There is no doubt about it, I depend on the internet in my everyday life. I still remember the time when we had a dial-up connection, and I wonder how I managed to get by. I’ve come to realize that it is only through being able to use internet as much as I want that I’ve discovered how much you can benefit from it. So, here is a small list of what I like about it.

Anonymity
With anonymity I don’t mean the fact that you can hide who you really are, but rather the opposite. Just think about it. When you meet a person in the real world, they form an opinion about you no just based on how you act, but based on how you look, what clothes you wear, what they’ve heard about you from other people etc. Even though you think that you are not prejudiced, these factors always influence how you see a person, whether you know it or not. On the internet, this isn’t an issue. I can read an article written by a person and get to know that persons thoughts, without having other things influencing my impression of that person, and for some people, this can be really liberating.

Information
I’m one of those people who can hear about something I didn’t know and do some research on it just for fun. For me, the amount of information available on the internet and the way it’s organized is one of the best things about it. Before the internet, you would probably have to search through a lot of books to find the answer to some of your questions. With internet, you can just put some words in a search engine, and in less than a second, you’ll probably find what you were looking for. In a way, the internet is a collection of thousands of libraries with almost omniscient librarians.

Being connected
The world is getting smaller by the minute, for better or worse. I like the fact that I can send an e-mail to my relatives in Germany and have it arrive within seconds, instead of waiting days for the mail. I can keep in touch with my old friends no matter where they are in the world, and I can show them pictures from my life. Being connected to the world in this way opens up a whole new realm of possibilities.

Technology
The technological development in our society is inevitable, and internet can help people deal with it. Whether it be offering a tutorial on a program or encouraging people to learn a programming language, the internet shows us the importance of technology and helps us cope with it.

Flexibility
The internet is there for me 24/7, it never closes, and it never asks why I’m not in bed when it’s past midnight. If only my ISP was that reliable.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 28th, 2007 at 11:15 pm and is filed under My life, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.