Danny Ayers thinks about what hisorians and aliens will find unique about the Web and suggests:
The Web is the first artifact to be constructed collectively by all humans.
This is true (insert disclaimer about all here) and indeed a first, but it’s not why the Web is great. After all, we could have built a collective pile of pebbles or something. Why is the Web different from that? Why is it better than an artificial Mount Everest?
The Web lets us exchange information better and faster than ever before. Many things that would have been prevented by large distances are now trivial. But this was largely true in 1990, thanks to the telephone system, fax, and TV.
Unlike those, the Web lets us find people from the other side of the world, and engage with them in a meaningful way. Every person with Internet access can offer his or her knowledge, information, goods, and personality, and others can accept these offers, regardless of distance. That’s what makes the Web unique and great, in my eyes.
This was, in theory, possible before. Imagine some elaborate scheme using telephones, broadcast radio and fax machines here. But the Web was the first technical system that was flexible enough to actually evolve to this point. The Web’s most interesting applications—weblogs, wikis, Google, those online community thingies, and cat photos–did not show up instantly, but only after people played with the system for a couple of years.
So here’s my try at the Web’s USP:
The Web enables humans with common interests to form groups, communicate, collaborate, and trade, with complete disregard to geographic distances.
Another interesting question is: How will this change the world? Some thoughts: Levelling of regional cultural differences. Faster advances in highly specialized fields. Forming of communities based on interests, not locality. Increased range of special interests, exotic tastes, and extreme views. Rifts in society caused by that.
I love such questions.