Our Growing Dependence on the Internet

As the world of online social connecting continues to evolve, its surprising how dependent we are of it at times. Do you fiddle with your smart phone while watching TV, going to bed, or just when you wake up? I remember years and years ago (don’t want to state how long ago anymore) when things were just starting to rev up. The first computer that I had was a 100 MHz Pentium with windows 95 and just under 2 gigs, okay, might of slightly given away how long ago. One of the first search engines that I used were HotBot and AltaVista and things were crawling at a snails pace.

For getting my news on a daily basis, I still rely on CNN and CTV Newsnet (here in Canada) but for the specialize areas that I like to keep up to date on a daily basis such as the latest ramblings in the search engine forums, newsletters and music gossip, I use RSS feeds with My Yahoo page and My Twitter Accounts. The Personalized RSS feeds are personal favorites of mine. You can choose exactly what you want to see on a daily basis no matter how strange or odd your taste is. Also, it is easy to keep up to date on other local areas of the world that would normally not be available on such an easy access today as it would of been 15 years ago.

If you were looking for the late gossip on your favorite band 10-15 years ago, you mainly had to rely on magazines. These days while the music magazines are still out there, the move to getting info on your favorite band is right at your finger tips and the information is updated instant.

Our computers, mobile phones, tablets are the gateway to the information highway, and its amusing at times when your computer breaks down and you feel somewhat cut off from things. Its more funny after the fact and when things are working again, but now with our dependence on the net, we rely on emails and txting via our cell phone, you can stay connected to the net constantly with your Blackberry or iPhone for example. No longer do we need to be totally cut off. Then there are those time that when your internet connection goes down and its just a time to sit back and relax and enjoy the peace.

Keeping track of friends and family is more convenient for myself these days with email and the various messenger programs. I managed to find a long lost friend with Facebook and reconnect, which otherwise may not of happened as quickly. The blog and twitter craze has been really good. Its making it easy for people to post their thoughts on the net without too much HTML knowledge, and its good seeing what people are writing about. I have a friend that occasionally writes these amazing emails on his thoughts and views of the world. With him being over 2000 miles away, I can still keep up to date on his very interesting theories and views of the world.

As our dependence on the internet has grown over the past decade and continues to go even moreso these days, we still rely on newspapers (less so for myself) and the popular news stations for the latest news, the continued move towards more up to date information via the internet will have an effect on traditional new sources. To what effect we will have to wait, and keep reading about it online or on the newspapers.