Almost every person nowadays uses the internet in some fashion practically every day. However, the average person knows next to nothing about this invention that has changed our society in profound ways! The internet and how we use it can tell us more about ourselves and the world we live in than we want to believe. So here are some interesting and disturbing facts about the internet.
We all know the joke that pornography infests every part of the internet, but did you know one third of all search engine queries are specifically for porn? Think about it, for every two times you search for something on the internet there is someone out there who looks for porn!
http://www.internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/internet-pornography-statistics.html
Ever search Google for an article on how to do something? Chances are you searched for the best way to commit suicide or kill yourself if you go by web usage statistics. Does that say more about human nature or more about the type of person who uses the internet? Whatever you do, do not actually go out and test what the best method for killing yourself really is the best!
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2008/04/suicide-searches-produce-disturbing-unsurprising-results.ars
Ever wonder why Amazon takes the internet prize for the biggest and most used online ecommerce site? Leading internet experts claim that because Yahoo, the internet’s most used search engine before Google came to dominate all other search engines, used to list sites in alphabetical order! Thus, Amazon gained much more exposure during the the early of the internet and it explains why my online marketplace zippyz.com never took off!
http://highscalability.com/amazon-architecture
Think of yourself as a pioneer of technology because you started using email back in 1996? This guy sent the first email in 1971, that’s almost forty years ago! Ray Tomlinson displayed a system he worked on, CPYNET, to read and write files on remote computers. His exact message no longer exists, but we do know it give instructions on how to use the “@” symbol!
http://openmap.bbn.com/~tomlinso/ray/firstemailframe.html
Think spam email has really been a problem the last few years? Spam has actually been around for thirty years now! In the late 1970s a company called DEC and a marketer ahead of his time used the directory of ARPANET, the precursor to the current internet, to announce the release of a new DEC computer with ARPANET capabilities. Over 600 people received this spam and it’s poor reception pushed back commercial mass emailing on the backburner for many years!
http://email.about.com/od/emailtrivia/f/first_spam.htm
Now go out and impress your friends with these weird facts about this world changing tool we call the internet and comment below on these facts or any other really weird trivia about the internet!
