Cloud Computing: Although the notion of "cloud computing" -- the on-demand use of shared computers and data storage -- had been discussed since 1996, it first became widely available via a 2006 Amazon offering. What this means is that businesses, of various sizes, do not have to have their own dedicated computer facilities; they can purchase these resources from Amazon, or the like, as they need them. (Nor do these business have to have other specialized facilities such as accounting, human resources, and marketing; they can also be purchased from companies such as Salesforce.)
Personalization: As e-commerce developed, massive amounts of consumer data were collected. This has permitted vendors, such as Amazon, to personalize offers to their customers; that led to messages such as, "based on your recent purchases, we recommend the following products..." Personalization expanded beyond e-commerce to news services that began delivering tailored messages and articles.
Microtargeting: Since 2004, U.S. political parties have used a form of personalization, "micro targeting," to tailor political messages to specific audiences. (In 2016, this practice included information obtained via Facebook.)
SUMMARY: By any measure, the Internet is a gigantic resource (https://www.livescience.com/54094-how-big-is-the-internet.html)
"According to Cisco's Visual Networking Index initiative, the Internet is now in the "zettabyte era." A zettabyte equals 1 sextillion bytes, or 1,000 exabytes. By the end of 2016, global Internet traffic will reach 1.1 zettabytes per year, according to Cisco, and by 2019, global traffic is expected to hit 2 zettabytes per year.... According to Cisco's research, 8,000 petabytes per month of IP traffic was dedicated to video in 2015, compared with about 3,000 petabytes per month for Web, email and data transfer. (A petabyte is a million gigabytes or 2^50 bytes.)"
There are more than 100,000 e-commerce sites with significant revenue.
But big is not synonymous with good. The Internet is a gigantic resource that is available -- at least in rudimentary form -- all over the world. But it is not necessarily a trustworthy resource.
in 2020, Internet users do not have to be "techies;" they do not have to a deep technical understanding of how the Internet works and where Internet data comes from. But these users do have to be skeptics because they are being bombarded with misleading information; and they do have to be wary because their privacy is under daily attack. Sadly many Internet users are not skeptical or wary and, therefore, they are subject to manipulation on a scale not seen before.
It's not surprising that Trump's base -- with a disproportionate number of uneducated white men -- has proven easy to manipulate. Daily, they are bombarded with Trump tweets and false news from related Internet sources. The formation of the Trump cult is one of the unsavory side affects of the massive deployment of the internet.
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