“The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow” (Gates, 2003). Since the birth of the Internet in 1969 until now, it has been known as the staircase not only for communication, but also for information, entertainment, and education.
In sociology, many sociologists talk about the social impact the Internet has on people and how it plays important roles in creating social interaction and interpersonal communication. For example, famous social networks like Facebook and Skype have changed the way friends connect and interact with each other.
With the aid of Internet, communication becomes easier and much quicker than other traditional mediums. Internet has changed the way we communicate and entertain; we can upload, download, and share games, music, pictures, and videos with our friends who live across far away continents. In addition, you can gain access to chat programs that can be uploaded from the Internet directly to your computer or even to your cell phone, for you to make relationships, contact friends and relatives, share ideas, gain social skills, and identify new cultures and nationalities.
Internet has also changed the way we obtain education and has offered academic facilities. For example, students can attend online classes, join courses and sessions, listen to lectures by experts and professors via YouTube, and send their assignments through Blackboard so that professors don’t have to second-guess any handwriting. Moreover, through Internet, students are able to check the availability of books, articles, journals, DVDs, and other sources instead of visiting libraries and consuming time searching. Northwestern University library for example, uses this technique by supplying the NUcat website, which has really taught me a new searching procedure and saved my valuable time with only a few clicks of my mouse.
Internet has certainly a profound impact on us that is far beyond what we would have expected; it has changed us by bringing conveniences and improving our thinking. That’s exactly what the communication theorist Marshall McLuhan (1967) has talked about. In other words, according to him, Internet is not only a two-way communication medium, by which users exchange messages and information, but also it affects the way users perceive and process that type of knowledge.
For me, it’s true that Internet steals my body most of the time, but it gives me a more motivated and enhanced mind instead. In fact, Internet provides me with both absolute communication and isolation, but its constructive side outweighs the unconstructive one.
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