Tim
Life is good
Joined: Nov 2007
Location: Kalamazoo
How the internet has changed our lives
And the world around us, for better and for worse
The internet has been life changing for myself and millions of other people. It's changed the way business is done, how we communicate on a second by second basis. The author of XKCD put it best 
. Granted I'm not a Twitter user because I really can't find a reason for it, and not really all that into Facebook despite being on it daily. But neither of those are my favorite things on the internet. The best thing about the internet in my humble opinion is the way we are able to have news delivered to us and the amount of interaction we can have with that news.
But why is the news so cool? Mainly because it's not on PAPER!!! This new ability to interact with news and see it in a way that's never been done before is beyond awesome. National Geographic, and The New York Times did an awesome job of really capturing the devastation of both of this year's major earth quakes in Chile and Haiti. Try doing either of these things in a news paper or any other physical medium, it's just not possible. It is this type of inspiring web work that really makes me love the internet that much more.
Even going back to "my glory days" on the internet when AOL 2.0 was the hottest thing out there. Surfing the internet or our styling 14.4kbps (or less) modem, reading the ...news..., yea news that's it, was captivating. The boom of communication when Instant Messengers (AIM, Yahoo) were all the rage was really when I started appreciating the net. Even today with our illustrious high speed internet I'm finding new ways to use the internet and interact with the world. Despite my dislike of certain social networking and social media like the aforementioned Twitter, I'm still amazed at its adoption and ability to run rampant in the world. This fervent usage of the internet keeps me coming back for more.
Of course this whole social dynamic also has a down side. Peoples utter lack of understanding and misuse causes social engineering to take this unfettered internet away. It causes people and companies to spend countless hours and tens of thousands of dollars developing plans to help mitigate misuse and keep its viewers safe. I myself have even spent days, maybe even weeks thinking up different ways to stop spam and targeted attacks on this web page. So far I've done a pretty good job at blocking the attacks I've seen. Spam of course is an always changing event. Spammers adapt and change their behaviors to suit the needs of the different defenses. I've changed the way comments are accepted on this site four different times in 2 years to keep up with this growing and potentially dangerous upswing of nefarious use.
So as a very social community of active internet citizens we should all do our part to help keep the internet a safe place for everyone. However it is you decide to help keep yourself and your personal information safe is up to you. Whether it's buying the latest $29 OS running on the coolest hardware ever, or buying the system that EVERYONE loves to hate, just be sure you're doing it in the spirit of keeping yourself safe on the internet that we have all grown to love and admire.