Use the web!

Recently mashable.com published an article about the staggering size of the internet, based on a infographic done by Focus. The numbers there are, like they say, “mind-blowing”… 2.9 billion known email accounts worldwide (25% corporate), 255 million websites (21.4 million just in 2010), 2 billion internet users, 600 million people on facebook, 62 million on google plus, 2 billion videos watch on youtube everyday, etc, etc, etc.

Have you ever seen a map of the internet?, Internet looks like a big wild overgrown garden where  there are beautiful colorful flowers, strong big leafy trees and vines that cover big extensions but mostly is covered by long careless grass, weeds, moss and even bugs.

http://www.cheswick.com/ches/map/

As the Internet became more accessible, more and more people discover it and start experimenting with it. It started growing without any control, fed by information from all over, which leads to another astonishing number: the number of data on the internet.

According to Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, the estimated size is roughly 5 million terabytes. He further noted that in its seven years of operations, Google has indexed only 200 terabytes, 0.004% of the total size! (WiseGeek.com)

5 million Terabytes of data!!!… but how much is that?… If we set one byte, the unit of data which everything online is represented, to the size of largest bacteria on earth (0.5 mm), what would be the length of the Internet? How big are emails, software, applications, hard drives and HD videos? take a look at this interesting infographic:

http://blog.fliptop.com/how-much-data-is-on-the-internet/

So, now we know the internet is huge! is this good?, well, yes because the rate people is using internet is growing everyday, the information being stored and shared on the internet is growing like never before, more people have access to more information, but we have to be careful too because the quality of the information being shared is not always good, the information may not be accurate or even true or simply is useless information. Since the internet is open to anyone (at least in some countries), the information is not verified, and this excess of information is as bad as lack of it or even worse because it can lead to confusion or misinterpretation.

In conclusion, these “mind-blowing” growth of the internet we are seeing, is not going to stop soon, everyday new ways of doings our day to day activities are being invented, it is transforming our lives, everything from education, communications, commerce, but also crime, and that is why we have to pay close attention to what we do with this powerful tool, we have to learn how to take advantage of it but also learn how to protect ourselves from it.

The intention of this blog is to encourage everyone to use the web, to feel more comfortable using it and take advantage of its potential, to share experiences, to teach and to learn and to advise and be advised. Welcome to the web! Use the web!