As a tool available to a reasonably wide public, the Internet is only twenty years old, but it is already the fundamental catalyst of the broadest based and fastest technological revolution in history. It is the broadest based because over the past two decades its effects have touched upon practically every citizen in the world. And it is the fastest because its mass adoption is swifter than that of any earlier technology.
It is impossible today to imagine the world without the Internet: it enables us to do things which only a few years ago would be unthinkable, and impinges on every sphere of our lives.