Scribd
Upload
271 views1 page

The Internet Has Turned Our Existence Upside Down

The Internet has revolutionized communications and how people interact with each other. It started as a static network for sharing information between terminals but is now a dynamic platform where vast amounts of data is uploaded and downloaded daily and users create and share content. The Internet grew from connecting universities and research centers to becoming the world's largest computer network with millions of systems and users. The emergence of Web 2.0 further transformed the Internet into a tool for social media and crowd-based interactions where people can communicate and share their lives globally in real-time. While connecting people worldwide, the Internet has also sparked debates around how online interactions impact relationships and challenges privacy and security in networked societies.

Uploaded by

Just Tine
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
271 views1 page

The Internet Has Turned Our Existence Upside Down

The Internet has revolutionized communications and how people interact with each other. It started as a static network for sharing information between terminals but is now a dynamic platform where vast amounts of data is uploaded and downloaded daily and users create and share content. The Internet grew from connecting universities and research centers to becoming the world's largest computer network with millions of systems and users. The emergence of Web 2.0 further transformed the Internet into a tool for social media and crowd-based interactions where people can communicate and share their lives globally in real-time. While connecting people worldwide, the Internet has also sparked debates around how online interactions impact relationships and challenges privacy and security in networked societies.

Uploaded by

Just Tine
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 1

The Internet has turned our existence upside down.

It has revolutionized communications, to the


extent that it is now our preferred medium of everyday communication. In almost everything we do,
we use the Internet. Ordering a pizza, buying a television, sharing a moment with a friend, sending a
picture over instant messaging. Before the Internet, if you wanted to keep up with the news, you had
to walk down to the newsstand when it opened in the morning and buy a local edition reporting what
had happened the previous day. But today a click or two is enough to read your local paper and any
news source from anywhere in the world, updated up to the minute.

The Internet itself has been transformed. In its early days—which from a historical perspective are still
relatively recent—it was a static network designed to shuttle a small freight of bytes or a short
message between two terminals; it was a repository of information where content was published and
maintained only by expert coders. Today, however, immense quantities of information are uploaded
and downloaded over this electronic leviathan, and the content is very much our own, for now we are
all commentators, publishers, and creators.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the Internet widened in scope to encompass the IT capabilities of universities
and research centers, and, later on, public entities, institutions, and private enterprises from around
the world. The Internet underwent immense growth; it was no longer a state-controlled project, but
the largest computer network in the world, comprising over 50,000 sub-networks, 4 million systems,
and 70 million users.

The emergence of web 2.0 in the first decade of the twenty-first century was itself a revolution in the
short history of the Internet, fostering the rise of social media and other interactive, crowd-based
communication tools.

The Internet was no longer concerned with information exchange alone: it was a sophisticated
multidisciplinary tool enabling individuals to create content, communicate with one another, and
even escape reality. Today, we can send data from one end of the world to the other in a matter of
seconds, make online presentations, live in parallel “game worlds,” and use pictures, video, sound,
and text to share our real lives, our genuine identity. Personal stories go public; local issues become
global.

The rise of the Internet has sparked a debate about how online communication affects social
relationships. The Internet frees us from geographic fetters and brings us together in topic-based
communities that are not tied down to any specific place. Ours is a networked, globalized society
connected by new technologies. The Internet is the tool we use to interact with one another, and
accordingly poses new challenges to privacy and security.

Information technologies have wrought fundamental change throughout society, driving it forward
from the industrial age to the networked era. In our world, global information networks are vital
infrastructure—but in what ways has this changed human relations? The Internet has changed
business, education, government, healthcare, and even the ways in which we interact with our loved
ones—it has become one of the key drivers of social evolution.

You might also like