I’ve been pondering this morning how the use of the internet has (or may have) changed my life. As a child/teen during the web’s infancy, I was blissfully unaware that so many lifes/careers/relationships would be enabled or changed as a result of the interactions it might facilitate. I hadn’t even heard of google prior to arriving at university and two years prior to that had never had internet access anywhere locally.
I am sure my behaviour today would be pretty different if the web wasn’t around due to the massive impact its had in my world view. It seems a far smaller place and more tightly coupled. I feel free to drop messages to strangers and write blog posts into the ether. I won a T4 competition in my early uni years which landed me a car and £4k richer, which I wouldn’t have entered if I’d had to phone – so I’d definitely be poorer. There are however, examples where the use of the web has had a detrimental effect on particular individual lives.
It’s a huge one to think about. Would my life be better as a result of the web having not been so widely adopted in the way it has? Would yours?