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Now We Have the Internet, But Why Do We Need It?
ReLik writes "BBC News is reporting on a survey carried out on the statistics of internet users in the UK, 'While the battle for digital access is being won, we now face a struggle to convince everyone the net is worth using' said Professor Richard Rose, of the Oxford Internet Institute. It begs the question why goverments around the world are encouraging everyone to use the internet, but is there really enough of a reason for everybody to need to? Is the internet suitable for everybody? Will it ever be?"
It's an endless supply of pr0n!
The Internet is a medium, being neither rare nor well done.
Somebody post some hot naked chicks to remind this guy why we need it.
We have to have a way to play Star Wars Galaxies
So what DOES the internet have to offer me? It doesn't cook me dinner, take out the trash, or even clean up its room. Screw this, I'm going outside.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
The question is on a website asking us why do we need it.
Well for one, news, second research, third communication, forth freedom of speech, fifth entertainment, sixth education.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Some people use TV to watch the Discovery Channel; some use it for MTV.
Some people use the Internet for research, discussion, and news; others use it for warez and porn.
Hey, I could take a screwdriver and deside to poke myself in the eye with it... does that mean we don't need screwdrivers?
Do we need automobiles? How about heart surgery, or any other tool created by humans since the dawn of history.
The internet is a great tool, and just like other tools it's not neccessary, but it improves the quality of life. Of course it not for everyone.
I think that the Internet is needed to offset the damage done by things like television and large newspapers - the "slave mentality" of only taking information in, never sending anything back.
The reason I love slashdot is that even though the editors fuck up every once in a while (don't we all?) someone else is quick to correct it in the comments. Same goes for wikis, usenet and so on. Everyone can chime in.
Sure, it creates a lot of noise, but it's better than the slick, mindkilling flow that comes out of the television.
That governments encourage the use of the net will be their downfall - they can never control it as well as they can control traditional media sources.
It begs the question why goverments around the world are encouraging everyone to use the internet, but is there really enough of a reason for everybody to need to? Is the internet suitable for everybody? Will it ever be?"
Everyone should have access to the internet. I know there is a lot of bad things on there, but there is so much more good. Wikipedia, Google, all that stuff; if it weren't for the internet, I'd know practically nothing. It makes research so much easier than driving all the way up to the library, sifting through books and magazines and not even finding the right info.
It allows for fast and easy gathering of information and images, and sharing of all kinds of data (and I don't mean just Kazaa...)
Of course, we don't need the internet, but, we don't really need anything besides food and water, either.
The internet is quick, you can learn about anything at the click of a button, you dont have to spend hours at the library looking through books,
Also you can communicate with complete strangers instantly. You get to communicate with guys like me who can tell you how the internet is useful, but I wont cook your dinner.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Research and communication in general, but here's a breakdown:
Personal research. Never before has it been so easy to find out if it's normal for your testicles to itch periodically. Not just great for sexual stuff either, it really helped me as a teen to understand social norms, and make me feel less abnormal.
Consumer research. I no longer drive to kmart, walmart, target, best buy, circuit city, etc when I want to buy something. I hit their respective websites to price check, feature check, etc.... then go to the store I plan on buying from. Not to mention the benefits of sites like newegg.com.
Communication. Duh. Email is awsome, so long as you can manage the spam. Instant Messaging is awsome. Internet(email/www/IM) to cell phone (sms) is awsome.
Resource sharing. Via the Internet, work and school I have instant access to countless various Unix/Linux computers and windows boxes. Usually I just leave my work up on a VNC server on a unix box and connect to it from wherever.
I can certainly imagine life without the net (and it's nice to try it sometimes)... but for computer use, I definitelly feel naked without it.
no comment
Google.
... handwringing about their "usefulness" doesn't exactly excite me as an important philosophical point.
Exchanging email with family.
Finding recipes.
Reading people's websites.
C'mon, "who needs the Internet?" is a silly question. The Internet is tremendously useful now (and offers lots of "unproductive" stuff, too -- quotes because the line between productive and unproductive is a mostly useless, fuzzy gray line not worth respecting in the way it's usually used) and will be more and more later on. People survived without it, just like you would survive without any of the foods you like best, or without recorded music, or without being able to read
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Yeah, who needs that?
Several years ago, demand for broadband was basically driven by demand for pornography -- just like the demand for early VCRs.
Pornography is like the space program, we love to have it, it's hard to justify, and sometimes there are spinoff benefits for everyone not involved in it.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Look at the graph. 100% of students use the Internet. Just wait a generation and everyone will be online all the time. Once you start down the internet path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will.
I guess I *am* new around here, because I figured more people here would understand that the b2b uses of the 'net will make all the consumer-level stuff seem like a speck, a blip on the radar, miniscule and insignificant. A million dollars will be spent linking enterprises for every thousand dollars spent by consumers.
If you're only looking at web pages, you're missing 75% of the traffic that traverses the Internet today.
Intelligent Life on Earth
I see this all the time - "the internet is for losers" "I dont need the Internet" "The internet is for sad lonely people" - people saying those things simply illustrate their ignorance.
For starters I've observed that almost all the people who say those things when they say "internet" actually mean "web", and furthermore are basing all of that on the sites that they have seen or heard about. These people also typically do not read much I've noticed.
Secondly they dont equate email with the Internet.
Its like the people who say that computers are "useless" and "boring" then you point out to them that they use computers every time they pick up a phone or turn on the TV.
To say that one does not need the Internet is the same as saying that one does not need communication.
Information at our fingertips.
That information can be of almost any type or of any form.
Want to read about the mercury space program, or see the latest pictures of nebulae? Go search for it. In the old days you could have headed to the library and look for this stuff, but they would be unlikely to have Hubble photos released this morning.
You think your Aunt Tellie has Diabetes? Go search for the symptoms... and support groups too. In the old days tis was a trip to the library, a local clinic, or you had to wait for a doctor's appointment
Need to find out if someone is selling a 4 barrel carbeurator for your 1974 Chevy Impalla?
If your local shop doesn't have it, Go search on Ebay or another sales site. If not, maybe do a directory search of auto parts stores in the city next door. In the old days, you were SOL until your local shop got the part
Hey, there's a new Rush album and DVD coming out. Cool. Head over to their website and see if there's a clip or some photos.In the old days you were lucky to hear the guy on the radio announce that Rush was releasing a record..or did a week ago
This is all information that can now be obtained in a matter of minutes.
That's what the net gives us, instant information and knowledge.
p/g
Huh?
The internet has provided a crucial service-- it has prevented many a "Kirk vs. Picard" debate from coming to blows, merely by ensuring the participants are separated from each other. And if the internet didn't exist, what would we do with all those Pentiums that help to speed it up?
Finally, if we didn't have it, I'd have to go outside once in a while. And interact with real people! And someone could mug me, take my wallet, and use the information in there to impersonate me and open up credit accounts in my name. When I'm sitting at home on the internet, those kinds of things can't happen. I-- oops, hold on. It seems AOL has lost my account and credit card information, AGAIN! I'll finish this post in a sec, as soon as I fill out the form on the webpage they directed me to.
BRB...
~Philly
We've only had the Internet since 1969 and the World Wide Web since 1993. Together, they are still fledgling technologies.
Imagine what the Internet could be used for in the future. The Semantic Web or something like it is set to revolutionalize the Internet of the future. Imagine being able to organise and sort information based on the qualaties - instead of quantaties - of the information (See Microsoft's qualatative search). The position the Internet is in today is that most of the information contained in it is quantative in nature, it is stored in a manner that reflects machine organization of information. Qualative information on the other hand is much more useful for performing searches and organizing information, it allows the retrieval of information to be based on attributes rather than specific-word-matches. Going back to the Microsoft search link, using qualatative information as the criteria of the search you could search for a base attribute of "cars" and refine the search using arbitrary attributes such as "sleek form", and "red". In this example, a web page that held information about "Ferrari's" would be included in the "car's" search results even if it did not explicitly contain the word "car" as part of it's web page text - in the semantic web XML markup, "car" would be one of it's attributes.
Shh.
What kind of a dumb question is this? Maybe I should RTFA but the premise boggles my mind. Maybe I'm jaded because I spend so much time in front of a computer with a full time internet connection, but FWIW the Internet is MY FRIEND! I need to look something up, GOOGLE! I need to buy something, FROOGLE/PRICEWATCH/ETC! I need to talk to people EMAIL/IM/IRC/ECHOLINK! I mean, WTF? If it wasn't for greedy nearsighted corporations and governments we could already have broadband in everybodies home and not have to fuck around with archaic technology like telephones and fax machines and phone books and magazines and newspapers. Or music CDs and DVDs. All that shit could be consolidated into one resource conserving blinky blinky brain box and a phat internet connection. But NOOOOOO we've got to lobby congress to BAN FILE SHARING AND WEB SITE COPYING! AND GOD FORBID YOU SHOULD MAKE A PHONE CALL WITHOUT PAYING THE PHONE COMPANY SOMETHING FOR IT!!!! HURRRR INTERNET BAD!! NAPSTER BAD!!!! DURRRR!!!!
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
If you use the internet for passive information consumption, you are getting maybe 5% of its true value.
You don't really absorb information by reading an srticle; the best learning experiences involve interaction and feedback. This is why teachers still exists, even though most information has been available in books for a long time. The internet provides a way to extend and accelerate your network of friends beyond what would ordinarily be physically possible. In a way, snail-mail could do this, but the process of searching out like-minded individuals and communicating usefully was impractical.
On the internet you can talk with a dozen people who may each have 1/12th of a solution. You can communicate with text, images, and sound. Publishing your solution for others to use is incredibly easy.
It's also a giant retail store, surplus store, garage sale, and swap meet. Just this week I needed a specialized high-voltage supply for an older industrial flat-panel display. There was no way I was going to find one locally. I simply posted my query to the appropriate Usenet group, and in one day I had someone ask me for a photo of the supply, because they might have one in a box in the attic. I already have the power supply and it works. It might have taken me months to find one any other way.
The internet is pretty easy to abuse, and just once I'd like to get my hands on the punk who put out this last email worm. It's probably not possible, but I wish there was a way to find a balance between anonymity and accountability.
...
While this may sound like a luxury, throughout human history "free time" has been an indicator of wealth. Those who have to spend all of their time on day to day tasks have less time for leisure. Those who have mechanisms (servants, for example) at hand to take care of the myriad little tasks that pop up in daily life therefore have more time to spend doing whatever they like.
The Internet shortens the amount of time we have to spend on arranging the minutiae of life, and provides the *option* to spend more of our time on pursuits that we find enjoyable. How people spend that extra time (by working that much harder, by watching more TV, by going on a hike, etc.) is up to the individual. But if the duty of a representative government is to help improve the quality of its citizens' lives, then a robust Internet infrastructure is something governments should be pursuing.
The above points don't even touch on the *potential* productivity gains possible through true integration of the Internet into the fabric of business and government.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Friction matters! Or, put another way, enough quantitative change becomes qualitative change. (That those two are a dichotomy instead of two ends of a continuum is a persistent fallacy.)
The Internet may, strictly speaking, not make anything possible that wasn't possible before. So what? Neither did telephones, automobiles, or even writing. People were talking to each other before telephones. People were moving around before automobiles. People were communication information to each other, even across great time spans, before there was writing.
To diminish the Internet as much as I am diminishing telephones, automobiles, and writing in the previous paragraph is as naive as it is in those cases. By making something easier, more people do it, more often, to more benefit to all.
I find when my Internet dies, the least tolerable thing to me is that I loose Google, which isn't a public library but sure does help me find information now. Which has in turn increased the quality of my own writing as I can support things better.
Would we have free software without the Internet? Probably, but it would be a mere shadow of what we have now, because the harder it is to communicate, the more likely the project won't form at all. Hell, would we be having this discussion without the Internet, and would it be anywhere near as large or as comprehensive?
Boo hoo, there's no "soundbite" for the Internet, therefore it must be useless. Bah!
>> ... It begs the question why goverments around the world are encouraging everyone to use the internet...
I didn't know anyone was asking that question, which is based on a doubtful premise.
But, the Internet is just a big network. By itself, it is empty. The real question is this:
Is the content made available by the Internet worth it?
My answer:
Content created by "old" media and made available via the net is worth it. E.g., having on-demand access to the best news reports around the globe is very much worth it.
But, content created by "new" born-after-the-Net media is largely useless, consisting of silly and hopeless attempts to mimic other media and with polished spins on old-fashioned bulletin boards.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
It sorta seems ironic that the government is promiting internet usage, because IMHO the the most overwhelming beneficial purpose is to bypass obsolete and bad government.
Be it unethical copyright imposition, overbearing controlls on finances and money, censorship, or myrad of other obselete rules from anything to gambling to free anonymous speech. It seems to me that the internet is the best bet to bypass restrictions imposed by poor governinment the world over.
We need the internet so we can discuss about whether we really need the internet.
There are those who want to learn and do throughout their lives. They want to be something other than their 40 hour a week job. For those people the internet is useful. Just now, I needed to find out how to set up a bridge on a mandolin. My local library _might_ have a book on it, but the libary is closed today. But I found what I needed.
Those who just want to watch TV don't need the internet.
So has the internet had a chance to shape society? Not yet
You seem to be confusing "totally dominating" and "shaping". Did radio and telephone shape society? Mail still exists. Did TV shape society? Radio still exists.
The internet has not replaced everything, but it has significantly altered many aspects of our society. It has vastly changed the nature of communication (heard of email? IM? A few people use them). It has changed the way we get information (could you get instant answers to very detailed, very obscure questions before the internet? No, because as good as reference librarians are, they don't have the sheer scope of details that Google can provide), the way we shop (Amazon? Ebay?), the way buisiness provide information (How often do you call a chain store vs. going to their website for price information, or to get location/hours), the way we get around (Mapquest)... the list goes on and on. The fact that most of these things are household words is evidence that it has, in fact, shaped our society. Not everyone has email, but almost everyone knows what it is.
I have to laugh at your assertion that the automobile is "vital for life", but that the internet has not shaped society. The automobile allows people to get together more quickly, get what they want more quickly, and generally make the country smaller, and less fragmented into isolated pieces. What does that remind me of? Oh right: the Internet.
The internet is "just another form of media delivery" the same way automobiles are "just another form of people delivery".