Do you remember when you logged on to the internet for the very first time? The floodgates that were your Google, Internet Explorer,  MetaCrawler, or other browser you used at the time, ushered you into that great hall that is the unending river of information the internet has to offer…it was pretty spectacular!

The Internet. As seen on a laptop

For my generation, it looked a bit different than it does now; pages took a bit longer to load, and were you to happen upon a photo someone had included on their page, you could start a cup of coffee and change the laundry…because it was going to be a wait before that picture showed up.

Even so, the immediate access to other peoples insights, to encyclopedias, dictionaries, news from other nations, “spell check”, “fact check”, calculators, cliff notes, and so on, made it almost a guilty pleasure. I felt like I was “cheating” at life, because I hadn’t bought the book for my book report, or I wasn’t sitting in a classroom learning about the current history of Burma, or I wasn’t waiting for latest on the Guatemalan Civil War to show up on TV; a vast majority of whatever I needed to know was just a click and a dial tone* away. (*See: “dial-up modem” for history of slower than imaginable internet).

Flash forward to our current internet landscape; everything is now immediate. News, information, etc. can all be accessed, and updated, on-the-spot. Global communication happens immediately. E-commerce happens immediately. Companies rise overnight and are crushed in seconds by a single poorly-worded Tweet the next day. I can hold a live conversation over the internet with my aunt in France right now, as I play Pandora in the background, update my Facebook status, watch an art project sell on my Etsy shop, and I have a packing slip printing from my FedEx account to get that sold item on its way to William Gates, who lives on the East Coast.
That’s the internet today, and it is shrinking our world.

A Cyber Cafe located in Africa

Here’s another question: Do you remember what life was like before the internet?
If not, can you imagine what it would be like? Think about the details of everything from finding reliable health care, to visiting friends or family across the nation, to checking your bank account, or seeing if the local Target store has flannel pajamas in stock yet? How about social connectivity…how many of your high schools friends would you be connected with? How about distant relatives? Business contacts?
The reality is that many people in developing countries are just now beginning to gain access to the internet, and while there are any number of arguments for or against the availability of technology in these communities, the internet really does shrink the world down into a small room and encourages community on a global platform.

This is one reason, of many, that we at Nerds Abroad do what we do. If our hard work helps shrink the world down, and assists those communities that are ready and willing to step into that small room with everyone else on the Web, it will directly influence their quality of life.

A Cyber Cafe in a developing community of India

Imagine having at your fingertips previously inaccessible information on things such as simple (and reliable) medical remedies, live contact with places of the world you’d never heard of before, and educational/income resources for you and your community, that previously were not even a remote option? We’ll talk more about education and financial opportunities in the future, but for now, know that what we do at Nerds Abroad is bringing a dramatic change to the lives of many people in developing communities, and is directly influencing their understanding of this World as a whole.