watch it? You could have put your DVD in the player and watched it yourself. But no, it’s the sense of ‘liveness’ and connection with others that attracts you. There is not yet an online enterprise which satisfactorily replicates this feeling.

And while, yes, our user habits are changing, are we are now becoming more isolated at the same time as we’re becoming more connected?

We post messages on our Facebook walls instead of picking up the phone. We surf the Internet all day by ourselves, and don’t go in the streets and play sports with our friends.

We live in a world where it’s easier to send an email to a person in the office downstairs than it is to go and wish them a good morning in person.

In a world of ‘on demand’ – of access to everything when we choose, are we not at risk of missing out on the ‘liveness’? Of not witnessing something as it happens, in tandem with others? Of becoming prisoners of our online coffee shops, while those ‘less fortunate’ play football in the streets, and occasionally look through the windows to see what all the fuss is about?

Welcome to 2009, indeed.