Since the introduction of the Internet to our daily lives, people have considered it to be a vast source of information, as it managed to connect million of computers around the world, from servers belonging to governments, colleges, schools, libraries, museums, science laboratories, leisure centers, sports clubs, and thousands of other organizations. This extremely useful network, just a click away, delivers to all those interested and having a suitable Internet access, the advantages of sharing, exchanging, retrieving and uploading information of almost any sort. From researching for a college or work project, to selecting the travel destination of your dreams, the Internet can be considered a tool that has become indispensable now to most "advanced" economies of the world. Frankly, I am not familiar with another communication medium, so pervasive in nature and vast in scope to have done so much in such as short time after it has been introduced to the public; only television can perhaps enter the same arena, but yet again TV it is not a two way type of communication.



Millions of people today are using the Internet to keep up with their favorite team's score, to schedule a leisure activity, to communicate with friends residing in another continent, to check the latest trends, to read their favorite newspaper columnist or to write on their blog. But although the Internet can be a very useful tool, for a variety of individuals, as it serves different needs, one cannot find everything in there; not yet at least. For example, even the more progressive among universities libraries do not have every book of their possession available in an electronic form. Sad as it may be, many authors and publishers are still supporting that the negative effects of such a possibility would have a tremendous effect on their sales. Some Internet websites offer books in a digital form, usually available for one only to read and not to download, but again this is a niche part of the plethora of books available at your local bookstore shelves. So, if people are not using the Internet mainly to read books, what other recreational purposes does it serve?

Well, the answer seems rather obvious. People that spend more than 40 percent of their computer time online, have been found to spend more than 80 percent of that time discovering interesting websites, talking to friends, exchanging e-mails, visiting the Net-based music store of their choice, reading the online news, planning a dinner party or reserving tickets for a movie or a sport game. The Internet offers some amazing "site-seeing" tours for people interesting to discover new places from the comfort of their own home or work environment, while it is actually a huge database of onsite reviews, comments, articles, pictures, videos, experts' opinions and comparison lists for almost everything one can imagine. The Internet can help someone tap all these sources of information through reference databases -organized collections of information- and search engines.

Now that you know your time over the Net can actually be considered recreational, are you going to open the door and let the sun see your face? I hope you will, because regardless of its immense possibilities, the Internet is still only a recreational tool and should not be considered as a type of recreational activity you should enjoy in expense of your other type of recreational or leisure pursuits. Surf the Web, but remember to go out, have fun, play a game, meet friends, participate in a sport, enjoy a concert or visit the ocean once in a while. A more balanced life will give you more ideas on what to search online next time you decide to visit the World Wide Web.