Websites

With the Internet as it is the communication that an MP could have with their voters is never ending. Many MPs now use email, blogs and social networking sites such as facebook and twitter to gain voters and convince people that they should be kept in power. The voters also have access to all the information they need on the party’s website such as the manifestos that they have set out for that particular district.

Many of the parties now have websites and use them to try and boast their popularity amongst voters right before elections, however there is one main problem with this. Anything that a party comments on, on their website is available for everyone across the globe to see and a lot of the time it can be twisted into something they they didn’t intend it to sound like.

Having website like this can also be a problem depending on what country you are in. for example if you are in a country such as China there are strict rule onto what the party is allowed to say and therefore it is used much less.

This has all benefited the growth of the internet because it has meant that everyone has access to all the information they need in one place so more people are going to use it. it also lead the way to more political chores being done over the internet. For example with direct.gov you are able to carry out multiple functions which the government required you to do such as renew your TV licensing and your car tax.

Political - Online petitions

When someone mentions the word petition, a lot of people immediately think of someone from the older generation walking round and getting people to sign bits of paper. In the past few years this has all transferred onto the internet and has revolutionised the use of petitions. A lot of the more pressing issues of the younger generation are addressed by setting up a online petition, this way the cause reaches a wider audience a lot quicker. For example if a problem arises in Scotland concerning a particular matter, someone living in London could sign the petition because it is a matter that they hold close. They are also used on social networking sites like Facebook, again a way of reaching a larger audience quicker.

These have helped in the political growth of the internet because it means that the vies of the people can reach who it matters as a direct route using email instead of having to be passed up multiple ranks. It also means that because a larger audience more people are likely to sign up to views it it and therefore it is more likely that something will be done.

Online learning websites

Online learning websites allow people to access all of the information they need in a virtual area. One of the more common ones is open university which run university courses through their website. These typically contain all of the information and resources you need to carry out a qualification in that subject area.

They have contributed to the academic growth of the internet because they have made learning without entering a classroom possible and they have also allowed for independent learning of the students.

Digital libraries

Digital libraries allow the customer to read their books online or on a wireless device. The only digital library in existence at the moment is the Amazon Kindle store, where you can buy or borrow books, which are then down loaded onto your personal device, but many more are constantly being developed around the world. By doing this it means that you don’t have to leave your home to get a new book and you don’t even have to carry a heavy paper or hard back book around wherever you go.

They have helped with the academic growth of the internet for a number of reasons. Firstly, they have allowed a wider range of books to become available to a wider audience all over the world, which in an academic world can only be a good thing. Secondly they have encourages the people who spend all of their time on electronically devices to read more as they still have the comfort of it being electric and having a screen on it.

VLE's

VLE’s are a common port of call in any school that is technologically knowledgeable.  One of the most common ones is Moodle which has many different features which allow teachers to upload any resources for their students, set deadlines and comment on what the student needs to do.  By setting up a VLE account you are able to carry out learning inside and outside of a classroom environment and get the parents involved too.

These specialist websites have helped in the academic growth of the Internet because they have means that teachers and pupils can have a more intimate online relationship. They have allowed students to carry out work similar to that  which they would be doing in lesson under the watchful eye of their teacher and allows them to constantly see what they need to do to improve.

Academic growth - Online encyclopedia’s/Academic search engines

Access to academic search engines and online encyclopedia’s has had a very large impact on the growth of the internet for a number of reasons. Academic search engines like Google scholar are freely accessible websites which “indexes the full text of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines”. The search engine allows users to search for digital or physical copies of articles, whether online or in libraries.  Online encyclopedias allow users to find background information on any topic they need whether they are just interested in something or just need it for background information on a research topic.

These academic tools have influenced greatly to the growth of the internet because they have allowed free access to a lot of information while also making it easier. Now instead of having to go to a physical library and searching through hundreds of books you just type in the few words or phrase in a search bar to be shown thousands of results.

Mobile devices

Mobile technology has advanced rapidly ever since the first mobile phone – or the brick was created. They now boast features such as camera’s and video recorders as well as internet access and loads of interactive games to choose from. These devices have changed the way that people use the internet massively. With these tools anyone can connect to the internet and other services anywhere, because people now regularly access a multitude of websites, the website designers have now had to start making mobile versions, which makes browsing easier. It has improved the internet’s capacity as they have had to create two different forms of the website. 

Search engines

A search engine is a site which has been developed to make your life easier. They search the web and gather all of the relevant pages for the set of keyword which you typed into the search bar. The searches can be anything from very simple one word ones to ones which are specialised using the advanced search tool.  These sites have become the few which are the most visited in the world. For many of us it has become a force of nature to go onto these sites like Google as soon as you start up the internet and then take it from there.

The search engines have contributed to the technological growth of the internet because before they were around to make our life easier, you either had to guess the URL of the website you wanted or you would have to trawl through simple directories, using up a lot of your time. As well as this, they have become so used and well known ‘Google’ has become a common word in the English language and many people now refer to looking for something on the internet by ‘Google it’.

Domain names

The domain name system is essentially a hierarchical distributed naming system for computers, services or any resource connected to the internet or a private network. It associated various information which the domain names instead of the IP addresses. An IP address were a series of numbers and letters. The users of the internet would have to remember these to get onto a particular page, whereas now they only have to remember a name which is much easier.

These domain name servers made the internet able to access the pages we want as quickly as we do know. This is how the domain name server helped to contribute to the technological growth of the internet, with the speed. We only have the speeds which we know and expect of our internet because of domain names. 

Technological growth - Packet switching

The first concept of sending small blocks of data was originally explored by Paul Baran in the early 1960s. The idea of sending information in packets was coincidentally also developed in the UK a few years later by Donald Davies and the National Physical Laboratory.

Packet switching is where a piece of information is split up into multiple packets. Each of these smaller packets is assigned a ‘header’.  The header contains a network IP address, which it needs to arrive to and it also has the details of the IP address from which it was sent so that if anything goes wrong it can be returned safely. The header also gives each packet a number and records how many packets the data was split up into, this allows for the maximum security which it can do.

This has contributed to the growth of the internet because it has allowed for a much securer connection  for sending you personal details over the internet and has also widened what we use the internet for. 

On-line gaming

Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft are the three major online gaming names which everyone has heard of. These systems have greatly influenced the way in which we use the internet and thus its growth, by allowing gamers to challenge someone around the world to a game which communicating between themselves as they do so.

A lot of the games you play now are either on Xbox live, which has a grand total of 20 million users, or the PlayStation network which has 17 million users. These networks offer co-operative play where you can group up with a load of friends or a group of people you have never met before, and work towards a common cause.

This technology has had a massive impact on the social growth of the internet because it has allowed people to make friends who share the same hobby as you – online gaming. However, it can be a verbally abusive thing to be involved in because of the anonymous player who like to use their screen name as a shield.

E-mail

Email has become the main communication method, which everyone now is expected to use. Since it was developed in 1973 is has developed again a massive user following and has greatly reduced the need of paper letters in everyday life. The basic function of it is that it allows the customers who have signed up to allow people to send messages anywhere in the world at either very little or no cost.

As it has developed from only sending text based messages to sending messages containing attached files and messages which have been formatted to make them look more attractive, they have changed the internet with their pure potential. We are able to share articles and passages with our friends, forward important email with your work colleagues or even write to you pen friend in a foreign country without using the more traditional pen and paper.

Skype

Skype runs on VOIP software and provides cheap and free phone calls. It was launched in 2003 and now boasts 663 million users mainly because of the value for money and the fact that it appeals more towards the older generation.

Skype doesn’t just allow for phone calls but also has the software for you to, again for free, video call your friends and family. This gives the whole phone call a more personal feel and encourages the older generation to use it as they get to see the rest of their family’s more often and see their grandchildren growing up if they are unfortunate enough not to live close by.

These pieces of software have helped the internet to develop socially because it allows everybody to have conversations without any limitations. They are used for anything from securing that all important deal in your office, having a friendly chat with someone or even group calling a number of people.

YouTube

 YouTube stand for four things: independence, freedom, music and community, shown by its slogan "broadcast yourself’ which indeed many of us do. YouTube’s fan base has grown rapidly over the past few years, shown by the facts and figures which YouTube has published, displaying over 300 million account on YouTube at the current time, over 3 billion videos watched daily and the total time needed to watch all of the content on YouTube totalling over 600 years.This has totally changed the way in which we receive and distribute information between ourselves.

This website which has been the largest video sharing website since it was founded in 2005 has been made so successful by the features it offers. Everyone who sets up a free account can upload any video they have (within reason). This has allowed people who are experts in their field or just enjoy doing it to begin a trend called vlogging. This is when these few people frequently post videos on their channels which can show anything from music which they have created to their own opinions about current events and news. Vlogging has also become more popular to people using social networking site as you are able to like you content, so if you use Facebook it could be displayed on your wall. 

Twitter

Twitter has recently become the ‘SMS of the internet’ and can be accessed all over the world, anywhere and at any time. It has become so popular that over 300 million mobile devices are connected to the site at any one time, and each one making at least one tweet ( a message informing your followers of your current activities).

One of the main reasons for its triumph over other social networking sites is that it gives the average person the ability to make a personal connection with a celebrity. Twitter has had a large impact on the development of the internet because of its huge member base which is expanding every day and has started its own trends of connecting with the stars.

Facebook

Over one million sites are integrated with Facebook making it the largest in the world. 50% of the 400 million users (as of February 2010) log onto Facebook each day and share what they are doing with the world. There are three major ways in which the site Facebook has changed the face of the internet:

1.    Finding people  has become a lot easier thanks to Facebook. By just typing in their name into the search bar you are able to sift through all the people who have Facebook with that name. With the use of profile pictures, you can easily find the individual you want.

2.    Privacy on Facebook can sometimes be a problem. Every user posts lots of pictures on Facebook ranging from nights on the town to an average school day. Due to this the Facebook developers allow privacy settings to be applied to your account. This means that you can vet who can see your page ranging from friends, friends of friends and the whole internet. However , there have been a few reported cases where these privacy settings have been compromised, such as a few years ago where Mark Zuckerberg’s private photos were on show to the whole world.

3.    Connections are made through Facebook with people all over the world. Many different websites (over one million) have like buttons featured on them which means that everyone of your friends can see the articles which you have been reading.

Social Growth of the Internet

Social networking sites really took off originally in their simplest for – forums. Since them, these sites have radically changed the way in which we view the internet, something which now plays host to some of our favourite past times – sharing ‘What’s on our mid’ and ‘tweeting’. Facebook and twitter have changed the internet for good and even though they could eventually go out of fashion, the internet will never be the same again and social networking will always be king.