24th March 2012, 10:53 PM
Wax Wrote:Interesting discussion, I suspect those who were not young in the days before the inter webby thingy etc might not appreciate the rapidity of change that it has initiated. It is here to stay but as yet it is unstable and to be honest costly and not so easy to use for those who have-not been brought up with it.
Pfff, I used to volunteer in an internet access centre and regularly assisted people in their 70s and 80s in learning to use the internet: conclusion, the net is very easy to learn to use. The people who had trouble were those (mainly early 30s-40s in age) who approached it with the attitude that it was too hard to use. :p
The problem I have when it comes to archaeology and the net is that many (maybe most) heritage sites are poorly designed and developed (I probably notice this more than most: I'm a web developer). This will improve over time though. And as storage is cheap and bandwidth is getting cheaper, more and more information will become available.
The bottom line is that in any field of work or study there is something to be gained by using the internet. Learning to use it properly should only take a few hours at worst.