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Executive summary: Over the last few decades the internet has revolutionised our economy and society. It has become an essential component of everyday social and business life for billions of people around the globe. Since its birth in the early 1960s, the internet has been changing our lives to the point where the mankind stand today and our societies rely on it as a critical infrastructure. The internet has transformed from a purely academic network into a worldwide open infrastructure for information, communication and commerce. Wireless technology has taken everything a step further, making it possible to interact with the internet anywhere, anytime. This is continually expanding with the ever increasing connections of internet-enabled devices. The internet has become a powerful tool for creativity and innovation. The technology is rapidly spreading far and wide, especially with the broadband and mobile connectivity. In effect, this bang is likely to redefine the nature of internet and the fabric of social, cultural, political and economic institutions, worldwide in the near future. The next generation of the internet is going to have numerous socio-economic and environmental effects on modern society. So, there is a need for investigation on the impact of internet technology and its strategic management.
List of Abbreviations: .gov .org AOL ARPANET ASCII BBN BBS CERN DNS FreeBSD HTML HTTP IP IRC ISP IT MIT MUD NS OSI PC RIA SSL TCP/IP UCLA URL VOIP government organization America OnLine Advanced Research Project Agency Network American Standard Code of Information Interchange Bolt,Beranek,Newman Bulletin Borad System Centre de Reseau Nucleare Domain Name Serrver Free Barkeley Software Distribution Hyper Text Markup Language Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Internet Protocol Internet Relay Chat Internet Service Provider Information Technology Massachusetts Institute of Technology MultiUser Dungeon Name Server Open System Interconnection Personal Computer Rich Internet Application Secure Socket Layer Transmission Control Protocol/ Internet Protocol University of California Los Angeles Universal Resource Locator Voice Over Internet Protocol
Table of contents
1. 2. 3. Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 1 History of the Internet- a timeline .................................................................................................. 2 Impact of internet technology ........................................................................................................ 4 3.1 3.2 3.3 4. 5. Environmental impact of internet .......................................................................................... 4 Social impacts of internet ....................................................................................................... 4 Economic impact of internet technology................................................................................ 5
1. Introduction
There have been tremendous developments in information and communication technology in the past. Modern technology is based on the combination of computers, telecommunication networks, digital information and intelligent software. The combination of this communication infrastructure has resulted in new forms of communication, collaboration, business processes and social relationships. Internet has always played the central role as the backbone of modern state of art technology. In the present context, it has its growing impact in the areas of education, business, industries, warfare, law enforcement and social networks. Virtualization is impacting the behaviour of individual and organization. Things are getting smarter day by day with the help of internet connectivity. These trends and patterns show that we are now transforming to the age of the intelligent agents. Having told these, this case study introduces the positive and negative impacts of the internet technology in the social, environmental and economic sectors of modern society and suggests some ways to manage them.
Service Provider (ISP) called The World was brought about and in the same year, ARPANET ceased to exist. The coding for World Wide Web protocols have been finished along with the standards for HTML, HTTP, and URLs. The first web page was created in 1990 which was really a major innovation to the world of internet. In 1991, the first content-based search protocol called Gopher was launched which had the ability to examine file contents instead of just file names. MP3 file format was accepted as a standard in the same year. MP3 file format became popular in the internet for sharing because of its high compression. One of the more interesting developments of this time was the first webcam, which was deployed at Cambridge University computer lab. Among other browsers of 90s, Mosaic, which was released in 1993, was the widely downloaded internet browser. It is considered the first browser to make the internet easily accessible to the general public. White House and the United Nations came online, marking the beginning of the .gov and .org domain names. Netscape navigator which is considered to be the Mosaics first big competitor was released in 1994. 1995 is often considered the first year the web became commercialized because a few key developments happened that year. Netscape developed a first Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption which made it safer to conduct financial transaction online over the internet. Echo Bay which is todays eBay and Amazo n.com started their online business. Java and JavaScript was introduced to the public for the first time. Microsoft launched ActiveX the following year. In 1996, HoTMaiL, the first web-based (webmail) service, was launched. Next year, the term weblog was coined, although blogs had been around for a few years. It was 1998; the news story was broken online instead of traditional media. A major event that happened this year was the Google going live. This revolutionized the way in which people find information online. Napster was launched the same year. Internet-based file sharing started its way around. 2000 was the year of the dotcom collapse. This resulted in huge losses for crowds of investors. Despite of this collapse still going on, 2001 saw a light in the internet history. Wikipedia, one of the websites paved the way for collective web content generation and a social media. Skype was released in 2003 to the general public. Thus, providing a graphical user-friendly interface for Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) calls. MySpace opened up its door and grew to become the most popular social network. Web 2.0, which refers to websites and Rich Internet Applications (RIA) that are highly interactive and user-driven, became popular around 2004. During the same year the term social media was coined and social news site such as Digg was launched. This revolutionized traditional means of generating and finding web content. The Facebook, literally todays facebook, one of the most popular social media, was launched in 2004. YouTube, the most widely used video streaming website launched in 2005, brought free online video hosting and sharing to the crowd. A year later Twitter started twittering. In 2007 a major step was taken to put TV shows online. Hulu, was launched to make popular TV shows available to watch online. The biggest innovation of 2007 was the iPhone and the mobile web applications and design. The first Internet Election took place in 2008 with the U.S. Presidential election. In effect the internet was placed squarely at the forefront of politics and campaigning. From 2010 to present day the internet is widely used for media consumption, mobile advertising, online video advertising, media engagement, real-time social media, cloud computing, webinars etc.
3.2 Social impacts of internet The internet is part of the technological foundation of modern society and has significant importance to its constitution and development. Internet is facilitating a reorganizing of information and social relationships across time and space. The internet can thus be seen as not just simply an alternative means of distributing information but also as a way of creating new forms of action and interaction. In our society a growing number of internet users especially the youths and college students spend their leisure time in the cyber community. Many youths have used internet facility as a window of opportunity and succeeded in their career. On the other hand there are students who involve their time in surfing internet, playing online games, spending times in social media. We can find a number of such students left schooling in early life and started a hard life involving in illegal and criminal works. The influence of cyber culture on teenagers socialization is rapidly growing. Family members, relatives, friends, well-wishers or anyone living in different location around the globe are able to interact with each other virtually with the help of internet facilities and VOIP softwares such as Skype. This has helped in strengthening personal relationship and served as a base for socio-cultural unity. Internet has brought both political unity and fragmentation in our society. Number of virtual communities is on rise day by day. There used to be prevailing arranged-marriage in our society but with the internet technology and online dating websites, the scene has completely changed its track into the new direction. Internet is a huge and infinite database of information. The students are becoming smarter because they can see and learn about the state-of-art technology and can understand where they stand on the globe. They are able to communicate with their teachers or fellow students about their problems or any innovative ideas. Use of internet has build up confidence among the students with a can-do approach.
Research activities are increasing day by day. Many students are taking their higher studies especially in the field of ICT through online courses and trainings. People are carrying out their business activities online through internet. They can pay bills, book tickets, shop online etc. through internet. Distance learning has existed for some time. The internet is making possible for large coverage and better delivery of instruction. Development in internet technology has made possible to combine text with audio and videos, and such students are able to interact in real time through e-mails and discussion groups. Technological progress is making people more dependent on technology, which can bring risks. Failures in the technological infrastructures can cause the collapse of economic and social functionality.
3.3 Economic impact of internet technology Information technology has different impact on the economy of a country or of some specific area. The impact is mostly positive but it is not always true. With passage of time and progress in technologies many organizations of various types, scopes and services are being started in our work area. Many banks and institutions are established. Since the persons working in such business are better educated and highly paid, the demand for services of high value and better quality is increasing. To fulfil the demands many hotels, restaurants, shopping centre, recreation areas etc. are in operation. With this expansion of services of all types, various employment opportunities have been created to local people in our area. To supply the increasing demand of internet, more and more Internet Service Provider (ISP) is established. It has created jobs for computer professionals. The property value has risen. People are making greater income by working on flexible schedules: working part time, sharing jobs, or holding two or more jobs simultaneously. Internet technology has extended the market reach globally. Many outsourcing companies especially in the areas of software development have been established. It has a good contribution in the economy of our workplace. The globalization has resulted in a natural competitiveness. People are getting quality services in low price. With the help of web technology many INGOs have explored the feasible possibilities in different sectors of our society and thus the foreign investment has triggered huge economic development. In the other hand, sophisticated equipments have replaced the human resources in the industrial market. A large number of labour forces are getting unemployed. This has created a negative impact on the economy in our workplace.
References Valerie Quercia, (ed) Linda Mui, Intenet In A Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference, OReilly & Associates, Inc, 1st edn, October1997 (eds) Niels Brgger & Henrik Bdker, The Internet and Society?, Papers from The Centre for Internet Research, Aarhus, Denmark, 2002 (ed) W. Russell Neuman, Media, Technology and Society: Theories of Media Evolution, Draft Manuscript for University of Michigan Press, December 2008