10 Facts, and Clever Observations, About the Internet That Will Blow Your Mind
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When work and life get stressful, I like to stop, take a deep breath and take a few moments to put things in perspective. I have found the incredibly talented speakers at to be a great way to inspire and set me straight. Recently, it was a fascinating discussion about the .
Consider, for instance, the fact that have only inhabited the earth for 200,000 years. To put this in perspective, if the earth was 24 hours old, we have only existed for the . More interestingly, we did not start roaming the earth until about when the last ice age cut our population down to an estimated people, and we were forced to seek new lands to inhabit.
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We went from the verge of extinction to where we are today in a relatively remarkable short period of time. Now that’s perspective.
This perspective continues when you consider just how far the Internet has progressed in just . Consider, for instance, that to reach , it took the telephone 75 years, but the Internet only four. More impressive, the app needed only 35 days.
If that does not blow your mind, consider just a few of these other amazing statistics about the Internet, all of which have evolved over the past two decades.
1. There are websites, including the ever created more than ago. While estimates vary about the that are dedicated to adult content, I am convinced that if they , the Internet would cease to exist.
2. There are Internet users worldwide, accounting for almost of the global population. Almost half of all Internet users are based in Asia. Unfortunately, the other half are holding up lines at Starbucks.
3. There are households worldwide with a television, but people access the Internet from a handheld device. Interestingly, only a fraction of these people know (or care) that their device also serves as a telephone.
4. YouTube visitors view hours of video each month, and over 300 minutes of video are uploaded every second. Interestingly, of visitors are from outside the US. All of this explains why around the world.
5. There are people on Facebook () who use the social-media site an average of every day and share 1.3 million pieces of content every minute. The best way to avoid most of that content is by simply blocking all baby pictures.
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6. Facebook accounts for the highest percentage of total time spent on mobile apps, , and when you add Facebook Messenger and Instagram to the mix, this total reaches 22.4 percent. The second highest percentage spent on mobile apps was on , which accounted for only 10.5 percent. This implies that when Facebook develops it own music streaming service, we can pretty much shut everything else down.
7. There are between iOS apps downloaded every day, and more than total apps downloaded as of June 2015. That total would be far lower had I noticed my 4 year old downloading apps on our iPad sooner.
8. In 2015, we will send and receive emails, of which will be spam. Unfortunately, my spam filters still have yet to figure out that I have enough hair, don’t want to and have no .
9. It is estimated that we will take photos in 2015. In 2000, we took only photos. Unfortunately for all of humanity, most of that increase can be attributed to .
10. While all of these statistics are amazing, the reality is that the web as we know it — Facebook, Amazon, Wikipedia, etc. — represents only of the total discoverable web. The remainder is the “,” or that which is not discoverable by means of standard search engines. I am fairly certain this is where my lost set of keys has gone.
Again, it is difficult to fathom the incredible evolution of technology over such a remarkably brief period of time, but it is fun to imagine what in just a few short years.
And, in honor of a movie about our future, Back to the Future II, which in 1989 took our hero, Marty McFly, to , let us rejoice that the he used in his exciting escape may very well come .
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When work and life get stressful, I like to stop, take a deep breath and take a few moments to put things in perspective. I have found the incredibly talented speakers at to be a great way to inspire and set me straight. Recently, it was a fascinating discussion about the .
Consider, for instance, the fact that have only inhabited the earth for 200,000 years. To put this in perspective, if the earth was 24 hours old, we have only existed for the . More interestingly, we did not start roaming the earth until about when the last ice age cut our population down to an estimated people, and we were forced to seek new lands to inhabit.
Related: U.S. Appeals Court to Hear Net Neutrality Lawsuits in December
