Webs We Weave

The Age

Thursday August 19, 2004

Nick Galvin

Nick Galvin looks at how the internet has changed the way we work, communicate and play.

For those of us who can't imagine life without the internet, it may seem the information superhighway has been with us forever.

For its pioneers, the internet has some tooth on it, with a history dating back to the 1950s. But the internet has been in the public domain for little more than a decade. And many of us have been using it for a much shorter period than that.

Such is the powerful hold of the internet, or more precisely the world wide web, it has created continental shifts to our lives - how to we work, how we communicate and how we relax.

An awful lot of print, air time and bandwidth is used trying to figure out how the online revolution will continue to change our lives next month, next year and next decade. And there's not a shadow of doubt it will.

Not everything about the World Wide Web has been good: the illegal trade in music and films; the tides of unsolicited emails clogging our inboxes; and the ready access to porn and gambling. But on balance, most of us wouldn't want to turn the clock back.

Here, then, are 10 ways the internet has already changed our lives forever.

1 Need to know

Irritated by the half-remembered lyrics of a song? Need a recipe for cassoulet in a hurry? Want to know what's on at the movies?

In pre-internet days, finding the answer to these everyday bits of information would have involved looking through reference books, scanning a newspaper or even taking a trip to the library - all with no guarantee of finding that factual nugget. Now, search engines are available to deliver even the most obscure bits of information to your desktop within seconds.

Of course, a lot of information on the internet is unreliable and flat-out wrong. It pays to cross check facts against a range of resources.

Even so, search engines such as Google, Alta Vista and Teoma have become irresistible research and fact-finding tools and are crucial for putting the web at your fingertips.

2 Breaking news

If you have a yen to know what's happening on the other side of the world or on even your own doorstep, the web will tell you - instantly. Previously, real-time breaking news was available only to journalists. The average person had to wait until the media had decided which information supplied by the wire services or their own reporters they would pass on via television news, radio bulletins or the next day's newspaper.

Now, you have direct access via the web - try reuters.com or cnn.com for starters. You can also read daily newspapers from just about any part of the globe online. Try The Paperboy (thepaperboy.com) for a list of papers from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. Google's news service (news.google.com) is pretty neat, too, and even more useful is a new service that allows you to specify words of interest. When a news story on that topic pops up around the world, Google will email you (google.com/newsalerts)

3 Instant experts

If you're halfway competent at using the net for research, you're in a great position to get more out of your doctor, lawyer, mechanic - indeed, just about anyone who provides a service. In particular, the net has changed the doctor-patient relationship for many. Lots of people who use credible sources - such as Health Insite (healthinsite.gov.au) and Mayo Clinic (mayoclinic.com) - go to their doctors

well-informed. But a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing - medical information must always be approached with caution and used in consultation with proper medical advice.

4 Where am I?

Sites such as Whereis (whereis.com.au) have revolutionised car travel for direction-challenged folk. Whether it's a simple trip from

A to B or a more complex journey from A to P via Z, punching in a few details can instantly return a door-to-door list of instructions - complete with map.

5 Music to our ears

Driven initially by the controversial Napster and other peer-to-peer systems, the internet has revolutionised the distribution of music. Taking up the running here have been online services from Telstra and NineMSN and overseas Rhapsody, Pressplay and Apple's online music store, which sold more than 70 million songs in its first year.

But music piracy still thrives online and the web has been a huge factor in its global distribution.

The ability to grab tunes you want, then sort, store and play them however you want may well spell the end of the album format.

6 Talk the talk

For those who have grown up in the era of the ubiquitous @ symbol, it's easy to take electronic mail for granted, but the ability to flash messages around the globe with documents, images or applications attached is revolutionary.

While email is great, you can't ignore the tide of spam flooding into your inbox offering everything from cheap drugs and instant diplomas to weight fixes and penis enlargements. Although you can take precautions - such as not leaving your email address all over the internet and employing a decent spam-screening program - there is no doubt that one of the greatest godsends of the internet is still the most bedevilling.

7 Banking online

Plenty of retail businesses have tried to harness the online world's power to make their services cheaper and easier to use, but it is in the banking sphere that the effect has had real impact.

When banks started to provide online services, many were initially impressed that they could view their account balances online. Now, we expect to transfer funds between accounts and to third parties, pay bills and even print statements from the home or office without going anywhere near a branch. But like all transactions, online security remains a concern for users.

8 Publish and be damned

OK, so the internet is not going to turn you into Rupert Murdoch overnight, but the ability for anyone to publish their thoughts to a potential global audience is a tremendous change.

Now, everyone can play for next to nothing through regularly updated personal websites known as blogs. Try Blogger (blogger.com) or Geeklog (geeklog.net) for a taste of blog power, or even to set up your own. How you make people read your blog is another question altogether.

9 Global trading

The internet has connected the world and turned it into one huge marketplace. One of the prime conduits for this is the online monolith eBay, but there are hundreds of other auction sites. Whatever you want to sell or buy, online auction sites have evolved into an incredibly efficient marketplace bringing people together to trade from around the globe.

Huge numbers of conventional retail outlets are also online, including many internet-only operations such as the massive Amazon (amazon.com). This makes buying anything from books to flowers easy and, equally important, makes comparing prices a breeze. Get the cheapest price for an item online and, armed with a printout, head to a shopping centre to do battle. You won't make many friends among the shopkeepers, but you may save money.

10 No one is anonymous any more

Try a search on your best friend's name and chances are he or she will be somewhere on the internet. While you're at it, try searching your own name - you may be surprised how far your electronic tracks extend.

From websites to chatrooms, most internet users leave a trail that is easy to pick up.

For many journalists, the internet is the first port of call when researching an individual - likewise prospective employers and even potential partners.

It's not hard to see how far the online revolution has brought us. But predicting where it's likely to lead is a much more complex - and potentially profitable - business.

A PLACE TOMEET AND GREET

When the internet first began infiltrating the mainstream, there was much understandable suspicion and confusion about the risks, along with considerable media interest in the so-called virtual world and the idea that users could

escape into an alternative reality.

In some minds at least, science fiction had became science reality and hysterical stories of young people getting hooked on virtual worlds that appeared preferable to the real world abounded. Like most of the early scaremongering about the internet, those fears have proved largely groundless.

Hundreds of thousands of virtual communities thrive across the connected world in the form of chatrooms, forums and other variations on the interactive chat theme, including the popular MUD (multi-user dimension) games. But there is little widespread evidence of a generation growing up bereft of social skills due to the internet.

Indeed, this has almost come full circle with the rise of a recent phenomenon often referred to as "social networking", which harnesses the power of the internet to get like-minded people out from in front of their computer screens and meeting each other in the real world.

The best-known of these services are MeetUp (meetup.com) and Friendster (friendster.com). Others include LinkedIn (linkedin.com) and Tribe (tribe.net).

While at the very least, this is an interesting phenomenon, it may also rewrite the rules for many people on how they create and maintain their social circles.

© 2004 The Age

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