Task 1C-1

2. Dear Follow Students

The world at your fingertips…….

Internet usage statistics show that there has been a huge increase in Internet usage since 2000. Internet has become a part of many people's lives. Young and old are using it to perform tasks - from Internet banking, emailing, chat rooms, researching, flight bookings, buying online, study online (like we do) and accessing a range of news.

Easy access to almost anything has also brought a need for responsibility. On the negative side, easy access to pornography, influential political sites, sexual offenders, terrorists, on-line fraud, email scams, and false information are a big problem that internet users face, although Internet access brings a huge number of benefits.

Information is available to almost everyone. Another emerging trend is that the youth are becoming frequent online users. This gives them an early computer literacy level. Every household will have internet access if they can afford. Unfortunately South Africa is lagging behind the rest of the world due to red tape and bureaucracy in the creation of broadband, WIFI, and other avenues of Internet access. The cost of Telkom access makes it difficult for the average person in South Africa to have easy access to the Internet.

In South Africa where the majority of the population doesn’t even have access to any form of computer, but almost all have a cellphone the opportunity's for using the internet is endless. Cellphones are an integral part of everyday life. Mobile internet users are also more willing to pay for their content such as facebook, Mix-It and e-mail, as they could be doing it on their cellphones while on the move.

The use of webcams will grow steadily to have a more personal effect when communicating with friends, family that is over seas etc. Wireless will become the norm.

Once government sees the use of internet technology as a tool to target areas like education, the levels of access should be available to the general population that can’t afford the expensive Telkom / Cellphone Operators tariffs. In other countries Internet usage are very cheap.

Online Video and Internet TV is a trend that has already exploded on the Web - but you still get the sense there’s a lot more to come. South Africa has a bandwidth problem to International Sites but this trend will explode in the next year or so. We have Google earth – you can locate an address, so what will be next???

Task 1C-1, Question 1

The post by Mareina has touched on an important aspect of identifying future internet trends. Different parts of the world are at different stages of internet use, and therefore different trends exist. While in first world countries developers have the luxury to ponder about internet-enabled refrigerators, in South Africa there are still a shocking number of businesses that don’t even have a web presence. However we are catching up.
As long as we continue to have bottlenecks due to bandwidth and imposed caps, South African web users will not be watching television programs with high definition quality via the internet very soon. But nevertheless, in the developed world the following trends are developing:

The use of mobile devices to access the web has a very strong influence on the development of the internet. Web developers are specifically designing applications and websites that target the mobile device user, as Mareina pointed out, “almost everyone has a cellphone”. A market of 2.5 billion cell phone users must certainly be tapped into.

This will link up with the trend mentioned earlier, in which more and more equipment will be internet-enabled, from refrigerators that take stock and send a message to your mobile device reminding you to buy milk, to you pre-warming your oven via your mobile phone before you get home. Gym equipment will monitor your exercise routine, and send a performance report to your fitness instructor for analysis etc. These are all working concepts, but for it to become a trend, the technology has to be cheaper and accessible.

Internet television and video will experience massive growth if the speeds with which you access the internet, both wireless and the standard wired, increases. Developers will build on the success of sites like youtube, by offering better quality picture and content.