What excites me about the digital revolution

I believe the digital revolution is concomitant with the internet which gives four examples that excite me almost daily. These are:

Open Source

The ability to find out anything one wants

Interactivity

Progress (social, economical, political)

Open Source is free distribution and free licensing of anything from programmes to operating systems. Programmers make the programme code available for others to copy and use as they wish. It is responsible for everything from the 25,000 on applications on Facebook to sleek operating systems such as Ubuntu.

Knowledge, or perhaps information, is now readily accessible thanks to the internet. 81% of internet users in the UK go online specifically to find information (ONS). Interactivity is a key feature of this information. Anyone can respond to an opinion piece from a newspaper, groups form to discuss consumer products and quite possible every niche sub-culture is represented online.

I am not suggesting any explicit link between access to information and political, economical and social progress on a structural scale – maybe with time - but I do believe greater access to information has played a significant part in bettering the day to day experiences of people in both developed and developing countries. For instance: being able to earn an income from advertisements on a frequently read blog, voicing and garnering dissenting opinion through forums, working as an IT specialist for an overseas company, or searching for the cheapest plane ticket.

This is all possible because we can transmit information digitally around the globe. The fundamentals of this is very exciting!