I went back to highschool today. A few of my teachers invited me to give a little talk to the students about what I do and so I prepared a presentation and went back to my old art classroom to face a crowd of 16-18 year olds.

Reflecting on what it means to be a freelance web designer turned out to be a very interesting exercise, as I realised that 20 years ago, when I crossed that patio for the first time, web design didn’t even exist. A web designer wasn’t what I wanted to be when I grew up, how could it?

Thinking about how it all changed so quickly and unexpectedly, I tried to learn a bit more about the history of the internet and the world wide web, and where it’s going. Technology is moving so fast that I can’t really say what I’ll be doing in five years time. Pretty exciting!

I hope everybody enjoyed my class, maybe learned a thing or two, and went home wanting to find out more about the subject. As promised, here are the links to four fantastic videos that inspired my presentation:

Did You Know 3.0

History of Internet

Predicting Ted Talk: The next 5000 days of the web


Ted Talk: Unveiling the “Sixth Sense,” game-changing wearable tech

Tomorrow I’m off to Barcamp Portugal, in Coimbra, where I’ll be doing another presentation, this time to a totally different crowd. Geekland here I go!

 — UPDATE — 
Another interesting video about the first steps of the internet:
1981 primitive Internet report on KRON (via @cdeath)