Internet have big impact on our lives. 3 years ago when I was traveling using Warsaw communication system there was about 10% people that were looking on their phones. Now we are at least 30-50% of people looking for something interesting. Something what will get our miserable lives out of this real world problems.
Internet is tv of our times and deal with it oldtimers that are in governments. Because you cannot make anything about it even if you try to. But it won't last long at this form.
Time is a big impact in this problem. As a part of internet society, also as a person that have some input in this field I know how hard it was to solve technical problems without stackoverflow. Or if we dig into the beginning of search. Before google there were only big catalogues of websites, managed by people working for example for yahoo. Now let's step back in time even further and imagine our grandfathers digging trough paper encyclopedia when solving crosswords. Let's imagine me before wikipedia was born, really ? Even now not everyone trust it. So now for some social experiment type "Woman in blue outfit playing tennis" using your search engine. How many of you just clicked the link ? And now how it happened that we got what we wanted ?
There is also second thing about internet that is changing the world that we won't know in 10-30 years. You cannot control it, and if you try to make some obstacles the technology will advance so you all humanists as I call regulators will be always behind. Pronounce in mind one name of your friends who are living in Europe and looking at those annoying popups about cookies. Then tell me about people that are worried about their privacy but still using some IOT or smart TV. Show me people with computer, look at the street in your town, look for person without smartphone and camera. There are those places and people but they are minority.
Time is the only limited material during our lives. Not money, cause you can always earn it by scarifying time. Either you gain trust by diploma, try to selfstudy or you find some other ways (not always right with law) to outsmart the system. And that's where internet ships with time travel.
One of the biggest industry that understands internet and technology is music. It's not the very first with innovation but it adapted a lot and it has one of the biggest impact on our lives cause we hear music everyday.
When people wanted to listen music trough internet in the past one of the first was napster. Then when money flow in other directions and big companies started to feel some of it is missing in their pockets they shut it down. Luckily after music industry stopped to be angry and realised that they cannot do anything about it they simply adapted. To adapt they need to understand the internet. And now after those 17 years probably they understand it better. Probably they don't understand it all but they at least understand how hard is to gain money this way. When you can always try before you can buy, and you have access whenever you want to the second you want. Internet is traveling above time in music industry now and it still work. At least it's limited only with Einstein theory of relativity.
To keep on track in our time travel second biggest impact in search. When we simply search what we like was not music. Well partly because it turned out that what we want is similar to what is our friends needs. And it is obvious from sociological perspective. But was not obvious from technological that we are similar to each other, we are generation of our times.
So to spend time with people that we like we need to spend it in similar ways, do the same things, eat the same food, or when we are younger be at the same place. That's where facebook comes around.
We also want to know what is going on in the world around us in real time now snapchat ? We want to be aware about our interests and we don't want to wait for news in tv or read this big article about nothing interesting, often subjective and definitely filled with ads that we now even don't see anymore, so we have twitter that puts our information short. And if we spend less time reading and more time watching images or videos on youtube that we can always skip cause there is always comment about it. We gain time that we simply loose somewhere else. Hey are we imaginary people, are we real ? Those movie blockbusters from Marvel and DC Comics.
Finally as we are overall all different so also egoistic in our needs we don't want to read this stupid post written by this miserable human who doesn't even know english well. How about hear this words using personal assistant when we are getting to the location cheaply (hello Uber) without waiting for public transport.
I won't go any further cause I know where it's going now, don't I ? Nah I'm just waiting for it ;)
Time is what I value at most. How about You ?