Life Without the Internet = Life in the Stone Ages?

Just visit this site (http://www.usatoday.com/tech/top25-internet.htm) to see how the internet has changed our lives forever. From the World Wide Web to EBay to Craigslist- it has changed us all. We would probably be lost without it. Here are some stats to toast to: approximately 747 million adults logged onto the World Wide Web in January and nearly 97 billion e-mails are sent out daily; quite a lot to say the least.

Yes, the Internet has changed our lives dramatically. We all agree that life without it can be likened to life in the stone ages. Let’s take a quick look at the origins of the internet. The internet was invented in the early 70’s by the Pentagon in order to create a ‘secret’ network where information could be shared via a computer throughout the building, in privacy, from the outside world. Today, that concept has expanded, including the world in sharing information in just about every category imaginable. From trading stocks, to purchasing merchandise, to looking up health information- the internet does it all. Some internet oriented theories will always hold through time. These include:

1. Social Support: Due to social distance, anonymity, interaction management, and access, social support on the Internet is extremely common.

2. Hyperpersonal Model: Walther’s Hyperpersonal Model is made up of the over-attribution process, developmental aspect, selective self-presentation, re-allocation of cognitive resources, and behavioral confirmation. Though the degree of cues will constantly change over time, the hyperpersonal model will always be relevant.

3. Law of Attraction: Attraction is a result of shared attitudes, beliefs, and interests across different parties, and this will always remain the case.

4. Fundamental Attribution Error: Behavior is attributed to personal traits, as well as situational constraints.

There are a few theories or phenomena that will change in response to the passage of time. These include:

1. Digital Deception: With more and more cues available to the public, it will be harder to deceive on the internet.

2. Anonymity: As real-time video messaging takes a solid rooting, the theories connected to anonymity will change drastically, as anonymity will be harder to come by.

In terms of future technologies, I feel that the PDA and Blackberry sector will grow in size. Just as labtops are pretty much the norm these days, I feel that the PDA device will become the norm across all people. Also, we will see an increased reliance on video messaging. With low-cost to free phone services such as SKYPE becoming popular everyday, home landlines will become more and more obsolete.

We covered many topics in Comm245. I however would have enjoyed a greater exposure to movie and music piracy. Internet piracy constitutes obtaining movies and music before they are even released on DVD by cracking codes and ripping music. These internet pirates may feel that the “information should be free” and so ripping the music and redistributing it is permissible. Also, if we actually map internet’s fruition through time, we come to see that it has a long and twisted history. Perhaps learning of the internet’s history would have been a good way to set the stage for the semester. Discussing how the internet has changed, what people thought it would be like, and where people think it will be in the future are some ways to mull over the constant evolution of the internet.