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Final Essay

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Technology has changed the lives of millions; anyone with a smartphone, access to the internet, and a social media account can become an instant news correspondent, human rights activist, viral sensation, or leader of a resistance. The profoundness and consequences of these combined technologies and actions has had both positive and negative impacts on modern civilization and warrants examination.
Contrary to urban legend, the Internet was not invented by Al Gore. The modern day Internet began in 1989 when a British scientist named Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web (WWW). He collaborated with the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and in 1993 they made the WWW publicly accessible (McPherson, 2009 & Pew Research, 2014). …show more content…

In 1995, the first online dating site, Match.com, launched and changed how humans meet, communicate, and decide who is best suited for them – without ever physically meeting. The same year, eBay (then known as AuctionWeb), Craigslist, and Amazon went online changing how the world shops (Maney, 2005 & Amazon, 2017). This shift in shopping has had both positive and negative effects. Companies with the foresight and resources have capitalized on online commerce, while those without resources or foresight have …show more content…

First, the Internet, various technology devices, and social media are relatively new communication platforms in comparison to television, radio and newsprint. Today, the President tweets his thoughts, plans, feelings, and proposed legislative actions to the American people. Though not a new concept, the current president is using it as a personal means of communication. This has been met with mixed reviews, but never the less, he has changed the way government communicates and governs. Research such as Rubenzer’s Social Media Foreign Policy: Examining the Political Use of Social Media by Ethnic Identity Groups in the United States (2016) shows a correlation between social media and political awareness in smaller groups that traditionally were not able to organize and communicate. This correlation between social media and political change has played out on the world stage over the last few years. The Arab Spring was fueled by social media so much so that the Egyptian government shut down access to the internet as the government was losing control, which resulted in President Mubarak eventually resigning (Williams,

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