Mike Steminsky
ENG 110 – H6
Professor Emerson
13 October 2017
The Multiple Advantages of the Internet
The internet has been around for 40 years, each year becoming more modern and filled with a multitude of websites. The internet is always changing, allowing for new advances, new information, and new ways of doing activities we would have never considered before. As the Internet evolves, humanity evolves. In this 21st century we are all subject to the latest internet trend or phase. Oliver Burkeman, a decorated writer for the Guardian, discusses this in “Forty years of the internet: how the world changed forever.” The internet also allows us to be distracted but these distractions can be controlled and be overseen in the genuine positives of the internet. Sam Anderson, a writer for New York Magazine, refers to this in “In Defense of Distraction”. Another aspect to the internet is it’s abilities to affect a mass populous and the way that we perceive each other’s actions. Bill Wasik, an editor for the New York Times Magazine, writes about this in “My Crowd Experiment: The Mob Project.” All three of these parts concerning usage of the internet have an advantage of being a tool for meaning making and pursuing purpose. The internet as a tool can be used for research and learning, connecting people and groups, organizing large movements, and raising awareness.
The internet has made research much easier and resulted in learning in multiple different fashions. Research can now be accessed in many different ways. It can be found through databases resulting in hundreds of articles and journals about a certain topic. Libraries now also use this type of information accessing to allow people to find books or titles easier. Instead of physically looking through the information, one can just find it online and either request it at the library or find an ecopy. This helps students mainly but can also be for recreational use. Another example of this is the instant information that a person can access. Online classes are a practical way for people to learn. They are able to either take classes at home, or in their free time in order to achieve a goal of theirs. Another example of this is children learning. Many children can learn online with no teacher to guide them. They can instantly google any question they have and find hundreds of websites with the answer. Most teachers even encourage this, calling students to look up key words online while reading a text they may not understand. The internet allows information to be connected and synthesized easier by guiding the user. Anderson states while discussing Einstein and Lennon, “What made both men’s achievements so groundbreaking, though, was that they did something modern technology is getting increasingly better at allowing us to do: They very powerfully linked and synthesized things that had previously been unlinked…” (In Defense of Distraction). Internet allows scholars to make connections they would not be able to make without it. The internet increases the quality of education and this will continue to improve as generations continue to grow.
The internet also has the ability of connecting and communicating a message to a mass group of people in a very short amount of time. Facebook, a social media page, allows users to use this feature of their website. The user can create a group page and invite friends who they think will be interested in a particular topic. For instance, a very common example of this is reunions. Someone on Facebook will create a group concerning a high school reunion. The person will then invite all their high school friends to the group which will allow them to receive the proper information. After receiving it, the people invited will be able to invite more people and more until the group has a vast amount of people who have one set of information. This is an example of how the internet can allow someone to get a simple message out to hundreds in seconds. It is extremely fast compared to the alternative of contacting every person individually. Another example of this is using a website or another group service to get information out about an issue one may want to address. Walks for Cancer is an example of this. One person can share an article about a group doing a walk and that article has the potential of reaching thousands. What is nice about the internet is the connectivity everyone can get as a society. People’s messages can be easily branched out. Huge events can be scheduled in a matter of hours. This used to take days even if proper networking techniques were used and many people learned about this at once. Another aspect of networking is the bandwagon effect, as Bill Wasik calls it. He describes it as “the instinctive tendency of the human animal to rely on the actions of others in choosing its own course of action.” Therefore, if someone sees that a walk or fundraiser is going on and a lot of people are donating or participating in it, the person will feel more inclined to do the same. This is a piece of what makes this tool so successful. It simply is just easier to put something online and allow people to see and share it resulting in more eyes seeing it in a shorter amount of time. The internet allows many people to raise awareness for a cause they may have. Already discussing how they can connect to other groups or create groups and spread a message, the internet allows for messages of an individual to be taken notice of. For example, many people use go fund me pages in order to fund a new invention that they have. The invention may not be good but they are able to raise awareness through the internet about their product. This can be huge for even small business who need to spread awareness. This can also be used by people trying to spread awareness about a political movement or new development. Someone, such as a doctor, can use the internet to potentially warn their patients about a new life threatening disease or virus that has been found. They can also use the internet to inform patients of new tactics in the field and which ones are better than others. Politicians also can use the internet to spread their message of their respective parties. Other celebrities will use the internet to spread images or text that they may see as a worthwhile cause. The internet allows for a cause to be noticed and issues to have an awareness raised.
The internet can be a tool for connectivity of people. The communication aspect of the internet has been a tool for years. However, Bill Wasik states that what the internet has done to change culture “is to archive trillions of our communications, to make them linkable, trackable, searchable, quantifiable, so they can serve as ready grist for yet more conversation.” The invention of social media has made connection easy, simple, fast, and a good example of the above quote. A person can check up on someone’s status as long as they have an internet connection and if a friend is active in their posting, a person can know a lot more than they may wish in a very short amount of time. These platforms also archive posts, letting a user look at ideas a person has said or represented for years. Instant messaging, however, allows for another faster form of communication. Texting is a good example of this. A person in California can send message to someone in Maine in less then a second. This upgrade is astonishing compared to the amount of time it would take to relay a message this great of a length of distance. People can also get in touch with people they have never met before. For example, suppose you request to speak to a manager in a store to complain about a poor experience. Not only can you instantly contact the manager through email, you can contact the owner, or even the CEO. The internet allows an individual to get in touch with someone who is higher up you may not be able to see. They may live miles away from the store, yet you can still talk to them about a key complaint or an issue you see. Before this, you could maybe only talk to an owner at best, but your chances of getting in touch with a high ranking individual was very minimal. Communication through the internet has an interesting future however. Robert Taylor, an Arpa scientist, discusses in Oliver Burkeman’s article that “In a few years, men will be able to communicate more effectively through a machine than face to face. That is rather a startling thing to say, but it is our conclusion.” In this day and age, communication is a huge positive tool that can be used by anyone and will continue to get faster and faster as the years go on.
To conclude, a short story can summarize how the internet allows for all these positive tools. Last year I had to get knee surgery. Using the internet, I was able to research what was wrong about my knee. I found multiple articles about the symptoms of a tear and pictures of what a tear looked like in an MRI and X-Ray. I was also able to find many websites about the type of surgeries that can be attempted. As I continued to research, I was able to find blog posts of people who have gotten knee surgery. I was able to connect with one of them and they gave me more information of which I could use. They also were able to refer me to multiple surgeons in the area. All of this was able to happen instantly, as long as the other person had time. I did not need to wait for a letter or in person meeting with this person. I then got in touch with the surgeons he recommended. These people, who I have never talked to in my life, gave me more and more information about this. They also gave me doctors information I could use and suggested facilites I could visit. Without their accessibility I would have to talk to each one individually and either at their offices or through the mail. Finally I was able to make my decision and had the surgery done at a facility with a surgeon I already knew, doing an operation I already researched. Without the internet, I would not have been able to retrieve all this information in such a fast pace that I did. The internet is a great tool that has been created and it allows for so many positive experiences and interactions. Through its connectivity, it is able to give a user so much information and so much learning. The internet is one of the most useful tools to come out of the 20th century and will continue to shape and evolve our lives for generations to come.
