The Internet has created more wealth for mankind in the last couple of decades than any other invention in the same span of time. Wealth is not money. The difference between money and wealth is the same as that of a fish and the art of fishing.
The Internet has been instrumental in catalyzing a number of real changes. When money became digitized, we started seeing the real ripples caused by a digital world.
Tomislav Nikolic, the president of Serbia, unveiled a statue of the great Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla at the inauguration ceremony of the Tesla Science Center at Shoreham, N.Y.
The Tesla Science Center is a museum built out of Tesla’s old laboratory. Matthew Inman, better known as ‘The Oatmeal’, started an online campaign to buy the land for the museum.
As a technology freak, Inman’s comic about Tesla being the coolest geek inventor was noticed by Jane Alcorn, the president of the nonprofit group – Tesla Science Center.
The campaign – “Let’s build a god— Nikola Tesla museum” – was started on the online crowdfunding platform, Indiegogo. The goal of $850,000 was achieved within days of the launch. The campaign raised $1.3 million, and the state of New York paid $850,000.
The Tesla Science Center bought the Wardenclyffe facility for $1.6 million and converted it into the Nikola Tesla museum.
The solid three-quarter length statue showing Tesla with his hands outstretched, apparently engaged in some sort of scientific experiment, is a direct physical result of the outreach of the Internet.
Separately, Inman was also called for a consultation by Disney for a future film project about the Serbian inventor.
A giant 10-foot-tall statue of Robocop, the sci-fi law-and-order hero, will adorn Detroit as a result of a Kickstarter campaign that raised $67,000 in just six days. Kickstarter is a company that provides online portals for starting crowdfunding campaigns such as Indiegogo.
These campaigns signify the reach that the Internet has today. The Internet successfully created a channel between the interests of people, which lays distributed throughout the world and the physical realization of those interests.
Open-source software adorns the data warehouses of technology giants such as Google, Facebook or Microsoft where it saves billions of dollars, it has impacted society.
Online revolutions are a reality now. The huge awareness campaigns against surveillance and keeping the Internet free are examples of this phenomenon.
Speaking of awareness campaigns, there are real world revolutions brought by the Internet. The Movember is an awareness campaign for men’s health and research into prostate cancer.
The Movember campaign urges men to keep a mustache for the month of November each year and donate for people or organizations who need monetary help with men’s health awareness programs or medical research programs.
The Internet and its physical impact cannot be overemphasized. However, the question remains how the Internet pulls up other fields of science and technology such as biology, horticulture and engineering among others.
