After completing another oh so special day here in the office earlier this week, I went home and cooked something totally unique to my taste buds. It was a variation of my girl Rachael Ray's Chicken Spanakopita Burgers. As I was eating this, my roommate decided he wanted to subjugate me to the horror that is Star Trek and William Shatner's unique speech pattern. It was The Undiscovered Country movie I think. Never-the-less, it got me postulating the visions of the future in the past. We aren’t driving space cars yet which is disappointing. However in the 30 agonizing minutes of Star Trek I endured, there was no mention of the Internet. Then I thought about a truly quality trilogy, Back To The Future, and how there was no mention of the Internet in there either. I couldn't even recall seeing a computer or even an Atari.

Now jump with me to the present. With the ever increasing usage of the Internet and the world wide web, people and ideas without millions of dollars of corporate backing can be found, heard, or used. If it wasn't for the internet, how many people would have heard The Beatles meet Jay-Z on The Grey Album, M.I.A.'s groundbreaking Piracy Funds Terrorism, or Frank Sinatra mixed with Notorious BIG. Rethink the world without eBay, Amazon, or even Google. Think back to the days before online banking, AOL Instant Messenger, MySpace and Xbox Live.

There is a large subsection of people always looking for the next big thing, the most influential type of advertising is word-of-mouth. Someone stumbles across something cool, quirky, and unique then emails it to everyone in their address book who then emails it to everyone in their address book and so on. No amount of search engine optimization or pay-per-click advertising can overpower a movement of the people by the people.