40 years of Internet

With the dot com boom, internet has substantially evolved as a part of life for majority of world's educated population. From 2000 to 2009, we have seen 360% hike in internet users.And more importantly,internet has changed from its early essence of holding information and sharing to a mass community to a gathering place where people interact , share and get together on different and common causes. The online communities like facebook, Orkut, Spaces are the places which I am talking about. Moreover, the internet application are on the row. If you take Firefox browser, there is add ons for anything and everything. The number of standalone applications which doesn't interact with the internet is quite rare. The mobile devices are all now streamed with internet so it makes us always plugged in, messaging and blogging on the run.

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Also, a new life has begun in internet space. A life in front of PC. I am not talking about long hours spend on  blogging, chatting etc, though it does has made a change in techs life style. It's about the virtual life that the internet provides. If you check the sites like www.there.com or www.cyodine.com/virtual life, you can see an entire virtual world in front of you. It will let you create a virtual identity of you and will let you live in a virtual world. Something like 'living in your dreams'. Many of the losers in life or the beginners just get lost dreaming in these virtual worlds. All they lost in life( not all, but at least a lot of them), all that they wish to get in their life will be in front of them behind the screen. This is one of the dumbest application of internet I have ever seen. exploiting the human ability to dream and making money through ads.

There are yet many downfalls of internet like porn, exploits for messaging by terrorist groups, identity theft , credit card frauds etc, but still internet has begun a new age of technological advancement. It is good to read along  that, Internet is celebrating its 40th year of birth this month. It had a silent start as a non commercial project for securely transferring data from one computer to another. It was a military project which later evolved as the largest virtual web of computers around the world.

For every inventions, man has found two faces. The same applies to internet also. But, when I look into the best side of it, I see that internet is allowing me to post my ideas to public, and not writing letter to editor of some news magazine and waiting with the hope, my article will printed someday. The Google always answers me like a God father whenever I am out of words. Gmail,yahoo etc is keeping me in touch of my friends, for whom I may not spend money to call on phone, but always ping on the chat window to know about their day.The freedom, the internet provides is of immense potential. When used properly, it will prove to the Technology that man kind could ever be proud of.