Invaluable Internet (Societal Impact of the Internet)

Member Name: Del_Boy

Product:	Societal Impact of the Internet
Date:	26/09/01 (58 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Meet new people, Dooyoo type sites good for consumers, E-mail

Disadvantages: As stated

The Internet, in my opinion has benefited society in many ways. Of course there is a dark and disturbing side to the Internet as well so all is not quite as Rosy as I will be making out in this opinion. However, the positives far outweigh the negatives, and I shall be concentrating more on them.

I believe that the Internet has benefited society in so many ways; some of them are not so obvious at first. I will take my situation, and my circumstances first:

I was 18, I had some friends and when I trusted them I could be the life and soul of the party. The trouble came when my social circle widened. I found it difficult to get into group discussion with people who I only had a passing acquaintance with. Also I disliked Dance/Rave/Club music, and found I was too shy to dance or to talk to anyone in clubs. Partly because I guess I had a complex about how I looked (though I admit that was all in my mind). Also partly because of the aforementioned shyness and also because I couldn’t participate in conversation in clubs because:

a) I couldn’t hear what was being said
b) I couldn’t speak with immense clarity in that situation, leading to some embarrassing moments when I had to keep repeating myself.

So meeting new friends, and potentially girlfriends was excluded by and large through those factors. The Internet came along, and as I had always liked Computers, and had managed to save up money I bought a Computer and a Modem.

At first I had to limit my online time as I was still on pay per minute. I went into chat rooms but by and large found them to be a waste of time, too many people wanting Cybersex! I may be sad, but not that sad, lol.

Once a flat monthly fee plan came out, I became pretty much addicted to the Internet. I still went out, but I spent a lot of time building up friendships in chat rooms where I shared mutual interests with the other participants. I found it an awful lot
easier to get involved on a non face-to-face basis.

Now I have a couple of Messenger programs on my Computer and use these to converse with a couple of long term Internet Friends. Indeed one of them, I hit it off with straightaway Kristina (she who is mentioned in my Love on the Internet opinion). I have met her a few times now, once when I went over to Sweden to meet her, and once when we both met in London. We are meeting again in Novemeber:

The Internet helped me to solve my initial bouts of shyness, and also allowed me to get close to a person before I sent them a photo. With Kristina that happened almost straightaway, we also started talking via phone within the week as well.

So far, so good I have hopefully explained the main good part of the Internet, the part that enables you to build a social circle. It is interesting to note that people who use the Internet a lot get called Nerds, yet, it is normal for people to vegetate in front of TVs all night. The Internet provides mental stimulation – TV often doesn’t!

As long as you don’t allow the Internet to be the be all and end all of your social circle I believe it is a very positive thing.
Other good points of the Internet, include being able to access information on virtually everything known to civilisation with a few typed words in a search engine and a couple of clicks.

I do believe the Internet needs some kind of Policing, the trouble of that being if something is policed too much it will be driven even further underground. I think you all know the kinds of things which I am referring to here, that I as well as 99.9% of others think is the worst part of the Internet. I do firmly believe that those people who are committing the most heinous of crimes on the Internet, should be locked away for life. Instead paltry sentences are handed out. This is the bad side of the Internet.

Other negative parts of the Internet, could
be the way it is seen to promote piracy. I would like to make a point here though:

I have downloaded MP3s in the past, and will continue to do so. Though, I only download unreleased albums or rare/live tracks. With the unreleased albums, I go out and buy the CD the day it hits the shops. This just helps satisfy me whilst waiting for it to come out. In the case of me downloading rare/live tracks, if they are not available to buy I see no harm in it. In fact this only goes to increase my liking of that band, and thus increases sales of their CDs as I go out and snap them all up!

Positives:

Meet new people
Increase your knowledge base
Allows me to find out about things before purchasing them, be it an MP3 song I have downloaded or a Dooyoo opinion I have read; The Internet is good for consumers
Enables you to solve problems, forums and newsgroups can help
Online shopping by and large is a reliable thing to do

Negatives

Allows a few unsavoury characters to communicate and to swap pictures
Not (unsupervised) child friendly, even the best Net Nanny type utilities don’t filter out all Porn
Too much piracy

Do I feel the Internet is the future?

The answer to that question is at least in my opinion, YES. I do believe that the Internet is going through somewhat of a transitional period at the moment with many websites going out of business etc. This is only to be expected though, sites such as Dooyoo have proven that with a sound idea E-commerce sites (and those connected with it) can thrive.

If the positives can be continued and indeed expanded upon, and the negatives eradicated a little more, then the future is guaranteed in my opinion to be bright.

I hope this opinion has covered all of the subject matter, if I have eluded to state something that is vital to this topic (and I hope I haven’t) feel free to mention it in the feedback section.
r>Kev