At the most basic level, the Internet is an international network which is formed by millions of computers around the world which are connected together in a tight digital web. Through this web, information is transferred at fantastic speeds from one end of the planet to another. Information that in the past took days or weeks to travel from one location to another can now be sent instantaneously. This means that like the steam engine itself, the Internet has led to a quantum leap in the productivity levels of all the humans on the planet who use it, simply because it allows them to move information at high speeds.
To truly understand the Internet, one must first understand the Information Age. The Information Age is to the 20th and 21st centuries what the Industrial Revolution was to the 18th and 19th centuries, a major turning point in the dawn of humanity. The key factor which led to the transition from the Agrarian age to the Industrial Age was the creation of machines which eradicated the need for man to rely on manual labor in order to produce products. This meant that products could be produced in a much shorter period of time, and the laws of economics make it clear that as a civilization or nation produces goods or services at a faster rate, the wealth of this nation would increase. As we can see, the Industrial Revolution lead to a quantum leap in wealth for the nations which took advantage of it, eventually transforming the entire world. Just the same, the Internet will play the same role in the Information Age that the steam engine played in the Industrial Age, because it is a tool that allows the productivity levels of humans to increase, meaning goods and services can be produced at a faster and cheaper rate.
One key thing that I want to discuss at this point in the chapter is that throughout history, each time humanity enters a new “age,” there is a group of people who are usually able to take advantage of this age more readily than others. In the 19th century, it was the “robber barons,” the likes of John David Rockefeller and J.P Morgan, who were able to take advantage of the age in which they lived to build immense wealth. In the Information Age, it was men like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Sergey Brin, Mark Cuban, and Lawrence Page, who built fabulous fortunes due to their ability to build businesses based on the “age” in which they lived.