onNeutral: Helping you with your Information Technology and Computing Assets

Our Services

Navigation

Of Interest

Email: info@onNeutral.com

Subscribe to this page.

The Great New W

by Alan C. Bonnici

2008-03-24 12:00:00+0

The internet is a place with millions of electronic showcases carrying all sorts of content. It is also the place where people can meet around virtual tables to discuss or argue anything about anything. On the one hand, these virtual places can be static, simple and straight to the point, on the other, they may be colourful, original and dynamic making the most of the technological gadgetry that makes all this possible.

The commercial aspect is what provides the main driving force behind the Internet. Unlike the real world, virtual shops are cheap. Thanks to companies such as Go Daddy and PayPal, anyone tempted to have a go at becoming the next millionaire can have a cheap web presence, free web design tools, free electronic shopping facilities as well as the ability to take in online payments. Other models are those offered by the likes of eBay and Amazon; here sellers use the infrastructure of these giants to market and sell their wares.

Not everyone is geared for self employment. The rest must be employed and, here again, the internet infrastructure has made its mark. The ability to connect from home and perform the same duties previously necessitating a visit to the office has given rise to telecommuting jobs. Having control over the time one starts working, when to stop for coffee breaks and for lunch and the attire to wear when in front of the computer make working an enjoyable experience. And unlike the office, working in PJs and undies is not a problem. Advancements in the area of robotics will soon make it possible to have a robot counterpart perform actions previously done by a person. The person, sitting in the comfort of a computer, would remotely direct the robot from home. Not all jobs are glued to home, as some jobs necessitate a visit to the client. Again, as a result of advancements in communication technologies, rather than have the technician travel from home to base to clients to base to home, it is now possible to have a setup in which the base is eliminated from the equation. The technician’s would travel from home to clients to home. Information previously stored at based can be communicated to the technician’s home computer.

But virtual or otherwise, life is not just work and working or shops and shopping; people want to socialize. People need to interact with one another and need to have others listen to their thoughts and opinions. Had the internet not catered for these needs, we would be describing it as another technological failure. Even commercial web sites recognise this and have systems that allow users to share the experience of their purchases with others. But here again, people don’t only want to talk about how the washing machine cleans at the 1200rpm cycle; they want to talk about anything and anyone and for this reason, non-commercial areas are available. These are equivalent to the public and open air spaces in a city.

The general public tends to like everything for free. On the other hand commercial interests would soon cease to be such if this was the case. Therefore a reasonable balance between the two extremes has to be arrived at. In this virtual world, advertising is the answer. Making consumers aware of products and services they can spend their money on as well as creating a desire for the same is one goal of advertising. Building brand loyalty is the second target. One company that stands out in this sector is Google. For example, before Google, anyone wanting to have a non-commercial web site had very limited options: either pay up or use limited and restricted solutions that dictated how and what could and could not be done. Google introduced automated facilities in which a web author trades areas on web pages for paid advertising. The owner controlled what got displayed, where and how. The model is simple: more clicks more earnings. Google also revolutionised online storage space and download speeds. Gone are the days when free meant meagre. Services such as YouTube and Gmail are sufficient proof of this. Google placed the gigabyte and the megabit per second in the everyday vocabulary of the web surfer. Others had to follow. Things such as blogs, audio streaming and video on demand and social networking are examples of things that never existed when the commercial internet came into being a little more than a decade ago.

Thanks to the developments mentioned above, more and more people meet one another, each behind her or his virtual persona. Just as in the flesh and blood life, today the internet provides its own libraries, bars, town halls, notice boards, matchmakers, agony aunts, temples, movie theatres, concert halls, conferences and pavements that have been used for centuries as areas in which people get acquainted with one another.

It’s a great and interesting [virtual] world we’re living in.

Contact Info

Author: Alan C. Bonnici
Email: chribonn@gmail.com
URL: http://www.AlanBonnici.com

This work by Alan C. Bonnici is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

Based on a work at http://www.AlanBonnici.com/articles.asp.