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Ask HN: How has the Internet changed your life?

• private1 16y ago
  Here's my story... Growing up I was always very active. I spent a lot of time outdoors and really enjoyed it. I was planning on becoming a paramedic. I'd grown up with computers and our family had the internet from about 1995. At the age of 17 (I'm 24 now) two things began to happen, I started to play with design and HTML and I also developed a continuous headache... it started one day and I haven't had a moment without it since. So how has the internet changed my life? Since I could no longer be active and couldn't pursue becoming a paramedic I spent more and more time designing websites and very quickly friends started paying me to create websites for them and I realised that I could do it for a living. Now I've spent over five years working in the industry and have worked with people all over the world. I have worked for myself and for a number of creative agencies. I'm currently employed full-time and work in an office, but I'm not sure how much longer I can do that (bright fluorescent lights and the routine can be difficult at times) and so I'm either going to start looking for a startup/work from home job or go back to freelancing. All of this has been made possible because of the internet and I will continue to be able to work full-time because of it.
  • rblion 16y ago
    Thank you for sharing. The Internet is like our era's 'New World'. So much opportunity for anyone bold enough to 'figure it out.'
• gvb 16y ago
  The amount of information at my fingertips (literally) is mind boggling. I used to read Worldbook encyclopedias when I was a kid (mostly at school). A set costs hundreds of dollars... and is eclipsed by Wikipedia + google. I used to collect cast-off databooks (National Instruments, TI, Motorola, Intel, etc.), now all that information and more is only a google search away. I used to buy ARRL Handbooks to learn about electronics and circuits. Now I mostly don't bother (just kidding, I still dabble in electronics, but gave up my Ham license many years ago - just wasn't interested in talking to random strangers). Hmmm, now I type text to random strangers and browse random strangers' blogs. I used to subscribe to magazines (e.g. Byte, Dr. Dobbs) to learn about computers and software, now I run, read, and contribute to Open Source projects. You know how you always forget the bad stuff and only remember the good stuff? Looking back, I remember a lot of cool things I did, but I kind of blank out how much effort it was to find the necessary information. On the dark side, I waste a lot of time on the internet. One of our kids did a clay "diorama" of "this is my family." Someone else's kid had their family around a campfire. My kid had the family in the living room, me with a little clay laptop on my lap. Oh-oh.
  • rblion 16y ago
    We are some lucky apes. The internet is like buzz lightyear and books are like woody. This generation needs LEGOs and camping trips.
• tiffani 16y ago
  I feel smarter and more knowledgeable. I've had access to the web in my house off and on since I was 11 (25 now) and even when things dragged along via dial-up, I always felt like I had all kinds of info at my fingertips. I'd go to class in high school armed with all kinds of facts and background info on topics that the teachers (especially in history classes, for example) never would have/could have covered. My parents were always all for dropping me and my bro off at the library, but something about finding out about stuff by going from link to link is just more fluid than walking out with a ton of books (some of which may not even be all current). During college, I picked up Rails and all this open source stuff--the databases, servers, etc.--that I really wouldn't have gotten to in classes until my senior year. 'twas all made possible by going from link to link, blog to blog. Overall, I'm just happy that whatever I want to know is always going to just be right there as long as I have some kind of internet connection. It's always been an advantage in my book. Socially, I'm glad I can stay connected to whomever despite not physically being within a convenient distance of any of my really good friends. Despite Facebook and Twitter, iChat and Skype keep me connected and able to see friends from college who are allover the place. Seeing a friend react in real-time to some new shirt you bought, for example, really beats even just the telephone. It all makes the world smaller and a lot closer. Gotta love the internet...!
  • rblion 16y ago
    Long live the internet! We are lucky to have had a taste of life without the internet and to be among the few who care to influence it's future.
• brudgers 16y ago
  I write a lot more and I read about more diverse subjects.