The Internet: The Third Arm of Society

You learn a lot about people when you travel. I'm not talking about the people that you are traveling with in particular because you are bound to get to know them better; I mean the people that you encounter along the way. Traveling appeals to lots of different types of people and therefore when you stay in hostels all over Europe you get to see a very clean cross-section of the 'world society'. Anyone who has ever been in a hostel (either at home or abroad) will understand the kind of mix of people that can be found in places like that - it's all very interesting. One of the main things that I observed about these people when I was on holiday was that they all had one thing in common: they all wanted access to the internet. No matter what type of person it was or where they were from, everyone hovered around the computers in the hostel until there was one free. Most of them were looking for their fix of Facebook but no matter what they wanted to do online it struck me that whatever it was, it was vital. It brought me to the conclusion that most people (particularly young people) can't live without access to the internet for longer than a few days. I'm no different and I knew that I was going to struggle but it's nice to know that I'm one many who need to have the internet at their fingertips whenever they desire it.

In a world that moves so quickly, where things can change rapidly in the space of about 10 minutes, it's almost imperative that we have internet access at least once a day. If you don't use the internet and you then don't watch the TV (the news in particular) even just for a day then you are going to get caught behind the times. Sadly this is also the case on social networking sights such as Facebook. If you don't check your 'news feed' at least once a day then you feel like you are missing out on something - it shouldn't be like this but sadly it is.

I'm one of those people that can spend whole days on the internet and I know a lot of people who are the same. It's almost like we push each other to do it because we all like to keep one step ahead of everyone else - a desire that fuels this constant need to keep up to date. It would be nice if life wasn't this competitive but humans, by nature, are a competitive species and therefore as long as there is internet then we will always look for ways that we can get online. It's for this reason (amongst others, such as online gaming) why people are always after faster internet connections - faster internet means more information in less time. We've grown inpatient and we want more, more, more!

Yes I can admit that I'm an internet junkie but I know of people that are possibly 'worse' than I am. But then again maybe they aren't worse; maybe they just know their time and have adapted better than the rest of us. Long live the internet, long live our modern society!

Thanks for reading,

Martin