Is the world better off because of the Internet?

Instant millisecond communication between people half a world away, and information retrievable in almost less time. But is our world better off because of the Worldwide Web?

Edited by SteveG - September 06 2016 at 04:45

pfff.. what kind of question is that.

1. instant access to any flavor porn you like...
2. destruction of the music industry as we once knew it
3. zero excuse for being ignorant or uninformed
4. instant access to music
5. internet shopping!

"If you ever get mad at the internet, just remember it'd be f***ing tiny if only smart people
were allowed to use it."
                                     -- Drew, creator of Toothpaste For Dinner and Married To the Sea

Yes! ProgArchives! Duh. I'd still be listening to Wayne Newton and Slim Whitman without it 

I manage to live with it but ... boy, do I miss the ancient culture of ignorance and isolation of my younger age


Edited by Quinino - September 06 2016 at 08:06

micky wrote: I need to amend my list. 1.  Pure entertainment....

Dean wrote: micky wrote: I need to amend my list. 1.  Pure entertainment.... Presactly ... it's the biggest and most entertaining distraction known to man, at least since an Egyptian called Imoteph uttered the words 'Hey guys, I've got an idea - instead of wasting our time growing food and learning to write and stuff let's all go out into the desert to carve massive blocks of limestone into cubes and pile them up in sort of 200 foot tall square-based triangular shape for no logical reason' 4,700 years ago and proceeded to occupy the entire Egyptian nation for the next two thousand years building successively larger ones until someone realised they hadn't the foggiest idea what they were for or why they were doing it. Which, coincidentally, is why the Egyptians never invented soap operas, water skiing or the internet and why the millennial generation will never amount to anything worth writing about so will be forever remembered as the generation did little other than shout angrily at pieces of electronic gadgetry made in a land far far way, without knowing how, what, why or where any of that seemed so vitally important at the time.

this is why we love the internet... far more stimulating than porn.. a stiff breeze works as well as anything porn... but a good rant on the internet...

priceless.

it is a tool..  one can use it.. or abuse it.  Thus it is not good or bad in itself. Zero sum gain. For all the good it does is balanced by the negative elements.

oh yes.. I do draw the line there with phones.  I still use an old school flip phone. No smart phone.. no internet with it.

SteveG wrote: I posted a serious question, so it looks as though I'll have to answer it.   No. Instant communication around the world has not done anything substantial like ending armed conflicts, but has become a tool to draw in the socially outcast into militant groups like ISIS.   It is also used by many, without a purpose in life, as a time wasting toy.   Aside from the brief above stated negatives, I can't say anything positive about the Internet.   And that is serious. And sad.

Well, then, nothing really new since the invention of paper and books (which lead to propaganda leaflets, recruitment files, etc...) or cinema and TV which are also time wasting toys (just go and watch Star Wars again, and dare to tell me it's better than Dante, Cervantes, Virgile and their pairs)

If you expected Internet to end armed conflicts or to end the hunger in the world just because it's an instant communication tool, maybe you failed to see what's Internet: it's a tool. Nothing more.
If one wants the world to change into a better world, we have to work on the human society itself. The human mind won't evolve just because we bring it some new communication tool: telephone hadn't changed the world, television hadn't changed the world, newspapers hadn't changed the world...

Or maybe the changes were so tiny in comparison to the dementially huge expectations one can have for the mankind that one is just unable to realise what comfort the utilisation of tools may bring.
Internet isn't a magical wand which makes people better, wiser, more tolerant... It's just a tool.