The internet established an innovative and user-friendly platform for efficient, live
and timely exchange of ideas and products. The pace of development demonstrates that
the internet restructures the lives of people and social interactions worldwide. Dertouzos
(1997) suggests that ICTs alter how we work and play and will revise deeper aspects of
human life and humanity, such as how we receive healthcare, how children learn, how the
elderly remain connected to society, how governments conduct their affairs, how ethnic
groups preserve their heritage, whose voices are heard, even how nations are formed. On the
on hand, technology enables the personalization of information. Products and services to
individual needs and desires. People will have the tools to design the information they
require and ask service providers and intelligent agents to filter all external messages
according to their needs, circumstances and even moods (Negroponte, 1995). On the other
hand, ICTs also enable people to socialize and interact not only with their local community
but also with a virtual community, which may be scattered around the earth.
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THE IMPACT OF THE ICT REVOLUTION AND THE INFORMATION SOCIETY (CONTINUE)
On-line communities emerge to assist people to meet, network and establish
communication channels. This often happens at a geographical level or at a special-interest
level. People meet, talk to, work with and, in the extreme, even fall in love with and marry
individuals that they have never met in person.
Virtual communities may also be established between people with common
interests. Thousands of bulletin boards, discussion groups and chat pages assist people to
communicate all over the world.
Digital living increasingly places less and less emphasis upon people being in a
specific place at a specific time, and people increasingly operate from a distance. The
internet therefore introduces new practices, such as home shopping, tele-entertainment,
tele-working, tele-learning, tele-medical support and tele-banking. This will be particularly
critical for remote, insular and peripheral communities.
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THE IMPACT OF THE ICT REVOLUTION AND THE INFORMATION SOCIETY (CONTINUE)
Parents with young kids who were pressurized to move to central places to take
advantage of education and medical facilities may be able to use tele-services and distance
learning in order to stay in their societies.
This has led several people to predict that the internet has the capacity to change
everything-the way to work, the way we learn and play and even maybe the way we sleep
(Symonds, 1999).
On balance, though, through transparency and interactivity the internet enables the
world to become better informed. Even in countries and regions where human rights are not
respected, people can access and, more importantly, generate and share information with
the entire world. As a result, democracy spreads gradually, empowering individuals to decide
for themselves.