Today, I am reliably informed, is the twentieth birthday of the internet. Which means the internet has been a teenager for the past seven years, which certainly explains a lot. Stropping around, drawing attention to itself, obsessed with sex.

It also means that the internet is roughly the same age as the GorgeousTeen. Although a great deal less gorgeous, and a deal more trouble to have in the house.*

Come to think of it, though, wasn’t the internet celebrating its 40th birthday not so long ago? I think the internet is maybe taking the Anna Friel approach to ageing…

Coincidentally I had a conversation this week about the origins of the internet with my friend SomethinginIT. SomethinginIT used to be an engineer but now, well, I’m clearly a little vague about what he does for a living but it’s definitely something in IT. He asked me why I thought the internet had been created? As I looked a little puzzled, he gave me a clue: ‘What’s the reason behind ANYTHING human beings create?’ and I thought ‘Oh too easy!’ And so I replied, quick as a flash, ‘PORN!’

SomethinginIT was a little taken aback I think, possibly because he doesn’t often experience seemingly-respectable middle-aged women shouting ‘PORN!’ at him in pubs (although he has known me a LONG TIME, so he shouldn’t really be that surprised). But he soon recovered enough to put me right. Apparently it was created for the purposes of warfare, as a robust system to blahblahblah. (I sort of zoned out at this point, because he started talking about TCPIP and protocol and that sort of thing.)

He went on to tell me that in fact the Internet wasn’t used to look at porn for 95% of the time, as I assumed. It’s much less than that, apparently. Definitely no more than 80%, at least at work.

So, as we wish you a happy birthday, The Internet, now might be a good time to consider how you have changed all our lives, for the better and for the worse. Well, mostly for the worse to be honest:

1. Porn. In the old days, I understand, this was very tricky to get hold of. It was on very high shelves, which would involve brazenly asking the newsagent for a step-ladder to get it down. I assume this probably acted as something of a deterrent for the casual browser, especially if they knew your dad. Or if you were a paper boy there. God knows what the ubiquity and easy availability of porn on the Internet is doing to the next generation, and I am certainly not going to start asking them.
2. Email. When I was at college, I used to love going to my pigeonhole in the morning, because there would very often be a letter there. A handwritten letter with actual news in it. I have about three boxes of them in the attic, and I love re-reading them from time to time, because they are full of wonderful detail about the way we lived our lives then. Getting an email in your inbox – well it can’t really compare, because if you were to receive some news in an email (1) you’ve probably already read it piecemeal on Facebook and (2) if it contained anything interesting, it would get sent straight to your SPAM folder. Which leads us onto:
3. The demise of the love letter. Whoever heard of a Love Email? The modern day equivalent is probably the Sext. And I rather suspect that in 90 years they won’t be publishing The Collected Sexts of Twenty First Century. I could be wrong.
4. Viral news. Back in the early 90s, you still heard rumours by chance. You had to be in the right place at the right time. I heard about the death of Robert Maxwell, for example, while walking in a crowd back from a firework display. It was an amazing experience to feel the rumour almost physically rippling through the crowd. A couple of years later, I stood nervously by the work fax machine waiting for the arrival of the transcript of THAT hacked phone conversation between Charles and Camilla where he expressed his desire to be, er, very close to her. Nowadays, news travels ludicrously fast. It’s inescapable. As I noted before, we’re all part of the Borg and ‘getting away from it all’ is pretty much impossible. One downside of this is that sometimes the necessary speed of reporting means that it isn’t always accurate. For example, I once told my sister that George Best was definitely, positively dead, just as she was going to bed. I had read it on the internet. Er, apart from when she got up the next morning he was still alive. I managed to convince her that she’d dreamt it.
5. Stalking. Very very much easier these days, what with Friends Reunited and Facebook etc. No need to lie under hedges any more to find out what they are up to. You can look up old friends, and even better old enemies, in the comfort of your own home with very little chance of discovery or arrest. A few years ago I stumbled on some photos of a school reunion on the old school Facebook page and GOOD LORD what a delightful time I had scrutinising those photos. The downsides of the way we live our lives in public are manifold and enormous, of course. We all know a story of an infidelity discovered online; the horrors of scrutinising candid photographs for evidence of that laughing girl standing a little too close…. Yet another reason why being a teenager today is completely rubbish.

So, porn, rumour, nasty jealousy and war! Happy birthday The Internet, and many happy returns! Let’s hope you grow up a bit. Soon.

* and just about as tidy. Haha just kidding GorgeousTeen.

PS talking of the internet (as I was, just there, in case you had lost concentration for a bit) you can now follow me on Twitter. So, you know, if you would RETWEET me and all that, I’d be grateful. TIA. (Thank God I don’t have to say RETWEET to your faces. I sound ridiculous.)

Richard Westcott (mmmm…) explains it all:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14430076/