If we are looking to research something, find some answers, or access government documents, we always turn to the Internet.
This wasn’t always the case. I still remember looking up encyclopedias to research projects for school or finding interesting facts about the world before Wikipedia and Google were around.
As a kid, I think I was one of the last people I knew to get Internet, and again I was the last to get high speed.
I was stuck with dial up Internet until I was on my way to college, except for a short time when I lived in town.
Dial up played a large role in my life growing up. The sounds it would make while connecting still plays in my head. Sometimes, we try to mimic the sounds many kids these days may never understand. We probably sound like a bunch of weirdos.
Where were we before all of the answers were at our fingertips? I suppose we were in libraries or asking a million questions our parents didn’t know the answers to, probably annoying them every day.
But now, we use the Internet for everything. It’s where we connect with friends, stream movies, look up information, access our personal government files, and apply for assistance.
The Internet plays a major role in our life, and it is one of those things many of us probably take for granted.
Even still, here we are in 2018, and some people don’t have access to high speed Internet. There are people in our community who are unable to connect with important services only available online.
I remember calling employment insurance one time, only to be hung up on and told by an automatic message that call volumes were too high, and I should go to their website to find the answers to the questions I had.
When I first moved to Golden, I used the Internet to search and apply for jobs, so I could support myself and put food on the table.
The hard truth is, a lot of people in our rural community don’t have access to the Internet like we do in town. Even the Internet we have in town can be slow and sloppy, but it is nothing compared to our rural areas.
It is important that these people get connected and have adequate access to the Internet, since most of our services are only available online these days.
Oh, how the times have changed. Internet has become a human necessity.
Sure, there are people who prefer to live without it, but for the majority, it is a very important commodity, and it should be available to everyone who would like to use it.
It can make our lives simpler, and connect us together as a community, and as a country, and even as the world, as we access information from any place at the tips of our fingertips, and as we connect with each other across the globe.
