Digital Age: 3 Things The Internet Has Replaced In Our Lives in 2018
The number of people connected to the internet globally has exceeded the number of those without a digital life – today, 51% of all people on Earth, a little over 3.8 billion people, go online on a daily basis, reading the news, checking out New Zealand pokie reviews, and expressing their opinions on the global network. This massive shift toward the cyberspace has only been a “thing” for a few decades yet it has already altered the way human society works. Unfortunately, its effect was not the one its inventors dreamed of – they wanted to give the world a tool to learn, improve themselves, and share knowledge. The changes caused by the global network are pretty subtle but fundamental and will become more accentuated in the years to come. Let’s take a look at a few of them with nostalgia.
Shopping
At the time he invented the Internet, Sir Tim Berners-Lee was married – so we suspect that this visionary foresaw the emergence of eCommerce. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, eCommerce is the thing that saves husbands all over the world hours spent shopping with their wives in megamalls and flea markets. Today, the wives can go online and browse through the pages of a massive selection of shops selling pretty much everything, from clothes and shoes to jewelry, food, underwear, handmade items and essential oils – both new and used.
Not a moment too soon, say husbands all over the world.
Protests
While there are still massive protests over a variety of things that block the streets of cities and towns around the world, a large number of activists have shifted to protesting online. This saves them a lot of trouble – they can express their desires without shouting their lungs out in streets flooded with exhaust gas and dust, they can share the hell out of their petitions on social networks, and they can also avoid the retort of counter-protesters and the authorities in the process. For them, protesting has become much safer while reaching an even bigger mass of like-minded individuals thanks to the internet.
And for the rest of us, it has become much easier to ignore them.
Population growth
Have you ever thought of the fact that, while the population growth in developed countries is slowing down year after year? This is, apparently, one of the effects of the myriads of entertainment channels thrown upon us day after day over the internet. Each couple spending their evenings browsing the web, playing games or chatting up their friends on their smartphones instead of getting busy conceiving a new generation helps keep overpopulation at bay. And take a look at those living in countries with no access to the internet and other advanced entertainment options! While there is no scientific evidence to back this claim available yet, the sociologists of the future will likely discover the correlation between the two.