Uses for the Internet its Inventors Never Dreamed Of

The internet is an amazing tool to keep connected to people often half a world away and to share and gather information about an incredible range of topics.

Uses for the Internet its Inventors Never Dreamed Of

The internet is an amazing tool to keep connected to people often half a world away and to share and gather information about an incredible range of topics. As in the case of many other advancements in technology, the internet was built upon a military project but out of the desire of scholars to freely exchange information - Sir Tim Berners Lee, often credited with being the "father" of the internet as we know it, was a computer scientist and engineer at CERN when he proposed the concept of hypertext with the goal of sharing and exchanging information among researchers. What he created, in turn, has proven to be a highly versatile system, used in ways he probably never even imagined. Here are some of the most unexpected online services available today.

Content for adults

The content of a sensitive nature aimed especially at adults is probably as old as humanity's capacity to record information. Throughout history, there are many records of writings of a racy nature, from poems to paintings and sculptures, among others. The advent of the internet made this type of content spread like wildfire, turning it into one of the most profitable online businesses ever invented. At one point, there was a joke circulating about all the content of the internet fitting on hundreds of DVDs... or one of them, without all the adult content available.

Real-money games

There are so many websites today exposing the numerous benefits of online gambling at Royal Vegas that we lost count. Online games played for real money have emerged soon after the invention of secure internet money transfers and they have never stopped growing. No wonder - the games available in this form offer their fans an experience similar to those at Las Vegas venues but for a fraction of the cost and in a far more convenient way.

Self-diagnosis

The emergence of health-related content online has led to an exponential growth of people checking in with "Doctor Google" before - or even instead of - seeing a real doctor. Self-diagnosis based on information available on the internet has, in turn, an unexpected effect - a condition called "cyberchondria". The term may sound familiar, and for good reason: it covers the unfounded escalation of concerns about symptoms based on information found on the internet, a condition similar to hypochondria. Some even go as far as being angry with their doctors because they don't agree with the search results.

Social networks

While one of the goals of the internet was to make it easier to connect with others with similar interests, things have gone a bit too far thanks to social networks. Today, there are too many people using them as their exclusive way to connect and communicate with others, which leads to a massive decrease in real-life social interactions, depression, feelings of loneliness, and the loss of even the most basic social skills, especially in teens.

Dumber people overall

The internet was intended to serve as a tool to help people find information and learn. Instead, it has become instrumental in dumbing down its users - and science is there to prove it. Search engines have become tools that can reinforce even the wildest ideas through confirmation bias, no matter if these ideas refer to the harmful nature of vaccines or the fact that the Earth is flat. News feeds and social media streams are filtered in a way to show people what they want to see instead of what they need to see (there's a major difference), and so do media outlets, confirming their worldview instead of making them question everything (which is the most important part of acquiring knowledge), and the publication of shallow, easy to consume content that carries little to no value but is entertaining, generating income for the publisher without adding value to the consumer's life.