Celebrating the Birth of the Internet

Anniversaries and birthdays represent a great opportunity to examine where you been and where you’re planning to go. (I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, since Makovsky is celebrating its 30th anniversary.)
Interestingly, according to a headline last month in the Telegraph, the Internet recently celebrated its 40th birthday on September 2. That’s the day in 1969 when scientists at UCLA connected two computers with a 15-foot cable, enabling the transfer of data from one computer to the other.

It was, in my opinion, an occasion every bit as momentous as the time in 1876, when Alexander Graham Bell first shouted into the mouthpiece of his new invention: “Mr. Watson, come here — I want to see you.”

Technology marches on. In 2009, marketers are creating “Minority Report”-style digital signs that display targeted ads based on information they glean from examining individual human faces. Tiny cameras estimate the age, ethnicity and gender of passers-by and track how long a given person watches the display. The digital sign can then play an advertisement specifically targeted to whoever’s watching. But we’ve been doing that for years in public relations. We have a long tradition of crafting and delivering customized messages to micro-communities of stakeholders at the times, in the places and in the ways that make sense to them.

It’s a skill whose value has increased exponentially since the dawn of the age of the social media … another important milestone in the history of the internet.

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