How influential is the internet?

The Internet. It's ubiquitous. Everyone is advertising on it. You old friend from high school has a facebook, your priest or paster has a google plus, you list old junk you never used on eBay, hoping someone will buy it. And you just snagged that awesome T-shirt on amazon. These are just some of the things the Internet allows you to do. There is no debate that it is a great tool.

But, like all tools, can be used as a weapon. Many people, in the rush to get on the Internet and use it, have put themselves out to such an extent that anyone with a decent knowledge of Internet usage can steal their information and take there identity and scatter to the four winds of the earth, allowing anyone and their brother to take it. But these are not even the most scary things that the Internet opens up. As more and more machines are using it and more and institutions use it for official purposes, it becomes a virtual version of real life. What does that mean? Does it mean skynet? Or the matrix? Or I,Robot? No, I do not think that any of these are realistic versions of the future. As much as I am a fan of dystopia, the real world is not always distopian.

The real world is a combination of both. I do not want to say that my experience as a person has been broad, because in all reality, it hasn't. But neither can I say that I am ignorant of the world as a whole. Life has always been moments of triumph or bliss, and moments of failure and despondence. The Internet gives voice to these things and solidifies them in time. Preserves so we can go back and look at them. So how does this make the Internet influential you ask?

It makes the Internet influential because we can remember things that are usually forgotten. The Internet captures humour, pain, despair, happiness and the mundane business of everyday life all in its servers. Whether through memes, or blogs, or facebook, twitter, tumblr, websites, clouds and all the other stuff that gives the Internet is influence. It has influence on us because it is our past. Our legacy preserved in 1's and 0's. We, as a whole race, are remembering ourselves. And this is why the Internet with its powerful influence on this next generation, will either bring human kind to the apex of its history, or take us into the blackest age we will ever know.

Choose what you remember wisely.