It's Amazing Isn't It?

The Internet is a worldwide network of computers that allows individuals and business users of computers around the world to share information and other resources and to conduct business transactions.  The Internet is used for personal and business use, shopping, networking, schoolwork and communication.  Though many people think that the Internet is something that is relatively new, it has actually been around since the 1960’s.  The world’s first computer network was developed in the 1960’s through a collaboration of academia, industry and government.  Computers had already been in use for a few years, just not by the general public.  Computer systems were used by the U.S. government and the Department of Defense.  Because the government feared nuclear attack and became concerned that other countries were becoming more advanced, it was decided that it was important to connect computers so they could distribute data to more than one location. 

The World Wide Web was developed in the 1990’s by two graduate students from the University of Minnesota.  The web was first named Gopher.  Tim Berners Lee developed the idea of using hyperlinks to make connections between related ideas in separate documents.  Mr. Lee’s idea led to the development of additional servers which contained more and more information; hence the World Wide Web was born.  An Internet Service Provider (ISP) is a company that provides internet service to businesses and consumers.  In order to access the internet, one must have an ISP provider and have made several decisions as to what they would like to pay for the service and the bandwidth they would like to use.   There are 6 different types of internet connections:  dial-up, digital subscriber line (DSL), cable, fixed wireless and mobile wireless.  Each connection has a different bandwidth which will determine how fast you are able to access the internet, download photos and music and surf the internet.

It's hard to imagine what life would be like if we had not become so technologically advanced. 

Somebody Has To Say It

Being this is my first attempt at blogging, I racked my brain trying to think of a good topic to blog about.  One of the most powerful thoughts I had was to write a blog that would reach out to those of us who are raising families, working full time jobs and just trying to get through life. 

Those of us in "Generation X" did not have computers, cell phones, PDAs, iPads, iPhones, XBox, Wii gaming systems and several other technical gadgets out there today.  We were raised with telephones that still had a cord attached (many of us were lucky if we had a cordless phone), alarm clocks on our nightstand, Intelevision for our gaming system and lucky for us, the VCR player was invented in "our time". 

Wherever you go, wherever you look, there are people everywhere with their noses buried in a cell phone, iPod, PDA, laptop computer or iPad.  One must wonder, has life become so hectic that we have to keep up with out daily schedules electronically?  What happened to the days when a family sat down to dinner and talked about how their day was?  What happened to the days when children had to pick up a phone and call their parents to ask for permission to spend the night at a friend's house?  What happened to the days when children would actually GO OUTSIDE and play with their friends in the neighborhood? 

It appears that with the advancement of technology, someone is always just a text message or face time away.  Am I the only one out there who feels that the advancement of technology has had a significant impact on family life, the raising of children and the breakdown of both?