Nowadays the internet and digital technologies are very familiar to most people all around the world. People use the internet along with digital technologies in their daily life in many aspects. Checking on their social media account first thing in the morning becomes one of the daily routines for some people. We use the internet to do everything for us as if in the future they will not be able to live without it anymore. Kids these days were born knowing how to use the internet and use it for both education and entertainment since they were in kindergarten. Back to when I was born, in 1999 it was the time when Thailand has just known the internet. The Internet wasn’t wildly used like in the present. Computers and the internet have been used in specific places like school or some companies only. At that time I still didn’t know that I can do so many things and discover a lot of information from browsing on the internet. The first time that I used the internet was when I was in grade 5, the teacher brought us to the library and use a computer to search for information to write a report. At that time one computer was used by 2–3 students because there were a limited number of the computer.
At that time I didn’t even know was is WIFI, what can the WIFI do, or what can I do with the WIFI because I didn’t even have tablet or smartphone to use the WIFI with. I only know that I can use google to search for some information I needed or use the internet to play an online game. The internet is really something invisible to me at that time. When I asked my parents where did the internet come from or how can a small wire of the fiber optic carried the internet signal for use to use on the computer? It was the question that they also cannot answer me.
The internet is everywhere. It’s absorbed most of the essential civic, commercial, and social activities of the world… yet, we can’t see it.
Who is going to believe that one day the internet and digital technologies will run the world? In the past, we have to go to the department store to buy groceries, eat some food, buy furniture or withdraw money, you need to go to the bank to do it. But nowadays all of that can be done online by using only one device called a smartphone. This day the smartphone might be more important than your wallet. All of the passwords and secrets have been saved on the smartphone instead of safe. Banks are more worried about hacker than worried about the robber nowadays because everything all has been on the digital form. There was news that the bank has to hire the hacker that hacked their system to protect the cybersecurity from other hackers.
In another way, the internet has changed our way of living. It can benefit but also can be exhaust too. Some people really prioritize their social media status. They have to always make it look good and maintain to be popular which sometimes can affect daily life too. I have seen a lot of people in my generation that value their social media identity more than their real life. When they get famous on the internet it sometimes makes them forget who they really are and start to believe that social media life is their reality. They are having friends, creating a relationship with someone on the cyberspace, posting their private life on social media which sometimes they might look back from 5 years later and feel sorry for what they have done on social media that day. One thing that we have to always remember is that was is on the internet will always be on the internet. It will be there even though you died, your online life will not die with you. Sometimes social identity steal your own identity. You have been shaped by a lot of factors and one of the major factor is internet. People these day spend most of their time on internet. We got influenced by the movie that we watch, music that we listen to, people that we follow and interact with online and we started to forget how life could be without the internet.
Sometimes I imagine my life without all these digital technologies. What if I didn’t have google maps to show me how to go to somewhere I have never been before, or even imagine how people in the past will react if they know that we can estimate the time that we will arrive at the place that we have never visited. Will they think that we are witch who can know the future or not? I have think about these kind of story a lot that how come the gap of innovation and time can created something a lot more different. It would be a whole new planet for them if they come to live in the present time. everything would be like a magic in a form of internet and digital innovation.
