Internet reading assignment - Week 7

From the AccessScience article for assigned reading, I took the important impact of the Internet on communication. We take advantage of e-mail and chat as everyday forms of communication with out realizing the complicated theory behind these resources. Files are encoded and decoded and sent through many different channels just to send a simple e-mail from one user to another. I wanted to read more on the Internet and communication, which brought me to an article called The Social Impact of Internet Use, which summarized a psychological experiment were the impact of the Internet on relationships was studied. The researchers found that, despite their predictions, increase use of the Internet did not really lead to larger social circles and those who used the Internet relatively heavily felt that it stressed them out. The researchers believe that this is because they heavy Internet users felt obligation towards communication online, maybe because these relationships take longer to establish and grow than those cultivated through traditional means.

While this absolutely is important to consider, I thought it would be interesting to continue reading into how the Internet would effect our field of engineering. The first thought that came to mind was the recent popularity of the cloud. According to the article I read, Cloud Computing will Surpass the Internet in Importance. This article addresses the Internet and its important impact on communication, but takes this further. It states that cloud computing will allow younger, less fortunate nations to access software and other resources that were previously only available to affluent nations. The cloud offers the opportunity to create "a universal cloud," if we push hard enough. This could lead to the sharing of information, and therefor communicating, across the entire globe. This led to me to wonder how this effects the quality of life of engineers who use the cloud, and how this sharing of information effects professional relationships in the field of engineering. While the cloud will be great for sharing information and collaboration on projects, a lot of this will be completed online using the cloud. Will this necessarily lead to stronger projects? Could the cloud have negative impact on the quality of projects produced? It will be interesting to see how this develops as the cloud becomes more and more integrated into the field of engineering.