“Everything you need to know about the internet” is a brilliant essay from The Guardian that is not only instructive but also engaging in its content and significant in its scope.  (Thanks, BoingBoing, for the pointer.)

Here are just the key points, though you will need to read the entire post if you want to make sense of the world we now live in…

Take the Long View
The Web isn’t the Net
Disruption is a Feature, not a Bug
Think Ecology, not Economics
Complexity is the new Reality
The Network is now the Computer
The Web is changing
Huxley and Orwell are the bookends of our Future
Our IP regime is no longer fit for purpose

As John Naughton writes in his essay, “The internet has quietly infiltrated our lives, and yet we seem to be remarkably unreflective about it.” 

If you’d like to change that, you need to start with this.