Since the beginning of human civilization, there have been huge changes in the way people think around. People have always strived to come up with better ways of doing things. If the Stone Age people had not found the use of fire, probably we would still have been eating raw food. It is just a guess.

In the beginning of civilization and even when people were not advanced in communication, and connectivity with each other was one of the most important things in life. There have been many ways of human connection and interaction. The only difference now is that the technological innovation, called the “INTERNET” has changed the human connection. It has changed the face of earth and the way people communicate and interact. Changes that had not been in last hundred years have occurred in past ten years because of fast growing use of Internet. With the concept of innovation, people thought of making changes in the existing technology for making lives better. Innovative people started transforming the Internet technology to benefit the people around and to boost their businesses and lifestyle.

Internet itself was previously developed for military purposes back in the 1960s and commercialized in 1990s. Since then, human lives have been changing like never before. Starting with ARPANET, Internet made the world itself  a global village. Today, Internet is the infrastructure of development. It has made life, the way people communicate, and the way people work, easier.

Just to send mail via post office used to take days or even weeks to reach a destination, but with the help of Internet just composing and clicking send button gets the job done. Various chatting tools like SKYPE, VIBER, and MESSENGER have made talking with distant people, instant and with the minimum cost, possible. The question that needs to be answered is, can we live without using search engines, email providers, social sites and so forth? These have become like our basic needs; we make use of them on a daily basis and stay connected wherever we stay. Staying at home, you can do the shopping locally and globally and pay via MasterCard. The banking, health and customer service providers are all using Internet. What made watching videos/ news/ live games, sharing pictures possible from your gadget? The simple answer is Internet. The advancement of the connectivity speed has made it possible to join virtual classes from your home or workstation. It is not necessary to print thousands of books just to publish and share ideas or information. It can be done through personal blogs or pages in a few minutes with minimum cost. Memorizing the books and notes are beyond the expectation at present days.

Internet is the emerging technology that brought the revolution. It has opened up a whole new world for us. It has made communication and sharing of ideas very simple, which has hugely contributed to the progress of humans. It has reduced costs and saved valuable time. Apart from saving time and money, Internet has also improved efficiency of our work.

There have been many instances that have touched the human life and a serious question is, can we live without Internet? Yes, we can live but cannot survive in the long run. Without Internet, nothing would be possible and as easy as it is now. We can justify this by the fact that these days we cannot even imagine our lives without the Internet or computer or laptops, they have become the basic need of every human being in this world. (But keep in mind, that many people in the world do not have computers or access to the net and yet survive)

(Author Biography: Bijaya Kumar Shrestha is the Academic Program Coordinator at DWIT.)