"Just imagine what your world would be like without google and email"

I would not be wasting time having this debate at my office, which is part of his point. :)

I do not think just saying "The Internet, I mean, come on..." wins the argument. There needs to be something showing that the Internet changes our lives in ways similar to what radio, television, antibiotics and the atom bomb changed lives in the first half of the 20th century.

I think part of the problem with making that argument is that the Internet and computing technology is changing life much more appreciably in India and China than it is here. It is allowing people in India to suddenly join the cubicle dwelling, information processing, Western world work force in large numbers in ways that are profoundly changing the lives of many people there. Walmart's computerized, just in time inventory systems makes ordering products in China and getting them to the right shelves in a timely manner feasible. That is having perhaps an even more profound effect on the life of many Chinese. (This also applies to many other developing countries, of course.)

So it may be that the technology advances are less noticeable here in the U.S., where many of us were already working in offices and shopping at department stores in the 1950s. But the way lives are changing in developing countries is akin to the kinds of changes Americans experienced in the first half of the 20th century.

You giving up your age here :) The world was actually fine, and more or less the same as it is now.