I'm inclined to agree with you - it's unparalleled in scale and unprecedented in concept. It's defined modern culture in a way no other thing ever could.

Exactly! A virtual 24 hour store that never closes and has everything. Eventually it will replace traditional forms of education, allowing someone to learn what they want at any time and most importantly, you can learn at your own pace.

It's sort of Humanity: Augmented edition. You might not know how to do something, but someone else does and its available immediately to learn and look up. Like a 'hive mind', just ask and you shall receive!

A library larger than any ever built before, that can fit in your pocket, along with links to friends and loved ones, a plethora of shops and stores, games, videos, news... virtually anything humanity can create, for good and for ill.

Yea, it is the 'road' that we all can use. Never said anything about the quality of travelers on it :P

Yes, I agree.

It is not only the 8th wonder of the world, but a world in itself. Mankind has essentially created another world hosted within ours. Everything our world possesses has been transcribed into the digital medium. All the sights and sounds and knowledge. As well as things that do not exist anymore, or have yet to, or ever will. Perhaps one day, if singularity is achieved (Which by god I hope is soon!!!), it will contain everything. Emotions, sensations, consciousness.

This might be way out there, but I think the internet is that "singularity", or will lead to it. I read one of those odd 'spiritual' things, the chakrahs and pineal gland, all the good old 'mysticism' things and had a startling revelation...
We already have the 'global consciousness', this change...

It's said that 'unity' and the global consciousness is an awareness of everyone and everything. Now, all the mundane things we wouldn't really care to know about, but we still have a technical allegory to this 'spiritual' aspect. We can send support to a country because we see a tragedy that happens through the net. If we were all 'spiritually' connected, such a thing would happen in the same way, we would send support, people and supplies to help them.

We can already read emotions, videos on youtube and elsewhere. You can tell when someone is happy, or sad, or inspired. We have voice and video, and second to being there personally, its what we have.

Someone can have an idea, send it to the "X" (Where X is the internet or global spiritual awareness) and that idea can be exposed to millions of other minds, that can test it, compare it, offer advice. And if we can talk honestly about it, no taboos and no ego, then we can all pass that idea through our own minds, a global computer working on a problem, then comeback with a potential solution.

The 'global awareness' is already here, albeit in technological form. I think most people are waiting for 'the light', the one thing, the single paper or global announcement that "It is here", that they pass up all the small bits that create this "X". Can't see the forest through the trees ordeal...

I can see what you mean. It is in a way that singularity. It offers a connection between people that has never existed before. But it is still via our senses. Distant in a way. Not quite that "direct" method that people assume is possible.

I think that that barrier will be broken eventually. When we remove the sensory organs that transmit the information to the brain and to the consciousness and replace it with a direct input. Instead of data being transformed to sight and sound and that sight and sound being transformed to electrical impulses and then fed to the brain, there will be just data transformed into those electrical impulses that are then fed directly to the brain.

I'm not sure I believe that a consciousness can be uploaded into a computer, but I know that a brain can be wired into a computer directly. After all, all that we perceive of the world is just electrical signals fed via the nerves to the brain. It has been proven long ago that memories and sensations can be triggered via electrical signals fed directly to the brain. So I'm sure any sensation, emotion, etc. can be created by replicating the signals that would be produced in the body and feeding them to the brain in the correct location. It would be beyond virtual reality. It would be as real as anything else.

I think we're a long way off from that though.

I'd say yes

I've more than once amongst friends referred to the internet (wikipedia mainly but the internet period) as "The 'not quite a jetpack' but still pretty good future invention": mainly because, like an airborne population: it's a "machine" which fundamentally shifted entire elements of our daily lives. It's also in terms of hardware the single largest "machine" ever produced: reaching all continents on Earth and people from poverty-strikcen Africa and Asia to Bill Gates' home theatre.

I agree with the idea it is the 8th wonder, but not that it is the Library of Alexandria. It's way bigger than that,

In allegory, it is. Alexandria was a center for knowledge, people traveled there to get that knowledge, and in turn they brought their own knowledge with them, adding to it. It was a 'primitive' internet to put it. More was added in time, some was taken out of the library because it was proved to be untrue, or updated to be true.
We just now have all of that in our back pocket.

I'd disagree, on the bases that it is easily manipulated and easily sensored. It certainly has the potential to be an 8th wonder of the world but it has some serious flaws which would bring it in to question. why was the library of alexandria impressive it was an ever growing source of information that had corrections over time. the internet has people turning the 'ok' hand gesture racist for the luls.

The question should be what are the other seven...

I agree; actually the Internet was what immediately came to mind before you said it yourself. It's an extremely versatile multipurpose tool accessible from almost anywhere. It's pretty amazing that because of it I know and talk to people on a daily basis who live on a different continent thousands of miles away, who despite never meeting physically face to face I know better than most people in my own 'real life.'

Also, there are a lot of old institutions and authorities that are set in orthodox ideas, but the internet offers an alternative that undermines their power to curate and gatekeep. Quite a few artists are doing rather well for themselves on this site drawing what they like and they didn't need to get the approval of a gallery to exhibit.

Definitely agree. Nothing like it has EVER existed.

i echo all those before me, this is 100% the 8th wonder. it went from humble beginnings as a government project to a basic utility, and if you're not on the internet in some way, you never existed in the first place. plus, there's no losing anything on the internet. if you lost something, but know where it was, just use the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayback_Machine and there you have it. only condition on that one is has to allow crawlers. another one is just search online for it. youtube for music, wikipedia for info, ask.com or any engine for anything else.


TL:DR internet = 8th modern wonder for sure, useful in tons of ways, archives can store the stuff you forgot/lost to site moves.

It is because of the sheer amount of information and community/communities that can get together from every part of the whole world and even beyond (with a decent enough connection)

It and isn't (depends on viewpoint) because of the sheer amount of it being porn.