The Guides Get All The Crowns! (Societal Impact of the Internet)

Member Name: marandina

Product:	Societal Impact of the Internet
Date:	03/02/06 (243 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Numerous

Disadvantages: Numerous

And you can already see the veins throbbing, neck chords bulging and the eyes straining from everyone’s sockets. Even a simple statement like this can elicit the strongest of reactions from the Internet user (especially on Dooyoo). There's no doubt the advent of the World Wide Web has impacted on just about every aspect of life. From its humble beginnings in the early 70's, the Net now sweeps across the globe and is used for everything from ordering groceries from Tesco to spreading terrorist propaganda.

In its most innocuous form, the WWW is a basic ordering mechanism that allows the user to arrange for their weekly shop to be delivered to their home. Allowing for substituted items, errors and a delivery charge, folks in remote parts particularly appreciate the ability to order their items from home. This has become a Godsend in places like Scotland where the nearest supermarket may be up to 50 miles away in some parts.

Likewise, in a broader consumer sense, the Internet has become a significant resource as more and more folks download their music, watch movies and research family history. Music has become so accessible now that download sales exceed the more conventional purchasing methods. The Arctic Monkeys are just one example of how a band has created itself in Cyberspace before being exploited in the mainstream via the media.

It looks like reading habits may be changed forever soon too. With the technology now available to download books onto a reading tablet that only uses battery life when the equivalent of a page is turned then maybe the conventional, hand held book could be doomed in years to come. Buying and downloading up to 25 books at a time may become commonplace with readers having choice and access never before dreamed of (except in some Japanese laboratory somewhere).

Dating and meeting partners now routinely takes place via the Internet. An explosion of dating agencies on the Web has made meeting somebody easier than ever. Of course, this has its dangers too as there are some strange people out there. I’ve first hand experience of this as a good friend of mine has just witnessed the birth of his first grandchild. His daughter met her husband over the Internet. He eventually moved over here from Detroit to marry her only last year and they seem as happy as anyone else I know.

I can still vividly recall returning from New York last year and sitting next to a young girl who was travelling to London all the way from San Francisco. She was meeting her boyfriend for the first time in the flesh and very nervous she was too. We chatted away for what seemed hours in a deliberate ploy to take her mind of the impending rendezvous. She kept looking at the flight map that plotted the flight path on a big screen at the front of our particular section of the plane. As we got closer and closer to Heathrow, she got more and more pensive and kept popping in and out of the toilet. The thing was, she was expecting him to propose marriage to her. Bearing in mind that she’d only ever seen or spoken to him online, this was a hell of a commitment in my book but what do I know these days?

The Net with its multitude of chat rooms and forums seems to break down the more conventional social barriers. It’s as though all the usual hang-ups disappear and folks feel free to say whatever they like; often not what they would say in real life. My daughter is possibly typical of the new wave of Internet savvy teenagers. Having now designed and established at least 5 of her own websites, a regular visitor to chatrooms including MSN and some school-orientated ones, she is more PC aware than ever I was or probably ever will be. I suspect that she will be like many of her generation and eventually meet her future partner online.

In its most sinister form, the Net has seen some of the most bizarre happenings that anyone can imagine. There was the case of the real-life Hannibal Lecter. Who can forget the case of Armin Meiwes, a computer repairman who had cut up and consumed a man he had met via the Internet? Meiwes had advertised on the Internet for a well-built male prepared to be slaughtered and then consumed. He wanted a slim, blond and victim, 43-year-old Bernd-Jurgen Brandes, answered the advert in March 2001. Meiwes took Brandes back to his home in Rotenburg, where the victim agreed to have his penis cut off, which Meiwes then flambéed and served up to eat together. Meiwes then stabbed the victim repeatedly in the neck and dissected the corpse. This was all apparently with consent right up until the last few moments!

You would like to think that this was an extreme example of where the Internet can go wrong but, sadly, there are numerous other instances of the WWW reflecting the more grisly aspects of human life. When it comes to blogging (a web log i.e. an online diary), folks writing their own online journals seem to lose all grasp on reality and post their innermost thoughts for the world to read. There was the recent case in Japan of a teenage girl who hated her mother. Having meticulously planned to poison her, she duly did and wrote about it in her blog. Within a few days, the police arrived having been tipped off by a reader. She was arrested and tried for her crime!

The Internet has changed the face of fundamentalists who have a wonderful opportunity to call the world to arms for their cause. It’s no secret that Muslim extremists publish the own political ideology online whilst detailed manuals on how to make bombs and other weapons are freely available. Armed groups in places like Iraq parade their prisoners in front of cameras and within hours the material is available on a spider’s web of Internet sites. This switch to psychological terror is incredibly powerful, bringing the plight of bound and gagged victims right into the very front room of millions of homes across the world. Not only is the exposure transmitted online but mainstream media then amplify the effect by including the material in peak time news bulletins. Maybe there is a case to take the oxygen out of issues like this but then you see the whole debate this week around the issue of freedom of speech and the right of the press to publish cartoons even if they offend some in religious circles and you see how circular the whole debate can be.

In summary, the advent of the Internet over the last 3 decades has been the most wide ranging event to hit the world in a long time. The applications that will benefit society as a whole are numerous. The WWW has forever changed how we meet, think, shop and has made the planet a much smaller place. The Net is also an insidious place too with just as many applications available for bad and evil doing in general. Ultimately, the Internet reflects us as we are, whether good, bad or indifferent. It’s as useful as we want to make it and as dangerous as we dare.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend. I certainly will as I’m one year older today :O)

Mara

Summary: The WWW and its impact on society