I laughed when he quoted Neal Stephenson - I was thinking about Cryptonomicon during the whole talk. This was a great TED Talk. It's interesting to think about the shapeless, meta-physical thing we all refer to as the internet as only having an existence because of the physical infrastructure painstakingly laid out all over the world.
Interesting talk, but I don't understand one thing. Who actually thought that internet wasn't a physical thing? Did people think that it's based on what, air, somewhere on the actual cloud? Do people think that television isn't physical, thinking that it just "appears"? Is someone who doesn't know that products in supermarkets are delivered there, and don't really grow in their warehouses?
Internet is another way of delivering digital content through the use of a massive web of physical infrastructure, which is why it was labeled WWW. It's not just a cool name; it represent what it ACTUALLY is. There's nothing to think about here. How is that not obvious?
I loved the quote in the end, which is a completely different topic, by the way, and not what the whole talk was about. And I'm not trying to sound smart here - I might not be getting something here - but why does this obvious thing even needs to be explained for adults? Serious question.
As someone who works in data centers, I don't understand how people are not even aware of the physical part of networks, websites, etc. Schools need to start having field trips to data centers (even though most data centers are secure facilities), so we are not raising a generation of idiots who think the internet is created my magic.
I'm sick of people telling me what I do and don't need to know. Not everyone needs to know, sometimes some people or a lot of people need to know. But more often than not I find not everyone needs this knowledge. I think in order not to know we need to learn how to more effectively communicate. But that is why we have specific people to do the job, because they are the best or the most interested person to be doing that job.
Prior to the internet people related to other people using pieces of paper (books, letters, newpapers, etc.). But we didn't have people getting freaked-out about looking at rectangles of paper all day the way people get freaked-out about looking at screens.