Is The Internet a Devil’s Work Or a God’s Gift?

From the very beginning of human existence there are tendencies to store and share information.
Firstly there were just pictures on walls. Apparently, it was not enough to store whole ideas so
the writing system was developed. Thus the ideas could be stored properly at that time, although
the sharing was not so easy yet. In the middle of 15th century letterpress printing was developed
and books mania could begin. In 2010 Google pronounced that there are around 130 millions unique
books in the world. Nevertheless, it is the year 2015 and information in books is mostly considered
as outdated. Old fashion paper books delivering by vans cannot compete in topicality with
information sending via the Internet at light speed. It seems like the Internet is natural result
of development, however, there are still a lot of people who believe that the Internet is devil’s
work. Why does somebody think that the Internet harms us? And if the Internet is so great why there
are still over two million books are published every year?

The Internet is quite new piece of technology. The first browser called Mosaic was developed in
1993 so it’s incredible that after only 20 years 96 % of adults in Czech Republic attend the
Internet. It is not difficult to understand the popularity. You can do so many things there that
everybody will find her or his own way to use it. You can look for information, communicate to
somebody at any distance, analyze huge amount of data, play multiplayer video games and a lot more.
Therefore, many people spent most of a day in front of a computer. Is our body ready for this kind
of pressure?

We cannot overlook the fact that using computers too often can cause injuries such as backache,
eyestrain or muscle shortening but you can avoid these effects quite simply by taking breaks
regularly and doing exercises to strengthen and stretch your muscles. There is no such a difference
between using computer and doing whatever else too long. Although there are threats much more
dangerous than the physical ones. Some doctors say that using a computer can have a bad influence
on our mental well-being and behavior especially on children. According to them be surrounded by so
many kinds of devices such as phones, tablets, notebooks and desktops is stressful. Some parents
are even afraid that their children are asocial and have no fun, because they only stare to a
monitor all the time and don’t go out to play with their friends. On the other hand, the kids would
tell you that they play games and chat with each other, however, via the Internet. We will probably
not discover the real influence of modern technologies during a childhood until the first
generation of these children grows up.

There are many web sites that contain a lot of information. There are encyclopedias which includes
articles about different areas. These articles can be often written by anybody and the auditors
then only verify it. There are also tutoring web sites that specialize in teaching people foreign
language, biology, chemistry or even math. There are also hobby web sites, which contain tips for
gardeners, breeders or cooks. These web sites are mostly dynamic,

which means that users can not only passively read but also discuss the topic with each other and
so develop the know-how. Nevertheless, if there are so many kinds of web sites, why there are still
so many books? Why the books are not only in museums in these days? There are two main categories
of books – informative and books for fun. There still are and will be people who prefer reading
over watching movies so the books for fun will probably never lost completely, although they might
not be written on paper anymore. On the other hand, popularity of informative books are already
decreasing, especially these which are about a quickly developing area. It is better to find this
kind of information on the Internet. Even though there are a lot of wrong and duplicate
information. Due to search engines we are able to find more up-to-date information much more
quickly. This is the reason way many schools have started equipping classrooms with computers or
tablets and modified the way of teaching. It is no more important what the pupils actually know,
but what they can find and if they are able to understand what the resource says.

One of the best properties of the Internet is the freedom. You can easily create your own web site
and publish in there whatever you want. You can visit millions of web sites throw the Internet and
no one don’t have to know about it. The anonymity is good weapon against the government. Due to the
Internet the democracy is not protected only by journalists. On the other hand, the freedom can be
very dangerous. You cannot be never sure who you are chatting with, so you have to be suspicious
all the time especially when you are going to share your private data. The anonymity also causes
that people can afford to be more vulgar and aggressive. Therefore, you have to learn not to take
it so seriously and be the smarter one.

The Internet has been developed and there is nothing to do to avoid it. The only thing that we can
do is learn how to use the Internet harmlessly, how to prevent injuries from long sitting and how
to decrease the amount of stress. We have to do enough breaks and do exercises to keep our body
fit. We have to select the resources carefully and avoid sharing our private data hastily. If we
keep all this in mind there will be nothing to worry about and the Internet will be useful and
powerful mate.