General Studies Coursework, Scientific Domain: Is the internet a Triumph of Technology?

Primary Research

As Primary research I have created a questionnaire which consists of 8 points, which I will ask 20 people to answer. I have tried to gather the data by giving the questionnaires at random, to people from different age ranges for good comparison in order to find out how often people use the internet, what they use it for and if they think it is a triumph of technology. Once I have collected the data I will put it in tables and create graphs for comparison. However, the honesty of my questionnaires may be questionable, as some people may be worried about saying how long they spend doing things, and what they do.

Questionnaire Results

1. What do you mainly use the Internet For?

The data collected in this question, is evenly distributed in most cases, although the largest peak is in social networking, with 8 of the 20 people using the Internet mainly for this, and people using the internet for gaming the least.

The peak in Social networking is easily visible on the Graph, I think this peak is mainly due to the fact the questionnaire was distributed in a school, and was mainly answered by students (even though of different ages).

2. If yes, which Real Life Services?

This shows that of the real life services chosen by the 4 people in the question above, shopping is the most popular, and surprisingly none of the four people chose banking. I think this may be due to people’s views on the safety of online banking, which I will look at in more detail in question 8.

3. How often do you use the Internet?

As with the question above, I think some of the answers may be biased as school students who would use the internet for research/homework more than someone in a job, despite this, I got varied results, with a peak at 1-2Hrs per day. I also found that all 20 of the people use the internet at least 1-2hrs per week, which shows its increasing in popularity.

4. Do you have Broadband?

This questions also shows the rapid increase in internet usage, as not only do people use it every week, they also pay for a high speed connection to it, which may also be a sign of how dependent they are on the internet. From this I can also gather that all the people in the questionnaire have an internet connected computer in their house.

5. How dependent are you on the internet?

From this Graph I can see that the majority of people need the internet to some extent, with only 5 of the 20 people saying they are not dependent on it at all.

6. Do you think the internet is a triumph of technology?

This is very useful information to answer my hypothesis, as 90% of the people who filled in the questionnaire think the internet is a triumph of technology. This is pretty consistent with the amount of people who rely on the internet, and those who use it a lot.

7. How many internet connected computers do you have in your home?

The results from this show that most people have 1 computer in their home connected to the internet, and that none of the people have 5 or more, this question included the use of a laptop.

8. How safe do you think it is to use bank/credit details on the internet?

I added this question to see how safe people think they are on the internet. 12 people think they are not safe to enter their credit details on the internet. The most accurate answer to this question would be “Depends” as how secure you are varies based on many different factors, despite this the graph shows many people do not feel safe about it.

Summary of Graphs and Questionnaires

The questionnaires have given me some insight into people’s thoughts on the internet. From my results I can say:

• Most people use the Internet in some capacity during their week;
• A small amount of people rely on it for convenience of some real life tasks, e.g. shopping;
• Most people have at least one internet connected computer in their house and the connection is usually broadband.

Secondary research

To further support points from my questionnaires I will now research the internet itself in some detail, and find good and bad points about it.

• According to  the estimated number of people who use the Internet is 6,606,971,659, it is also estimated that 57.2% of the UK population actively use the Internet.

So far, I have looked at the Internet usage in a good way, but sometimes the Internet can, be a bad, unhelpful thing, I have summarised the pros and cons in the table below:

Although there are some bad aspects to the internet, many of these problems can be avoided, E.g. By using proper Virus scanner/firewall programs, virus problems may be avoided, and access to certain websites for kids through parental control.

Conclusion

From my research I can conclude that while the internet helps in many ways during our everyday life, e.g. it is used heavily in industry, and in making tasks more convenient, despite this there are also many bad aspects to the internet, making it a harmful tool. Having said this, many of the problems in using the internet can easily be avoided, by using the proper software and precautions. The questionnaires I distributed gave me a good idea of how people use the internet, what they think of it and how it makes things easier for them, from the questionnaires I can conclude that the internet is an important aspect in many areas. Therefore I think the internet is a triumph of technology.

Evaluation

I think my study went quite well, although I could have researched from other sources, E.g. books and newspapers to get more secondary research about the internet, since I was collecting information about the internet from the internet itself, some of it may have been biased. As well as this I think I should have distributed my questionnaires to a wider audience, or possibly a set of questionnaires to different age ranges and professions to get a better idea of people’s different internet usage. Further possibly problems with the questionnaires are that they can potentially have low validity, people may lie/misunderstand a questions and give an inaccurate answer, as well as this they can leave areas blank or give illegible answers to questions that require an opinion. I think I chose a good topic, as it is both something I am interested in and something I use a lot, as well as this there are a wide variety of sources, to find information about the internet on.

References

Http://

Http://

Http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/

Http://www.walthowe.com/navnet/history.html