The internet, is there anything it can’t do?

Since Tim Berners-Lee invented the internet in 1989, the amount of users and uses has skyrocketed. Shortly after its creation nobody would have been able to predict with anything close to accuracy what exact form the internet would take in 2015. There’s a number of dark places on the internet that tailor to the fringes of society, but for the most part the web is an incredible device which is now an integral part of most of our daily lives.

Finance

Money is a continually shifting phenomenon, with trends frequently appearing and then vanishing. With the arrival of mainstream online banking services money has become an abstract concept in some cases, with a shockingly small percentage existing in a form you can actually touch. This may seem strange but since the web started to influence the financial sector it was only a matter of time. Its power to connect people has also allowed many companies to make money from helping members of the public with financial plans and problem solving that they may not have been able to sort out by themselves. Examples include Nutmeg, which invest their customers stocks and shares ISAs.

Image Source: Pixabay

Television and film 

Watching television and films has been made much more interactive in the last decade with viewers spouting their thoughts, feelings and predictions on social networking websites. There”s also countless websites where dedicated reviewers rate every episode of the world’s most popular TV shows, and websites like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic that hint at which films are worth seeing by combining reviews from hundreds of critics. A new and very serious problem (people can take television very seriously!) is that the web is awash with spoilers meaning that due to bad luck many of us have accidentally read what happens in the finale of a show we”re halfway through… So be careful what you click!

Music

Before everything went digital music was listened to on records, CDs, through the radio and at live gigs. Nowadays, however, it’s a very different story with the official top 40 chart now extremely inaccurate as there are so many platforms for listening to music like iTunes and Spotify. Millions of people across the globe now illegally download, or ‘pirate’ their music too, with the chances of being caught for copyright infringement extremely slim as so many people are doing it. The online switch has ruined the record industry, and musicians now have to find alternate ways to make money as CD sales are now nowhere near as profitable.

News

Today’s society is more obsessed with the news than ever before, and the main reason for this is that it’s so much easier to find what’s happening anywhere in the world than it was just 10 years ago. In the past we’ve been reliant on daily newspapers, but now there’s thousands upon thousands of independent news and current affairs websites. Everything is just a few clicks away! Check out this Telegraph article on how we’re all getting addicted the news.