Three cheers for the net

Late last night, I lay in my bed musing on the world and all the fascinating things which it contains. I ended up asking myself the question: the internet, good or bad? Is it propelling us into some dismal Orwellian nightmare, or has it liberated the world's citizens to communicate as never before? Here are my thoughts on the matter.

For a start, no one can doubt that the internet has had many positive effects. With the advent of cheap computer hardware and the ongoing price battle between the ISPs, getting online has never been easier. Once a user has the now requisite broadband connection, they can tap into the rich stream of media being propagated out there, and, with the net becoming ubiquitous in Western homes, the content available - already vast - is expanding exponentially. From being able to read a Wikipedia article on catfish, to finding your true love on datingdirect.com, it's all out there. However, if I had to pick a part of the net I could not do without, it would be Google, who, in my opinion, deserves a big 'thank you' from everyone in the world. This is firstly for a very practical reason: I couldn't navigate the net without them. Secondly though, far from being the Big Brother of the future, the company have leveled the information playing field. Everyone now has vast reams of the stuff at their fingertips. Email has had a similar effect: I can now contact anyone for free (using Gmail, made possible through the scarily accurate and unobtrusive joy of contextualised advertising), where they are in the world being irrelevant. To adduce an example of where email has revolutionised working practice, I only have to look at my Dad's office. As an engineer he used to have to send his drawings, plans etc. out to where the contract was being assembled far off in China or Australia using the relatively slow business post, taking about 2 days. Time is money, which is lucky as plans can now be sent in under 5 seconds with the click of a mouse.

To look at the blogging phenomenon which as swept the world, perhaps I myself am I salient example. Twenty years ago, the thought of some 17 year-old publishing their thoughts in a form accessible to (potentially) every other being on the planet was inconceivable, ridiculous. Now everyone's doing it, from bloggers in China registering their acrimonious sentiment at their country's repression of civil liberties, to loquacious university students yacking on Facebook. And do you know the best bit? I, like probably 99% of other users of the net, don't have the first clue how the whole bloody thing works, yet here you are, reading my thoughts.

Sadly though, the net's negative impact has to be weighed up. There are plenty of unsavoury people out there, and they've been empowered by the net. From people trying to sell me cheap Viagra, pedophiles indulging their repugnant habits, to Nigerian scammers attempting to 'fish' my bank details, they're all out there. On top of this, the more we move previously offline services to the net (my UCAS application being a good example), we add to the potential chaos hackers and those that create viruses can unleash. This in many cases is compounded by people's fundamental ignorance - like all those people who divulge their details when sent an email from their 'bank' querying their username and password.

Furthermore, the net has the potential to enslave society as well as liberate it. It doesn't take a drug fuelled science-fiction writer to imagine a future where the government monitors our every search query, perhaps our every move using the net. It must seem so tempting to the authorities, almost irresistible to start trawling through the data they could collect and look for potential trouble makers. I'm more than certain that in China, those uploading subversive material are tracked and arrested. Big Brother seems to be rushing from 1984 to the present with frightening speed. Yet I'm sure things are not as bad as they seem. We can avert a dystopia from forming.

Admittedly, I can chat to other university applicants on The Student Room and sell my old books on eBay (or even look at books I don't have using Google's book search) but does this outweigh the negatives - the deception, the potential for mass surveillance? In my opinion, yes.

For every major virus spreading out there, they're must be thousands of successful Amazon orders dispatched. Worries about pale teenage nerds controlling America's nuclear arsenal from their suburban bedrooms are overblown, and, despite the Avenue Q song, the internet is not just for porn. Now, if you don't mind, I've got some surfing to do.