Impact on Society The Internet is just starting to have a large impact on society. It seemed to come out of nowhere, popping up in magazines and on the news. The Internet is now becoming an influential communications medium to over 40 million people worldwide. Many of these people are becoming aware of the Internet's commercial capabilities and they are taking advantage of them. " According to some recent estimates, the amount of traffic on the Internet has been increasing 10 percent per moth, and the number of new applications and services has been increasing almost as quickly." (LaQuey 6) There are tens of thousands of sites scattered throughout the world wide web where items ranging from games to sex toys can be ordered through a First Virtual Internet Account, or just by providing your e-mail address (not a very good idea if you want to keep your privacy). Business is another thing the internet can be used for. You could read documents and obtain projects and reports from anywhere in the world through your computer. The downside to conducting business over the net is the possibility of a hacker infiltrating private documents and using them for whatever he/she pleases. The internet can have a good influence on society as well as a bad one. On the good side, the internet teaches us how to us a computer for communication purposes and it provides us with bundles of information. It can help you get your business going and is great for advertising products no matter what they are. These are all the good things that the Internet can be used for. Unfortunatly it contains a lot of bad stuff too, the stuff you hear about most often on the news or in magazines. The internet is one of the few uncensored forms of mass communication. The net is loaded with pornographic images and movies as well as dirty chat lines and sex shops. Many of the images you find contain child pornography as well as bestiality, all of which can be downloaded onto your computer and viewed.