The internet is the greatest advancement in the history of humanity

The internet is the greatest advancement in the history of humanity. It has already changed our lives in amazing ways and will continue to do so. Think of all the things that have changed since around 1995 when the internet was just starting to catch on. Just the fact that you could be reading this just a few minutes, or even seconds, after I finish writing it is groundbreaking. This would have been unthinkable just a few decades ago, at least without the use of expensive technology unavailable to normal people.
When was the last time you went inside a bank? I personally haven't been inside one in years. I conduct nearly all of my financial transactions online. The internet allows for the nearly cashless economy that we are becoming, without a high speed global data network it just wouldn't be possible to have such a system.
But much more important than a better financial system is the way the internet is creating communities. To illustrate my point I will tell you that I participate in a lot of online Mormon discussion boards and communities. The kinds of communities that welcome apostates like me. It doesn't matter what you think of such communities, all you need to know is that they are important to me. I have met and talked to great people. I have received support from these people and hopefully helped give some support to others. I have never met any of these people in real life, yet I feel like I know them and they are my friends. Without these communities I would know about a half dozen adults who are apostate like me. With these communities I can interact and get to know thousands. Not all of them believe exactly what I do about Mormonism, but they all welcome me and my thoughts. So these friends may not be as good as having someone that can actually come over, but can you really say that they aren't better than no friends at all?
But, possibly even more important that creating communities is the possibility of the free exchange of ideas. I have debated and exchanged ideas on the internet with people for years. Many of you are those people. The amazing conversations that we exchange would never happen without the internet. We would barely even know each other's opinions. And we would be worse off for it. But there is a danger. When we use the internet we are our own curators. We decide exactly what we read and watch. We decide exactly what opinions we hear. So ironically it is possible to have access to nearly the entirety of the worlds knowledge and opinions and still be ignorant. We have to be very careful to guard against the tendency to only access the parts of the internet we agree with. This is a very hard thing for every human to do. We tend to love hearing our beliefs and opinions confirmed. I have learned much more when I have been challenged on my beliefs than when everyone agrees with me. There is almost always another side and I should want to hear it.
But really the vast store of knowledge is probably the most useful and obvious advantage of the internet. The Library of Congress and the Alexandrian library combined pale in comparison with the knowledge found on the internet. In fact, I suspect that libraries are becoming obsolete.