Rise of Network Society - Case Study Example

? INTERNET INTERNET Internet is a need of today’s world. By the passage of time the usage of internet massively increased. The demand of data through the internet is increasing day by day. Besides telephone, internet has got an important position in the world of communication. It is faster and reliable source of communication. Other types of communication like television, radio and telephone used internet for their communication. The concept of voice over internet protocol (VoIP) changed the concept of telephony and a similar concept of internet protocol television (IPTV) has carved the communication through television. There are almost 100 countries that use internet for variety of purposes. The main purpose is yet the demand of information. Business on the internet is growing at a much faster pace. EBay and other such internet based corporations used internet to provide a customer an ease to shop online with going anywhere. Similarly some organizations use the internet to hire persons from all over the world. Electronic marketing or such marketing strategy which involve internet for the marketing purposes is widely utilized now a day to promote the products. The concepts of E-learning, E-banking, E-health, E-commerce and E- governance which were a dream of the past now became the reality. Some institutes provide internet based learning, where one can participate in the lecture with going anywhere. Internet based banking provided us an ease to check our account and transfer funds from anywhere in the world. Internet is a term, which is used to refer a global network of computers or other networks. The word is derived from a term ‘internetwork’. The global network of internet involves an infrastructure to support the communication through the internet. Internet service providers (ISPs) are engaged to enjoy the services on the internet (Castells, 2001). The most common services that are provided by the internet are World Wide Web (WWW) and electronic mail (E-mail). Internet holds a lot of information which is pre-stored in main frame computers at different locations. When user requests particular information, the request is sent to the mainframe computer, the mainframe computer then completes the requested information. The whole process involves different networks that support the internet. To support and serve millions and billions of users in the whole world, internet uses the standard internet protocol suite which in computer derived as TCP/IP, where TCP is transmission control protocol and IP is internet protocol. The networking hardware is associated with the internet protocol (Moschovitis, et. al, 1999). Internet protocol is important, as it provides an identification of a user. Internet protocol version 4 (IPv4) and internet protocol version 6 (IPv6) are two internet protocols. The whole communication system works in a well organized manner and updated according to the technology. The wireless technologies in the internet communication system has revolutionized the utilization of internet and provided an ease for the users to use the services. Wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) or wireless local area network (WLAN) is the common type of wireless network that is capable of providing wireless internet. Internet banking is now a common service that almost every international bank is providing (Moschovitis, et. al, 1999). Internet has a major impact on the society and country. Internet has a powerful impact on the social setup of country, as it describes social freedom. It is a powerful medium of communication and the numbers of internet users are increasing day by day (Castells, 1996). The sites like orkut, facebook , MySpace and other similar networking sites are playing an important role in increasing the social network of users. Some countries make internet available to the residents but in a restricted manner (Moschovitis, et. al, 1999). The restriction restricts some of the internet content from viewing. Iran, Saudi Arabia, People’s Republic of China and North Korea restricted some internet content for the internet users in their countries. The restricted websites may have some content that is restricted in favour of religious and political matters. It is thought that the restricted content may have a negative impact on the people both in terms religion and politics. The growth of a country is directly related to economic growth. Internet is one of the largest growing industries in the world. There are variety of industries and people which are related to the internet industry. For an example internet is incomplete without any supporting hardware, so someone is required to provide the required hardware, then some internet service provider (ISP) is in the need to provide the internet service. The whole process involves many other industries like electronics industries and other supporting industries. The internet is then given to the end user, who pays for the service (Verity, et. al, 1994). Some sites use the internet to promote their product or just maintain a market of a certain product on the internet. Shopping on the internet is also economical, as it gives shoppers a comfort of shopping. The customers are billed and they have the freedom to pay the bill online anywhere from the world using other internet services like internet banking. Now internet has revolutionized the business, every organization has to maintain a certain web address for the development of business. More and more industries are becoming international from the national status. Every organizational has to work online to support more customers and partners (Brown & Duguid, 2000). Other communication systems have not such capability to provide services and support to as much customers as the internet can. Today an organization’s growth is dependents on the relations of organization with the customers and partners and internet provides a good environment to maintain good relations. If the services provided by the internet are used in a proper manner, internet becomes much less expensive as compared to other means of communication. In this way the economic development of a country is incomplete without the use of internet (Mankew, 2003). Currently almost hundred countries are provided with the service of internet. It is been one of the largest growing industries in the world and still maintained one of the top most positions in the business market (Brown & Duguid, 2000). No one can decline the need of internet in the modern world (Cass, 2007). The need of internet is almost in every aspect of life. Electronic banking (E-banking) is one of the most used services provided by internet in the world, where one can use the services provides by the bank by means of internet. Electronic learning (E-learning) is a service that is provided by online institutes, where one can listen to the lectures online using the internet. E-learning is not a very common internet service. Voice over internet protocol (VoIP) and internet protocol television (IPTV) are two services which changed the way of using telephone and television (Moschovitis, et. al, 1999). Now, one can communicate using voice signals by means of internet and can enjoy hundreds of channels by the utilization of internet. The social network sites gave us freedom to write what we want to write and join such groups that match our interests. Music, pictures and other such things can be shared with the friends and others by just a single click of mouse. Messenger software programs have provided people an inexpensive mean to chat and talk to their family members and friends. More and more people are accessing internet for the purpose of attaining information. Books, articles and other papers are available on the internet. Students use internet to access information about their subject and assignments. Mobile internet is a common thing now a day. Mobile internet was started 1999 and since then the demand for mobile phone internet increased rapidly. Now a mobile phone supports almost every internet service and can be accessible at every time and everywhere in the world. Most governments of the world have adapted internet and included the usage of internet in almost every department. The health department utilizes internet to show different patients and their respective timings to visit the doctor in many countries. In this way, internet provides an ease for both the doctors and the patients. Some governments use internet for making a database of the residents, residing in the country and make it available when the database is required (Moschovitis, et. al, 1999). Governments use internet for the good of people, use internet in education, use in solving health issues and maintaining a database of the people and homes present in a country. Internet maintains a healthy connection between the users in different parts of the world. If the connection is broken, it is quite difficult to tell the situation to someone else, who is not the resident of the place. Some governments like Egyptian government have the full control on the internet and blocked the internet services when they found that it difficult to stop the people from spreading the news. Chinese government introduced internet police and internet acts to control and restrict some of the internet content from viewing and to have control on the retrieved pages. Internet police is also responsible for controlling the internet based protests and work according to the interests of the government. Government involved internet in education, sports and other aspects of life. Now most governments have realized that the growth is exponentially related to the growth of internet. The revenue generated by the internet industry is massive. Some governments have passed a bill in which internet is provided free of cost to students and other persons. Future of internet has a great impact on other technologies. In future internet will be associated with everything in the world. The bandwidth of the internet in the future will increase massively (Cass, 2007). To provide service at a faster rate to all the users worldwide, the bandwidth will have to be increased to continue undisturbed traffic through internet. In the future wireless technologies have the highest demand. The wired networks which are used to provide internet will be eliminated and wireless internet will replace the wired networks. The usage of internet will significantly increase. The concept of smart grid will be utilized to solve internet grid problems. Grid computing will be the best way to solve network problems and users can resolve the problems to the grid too (Verity, et. al, 1994). In the future internet will be more global and almost all the countries will be able to utilize the services of internet. As the internet has a distributed broadcast now a day, in future there will be a significant increase in the substations. In the future economics will revolve around the internet. There would be less travel for the business. International meetings will be fixed and completed through the utilization of internet. The utilization of voice and video services provided by the internet for the international meetings will save much on travel costs (Verity, et. al, 1994). Similarly doctors are appointed through the internet for an online check-up and a real time check-up will be conducted, where different sensors will sense the patients’ different metabolisms. In this way one can take an appointment from a doctor who is not even in the same country. People work from their homes at offices which will be located at the other edge of the world. So the internet will save much on communication and travel expenses. Internet became the demand for the today’s world. Today world is incomplete without internet. It provides us information about any topic; it has news and discussions from worthy members of press and common people. People use internet to chat and to interact with their friends and family members. Internet became a vital component of many other industries like banking without an ATM is considered less worthy and ATM utilizes the services of internet. Now a person can have an online account in which he can maintain his account with going anywhere. Internet is related to the economics. It has a variety of industries which are linked with the internet. Maps are easily available on the internet, which have provided an ease to find out the ways in a different location. VoIP and IPTV are used to enjoy the services of telephony and telecommunication. The future of internet is bright and internet will provide an economic relief in the future, which certainly better the economic condition of a common person. The good will be the economic condition of a person, the good will be the economic condition of the government. References Brown, John S and Duguid, Paul. (2000). “The Social Life of Information”. London: Harvard Business School. Castells, M. (1996). Rise of Network Society. London: Blackwell Publishers. Castells, M. (2001). “Lessons from the History”. The Internet Galaxy, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cass, Stephen. (2007). How Much the Internet Weight? Discover Magazine. Retrieved on 20th May 2011 from http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/how-much-does-the-internet-weigh Mankiw, Gregory. (2003). Principles of Economics. Boulevard: South-Western Cengage Learning. Moschovitis, Christos; Poole, Hilary; Schuyler, Tami and Senft, Theresa M. (1999). History of the Internet: A Chronology, 1843 to the Present. Santa Barbara, Cal.: ABC-CLIO. Verity, John W., Robert D. Hof., Edward, C. Baig., and Carey, John. (1994). The Internet: How it will Change the Way You Do Business, Business Week, l4 (11), 80-88. Read More