Journal #6 - Are We Too Connected?

                We are living in the Information Age, when the answer to anything is just around the corner of a Google search.  We don't search something, we Google it.  Web 2.0 has changed our society to be more interactive.  Our society feels that we must be constantly connected to the Internet to update our friends and family about our mood, post a funny picture of a dancing cat, or rant about how Captain Crunch scratches the roof of our mouth.  Web 2.0 has made the Internet more dynamic and constantly changing, just like our daily lives; and this breathes life to the Internet and makes it a living entity.  We feel lost unless we are plugged in.  GPS helps us find our way again.  Is all this necessary?  Or are we too connected?

                I think being constantly connected to the Internet is what our society has evolved into, and I believe this step in evolution is a good thing because the Internet makes our daily lives easier by allowing us to access information on the go with just a flick of a finger.  The Internet is a big place, a vast place filled with a lot of information and we naturally want to have it at our finger tips.  I can't even remember a time before the Internet and now having a constant connection to the Internet is necessary to keep ourselves informed and track our friends and family.  Google knows this and wants to make our interaction with the Internet more seamless.  That is why they are marketing this idea by releasing their Google Glass at the end of this year.  The relationship between the Internet and humans has evolved into something symbiotic, the Internet helps humankind complete daily tasks and in turn we build and expand the Internet with more information.  "Help you help us" is the motto we seem to have with the World Wide Web.  Google's new product will be a more efficient tool to help us utilize the Internet just like the smart phone was.  Next will be implants.

                Like all great inventions we want to use it and push it to the limit.  This explains why new technologies are being developed specifically for the Internet all the time.  I remember a time when there was no HTML 5, 4, or 3.  It was just HTML.  Another technology that has evolved is IPv4, it has approached the end of its life time because the human population has outgrown the number of IP address the technology offers.  IPv6 will supply enough IP addresses to satisfy the human population for a while.  This idea supplies evidence of the symbiosis between the Internet and humankind.  We develop new technologies to make the Internet better in order for it to better serve us.