The World Wide Web has revolutionized many aspects of our lives, especially the way we buy and sell.

Over the years, various technological advances have had a defining impact on the human race, changing forever the way people do things. There was the wheel, electricity, the telephone, airplanes, the atomic bomb, but it’s certainly arguable that no advance has had a greater impact on the planet than the World Wide Web.

First and foremost, it’s a communication medium, but its power to communicate instantly to an unlimited number of people also has made it a powerful tool of commerce, politics, education and many other venues.

People now can send messages, documents, photos or their own voices over the Internet to anyplace on the planet. In places where traditional mail, telephones and other standard communication devices are unreliable or non-existent, Internet access may be the most reliable medium available.

Anyone with access to the Internet now is a publisher, able to post information — factual or fictitious — to an unlimited audience with the push of a button. Candidates have begun to use the Internet as a campaign tool, and every special Interest group trying to make a point has a Web site to espouse its views.

Perhaps the most stunning area of impact for the Internet, however, has been on commerce. There are, of course, the Internet powerhouses like Amazon, but even tiny Kansas towns are using the power of the Internet to market buildings and other property for which it might have been impossible to find a buyer a decade ago.

Douglas County announced plans this week to list two aging dump trucks for sale on an Internet auction site aimed specifically at helping governments, schools and nonprofits dispose of surplus property. By using the site, the county can market the trucks to everyone with Internet access rather than just those who can come to a specific location on the day of an auction.

Does this seem like an odd way to dispose of property? Well, talk to school officials in tiny towns like McCracken. The LaCrosse school board recently sold the former McCracken school on eBay for $49,500.

The buyer is a warehouse and Internet business based in Phoenix, whose owners hadn’t even considered relocating to Kansas. However, after spotting the school building on the online auction, they visited McCracken and decided to purchase the school and move their business to Kansas. Not only will the sale add to the school district’s capital outlay fund and put the building on the property tax rolls, the business might provide some jobs for local residents.

In pre-Internet days, the school district probably would have advertised regionally or perhaps statewide that the school building was for sale. Such advertising might have reached the right potential buyer, but just as likely the property would have ended up being sold at a local auction, probably for far less than the $49,500 eBay selling price.

It’s all a matter of matching up the right product with the right buyer, and when your advertising goes out over an almost unlimited landscape, the chances of finding such a person are vastly increased.

It’s a new way of doing business and finding buyers for just about anything. Who would want a couple of used dump trucks? It’s a good bet that using an online auction, Douglas County will find out.