How the Internet is changing our lives
It is impossible to imagine how the world would have been without the invention of the Internet about five decades ago. The Internet has changed how we behave, connect with one another, do business across geographical borders and govern politically.
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It has shifted power from the owners of media to the consumers of media. Internet has democratised communication and content management. Without a doubt, the Internet has impacted the lives of individuals, businesses, communities, nations and the world as whole.
Governments now see the need to invest heavily in broadband Internet connectivity because research now shows that there is a direct corresponding effect of Internet Penetration on the Gross Domestic Product of the country.
How Internet is changing our lives
According to a World Bank findings, low-to-middle income countries had about 3.8 per cent growth in their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for every 10 per cent increase in their broadband Internet penetration between 2000 and 2006.
It is now a legal right in Finland for the citizens to have access to free Internet. Internet giants such as Facebook and Google have started the Internet.org project to give free connectivity to people. Zambia is the first African country benefiting from the project.
• Connecting cultures and people
The world has been reduced from its complex diversity of cultures into one virtual place where people now connect with one another in real time without any space or time restrictions. With over three billion global Internet users, it is obvious that billions of people from diverse cultural background can now do businesses and share their cultures.
Businesses are now done between people of the same industry located in different cultural and geographical settings. The global market is now the local market of every Internet-driven business. Transactions and commerce are done seamlessly via the web, enabled by the Internet.
• Sharing multi-format contents
We can now share different formats of contents over the Internet in real time with people living in different geographical areas. You can now listen to audio, watch video and images, and read text on the web.
It is possible to send these contents to other people connected to one’s personal or business life. With the Internet, one does not need to send letters on horseback or ship some contents to people in different locations.
Over 2.5 billion contents are shared daily on Facebook. Contents can also be shared on WhatsApp, Viber, Twitter, YouTube and other fast growing platforms. People now can express their thoughts, do business and share contents easily, quickly and cheaply on consumer applications on their mobile devices.
• Powering creative learning
Knowledge has increased because people can now connect to the Internet and consume contents on any area of subject. Online is a huge library of information on various themes and subjects which people can consume by searching for them.
People living in deprived areas can now learn online using the Internet. Khan Academy, Academic Earth and Udacity are some of the many platforms offering world-class education online for free. Distance learning is one of the areas of education which has benefited from the use of the Internet for teaching and learning.
Rural folks are now the source of product inspiration for huge brands which are customising some of their devices by way of features and functionalities are based on target costing for the billions of people living in rural areas.
• Socialising with networks
People can now socialise with people with shared identity, common interests, collective social action and social network on various social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp and other platforms.
It is now easier to find classmates, church members, colleague workers, business partners and political ideology believers on social media and engage them any time. Social media has over 2.1 billion users spending billions of minutes to converse around interests, brands, businesses, celebrities and politics. It is almost unlikely these days for one to be online without having an account on some social media platforms.
• Internet of everything
It is believed that over 70 billion devices will be connected to the Internet by 2020; meaning each person on earth will have an average of nine devices connected to the Internet. Experts believe that both living and non-living things will be connected and controlled on the Internet.
Nobody imagined that diapers could be connected to the Internet so mothers or baby-sitters can be alerted via their Twitter accounts when they needed to change the diapers. Huggies, one of the leading brands in baby diapers, has developed a simple device which is fixed to the diapers with sensors which triggers a tweet to mother or baby-sitter’s Twitter account in real time.
Apple Carplay is also an innovative product to mark car dashboards smarter and connected. You can do whatever a smart phone can do on your dashboard. You can pick calls, play music, map your direction, have text messages dictated to you, you can talk to Siri to find whatever you are interested in, send text messages by dictating it and many more features.
• Product reinvention
Decades ago, it took over a minimum of six months to have the set of Encyclopedia Britannica printed for you to exhibit on the shelf in your library for quick research. Microsoft then got the idea to develop an electronic copy of Encyclopedia called Encarta.
It was nicely packed in a pack with an Installation Compact Disc which you installed on your computer or laptops. You had advanced features such as embedded audios and videos accompanying some of the contents unlike the printed copy.
Unfortunately, Wikipedia also changed the game by making Encyclopedia free online so people can have access to any content in various formats as and when they need it. It democratised content creation, whereby people added their knowledge to the existing ones. It was discredited in the beginning. But it is now a major reference portal for contents.
Netflix, Hulu and other online video streaming platforms have virtually killed the video rental companies. Some of them even premier movies of their platforms implying that the movie theatre now has intense competition with these platforms. So many other industries are feeling the disruptions Internet-enabled businesses are bringing to bear on their respective industries.
• Business transactions
Online payment is facilitating how business transactions are done over the Internet. One can now use major credit and debit cards to buy products or subscribe to services online. Mpesa, a mobile payment platform, can now boast of business transactions of about 31 per cent of Kenya’s GDP. People in the rural areas can now receive or send money; businesses can now receive payments and other transactions can be done on the platform in real time.
The Telcos have mobile money transfer services that individuals and businesses are using to make and collect payments respectively. Online banking and cashless transactions are now getting the attention of governments.
Apple recently launched the ApplePay which is enabling payment just by an instant click using the Near Field Communication technology. They have the largest credit accounts on the web with over 800 million credit card accounts connected to their iTunes platform.
• Media redefinition
It is becoming a herculean task for traditional media to move in step with evolving technologies. Newspapers are in dilemma whether to stick to the news and do away with the paper by developing websites or apps so they can reach more targets with richer contents or adopt some technologies to their existing processes.
Newsweek magazine in the USA stopped printing hard copies last December and focused on its digital presence and channel.
According to an article published in the Wall Street Journal, “Newsweek's circulation has dropped by about half to 1.5 million and advertising pages plunged more than 80 per cent, while the magazine's annual losses had lately reached roughly US$40 million.”
YouTube, the second largest search engine, gets 100 hours of videos uploaded to it every minute. More videos are uploaded to YouTube in a month than the top three TV stations in the USA have produced for the past 60 years.
You can listen to thousands of radio stations with Tunein Radio app on your phone. Social media is also competing with the media houses in terms of breaking the news and publishing it to their targets.
Most users on social media break the news before traditional print houses go to print, though the latter gives more consistent, credible and reliable information. GB
• The writer is a technology consultant, digital marketing strategist, social media expert and trainer.
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