The Future of Humankind's Marriage to the Internet
 

The internet is something that people in western culture connect with on a more or less daily basis. The concept of free flowing information available through search engines and websites has revolutionized the way we consume information, music, videos, literature, and even our social lives and structure as a society.

The internet is also taking over TV, Radio, Telephones etc. It's all becoming one integrated system that we are all connected to.

So where do we see this going?

I have my concerns about the internet. It has serious psychological effects on us. We are more informed than ever before, but are we better for it?

An optimist would say that the internet is an asset to democracy, and an intellectual leveller that gives more people the ability to be informed and educated on more topics.

Being the pessimistic, skeptical bastard that I am, I can't help noticing how when you look at the internet's content you see something totally different. And when you look deeper into it, you see some really troubling things. Here are the risks that we face:

Deterioration of language
Privacy Loss
Commercialization
Social ineptitude
Apathy
Censorship
Tailored isolation

Just a few that I see. Here's a few videos that talk about the internet and where it's going.

Unrelated to anything in your original post (as far as I can tell), I think we are quickly approaching an age where internet neutrality is a thing of the past, and it sucks. That's my justification for whoring music downloads while I (presumably) still can.

That's actually pretty related to my original post :P

I agree.

A vaster amount of information accumulated during the last 15 years than ever before, accessible to more people than ever before. Sounds like a nice feat if you ask me.

over here, it's mostly talk in tea-shops (anti-governmental rants) put in text form for the world to see, without fear of reprisal from the secret police

There are actually treatment programs in rehab centres for Internet addiction, too. But yeah, the Internet is all around us, and it's not going to go away any time soon. There's a website for every little thing now, it seems.

I don't think anyone who was social before will abandon their friends for the internet. Even if it happened on a small scale, socialization would become a commodity. Everything balances. Just because "you" hate certain folks, or see symptoms happening in some people (perceived) doesn't mean its a full blown slippery slope. Things balance. People end up not wanting to be connected at some point and lay off.

YTMND = Fall of man.

I agree with Ian E, my mother was in London the other week and I asked her about it and we got talking about some restaurant she went to in Notting Hill, she decided to go to this particular restaurant as when she was outside it she googled it on her iphone and having received a number of favourable reviews she went in.

I Phones and the internet are too invasive we are losing a natural curiousity videogames were a precursor but kids these days are either sharpening knives or lost in cyberspace. When I was young we went outside.

i feel really funky taking a holiday and not having a line