When I was young we lived at a small country town, with my parents and my sister. The town did not have but of 20000 inhabitants.
There were the 60's, and we watched the TV only at night. Although being poor, we had been able to buy a television set with sacrifice and patience.
One day, my father bought an 11 volumes encyclopaedia. We paid a monthly payment during many months or years, no longer memory.
I loved that long books row with the same cover, which seems to me an infinite snake.
My father had only gone three years to school, but he knew that information and culture was the passport to the future for their children.
I was a dissuaded boy, without many friends. In the afternoons, while my friends left their houses to play football in the park or the street, I remained in the table of the kitchen reading those enormous books.
And I read page after page. I never wondered myself why following the word 'force' was 'fork'. And shortly after, I found 'fortune' definition and the Fortune magazine's history.
That was my window to the world: a large and transparent window that showed me all the variety and wealth of the planet, word by word.
Today I am almost fifty. I am plugged, wired, being digital, Negroponte said. My work and my life, as is today, are not sustainable without Internet. My clients demand from me more and more information, knowledge and skills, because his needs change every day. I go to the net, and there it is what I am looking for, always free.
Internet sponsored all my research and the progress in my career. Sorry, but not found a better word than sponsored. I've learned some languages, some spiritual inspiration, and much of the world knowledge with my computer. And always free.
My work requires fresh information, and the news are there, in the screen in front of me. My explorer home page has several feeders, selected, and filtered, of the world news more important to my job. Or to my hobby: internet.
And when I come to my computer looking for something and write three or for keywords on my search engine, guess what: I find ten thousand or ten millions pages related only to my search. I don’t waste time reading linearly page after page.
Now I like to communicate with many people, friends, colleagues, and all of them are in touch one click away. Sometimes they came to my blog and leave a remainder, sometimes in the form of comments. Or prompt my messenger, only for give me a tip, or for kidding. They are there. It doesn't matter if my business travel leads me to Turkey, or if I am attending a workshop in Brazil. They are there.
My dad has dead many years ago. Before his death, his face had many wrinkles, signs of time and suffering. I know that one of these marks, maybe a little one, appeared when he spent paying that encyclopaedia.
Now I have a bigger one, and free. My child born with it. We live in other time of humanity, different of that of forty years ago. However the need to know is bigger than those days. And I feel that we made possible the greater miracle on the history.
You know, left the children play with a book. The big book.
