What Has The Internet Meant To The World, And To Individuals
For folks who have only known it, the internet can be taken for granted. For us who started with a 300 baud modem on Compuserve and paid per minute for access to very limited services (plus regional toll call charges to access the server), what is in place now has made revolutionary changes to the world. These include...
1. Almost instant access to the world's combined knowledge
Fantastic in many ways, difficult in others.
2. Almost instant communication with family, friends, others.
Again, fantastic in many ways, and difficult in others.
3. Information Overload
Like an ant at the mouth of the Mississippi River.
4. Millions and millions of jobs that didn't exist before
Programmers, hardware engineers and manufacturers, many new business models,
5. Millions of jobs no longer exist, or had major transformations
Travel agents come to mind.
6. A Magnifier of Individual Points of View
"Going viral" gives otherwise unknown individuals world wide exposure (and money, sometimes).
7. Changes in every business (that the internet didn't put out of business)
8. Revolutionary changes in how we communicate
Not only the transformation from written letters and phone calls to e-mails and text messages, but also communicating with pictures and videos.
9. The opportunity to "do your own thing"
Whether starting your own business(es), write and publish your own book(s), booking your own travel, etc., the catchphrase of the 1960's has come true, but not in the way that the folks
10. New ways to manage our personal lives
From notepads, index cards, columned paper, the newspaper and the Sears catalog, to word processing, spreadsheets, personal finance software, phone apps, online shopping, and now AI, we all have much more data in our personal lives, and many more ways to manage it all. And could, if one chose to, be entirely paperless.
Sometimes, there is too much - after all, I still haven't found a satisfactory app for managing my personal, family, work, and officiating calendars in one place where an update in one ends up on my phone without having to do a fancy dance step.
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