Internet: Backbone of Modern Society.

I'm writing this post using my mobile phone. Reason being, the wireless router and modem at home has broken down and there no longer is any internet connection nor cable television to watch at home.

As the saying goes, "You never know how important something is, until you lose it."

Having lost the ability to freely access the internet at home, has made me realize that the Internet actually plays a big part in modern day society. The internet has been a convenient source of information for me; this is in terms of references and research. Tapping on this knowledge base, one does not have to go through as much trouble to get a similar task done. Without the internet, people will probably be reinventing the wheel more frequently, as they probably did not know the wheel existed already. I realized this when I wanted to try something for my final year project and had no clue how to go about doing it. Having no books with me, I'm pretty much in a helpless situation. My immediate solution would be to go somewhere with internet access, or head over to the library to look for references. Yes, I can possibly use my mobile data for my research as well. However, it is only limited to 2GB of data for the next one month and I want to save the data for other uses..

Why backbone?
I think that the internet is in a way, the backbone of our modern society because of globalisation. Businesses and databases are pretty much globalised by now, and the internet is the framework that holds everything together. Companies may have branches in various countries, and some companies have large databases of customer information, that are stored in various parts of the world for better efficiency.

Emails are the preferred method of correspondence between people as the mail gets sent and received almost instantaneously, compared to snail mail taking days or even weeks to reach the receiving party. Sure there still are various courier services that deliver parcels and important documents but email still is preferred in my opinion for more generic corrsspondences. Another use of the internet in businesses is video conferencing. Video conferencing enables companies to use the internet to have meetings across various countries at the same time, allowing for a global workforce.

In the modern day, I feel that people want things to be done as soon as possible, so that profits can be maximised. Take for example, a person wants to know what something means, or even just want to research on a subject matter. With access to the internet, all a person has to do is to simply do a search on their preferred search engine, and a list of websites filled with relevant infornation is returned.

The internet has helped us to stay connected to one another irregardless of where we live at. It definitely has brought about convenience and efficiency to our lives. It also helps to facilitate our learning process and brings various information to our fingertips. Because of our heavy reliance on the internet, should it suddenly cease to exist, it could well be a major catastrophy. However, I feel that the possibility of the internet's total failure is quite low as all the connections have to be severed before that happens. But it just goes to show how important the internet has become in our modern lifestyle.