The internet is the most extraordinary thing! I am old enough to remember a time before even computers existed, let alone the internet. It has brought about many benefits, today and I’m going to focus on the one I think is most important. I’ll tell you what it is, why I have chosen it and how it has helped me and could help students too before finishing with trying to articulate just why it is so important in my country, the UK.
The internet is an almost infinite resource. You can use it to find information on any topic – although the wise user is careful about the source of information as just because it appears on a page online somewhere doesn’t mean the information or advice is necessarily true or wise! For me, the real benefit of the internet is the way it puts people in touch across the world, communication and connectivity. Not only through instantaneous messages whizzing across the ether to people thousands of miles away that you already know via email, but more extraordinarily through putting people in touch with like-minded strangers.
When travelling this year, for the first time I kept a blog. I was astonished. I had a ‘comment’ feature on the site, and people from all over the world got in touch with me to give advice, offer feedback on what I’d seen and said and share their own experiences of travelling and working overseas. It was inspirational. I thought travelling on my own would be scary and maybe lonely at times, instead, I found that there was a whole international community of well-meaning, like-minded people who were happy to travel along with me – albeit virtually, and laugh with me at the highs and support me through more challenging aspects. It really opened my eyes to the possibilities of building new international friendships with people who had encountered my blog pretty randomly. It was fantastic to access this group of people, learn from them and enjoy their contributions. It made me much more confident in my adventures, I felt like I wasn’t alone.
The internet sometimes gets a bad press in terms of the dangers of social media and the need to be cautious about who you meet online. That is probably true in some instances. However, my experience was wholly positive. I felt that these friends from afar that I have only ever met online, provide proof positive that there are more kind and helpful people in the world than not. You simply have to open your heart and mind to the possibility of communication and connection and take it from there. The internet facilitates that for everyone who can access a cyber café or the internet signal wherever they are in the world.
Students - like everyone else – can exploit this. Whether that’s by carrying out original research from talking to someone active in an online forum about a particular topic, accessing an expert opinion from a specialist blog or from getting in touch with fellow students to offer each other peer support around difficult subjects. The internet is at its best when, rather than being used for passive searching for information, it is used to actively engage with other users. Discussion, debate, sharing experiences, all have value.
For my country, the UK, the internet has revolutionised the way people connect with one another. The same is true of course for all countries. However, perhaps it could be argued that as an Island, the ability to communicate so effortlessly across continents is even more important. Being an island no longer means being isolated. We have come a very long way from the times when sending a letter could take weeks by sea or many days by air. The only other alternative being to make a ruinously expensive phone call and keeping your fingers crossed that your intended contact would be in when you called. As for reaching out to a complete stranger ‘someone somewhere’ – I think the nearest equivalent pre the internet might have been to write a letter, put it in a bottle and cast it into the sea!Times have certainly changed!
