What a difference!

There are now 100 million websites, up from 18,000 in August 1995, a phenomenal growth in just 11 years time.

It is almost impossible to remember the pre-Web days. When you had to go to the hotel lobby shop to get a newspaper. When you had to go to a bookshop to buy books and for books on China you had to go to Hong Kong. When you had to pay for international long-distance calls. When you couldn’t google anybody. When nobody knew what a blog was. When you had to buy your PC operating system in a carton box. When you had to write letters to mom.

All this changed in 1995. I still remember that August clearly. I believe it was on the 25th. Three breakthroughs in one day! I installed Windows 95 on my PC (yes, those were the days before I broke all my Windows). I bought my first laser printer, an HP Laserjet 4L. He’s getting old, but is still in working order. We brought him to Zhongguancun yesterday for a clean-up. I hope I can still use him a few more years. And yes on that day in August 1995 for the first time I connected my PC to the Internet. It was memorable day.

Today I read De Standaard and De Tijd online before people in Belgium even get out of bed. In fact, I can peruse almost all the newspapers of the world sitting in my home-office. I have convenient access to the biggest bookshop in the world, Amazon.com, where I have ordered hundreds of books in the past decade. Calls to Belgium are much cheaper through VOIP or Skype. With Google and Wikipedia I have a whole treasure trove of information at my fingertips. I have started my own website and blog. And I am a proud user of Linux (after breaking all my Windows). I downloaded my current operating system, Linspire 5.1 through the Internet. I can play around with hundreds of other versions of Linux. Maybe I’ll give Mandriva 2007 a try. No need to run to the store. I can just download it. Writing letters to mom is history, we exchange e-mails. In fact all my work as a China correspondent in the past 8 years has been delivered by e-mail.

Yes, indeed, what a difference 11 years make.