Thirty years ago, the WWW (World Wide Web or “La Toile’’ in French) came into existence, with about 1.6 billion sites now, and invaded the planet with a web of computer networks, multimedia applications… The information technology era was heralded to penetrate our lives and work place any time anywhere with the use of computer hardware, software knowledge, portable home and office laptops, and mobile smart phones and the gap of the ‘digital divide’ started to close between the continents of the north and south. World wide connectivity with optical cable fiber networks united countries across oceans and their population into a global world with rapid and mega bit high broadband width.

Computer Science became a field of study along with software engineering (and now artificial intelligence) which brought about the setting up of call centres, outsourcing activities, back-office and recovery centres on an international scale. All human and above all economic activities are now operated in a computer age, paperless and instantly on line. But at the same time, society had undergone far-reaching changes too:

Cinema houses in our country with prestigious names which had their golden age with immortal Indian French and American films, unforgettable actors and actresses, singers and dancers on large screens had provided a family entertainment before the advent of music jukeboxes, satellite TV channels, videos and home cinema.

Emails have replaced letters by post and reach their destinations in seconds all over the world. Books and newspapers are now online. Encyclopedias on all the countries of the world are available on any aspect of their history and development. New vocabularies have evolved with abbreviations to facilitate communications and international telephone applications link correspondents at no cost.

Local TV, radio and private news channels are on a 24-hour service online. Music, songs, films from their creation in the 40’s can be heard and seen and downloaded via the Internet at home. Dating/matrimonial sites are now a platform for international contacts.

Technology has even gone to the extent of bringing in new electronic games, play stations, and e-portals for every government institution or private enterprise. The US military headquarters, which used high size servers to be later replaced by sophisticated satellite communications today, has been the pioneer of computer technology for strategic purposes.

Revolution

ICT (information and communication technology) has become a Ministerial portfolio and the citizens have just to connect online for all services by government or private companies to multinational corporations. Publicity in all medias is another field of activity which has pervaded the audio visual world and is now intensively used as a medium to promote sales, consumption and production of any goods or services.

Today, the Internet has at the same time exerted negative influences on social behaviors and lifestyles and at the click of a second every kind of image is visible on the mobile screen of a smartphone which is misused too in the virtual world. People everywhere is now exposed to images and videos which influence their behavior and violent games are translated into actions of terror, real gun shootings causing mass murders.

Facebook is now even requesting that governments have to regulate their content and mainly the videos which are rife on the screens of smartphones on any pretext of sharing images and videos. Cybercrimes, racist comments, misuse of the Web is regulated by cyber laws and institutions and carry heavy penalties. Many public figures have been trapped in their relationships and have been taken to task by the media probing scandals and affairs in many countries. All the same the Internet networks provide in-depth knowledge on any subject and language and we can follow events happening anywhere in the wide world and images are transmitted via mobile smart- phones to the television news networks at large. (…)

Without the Internet, the world today cannot be even thinkable and 3D imaging on any event and video conferencing on any subject can be resorted to across countries on any field of human activity. Mobile smart phones incorporating the Internet/ mobile telephone networks have reached a penetration rate unheard of by the million here and is intensely used like walky talkies on roads, transport of any kind up to the aviation mode when travelling by air. The SMS/MMS system operated by the telecom operators too has changed the way people communicate today despite our insularity on the immense ocean.

At the end, productivity has been enhanced many folds by timely information and their application in any field from architecture, agriculture, design and fashion, management, banking, aviation, transport, medical operations, tourism and travelling, marketing, robotics, navigation and discovery by space ships on other planets of the solar system.

The WWW has brought the greatest revolution of all times in human history and the future cannot even be now fathomed so wide is the horizon ahead. Humankind has even been projected in- to a manmade robot with artificial intelligence beyond recognition. But artificial intelligence will never replace the spiritual capacity of man in his faith and beliefs and the power of his mind can reach the supreme cosmos and travel in a matter of seconds to the galaxies of the universe.