The Internet of the 90s wasn't as widespread, but it had a much greater impact on areas of life and people it touched
Having grown up before the age of the Web/Internet, I couldn't disagree more.
I use Youtube on a regular basis to learn about things. Of the top of my head: gardening methods, worm composting, repairing a cracked ipad screen, fixing a macbook with soda spilled on it, learning about new programming environments.
Facebook and other social media have been given much deserved credit for allowing democratic organization of an unprecedented level in the Middle East.
Wikipedia is astoundingly useful for learning things quickly about math, history, science, culture, etc.
Skype keeps my parents in touch with their grandchildren even better than I kept in touch with my own grandparents when I lived an hour away from them growing up.
You could go on all day describing companies and Internet industries that have completely changed the way people live: Ebay, Salesforce.com, CNN.com, Blizzard, etc.
After all, you didn't name technologies, you named brands/services.
The brands are the ones that dominate the services being covered, just like in the old days Xerox was a verb that stood in for the service of making photocopies.
A lot of people drive GM cars to work, universities and shops. Your argument is similar to saying that without GM every one of them would be jobless, uneducated and could buy nothing. I.e. you conflating the possibility of doing something via a service with the service being the only outlet for doing that.
Internet of the 90s created a lot of possibilities that simply didn't exist before. Services of the 2000s mostly centralized and commercialized already existing trends. Of all the brands in your list, I would say Skype is the only one that profoundly changed something.
Also, I still stand by my statement that if the things I named disappeared tomorrow, the world would move on unscathed.
Having grown up before the age of the Web/Internet, I couldn't disagree more.
I use Youtube on a regular basis to learn about things. Of the top of my head: gardening methods, worm composting, repairing a cracked ipad screen, fixing a macbook with soda spilled on it, learning about new programming environments.
Facebook and other social media have been given much deserved credit for allowing democratic organization of an unprecedented level in the Middle East.
Wikipedia is astoundingly useful for learning things quickly about math, history, science, culture, etc.
Skype keeps my parents in touch with their grandchildren even better than I kept in touch with my own grandparents when I lived an hour away from them growing up.
You could go on all day describing companies and Internet industries that have completely changed the way people live: Ebay, Salesforce.com, CNN.com, Blizzard, etc.
After all, you didn't name technologies, you named brands/services.
The brands are the ones that dominate the services being covered, just like in the old days Xerox was a verb that stood in for the service of making photocopies.