Internet | Importance of the Internet

By Masha du Toit

It is difficult to think of an aspect of our lives that has not been affected by the Internet.  For many of us the Internet has changed the way we work, learn, and shop: the way we interact with friends, family and lovers, find new music and watch movies.

Growth:
According to Internet World Stats, the number of people using the Internet has increased from 16 million in 1995 to 1,734 million in September of 2009.  That is an increase from 0.4% to 25.6% of the world’s population in less than two decades. These days, in developed countries like North America, Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands more than 70% of the population are active on-line. 

Who and why:
It is difficult to find meaning in these numbers. They tell us how many, but they don’t tell us who is using the Internet and what impact it has on their lives. Let’s focus a bit more closely and consider some of these Internet users:

A young girl is preparing for her first job interview.  She positions her laptop so that the on-board video camera will show the least untidy part of her lounge and punches in the log-in details for the video-conferencing facility.  She sits down and nervously rehearses the answers she might give to her interviewer, who is at his office in a different city.

Her interviewer is quite busy. While he waits to conduct yet another job interview, he is searching Google for any embarrassing photos or messages that the next hopeful candidate might have placed on-line.  What can he learn about her before the interview even starts?

At the office next door to him a man is writing and re-writing an e-mail.  He is struggling with how to politely phrase yet another request for the long overdue research findings from colleagues all over the world, most of whom he has never met. He does not look at the number of unread messages in his in-box – he will have to spend most of his day working his way through them, a never ending task.  He sends the mail –

To a woman who is dreaming her day away under the florescent lights of her windowless cubicle.  She has her web-browser open to a site that offers live video footage from a camera next to a river in Africa.  Halfway across the world, she watches as an elephant relishes the cool riverbed mud.  She sighs, closes the browser window and checks the Facebook status of

Her daughter, who is sitting in an Internet café in Brazil, working out the best route to her next adventure.  While waiting for the route-checker web site to load, she opens a web-site with reviews by fellow travelers recommending the best backpackers, warning of tourist traps, and offering advice on local customs.  After printing out a number of maps, she checks her bank account, and leaves.

Another patron of the Internet café smiles and moves to the computer she has just vacated.  He retrieves her bank account username and password which were recorded by some key-capture software installed on the computer.  While he waits for the banking site to load, he checks his own inbox to see if anyone has replied to his persuasive e-mail offering a fair share of the winnings of a national lottery if only they will supply him with their contact details. 

He composes yet another plausible story and sends it to his e-mail list.  The mail arrives in thousands of inboxes, including that of a young man struggling to keep his eyes open in the glow of his computer screen.  He should have finished this essay a week ago and now he is reduced to copying and pasting entire unread paragraphs from Wikipedia.  He sighs, saves the document, and mails it off to his tutor who is also up late – but for a different reason. 

She absently soothes her fretting baby while reading a blog post on her laptop screen.  This is her favourite blog, written by a young mother who describes the trials and tribulations of parenthood in a most comfortingly amusing way.  She pages to another window on her browser that contains advice on how to cope with a colicky baby.

Next door, her wheelchair-bound neighbour is also on-line, finishing a report that he will e-mail in to the office the next day.  He relishes hitting the “send” button, the action symbolising the freedom from having to depend on others to help him travel the long and gruelling way to the building where his colleagues work.  He realises he is hungry, and rolls his way to the kitchen to the unopened boxes of groceries he ordered on-line this morning.

This story could carry on for many pages and still leave out many examples of the impact the Internet has had on our lives. Just think about how it affects your life?

If you would like to learn how to harness the power of the Internet and become an Internet Super-User, sign up for the University of Cape Town Internet Super-User Course.  Click here if you would like to learn more about the course.

Back to SmartyPants Newsletter - February 2010 Edition