My final year at Plymouth University includes a fascinating module on internet culture and psychology
We were given a question to answer and then to discuss in the next lecture. The question is,
What is the most important website on the Internet?
Now… this is most definitely up there with one of the hardest questions to answer along with “what is the meaning of life?” and “how long is a piece of string?”.
There is no right or wrong answer to the question. That’s the simple answer to the question. You could argue it depends on the circumstances, for instance Google has been a gateway to the internet and to give people the ability to find things on the internet that they may not have found if they didn’t have a simple and efficient way of searching the internet. You could also argue Facebook is the most important website because of the way it has allowed people to expand there reach to socialise with others they may not in the “real world” and also the impact it has had on modern society. You could also say the BBC news website for the fact that it is a central hub for news from around the world. The list could go on and on.
You could also discuss the idea of the first of a type of website would be important in terms of the effect it has had for example, the first search engine is an incredibly important website. Not just because it was the first search engine and allowed the user to search for websites but the fact that it has evolved from this with the likes of Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Ask/Ask Jeeves. You could use this with the first social network. The first social network has shaped the future giving us websites such as Friendster, yahoo Geocities, MySpace, Twitter and Facebook.
Another student at Plymouth University Daniel Groves also answered this question making a similar point that circumstance dictates the answer to that question. He also gave good reasoning to the point he made saying that in a way the first website he made was incredibly important to him. This point is also true. I would agree with that, the first website I ever built was a defining moment in my teenage years and has shaped who I have become.
While writing this post though, I found a common pattern in my thoughts/research, My first website, the first of a type of website. The word “first” kept popping up and then it hit me. I think personally the best answer that could be given for this question (with reasoning of course) is the first ever website! The reasons being similar to the above. It has shaped the world we live in today, we can do so much these days with very minimal work such as shopping or socialising with nothing more than the click of a button or tap of s screen. This for me is a landmark moment because without it there wouldn’t be what we call “the internet” today.
