I have been half-watching a documentary on the television this evening about changes that occurred in the chemical industry over the past hundred years. The various talking heads from decades old interviews talked about the times of great development in their industry.
I wasn’t really watching until a retired manager filmed in the 1950s talked about the glamour days of the 1930s and 1940s - when the chemical industry attracted the brightest graduates, and was regarded as the most exciting field in industry.
The parallel was clear.
Those of us writing software, building websites, and hacking away at databases and webservices are at the forefront of a very similar wave. Where other industries have been lauded in decades past, the internet - and the abstract contructs on top of it (social networks, social media, etc) - is now firmly entrenched in the modern psyche.
It’s a privilage to find ourselves in the thick of it - witnessing the march of history at such close hand.