Overall, Has the Impact of the Internet Been Negative or Positive

As an engineer, I would say it has been very positive, particularly for small offices. It enables one to find a variety of products for the same purpose and to get detailed info on which to base selection of one of those. Old school, shelves full of catalogs or a microfilm service which was outrageously expensive. Plus, the Internet is about as portable as it gets and can be used even on a job site with a smart phone.

Very positive.
less internet and every country would be more like Greece, rioting in the streets, threats of mass panic and chaos. People not paying taxes, governments on the verge of bankruptcy. Guys raping women because the internet porn is down. If not for the internet, I might actually think Godiva's was a great strip club until i visited.
If not for the internet and being able to report things online, I might be one of the crazy people with a sniper rifle waiting for a vandal to attack cars at a strip club so that I could take the vandal out. Vandal slashes a car tire or tosses an egg at a car at a strip club, I shoot a hole in his hand so he won't be using that hand again to do that for a while. That would be an eye for an eye sort of thing. Nothing better to do. Actually I'd rather invent an anti-vandal car device that when a car gets adversely affected by a vandal or looks like it might, a few guns pop out of the top and side of the car and a voice says, "GO AHEAD, MAKE MY DAY, PUNK!"

Without the Internet, we wouldn't be having this discussion in this forum.

Forget my ramble. I think I fell asleep on an episode of the Purge movie again. Trying to go back to sleep by watching Paranormal didn't help much. That was a boring movie. Not much happened. I never saw anyone get dragged and pulled or a ouija board catch on fire or move by itself. I think I scared someone to death one night with something paranormal worse than the movie showed. Only logical explanation for someone watching such movies is that I must have been possessed. lol. not true. I had a ghost door man opening the door for me and closing it behind me. That was in the building lobby. That was before the internet. Had some fun times. Used to read books too.

People used to hear rumors about Nostradamus predictions and no one could look it up online to see if it was fake. almost always was. You could go to rock concerts, sports events, etc. and no one was holding up a phone to record it.

Over all positive. I do wonder what the impact will be on the younger generation to be plugged into social media 24/7. I don't think it gives them time to reflect on who they are, who they want to be, or where they want to go. I could be wrong though. It is like this huge social experiment going on. It will be interesting to see where it leads.

I'll have to add that I think the internet has dramatically improved customer service in all areas of the economy. The internet enables direct and immediate feedback businesses on bad or good customer services. Get treated bad at a restaurant, it is easy to post a detailed review of times, servers, fuck up etc...on Yelp.

Like everything it has its pros and cons.

Good for business, not so much for youngsters growing up. My generation sure did and learned a lot without the internet, cell phones, or even cable.

Extremely net positive

The Internet makes almost everything people do easier and more efficient and that is clearly a good thing. complaining that the Internet has negative effects because people in retail loose jobs as sales move on line is silly. That's like complaining that the car was a negative invention because people who sold horses lost business.

Most complaints about the Internet center on sex -- porn, escorts, hookups, etc. but that's just people doing what they do in a more efficient fashion. nothing wrong with that.

Lastly, without the internet there would be no tuscl. Without tuscl I would never have learned how to be effective at strip clubbing. If I weren't good at strip clubbing, I would have never found my DS. If I never found my DS, I would have to settle for the sex my wife gives me. If I had to settle for the pitiful sex my wife gives me I would give up hope and die. Therefore the Internet saved my life.

John Smith haha I loved that last paragraph lol

Also, for anyone who ever had to use a paper map before, how can you not love GIS for location or reviews for clubs. Believe it or not people grumbled about the telephone when it first came out.

I love paper maps!

The internet enables me to work remotely and makes travel much easier. It also allows for hooking up with strippers and horny civilians to be much easier. Can't go wrong with that. Well, sometimes.

Knowledge is power (the internet affords access to an incredible amount of information all at the touch of one’s fingertips).

The *historical* stock market rally of the late 90s many say was in large part due to the internet.

The internet has also afforded many young companies and entrepreneurs to be able to take on old established behemoths w/o having to have humongous amounts of capital to do so.

It's been such a game-changer that it's hard to remember, sometimes, what the world was like without it.

While I think the world is better because of the Internet, there are a lot of unintended consequences. Information is far easier to find, but so is misinformation. Social media makes it easier to stay connected with friends & family in distant places, but a side effect of bringing people together is it tends to allow those of like minds to isolate even more from those unlike themselves, contributing to the highly partisan political environment, and intolerance, we Americans deal with. Since everyone can now be a news reporter and photojournalist in a moment's notice, the quantity of news and content has gone way up. But that makes it a lot harder to find quality news or to monetize it.

If anything, I wish there were more values inherent to the use of the Internet. In a way, it's oddly like the strip club: Yes, you have access to great stuff, but you have responsibility, too. You have to play by the rules of the club and dancer (moreso the dancer -- even if she's extras-minded, she's the one who establishes what she's willing to do). You have to pay. You can't stir up trouble. At worst, a very large man will literally throw you out. At best, if you're smart, you can probably get whatever sort of erotic act you'd like with a highly desirable woman. It's a great reward, but one with some risk and definite limits.

The Internet has access to great stuff, too, but no rules or responsibilities. As a result, it's great, but probably not as good as it could be if folks were a little smarter about using it. But people are lazy, so instead, the Internet is often just a display of how dumb people are.

Oh well.

What's "the internet"? :0

Positive. I don't know how I ever got though my day before having the Internet to waste my time.

positive in epic proportions!!!

-before the internet was out a lot of products and services you would either hear about by word of mouth or read about it through certain publications. now just type whatever service/product you want information about, whether good or bad, and voila - the information is there for you to sift through.

-although they still do come in handy while on the road, paper maps have been replaced for me to plan a trip. what's now available through the 'net is google maps.everything is there - maps that show every business nearby the hotel that you are staying. I use google maps to plan my strip club vacations the last several years. maps even have street views. it's like you're practically there, and you can sight-see through the clicks of your mousepad.

best invention since the television remote control imho.

The internet is great. The porn is just the icing on the cake.

I think the Internet has generally been positive. Social media sites however have not IMHO, especially Twitter.

It's such a game changer that I no longer have any TV service and my daughter just did the same thing. So it is a money saver as well.

The Internet giveth and the Internet taketh away. It provideth the final prophet of the LORD mane a meens too communicateth with his flack butt it also maketh it too eesy four his flack too egnoreth there prophet. I have ben preying too find a waye too reachest thou butt my preyers do not selectively destroy the egnore buttin. My flack is lost too the beast mane LUCIFER

Hencefourth I shalt giveth mye sermon on Sundays weering assless chaps whilst twerking an holdin thee holy prayer turd

Four the turd of the holy Grown Hogg is holy

I remember when I got my first PC people would ask me, "Whst do you do with it?"

I admit, all I did in the first year or two was balance my checkbook and play games. Then I got AOL and everything changed.

Pros:

Internet had made efficiency much better, but it in turn has made expectations rise on some workers and multi-tasking has taken on a whole new meaning.

You can find the answer to just about any question. I fixed issues with electronics, cars, general repairs all thanks to YouTube videos.

Facebook has reconnected me to old friends I would have otherwise never found, plus some I really didn't want to find. Best of all, the girl that broke my heart my freshman year in college is now a fat cow so I'm glad I didn't wind up with her!

I can buy everyday items and rare things at ultracompetative prices shipped right to my door.

My boss's office is 30 minutes from my house and I haven't seen him for 8 months or talked to him on the phone. Just emails and txt.

I haven't bought a movie, CD, or paid for porn in over 10 years. Good for me, bad for those industries.

Always can be entertained by the Internet, learning something, watching a show, playing a game or gambling.

Yesterday my fav college basketball team was playing on a station my cable provider doesn't offer, luckily I could watch the whole game on espn website.

I have discovered FKK clubs thanks to londonguy which is my next bucket list item!

Prophet Juice has made me find religion again.

Cons:

I don't even know how to hand write anymore because all my correspondence is on a keyboard.

People's social skills are dying.

I can never get away from work, and people flip out if you don't respond within 2 minutes.

Too much information. I go to look up a topic and I've wasted an hour getting sidetracked on some meaningless tangent.

At times I think I am addicted to the Internet, I get all my news from there and all work correspondence from there too, I still get a newspaper but rarely read it, I don't even know why I still have cable.

Shailynn, excellent list of pros and cons. I can identify with just about everyone.

I'm wondering when someone will invent a direct neural link to the Internet maybe using nanobots in your blood. With a direct neural link to being online, you would always be online and interacting with mere thoughts. No need to lug around a phone. Today's Internet would seem like an old slug.

I had a crazy dream one morning where I had a direct neural link but I kept wanting more information. I started secretly scanning everyone's brain on this planet until I scanned some alien brains and then scanned alien home world brains.

I was thinking, I wonder if this is what a Borg feels like? It was a cool dream visualizing all the alien civilizations. The reason my dream progressed to scanning minds was because most information is not readily available online. waking up and seeing today's Internet seems so backwards. I doubt I will see anything like this in my lifetime.

An even more advanced form of internet could be a galactic neural network. Signals would be sent by quantum entanglement mind waves or telepathically. Some humans could be network hubs and not even know it. Regardless whether such a thing is possible quantum entanglement holds promise to instantly communicate across the galaxy in the future. Now that could be a lightning fast Internet. It would be a major invention whoever comes out with the first products.

The internet and technology is where all of the jobs went. It brings pedophiles into your kid's bedroom. The information highway contains more lies than ever thought possible. It destroyed face to face connections. My job is the same as it was 33 years ago and while it is easier, it is sloppy, ignorant and useless due to the internet. Everything is a form, that a monkey could copy. The internet benefits the stupid and the lazy.