Internet implications for society: balanced perspectives and analysis

In the span of just twenty years, the Internet has radically transformed society. The Internet has changed the ways people interact with technology and with each other. The Internet has democratized information, while also revealing some inequities of access. Likewise, the Internet has given rise to the potential for global democratization. At the same time, the Internet has radically transformed the business and marketing landscape. The Internet enables the formation of online communities and new identities, in keeping with trends towards population migration and geographic independence. Finally, the Internet presents new challenges in terms of cybersecurity, terrorism, and national security.

Increased Dependency on Technology
Just less than twenty years ago, only 4% of the world was online; now about 50% of the world is online (Rainie & Anderson, 2017, p. 1). The number of people using the Internet increases, although penetration is likely to be slower in developing countries with poor infrastructure development. Overall, the Internet has increased dependency on technology at almost every level of society. Governments, public utilities, and all finance and business activities now rely on the Internet, as do media sources. The result has been a proliferation in personal, portable electronic devices and shifts in the ways consumers shop, the ways people travel, and the ways people process information.

The Internet has resulted in increased connectivity across the globe: “humankind is now almost entirely connected, albeit with great levels of inequality in bandwidth, efficiency, and price,” (Castells, 2014, p. 1). Overall, the Internet has had a net positive effect on societies throughout the globe in spite of inequities. In fact, the Internet is reducing inequities via the democratization of knowledge.

One of the great legacies of the Internet on society is the democratization of knowledge and information. Knowledge proliferation and knowledge sharing is the hallmark of the Internet (McEneaney, 2015). The Internet also “increases sociability, civic engagement, and the intensity of family and friendship relationships, in all cultures,” (Castells, 2014, p. 1). As population migration becomes increasingly commonplace, the Internet has fostered connectivity between family members who have been torn apart due to migration, and has allowed people from around the world to find unique job opportunities outside their country of origin.

The Internet has changed the meaning of communications in marketing and business. As a way of instantly interacting with existing or potential customers, the Internet has challenged companies to change their marketing strategies. The Internet has transformed the ways companies do business, interacting more directly with consumers as consumers have more access to information. Consumers have more information about corporate ethics and social responsibility, which can pressure companies to perform more ethically to respond to consumer demand. Also, the Internet enables consumers to access real-time pricing information, which potentially keeps prices more competitive. Businesses have capitalized widely on the ability to market products and services to customers more broadly and cheaply than ever before, and to reach target audiences and niche markets more easily.

The political implications of the Internet have been discussed much especially since the Arab Spring and the presumed role social media played in facilitating social protest and marketing political messages. As Zhang, Tu & Kim (2017) point out, the Internet has also been undermining authoritarian regimes worldwide, like China’s. Unlike the Arab Spring, in which grassroots movements capitalized on the Internet for their information dissemination, the example of China shows how governments respond to the Internet by changing domestic policies (Zhang, Tu & Kim, 2017).

Identity and Community
One of the biggest functions of the Internet particularly over the past ten years has been social media. Even beyond social media, the Internet has historically allowed for the emergence of and support for unique subcultures. Communities are no longer geographically dependent, defined by their physical location in the world. Instead, online communities can reflect cultural, ethnic, political, religious, or ideological identities, or help hobbyists join together for informal virtual or in-person meetings. Online forums and social media websites promote identity construction and the formation of new communities. Internet identity construction occurs in formal and informal ways, as some municipalities have been using the Internet to create a sense of community through “the foundation of heritage objects and historical events that categorize a social group and, at the same time, differentiate it from other groups (Piñeiro-Naval, Igartua, Rodríguez-De-Dios, 2018, p. 1).
The “Internet of Things” and Cyber Security

The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the ways the Internet functions behind the scenes in everyday life. Whereas news media, social media, information dissemination, consumerism, and entertainment are the obvious functions of the Internet for most people, the Internet now boasts an “expanding collection of connected things goes mostly unnoticed by the public – sensors, actuators and other items completing tasks behind the scenes in day-to-day operations of businesses and government,” (Rainie & Anderson, 2017, p. 1). Using cloud-based technologies, almost every public and private sector function imaginable depends on the Internet for their functioning.

While the Internet of Things has been promising for creating greater efficiency, it also presents real security problems: “every connected thing is susceptible to attack or misuse,” (Rainie & Anderson, 2017, p. 1). Hacking is a problem for businesses and governments alike, and hacking can become a form of cyberterrorism. Therefore, the Internet has changed the ways international counterterrorism organizations perceive and respond to threats, just as the Internet has changed the ways criminal organizations operate and strategize.