What
does the Internet mean to you?
If you're like most, not much more than access to your
email. If you're a typical
user, you don't spend more than 3 hours a week connected to the
Internet.
Very
few have discovered that the Internet is about control--control of your
lives, loves, learning and labor.
"Whoa!" you think to yourself, "now he's gone overboard."
Hear
me out. Before looking at
how the Internet gives you control, ask yourself which of these four L's
you now control. Do you control your labor or learning, or do your
bosses and teachers control these time-consuming parts of your
lives?
If
someone else, or a system, controls your work-life and your education,
how much control do you actually have over your lives or loves? Someone else is telling you what
to do with most of your life.
Let's
say, for instance, that you and your loved one feel a special passion
at, say, 7 AM. Stop! Can't share it! Got to go to work!
Or
let's suppose that you feel like reading a great novel at 1 AM. Nothing doing! You've got an 8
AM class to attend.
Organizations exercise control over your life.
How
then, you might ask, does the Internet give you more control?
After
years of suffering the limitations of classroom learning, the Internet
has finally opened the doors to learning almost anything you want at any
time of the day or night for as long as you want to spend doing it. This area of control isn't yet
complete, but it's progressing well. It’s only a matter of time
before complete libraries will be available on the Internet, and courses
in almost anything will be offered.
When
people can learn anything they want on the Internet—and that day isn’t
far off—it will no longer be necessary to travel to classes, sit in
uncomfortable chairs at inconvenient times and fight off sleep during
dull lectures. It will be
possible, as it is now for many courses, to access the Internet at times
of your choosing, from the comfort of your home and study what you need
and want. You can spend as
long as you wish taking the courses and replay what you didn’t
understand or want to have repeated, something you can’t do with
classroom learning.
With
your learning taking place at home, you also need access to a library at
home. These are becoming
available in the Internet at break-neck speeds. The introduction of peer-sharing
programs should soon make any book or magazine in digital form available
to all.
Every
major literary work published before 1930 is now available on the Net;
and several organizations, like the Project Gutenberg are working on
completing that picture.
From the PG site, you can get a complete list of the authors,
titles and books available.
Magazines
and newspapers are taking the lead in making their information content
available on the Internet.
Google's
Alternative
Media lets me find my news by categories and interests, from
activist or anarchist through conservative and libertarian to
progressive and left.
When
I want to scan headlines for a particular subject or just find the main
news of the day, I go to Google Headline
News updated every hour.
For
those who like to choose a news source in any country in the world or in
any language, every online newspaper in the world can be found at Online Newspapers. Simply click on an area
and country or on the alphabetical country list and go directly to your
favorite news source.
At
first glance, this may not seem like a gain of much control. However, when you compare the
available news sources with what you're fed through your limited
subscriptions and TV news, both slanted and incomplete, you'll find that
you've acquired an incredible amount of control over the amounts of
information and varieties of perspectives you get from the
Internet.
You’re
also getting an online periodical library. The academic journals will
follow.
Leading
magazines now publish archives of previous issues on the Net, and when
these and other journals are readily available for free or at minimal
cost, it won't be necessary to spend hours in dank and dreary libraries
at inconvenient hours when you want to do research.
Then
there’s work. Angela Wu
points out in the newsletter Site Pro News, “Home based businesses are
rapidly gaining in popularity. Not only do they offer you the
opportunity for freedom and the flexibility to set your own work terms,
but you also have control over your financial independence.”
The
Internet control factor will soon involve much more than home-based
business. Companies are
beginning to realize the benefits of having home-based work forces. So long as they can assure
productivity equal to or better than they get from office-bound
employees, costs can be greatly minimized. Expensive office space can be
drastically reduced; and hiring freelance independent contractors to
work at home can eliminate many expensive employee benefit
programs.
For
the worker, this also amounts to a boon. Not only does the employee save
travel time and expense to and from the workplace, you can choose your
working hours; and if you have more time available, you can do other
jobs from home that will increase your income. Of course, you need to have
enough self-discipline to meet deadlines and to keep your productivity
up to expectations.
For
mothers at home, there's even a Website, WAHM, devoted to
work-at-home opportunities for you with information for those who
already have a home business as well as for those who are looking for
one.
For
instant communications, email gives me control that I don't have with
the telephone. As Marshall
McLuhan observed, "The telephone demands complete participation, unlike
the written and printed page. Any literate man resents such a heavy
demand for his total attention, because he has long been accustomed to
fragmentary attention."
Moreover,
email gives me control over my interactions. I can write when I'm in the mood
for writing and when the ideas are clear in my head. If I'm responding to an email, I
can intersperse my comments immediately after the lines that I’m
commenting on.
Some
users go online to find entertainment. They devote time to playing
games, reading jokes, following sports, downloading and listening to
music, visiting fan sites or watching videos. Much of the entertainment that
one had to travel to enjoy can now be enjoyed from the comfort of your
home.
With
all of these various activities involving the Internet, only a few rare
individuals have discovered what the Internet is really about. Even fewer have learned to use
this incredible medium to realize its full potential.
I’m
not suggesting that everyone should spend all of their time at home
doing their work, learning, socializing and playing on the
Internet.
What
I am suggesting is that the Internet is increasingly giving us a choice
of which activities we want to pursue online while taking control over
those activities and our lives that we never had before.
