The Internet - the Most Useful New Invention

THE INTERNET, A MOST USEFUL INVENTION

I believe that the most useful invention to come along during my lifetime is the internet. There is nothing else that has changed our lives in so many ways. When I try to describe to my children what it was like before the internet, I might as well be talking about a time before electricity or cars. The internet has changed how we communicate, how we shop, and even how we date. Most importantly, it has changed how we get our information and how fast we get it. This has changed not only the dissemination of news and information but also education.

The internet has made communication easy and inexpensive in many different ways. Email is like mail but is instantaneous to anyone with an email account in the world, and requires no stamp. I remember when we used to joke about having video phones like on the cartoon The Jetsons. It is no longer science fiction because of the program Skype which lets two people with internet connections and video cameras talk face to face. I can call my brother in Moscow, Russia for free, and I get to see my little one-year old nephew between our yearly visits. He might actually recognize me the next time he sees me.

One of the biggest pastimes on the internet is social networking like Facebook and MySpace. It is a whole new way for people to make friends and keep in touch with old ones. It is a big boon with kids and teenagers but it has also caught on with adults. I was slow to join in, but I finally made a Facebook page after my divorce when I needed some friendship. I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly I was back in touch with high school and college friends. It was even the medium for mending a broken friendship that I missed very badly. Quite a few legitimate dating sites have sprung up as well, such as EHarmony which promises to match you with someone compatible after you take an exhaustive questionnaire. I have not tried one personally, but I do have a friend who met her husband of six years that way.

The most important effect of the internet, I believe, is the access to so much information. If I am at the grocery store and want to know how to cook spaghetti squash, for instance, all I have to do is pull out my cell phone and go on the internet and Google a recipe for spaghetti squash. I instantly have my ingredients and instructions. When I was in High School, in the seventies, if I had to write a term paper it was much more trouble than my kids can imagine. I would go to the Vanderbilt University Library, which is huge, to do my research. First I would have to look through the card catalog for books and then traipse through the stacks to find the books. After finding the books, I would have to look through each one to find something useful. Oh, and I wasn't allowed to take the books home so had to Xerox everything. Magazines or "periodicals" as they were called were found on