Posted by

Barry Siskind

UFIs Community Manager

The internet is something that most of us take for granted but if you are part of my generation of baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, you know all too well what the world was like pre-internet.

In an interesting article by writer Camille Bautista titled “How the internet has changed the world,” http://mashable.com/2013/03/02/internet-infographic/ there are a number of bits of interesting data that, for me, were a real eye opener.

For instance:

At the time this article was written there were 2,465,518,376 internet users in the world,

Ninety million people use Instagram every month,

Pinterest reported an increase of 1,047% in the number of users last year,

6.7 million people took at least one on-line course last year and 77% of them reported their expected learning outcomes were the same or greater had they taken these courses face-to-face.

In 2011 YouTube reported, are you ready for this, one trillion video views.

Every discipline, every human interest and every business is different today that it was 10 – 15 years ago because of the internet.

While the numbers may be interesting, on a practical level there is probably not much that you will do differently tomorrow.

Yet, I find it interesting to sit back and reflect and then fast forward 10-15 years in the future and imagine.