Tracking internet changes

Good morning.

Let me just cut and paste something from the internet ... hang on ... here we go: "Virtual Revolution charts two decades of profound change since the invention of the World Wide Web, weighing up the huge benefits and the unforeseen downsides."

That was easy.

The internet, as everyone knows, has made quite the difference to a number of occupations.

Consider the work of the television reviewer, in this case as he previews Virtual Revolution.

While the reviewer still has to give an opinion, getting any information on the show is as simple as clicking a mouse on http://www.bbc.co.uk/virtualrevolution/.

Episode one (Living Channel, 8.30pm, Sunday, September 19) covers: "The wonder and walls of Wikipedia; the blogger media revolution; the price of peer-to-peer piracy; who really has power on the web?" or so the site tells us all for free.

That is all very well, of course.

But how much is my preview now worth?

Have you paid for a newspaper to read it, or are you viewing it on the internet (a beast programme presenter Dr Aleks Krotoski says has created huge wealth by encouraging millions to work for nothing)?The debate swirling around this topic, one unfolding rapidly before our eyes, is fascinating, as is Virtual Revolution.

Dr Krotoski gets the opinions of Bill Gates, Al Gore, and, for some reason, comedian Stephen Fry, on what has unfolded online.

We discover that one-quarter of the planet now uses the web.

Episode one has a good look at Wikipedia, an essential tool if our aforesaid television reviewer needs to find a synopsis, for instance, of episode one of Gilligan's Island.

I just checked, and am told the first episode of Gilligan's Island; "Two on a Raft", is sometimes referred to as the series pilot.

That information is wrong, according to Wikipedia.

Or is it? Virtual Revolution discusses the new construction of truth, which comes now not from the top down, with learned scholars telling us all what's what, but from the bottom up, with many editors developing the 14 million articles viewed by 65 million people every day.

This series, clearly well researched by people who know what they are talking about, is well worth a look.

It raises some fascinating issues about a tool that has radically changed the way most people access information, however accurate that information may be.

And that last bit was neither cut nor pasted.

From the future to the past - if you have a quiet moment, have a look at From the Archives on TVNZ Heartland.

Sunday evening had a terrific show about bikies in New Zealand, complete with the most spectacular sideburns, called If You're in it, You're in it to the Limit, from 1972.

Old Triumph motorcycles, Morris Minors, Ford Anglias, experimental camera work - it was awesome.