How I use the Internet

I was given an assignment to describe all the ways I use the internet and it made me realize something: not only has the internet has become entwined into just about every aspect of my life, I am almost completely dependent on it!  I'm 33 years old which is old enough to remember a time before the internet ruled our lives. The fledgling internet of the 90's was painfully slow and used sparingly. But now, it would be easier to point out what I don't use the internet for than to enumerate the complete list of every way I interact with it. That wouldn't make a very long blog, so I'll attempt to detail how much this wondrous creation is used by me. Day to day stuff is obvious; I use the internet as my chief news source, the way I pay all of my bills, and it is used so extensively at work that if our server crashes we usually are sent home (with pay! yay!). I take online classes and use it for my traditional classes as well. I haven't had to brave the mall crowds at Christmas in years; all of my Christmas shopping is done from the comfort of my home, in my underwear. It is delightful. Thank you Amazon. Google has become my biggest crutch. I'm finding I need to know less and less because I can just rely on Google to tell me what I need to know. "OK Google, how do you fix a garbage disposal?" YouTube videos a'plenty with detailed instructions pop up. "OK Google, where is the closest ATM?" Google maps appears with 400 pins in a 2 mile radius of my location. Basically, if you can't Google it, you probably don't need it anymore. What about entertainment? I stream most of my content from Netflix and Amazon Prime. I'm terrible about setting my DVR so I rely on streaming apps from the channels themselves to watch the content I missed. I have 4 people living in my house including myself and I had to purchase a wireless router that would support 20 internet ready devices. Don't worry, it includes a separate guest network. God forbid my guests be without the internet for a few hours and forced to socialize with the people they are visiting. I used to use the internet to access social media, but after I turned 30 I realized how much of my time was spent virtually connecting with people as opposed to actually connecting with people so I put the kabash on that. 3 years clean and sober from Facebook. It feels great. The internet has become such a huge part of our lives, that we often overlook just how dependent we are on it. I challenge anybody reading this to try to imagine where we would be without this forum of freely exchanged ideas. Is that much information even a good thing? Have we become so dependent on a virtual world that we ignore the real world in front of us? I'm not sure, let me Google that...