Last June 3, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression, Frank la Rue, told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland that “governments are using increasingly sophisticated technologies to block content, and to monitor and identify activists and critics”[1]. He also said that “the unique features of the Internet, which allow individuals to spread information instantly, to organize themselves, and to inform the world about situations of injustice and inequality, have also created fear among governments and the powerful”[2]. And affirmed the United Nations declaration of the internet as a basic human right when he stated that “there should be as little restriction as possible to the flow of information via the Internet, except in a few, very exceptional, and limited circumstances prescribed by international human rights law”[3].

The United Nations, therefore, acknowledges the fact that the internet will always be here to stay and is a tool for the betterment of mankind, and one by which we can exercise our freedom of expression, reform ourselves and our societies, and exchange information that is vital to our daily lives.[4]

This very acknowledgement of the United Nations on the significance of the internet is a milestone of our evolution as human beings. It acknowledges the achievements we have made and will make with the help of the internet. It gives importance to the technologies that we have developed in communications that allow us all to stay connected. And most importantly, it shows us just how important a role the internet will play in our daily lives in the future.

Even now, we try our best to stay connected wherever we go. Our cell phones are capable of accessing the internet via a variety of protocols: WAP, GPRS, 3G, EDGE, HSDPA, and Wi-FI. We can stay connected without wires – without “tethering” ourselves to one spot. We communicate on-the-go. No matter where we are, we try to stay “in the know.”

And because we know that our cell phones cannot do everything we need them to do on the internet, we’ve developed laptops and netbooks so that we can bring our the feature-rich experience of browsing the internet from a computer with us. Wi-Fi has been made available for us no matter where we go – most of the time it’s free for us to access in the malls, in the coffee shops, in our offices, and even in whole cities. And when laptops and netbooks still won’t cut it for us because we think of them as bulky and heavy, we opt for the next best thing, tablets – although there are those who hold them in higher regard than laptops and netbooks.

In a sense, each one of us has made the internet what it is today, a web of interconnected computers, cell phones, TVs, laptops, netbooks, servers, workstations, watches, e-book readers, PDAs, media players, traffic lights, and much much more. We are a society where everyone is connected no matter whether we know each other or not.

Imagine the future, then. Imagine what it will be like to live in a world where the internet exists all around us in every sense – where it will be weaved into the very clothes we wear, where it will be visible in our glasses, where our soda cans will update our statuses on Facebook, and our TVs will know all our favorite shows. Imagine it and let it linger in your mind, because we are headed there.

Even now, we are developing technologies for connecting devices that we never thought we would be able to connect to the internet. Consider the how we can now access the internet on our wrist watches because of the advancements we have made in miniaturized electronics. Or how we have included Internet access capabilities to media players for our TVs. And we’ve even managed to invent security cameras that we can access via the internet without an intermediary host computer or DVR.

It’s true, that imagined future is not far from us. No matter where we look these days, we’ll find the internet it one way or the other. It’s so prevalent in fact, that sometimes it seems the world has begun selling, buying, and distributing it wholesale. It’s almost as if the internet has been a fact of life for each one of us since we were born – and that it seems like the United Nations declaration of its status as a basic human right was known to us “yesterday.”

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[1] Internet should remain as open as possible – UN expert on freedom of expression, News and Events, United Nations Human Rights: Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, United Nations, 3 June 2011
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] UN report shows broadband potential for economic and social development, United Nations News Center, United Nations, 6 June 2011