Overview

It is apparent that the internet is a phenomenal source of information be it downloading the latest music or perhaps checking the weather for the next day. Many services are available over the internet and that services will grow and grow into future.

For people they may see the internet as perhaps a way of relaxing or a sanction from the reality of life. People can now carry out practically any day to day task over the internet from buying to food shopping to checking their share prices . People can now even communicate with anyone in the world using various forms of communication including text based conversations and even internet-phoning one another. The way of using the internet is changing the way people think about communication as we used to know it. Instead of someone say perhaps “see you tomorrow” people may now say “come online tonight so we can speak”. People tend not to wait in fact to see someone when they can use the internet to communicate with them from the comfort of their own home.

People’s lifestyles are also changing because of the internet. People can now download practically anything. People no longer need to worry about missing a television/radio show when there are various services available over the internet that allow people to watch/listen there missed show. Instead of going to the effort of buying a CD from a shop, people can in fact download music directly to their pc. What even better about music downloads is that instead of going to the effort of “ripping” the music off a CD onto a pc and then onto an external device such as an mp3 player, music downloads can directly be transferred to the external device. This whole process is designed to help save people the time and effort of completing perhaps what was once considered as day to day tasks.

 

Another way the internet “helps” save people effort and time is e-commerce sites. They offer people the chance to buy practically anything over the internet using a variety of e-commerce services. People can even buy second hand items over online auctioning sites enabling them to perhaps find “a good deal”. The whole beauty of e-commerce is that people can shop 24/7 with no other human contact and get goods delivered to their front door.  People can also now receive a wide array of qualifications over the internet . As well as this, people can also use the internet to revise for national exams such a GCSE’s. These types of learning services are designed to be more entertaining and user-friendly than the “old fashioned” way of learning from a text book. But now why even worry about reading from a book when more and more publishers are putting copies of their books on the internet so users can read the book online or from their pc.

For many people they can now even conduct their banking over the internet. The internet offers people now the chance to complete a variety of banking tasks over the internet that in fact would have never seemed possible.

For companies the internet has too become a day to day feature for them.  Using the internet companies can operate pretty much 24/7. Instead of large organizations travelling half way around the world to conduct a business meeting, they can do so over the internet using various conferencing methods including video conferencing and VoIP conferencing. This proves a huge money and time saver for business who regular conduct business abroad. Another feature in which the internet “helps” companies is e-commerce. With e-commerce available, companies can receive trade around the clock. Instead of a company having to “shut” for the night and weekend, using e-commerce the company can constantly receive trade. Also, as the market is veering more and more towards the internet, using e-commerce companies may also find that in some cases it draws in more trade than having a physical “high street” shop.

What does the internet hold for the future? That is the question on just about everyone’s lips at present. It is very clear though that the internet is something that is here to stay for long into the foreseeable future although as time changes the types of services will change as well. More people are going to be using the internet into the future and internet services will change to help suit a growing new market. Services are also looking more probable that they will in fact get more complex as well. Many “futuristic gadgets” that people saw as being “impossible” are now far more a reality such as the ability to download television shows [ over the internet. 20 years ago services such as these would have been in peoples wildest dreams and now they are becoming ever more realistic. So if techngology and the internet have changed that much in 20 years, what will it be like in another 20 years?