Internet life is finally scaling

Tom Standage’s latest book is doing the rounds in an innovative (or allegedly ancient) way at the moment and a tweet about it leapt out at me this week:

Broadcast media was a blip in 2000 years of media according to @tomstandage wotw2013 pic.twitter.com/d9YEJiqzWY

— Stephen Waddington (@wadds) September 20, 2013

Thinking about this brought up some interesting comparisons from another area where I’ve noticed a similar trend: ecommerce.

In the old days, you used to go to a shop, the shopkeeper knew your name, knew what you liked, knew how to keep you loyal and could maintain a relationship. It was small scale and one to one. Since then, the commerce scene expanded so much with supermarkets and similar that this stopped being possible and a lot of this personal touch was lost. Then the internet happened and things quickly moved toward a dumb anonymous experience.

But the digital age...