If we had the Internet in college

I was chatting last night with a high school kid that frequents two of my sites. Smart kid, has a site about a certain amusement park, fortunate enough to have his own PowerBook. We were talking about advertising revenue. He uses one of the same ad firms I do, and he does OK even with limited traffic.

It made me think... what if the Internet was as mainstream today as it was when I was in college (fall '91 to spring '95)? I remember busting my ass on crappy work-study jobs, along with my radio gig, just to pay the rent my senior year. I was lucky to clear $300 for a month working 80+ hours. Not a lot of beer money, or money to buy other essential items like CD's and a replacement VCR when my hand-me-down died. I also wouldn't have had to settle for my ancient IBM PS/2 Model 25 with no hard drive (though ironically it was my first computer used to touch the Net).

Today, nearly every kid in college has a computer, a laptop even, with a wired dorm. There isn't a doubt in my mind that if I were in college today, I'd have some site and I'd clear a grand a month to seriously party. I might have even studied now and then.

And the effects aren't limited just to income. My former volleyball kids, now in college, are always connected and online. They're there in my buddy list 24/7. There's a totally different social culture aided by the Internet. I don't know if that would've resulted in fewer lonely nights or just a different means to receive a booty call, but it would be different, regardless.

Maybe the weirdest thing is just that life hasn't changed much in ten years now that we have a mainstream Internet. On the other hand, everything has changed. It's a very strange dichotomy.

3 Comments

  • All those facilities improve not one man's ability, but every man's ability, which raises competition, and drives down prices, but increases productivity. If you were in college today, with all that stuff, my insinuation is that you would still be working 80+ hours a week, with probably even much lesser beer money, just doing a lot more because of all the tools you had.



    Who wins? The Economy - because of worker productivity.

  • I totally disagree. It's college, not corporate America. More on why I disagree in another post...

  • Anyway... The kids I know in college aren't flipping any more burgers than I did. Furthermore, the kids clever enough to hack out some free PHP code to run their own sites are not in every other dorm room. To suggest that those kids, the kid I would've been, aren't going to have it easier is crazy.



    I loved the story in Business 2.0 about the kid that runs MobileTracker.net. He scores $4k a month with that site. Can you imagine? Not a bad way to pass the time in college. There are a lot of stories just like his out there.



    Personally, I work less now than I ever have.

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