The Internet Revolution: Before and After - Essay Example

Today, in contrast, communication is largely paper-free and instantaneous, thanks to the Internet. Instead of "snail mail", families, friends, and colleagues use emails and instant messaging, while newspapers have up-to-the-minute online versions. The reduction of paper reduces time, cost, and reach of previously geographically limited information, resulting in shorter and less personal, if not less meaningful communication on the family level, and more sensational and specious information on the public level, both of which are more transient than before.

A similar change can also be observed in the working world. Today 'telecommuting' is the new catchword as businessmen use laptops and cellular phones to stay in touch with the office from anywhere in the world. Gone are the days of the hour-long commute, and when men went off to work at 8:30 to return ten hours later after a nine to five; with the Internet, the office has become less and less a clearly defined space. Since one can access and send files without being in the office, people are working more fluid hours, with the negative spin-off of work intruding on family life, weekends, and vacation time.

In addition, the Internet has caused old spaces of interaction to be eroded and new ones created. Twentieth-century couples would meet by chance in the Laundromat and go on a date at the movies. Twenty-first-century couples meet in chat rooms and via online meet-a-mate services and date "virtually". With space-time borders erased, people no longer have to be in physical proximity, leading to them moving and traveling further from home, and creating more problems of loneliness than existed two decades ago.

Even when people are in the same household, individual family members are increasingly locked away on personal computers, engrossed in communicating with a stranger 5000 miles away in an Internet chat room or via instant messenger. It is thus evident that the Internet has changed life in many ways over the past two decades. While it has facilitated life, along with the technological advances with which it is concurrent, there are undoubtedly many social issues with which industry leaders must grapple, in particular, the impact on family and society.

Indeed, with the fast-shifting paradigms fostered by the Internet, we must constantly revise and evaluate how we think of our life to benefit from the technology "rapture", or risk being "left behind" (LaHaye and Jenkins) in fast-obsolete ways of thinking.