The Internet As A Common Denominator

The internet has a lot to offer. It’s been the jumpstart for social revolution, new forms of journalism and entertainment, and cultural shifts like never before. It’s also a place that virtually everyone needs to be at least somewhat familiar with in order to function in modern society.

When you think about how integral the internet is in our lives, one phrase likely comes up: “common denominator.” This expression is often used as an analogy for how everyone uses it nowadays; without the internet, we would all be isolated from one another and living in different parts of the world with different lifestyles.

We’ve come a long way as a society from those days. We could probably go so far as to make the argument that we live in a world now where the internet is not only a part of everybody’s daily life, but it is also regularly used in many different ways for different purposes. And yet, with all of these functions that have been established through the use of online tools – and so many more emerging – we find ourselves at this juncture in history, unable to advance our society without an internet-created common denominator.

In other words, it’s a great problem to have, so I’m not complaining.

What we can complain about, however, is the fact that many of us are still on dial-up internet connections and aren’t even aware that we could have broadband available to us… or even satellite internet… or any of the countless combination of technological solutions available to us today. We need to take advantage of all internet options when they become available to us if we want to continue moving our society forward as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Families can find themselves in a bit of a bad situation if they are just now discovering that there might be faster internet options available to them. They probably think that they’re stuck with their current speeds until they move, but this simply isn’t true. We’ve got satellite-based internet connections: high-speed satellite bandwidth that works from the outset and is perfect for all of those people out there who are currently under-served by their local cable company. Satellite internet has the capability to deliver fast and consistent speeds across a large area, so it is perfect for those people who live in areas where high-speed broadband isn’t an option at all.

In fact, there are so many options available for using the internet that it’s hard to keep track of all of them. How can we possibly know which ones are the best in order to make the right choices? I can guarantee that if you understand how satellite internet works – and there’s no more straightforward way to explain this technology than through an analogy – you will be one step closer to understanding what is best for your own situation.

Let’s take a look at a couple of pictures and compare them. These are two figures showing how people use the internet in different situations: A family with a single computer, and a family with multiple computers.

The online world for the family shown above is very limited. There’s a single computer, without any sort of internet connection outside. On this computer, there’s only 1.5 Mbps of internet bandwidth available to everyone in the household (this speeds up to 6Mbps with a high-speed broadband connection). There are only two ways for everyone to be connected: either everyone uses that one computer at the same time, or they all have their own computers and each takes turns using them. In this situation, you can go from one household member to another, but there is no way for each person to have their own computers and connection at the same time unless they all sit together in one room and share that single computer.

Conclusion: For a family with one computer, the internet is very limited in its uses. There’s really only so much that can be accomplished and there’s no real way to have multiple people accessing the internet at once without all of them having separate computers.

On the other hand, for families that have more than one computer, they can have access to tremendous amounts of technology at once. These households are on to something good! All of their computers can surf the web, use email, post on social networks, play games online and use applications like Google Docs or Skype for family video chat sessions.