See It Right Now

Seth Godin's recent blog post entitled "Seen it all before" talks about how our modern day technological culture has given almost everybody the power of being able to see it all. While it's obviously impossible to actually see EVERYTHING on the Internet (although we used to joke around with one of my college roommates that he had in fact seen the entire Internet) you can at least become familiar with a lot of it. This means that within 15 minutes of surfing you can watch a clip from the original TMNT, read an article from a small newspaper in Africa, listen to music that is similar to your favorite song, and find out what the weather is like in Andorra. This would be near impossible in a pre-Internet era, and these types of activities are just the beginning.

One thing that I think is worthwhile to add to his post would be that not only do we have this previous experience, but these experiences are literally right at our fingertips almost everywhere we go. For example, when I'm watching a TV show, at a movie, listening to a lecture, or watching a presentation, and I don't understand a reference I can get up to speed within a few seconds. My phone (and most cell phones out there right now) have the capability to do at least basic web surfing and can access simple sites like wikipedia. This means that you almost don't have to worry about whether people will understand certain references, because if they don't and the want to they can do it very easily.