The world wide web is a funny thing. If I had been alive in 1989 (I wasn’t), I cannot imagine I would have had the vision and understanding to recognise the upcoming seismic shifts that have occurred because of the internet. I am consoled by the fact that not many did. In the last 40-ish years since then, the world has changed immeasurably. I am sure that 1948 to 1989 felt as wildly transformative to those living through it as the last decades feel me to now, and I know that change is a ubiquitous experience. But I am constantly overwhelmed by the way I have watched information sharing and technology change our lives day to day, a little afraid of how far I am falling behind as the thread of progress stretches out ahead.
Progress is driven by people. By the programmers, the scientists, the CEOs and the ordinary and extraordinary people that keep everything in the world moving along. As a 90s kid, I thought about progress people in an abstract way. They were faces on newspaper covers, or household names. They won prizes and awards and got interviewed on television.
One of things I never imagined about the internet was the changing shape of success. Now they are the people on videos I see when scrolling on my phone instead of going to bed on time, people with follower counts that have lots of zeros in them. They are people with platforms, who distributed unchecked information to the masses, whose voice is louder and prouder than their platform-free counterparts.
These people come from many walks of life; they are doctors, dentists, aestheticians, musicians, writers, readers, acrobats and dreamers. Sometimes they are successful at simply having a lifestyle worth emulating, a skill that can garner them a living and once in a lifetime opportunities that appear every week.
If I am being honest, I am jealous of their success, envious but unwilling to replicate the work they have done to have a voice. I want people to read my book, even if I don’t have a TikTok following. I want someone to buy my painting, even if I have no idea how to make a reel of its creation. I want to be taken seriously as a scientist, even if I don’t share my highs and lows on LinkedIn. I am holding on to an idea of success that lives in the past. But the thread stretches out ahead, progress and potential unspooling into the future, and I am behind.
