How The Internet Has Changed Everyday Life: Hemes Discover

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TECHNOLOGY DIGITAL WORLD
Article from the book Change: 19 Key Essays on How the Internet Is Changing Our
Lives
How the Internet

Has Changed
Everyday Life
Change | Communication | Culture | Internet | Sociology
Zaryn Dentzel
Tuenti, Madrid, Spain
Time 15 to read
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WHAT HAPPENED?
The Internet has turned our existence upside down. It has

revolutionized communications, to the extent that it is now our
preferred medium of everyday communication. In almost everything
we do, we use the Internet. Ordering a pizza, buying a television,
sharing a moment with a friend, sending a picture over instant
messaging. Before the Internet, if you wanted to keep up with the
news, you had to walk down to the newsstand when it opened in the
morning and buy a local edition reporting what had happened the
previous day. But today a click or two is enough to read your local
paper and any news source from anywhere in the world, updated up
to the minute.
The Internet itself has been transformed. In its early days—which

from a historical perspective are still relatively recent—it was a
static network designed to shuttle a small freight of bytes or a short
message between two terminals; it was a repository of information
where content was published and maintained only by expert coders.
Today, however, immense quantities of information are uploaded
and downloaded over this electronic leviathan, and the content is
very much our own, for now we are all commentators, publishers,
and creators.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the Internet widened in scope to

encompass the IT capabilities of universities and research centers,
and, later on, public entities, institutions, and private enterprises
from around the world. The Internet underwent immense growth; it
was no longer a state-controlled project, but the largest computer
network in the world, comprising over 50,000 sub-networks, 4
million systems, and 70 million users.
The emergence of web 2.0 in the first decade of the twenty-first

century was itself a revolution in the short history of the Internet,
fostering the rise of social media and other interactive, crowd-based
communication tools.
The Internet was no longer concerned with information exchange
alone: it was a sophisticated multidisciplinary tool enabling
individuals to create content, communicate with one another, and
even escape reality. Today, we can send data from one end of the
world to the other in a matter of seconds, make online
presentations, live in parallel “game worlds,” and use pictures,
video, sound, and text to share our real lives, our genuine identity.
Personal stories go public; local issues become global.
The rise of the Internet has sparked a debate about how online
communication affects social relationships. The Internet frees us
from geographic fetters and brings us together in topic-based
communities that are not tied down to any specific place. Ours is a
networked, globalized society connected by new technologies. The
Internet is the tool we use to interact with one another, and
accordingly poses new challenges to privacy and security.
Information technologies have wrought fundamental change

throughout society, driving it forward from the industrial age to the
networked era. In our world, global information networks are vital
infrastructure—but in what ways has this changed human relations?
The Internet has changed business, education, government,
healthcare, and even the ways in which we interact with our loved
ones—it has become one of the key drivers of social evolution.
The changes in social communication are of particular significance.

Although analogue tools still have their place in some sectors, new
technologies are continuing to gain ground every day, transforming
our communication practices and possibilities—particularly among
younger people. The Internet has removed all communication
barriers. Online, the conventional constraints of space and time
disappear and there is a dizzyingly wide range of communicative
possibilities. The impact of social media applications has triggered
discussion of the “new communication democracy.”
The development of the Internet today is being shaped

predominantly by instant, mobile communications. The mobile
Internet is a fresh revolution. Comprehensive Internet connectivity
via smartphones and tablets is leading to an increasingly mobile
reality: we are not tied to any single specific device, and everything
is in the cloud.
People no longer spend hours gazing at a

computer screen after work or class;
instead, they use their mobile devices to
stay online everywhere, all the time.
Anyone failing to keep abreast of this radical change is losing out on
an opportunity.
COMMUNICATION OPPORTUNITIES CREATED BY THE

INTERNET
The Internet has become embedded in every aspect of our day-to-

day lives, changing the way we interact with others. This insight
struck me when I started out in the world of social media. I created
my first social network in 2005, when I was finishing college in the
United States—it had a political theme. I could already see that
social media were on the verge of changing our way of
communicating, helping us to share information by opening up a
new channel that cuts across conventional ones.
That first attempt did not work out, but I learned from the
experience.I get the feeling that in many countries failure is
punished too harshly—but the fact is, the only surefire way of
avoiding failure is to do nothing at all. I firmly believe that mistakes
help you improve; getting it wrong teaches you how to get it right.
Creativity, hard work, and a positive attitude will let you achieve any
goal.
In 2006, after I moved to Spain, I created Tuenti. Tuenti (which,

contrary to widespread belief, has nothing to do with the number 20;
it is short for “tu entidad,” the Spanish for “your entity”) is a social
communication platform for genuine friends. From the outset, the
idea was to keep it simple, relevant, and private. That’s the key to
its success.
I think the real value of social media is that you can stay in touch
from moment to moment with the people who really matter to you.
Social media let you share experiences and information; they get
people and ideas in touch instantly, without frontiers. Camaraderie,
friendship, and solidarity—social phenomena that have been around
for as long as humanity itself—have been freed from the
conventional restrictions of space and time and can now thrive in a
rich variety of ways.
Out of all the plethora of communication opportunities that the

Internet has opened up, I would highlight the emergence of social
media and the way they have intricately melded into our daily lives.
Social media have changed our personal space, altering the way we
interact with our loved ones, our friends, and our sexual partners;
they have forced us to rethink even basic daily processes like
studying and shopping; they have affected the economy by
nurturing the business startup culture and electronic commerce;
they have even given us new ways to form broad-based political
movements.
The Internet and Education
The Internet has clearly impacted all levels of education by

providing unbounded possibilities for learning. I believe the future of
education is a networked future. People can use the Internet to
create and share knowledge and develop new ways of teaching and
learning that captivate and stimulate students’ imagination at any
time, anywhere, using any device. By connecting and empowering
students and educators, we can speed up economic growth and
enhance the well-being of society throughout the world. We should
work together, over a network, to build the global learning society.
The network of networks is an inexhaustible source of information.

What’s more, the Internet has enabled users to move away from
their former passive role as mere recipients of messages conveyed
by conventional media to an active role, choosing what information
to receive, how, and when. The information recipient even decides
whether or not they want to stay informed.
We have moved on from scattergun mass
communication to a pattern where the user
proactively selects the information they
need.
Students can work interactively with one another, unrestricted by
physical or time constraints. Today, you can use the Internet to
access libraries, encyclopedias, art galleries, news archives, and
other information sources from anywhere in the world: I believe this
is a key advantage in the education field. The web is a formidable
resource for enhancing the process of building knowledge.
I also believe the Internet is a wonderful tool for learning and

practicing other languages—this continues to be a critical issue in
many countries, including Spain, and, in a globalized world, calls for
special efforts to improve.
The Internet, in addition to its communicative purposes, has become

a vital tool for exchanging knowledge and education; it is not just an
information source, or a locus where results can be published, it is
also a channel for cooperating with other people and groups who are
working on related research topics.

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 HEMES

How the Internet

Time 15 to read

The Internet has turned our existence upside down. It has

The Internet itself has been transformed. In its early days—which

In the 1980s and 1990s, the Internet widened in scope to

The emergence of web 2.0 in the first decade of the twenty-first

Information technologies have wrought fundamental change

The changes in social communication are of particular significance.

The development of the Internet today is being shaped

People no longer spend hours gazing at a

COMMUNICATION OPPORTUNITIES CREATED BY THE

The Internet has become embedded in every aspect of our day-to-

In 2006, after I moved to Spain, I created Tuenti. Tuenti (which,

Out of all the plethora of communication opportunities that the

The Internet and Education

The Internet has clearly impacted all levels of education by

The network of networks is an inexhaustible source of information.

I also believe the Internet is a wonderful tool for learning and

The Internet, in addition to its communicative purposes, has become

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