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Word of the Day: Netizen
A netizen is someone who uses the Internet.
In that sense of the word, we are citizens of the Internet world.
The Internet is bringing us all together.
Despite the debating and fighting about citizenship and border crossings, at least we can say that we have this much in common.
For the most part, the Internet is a borderless world where all its netizens have the knowledge of the world at their fingertips.
Being a netizen is pretty cool.
When Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989, he never thought that it would grow so big and so fast or become the central and controlling factor in almost every aspect of our lives.
Back in 1999, when I first set out to backpack across Canada, I didn’t have an email address or know what the Internet was.
Those were the days when people made hostel reservations over the phone.
Yep, I can remember using a payphone in Winnipeg, Manitoba, to book a hostel in Edmonton, Alberta.
Now that I’m a netizen, I plan out my entire trip beforehand and make all the bookings without making a call.
Back in the day, I arrived in foreign cities such as San Francisco or Melbourne with no place to stay because I didn’t want to pay the charges for an international call to make a hostel reservation.
How things have changed!
Financially disadvantaged people can access the net at libraries.
Even the most basic of smartphones can connect to the Internet, which helps to even the playing field somewhat.
Now, netizens are fellow travellers in the Internet world on the same journey of discovery.
The very act of reading this post means that you, too, are a netizen.
It’s a beautiful thing to be to say that, in this one way, we are all the same.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least an 8th-grade education (age 13 – 14).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 67.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.