Chances are in the past week you’ve read some argument about how the internet has destroyed the middle class, democracy, culture, etc, or a rebuttal of one of the above. I can’t add much to these debates. They sometimes sound like arguments over whether telephony is a boon or a curse. These technologies—as long as the grid’s up and running—we shall always have with us.
Sociological speculation notwithstanding, the exponentially increasing computing power that pushes our online interactions to ever-dizzying speeds is surely something to pause and marvel at, if not to fear. The short video above from Buzzfeed takes us on a wild ride through the millions of transactions that occur online in a single minute. Here we learn that in sixty-seconds, there will be 2,000,000 Google searches, 27,800 uploads to Instagram, 278,000 Tweets, 1,875,000 Facebook likes, a “low estimate” of 200,000 people streaming porn….
Actually, it does start to seem like all this online activity is pretty narrowly focused, or maybe that’s a limitation of the survey. Another video from 2011 (below) and infographics here and here offer some comparative analytics.
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Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Washington, DC. Follow him at @jdmagness
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