This is the summary of a term paper submitted by me and Lalit in the humanities course during our final semester at college.
Throughout the human history, there has been a gradual technological growth. Man has always strived to find ways to make his life easy and enjoyable. Starting from the earliest technology, “the wheel”, man has gone round the circle innumerable times. Technological advances have been followed by a huge rise in the standard of living, as a general trend. Be it renaissance, industrial revolution or whatever. Last half a century or so has seen advancement in technology like never before. Arrival of computers and digitization of datum has had its effects on the human sphere of life. The arrival of internet has given a further shot in the arm to the ever increasing sphere of expanding world.
Modern means of communication were said to have the capability to shrink the world. World became smaller and smaller. But as the regenerativity theory suggests, after shrinking to a tiny dot, this world has exploded again, this time to the infinitum. Internet has led to the creation of new worlds, termed as virtual worlds. All the notions of parallel world and teleporting has been a given a new dimension through this technology. It said that success comes at a cost. So at what cost is this new human success achieved? What sacrifice will the humans make to keep this success sustainable? Perhaps we are still to witness.
According to an article, “netizen is miles away from the nature and its laws. He constructs a fort separating him from the real world. This keeps him away from the realities of life” . Man has always tried to run away from challenges of the real life towards an artificial world. What else does the Arabian nights to the current day Harry Potter stand for, if not for the realization of the human fantasy? The author goes on to say, all’s well till we are inside this virtual world, the problem surfaces when we try to realize the fantasy in our real life and fail unsurprisingly.
As a result of the fast spread of internet and its unchecked expansion, a different society has come up in thousands of Internet cafes and in our own personal computers, says a report. This society has huge shopping malls like Ebay.com, meeting places like Orkut, Facebook and what not. According to a net survey, the number of users as well as the number of minutes spent by each user on Facebook has increased considerably over the period of June’06 to June’07. Most concerning fact is that around 31% of social network users enter false information. Does this suggest a new era where deception might be the reality?
Another area of concern is the reversal of roles on the net. Most of our elders don’t even have an idea about the borders of the cyber society. This is a world where the elders have become newbies. Will this hamper the human growth in the long term?
There is no doubt that internet has the potential to become one of the major tools for the global development. We can’t avoid it. The only option is to acclimatize with it. One can begin by not entering false information, using internet for useful purposes and setting time limits for internet usage.
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