What are the Reasons for the Growth and Success of the Internet?

The internet has become a massive hub of information accessible all around the world. Countless bits of information now freely accessible to anyone with an internet connection. Today the internet is a staple of life for many and there are multiple groups trying to bring the internet to places without it. Below are three reasons that contributed to the internet’s growth and success.

The first reason is the accessibility of the information. Before the advent of the internet, all information was contained on paper. To access it required traveling to the location in which it was stored. Most often, this was the library. Other options were records offices or seeking out experienced people to hear from them first hand. When information began to appear online, people became able to access the information much more readily. What once took hours of driving and researching could now be done at home much more quickly.

Another reason is the freedom of information. Censorship has always been a challenge in the exchange of information. People in charge review and determine which information they feel shouldn’t be freely accessible. This can still be seen today with schools that ban or censor books they feel students shouldn’t read. With the emergence of the internet, such censorship became much harder. Not only can the information be uploaded for all to access, but it can do so outside of the jurisdiction of those putting the bans and censorship in place. This can also be seen illustrated with the recent information leaks involving confidential government documents and how quickly they spread across the internet. Being able to freely share information without fear of censorship was new to people, and it helped drive the internet to greater success.

The third reason is that the internet connects people all around the world. People became able to know about the rest of the world with just the click of a link. Someone in the United States could connect to someone in Japan, clear across the world, without leaving home. This expanded the traditional oral passing of information by making it possible to talk without traveling to meet the person. With this, interaction among individuals was added to the vast knowledge the internet already contained.

Now, you can receive specialized answers and results for your exact query. For example, never before could you find an inmate so easily. Slammer Search is a search engine dedicated to locating people in the prison system. Before the internet, people would have had to wade through documents and phone calls in order to receive the information they were looking for. That’s not the case anymore with the internet.