As the internet has grown, subsuming nearly every facet of our daily lives on a truly global scale, the line between citizen and “netizen” has become increasingly blurred, if not nonexistent. Being the former in most modern societies now practically necessitates life as the latter – agonizing trips to the DMV can now be replaced by a few deft clicks on a government website, news is more often consumed via pixels than in print, and an email account has become a practical essentiality for both business and personal communications. We live and breathe the internet, through phones and laptops, through tablets and watches, even through our cars and soon our headgear. Yet there was a time when declarations of “cyberspace independence” were made, which decried the “colonizing” endeavors undertaken by the world’s physical governments (or “weary giants of flesh and steel”), and which sought to keep the net a place of free and unfettered thought, unbound by the archaic laws of the corporeal. This was, however, also a time when the residents of cyberspace were few, homogenous, and posse...
The topic of technology and our society has become a very controversial subject today. Many people believe that technology is an essential component of our modern world, helping us to improve communication from farther distances as well as giving us easy access to important information. On the other hand, there is the opinion that too much technology is affecting social interactions and our basic development. “Technology…is a queer thing, it brings you great gifts with one hand, and stabs you in the back with the other.” (Carrie Snow.) The CBC Documentary “Are We Digital Dummies” displayed the pros and cons when it comes to modern technology that we use in the western world everyday.
While the physical Frontier, or the unsettled West, is no longer in existence today, a new Frontier has emerged – cyberspace. Turner’s Thesis defined the Frontier as a space of freedom, individualism, and endless opportunity for those who were willing to venture and exploit the existing resources. This same definition can be used to define cyberspace. The Frontier, originally, was seen as a new place to be settled and exploit resources with minimal intervention from the American government. Cyberspace can be seen as comparable to the Frontier. Today’s cyberspace is a place of limited government with boundless opportunity waiting to be exploited. Because of this, the traditional West and cyberspace are defined as unrestricted spaces with vast economic and personal opportunities wit...
In “‘Plug In’ Better: A Manifesto”, technology writer and commentator Dr. Alexandra Samuel states that she believe that there is a middle ground between completely “plugging in” and “unplugging”. She states that we should approach our online interactions in the same ways we approach our offline ones. In “Attached to Technology and Paying a Price” (part of the New York Times’ “Your Brain on Computers” series), journalist Matt Richtel details technology’s effects on an actual family and recounts their experiences. Although Drs. Restak and Samuel are both widely respected in their individual fields, Mr. Richtel’s journalistic career has been almost exclusively devoted to studying technology’s impact on our lives and attention, and his views are voiced loudly throughout his work, even though they are not explicitly stated.
As decades and centuries pass, technology evolves. Machines become more efficient, and communication between locations becomes easier. Due to this, the process of doing things changes. With the advent of the Internet, it is important to understand and look deeper into the effects of technology on society, as it is “complexly woven into the circumstances and rhythms of social life” (Gasher, Skinner and Lorimer, 2012, p. 155). For this reason, there are various perspectives on technology.
More than forty years ago, the first personal computer was introduce and fifteen-years later the World Wide Web came to life; nevertheless, two decades and a generation ago life was completely different, especially when it came to technology and the internet. Today it is almost impossible to find a home that does not have some sort of computer and internet access in the United States or around the globe, which, from the vision of the creators, is astounding. That would be because it is. The ability to search anything the heart desires or talk with people on the other side of the world is at the tip of the user’s fingers and a person does not have to be on a bulky PC anymore to do it. In the age of smartphones, tablets, and free Wi-Fi everywhere,
"The Heart of the Well" " Composing Cyberspace Edited by Rich Holeton, San Fransisco: McGraw Hill, 1998, 151-163
With an entity as vast as the Internet, it is not surprising that a variety of unanswered questions will arise. I’m positive that the Internet will continue to confound scholars as it continues to quickly evolve. By analyzing the views of the celebrants and skeptics, I have been able to understand the potential that the internet has. By using the PEC, I have been able to understand how democracy and capitalism relate to the issues of the Internet. In the future, I hope that society can develop a further understanding of the Internet and move toward the Internet that the celebrants had hoped for.
"Finding One's Own in Cyberspace." Composing Cyberspace. Richard Holeton. United States: McGraw-Hill, 1998. 171-178. SafeSurf. Press Release.
We live in an age of 24-hour news, thousands of TV channels and global Internet. There’s no longer any need to travel to the local library, spending time hunting down books. We don't even have to sit in front of a desktop computer in order to start searching the world wide web. The era in which we first-world citizens find ourselves has afforded us with virtual access to unlimited information at our fingertips. It’s now a permanent part of everyday life. Our children can’t envision a “stone age” culture without the Internet. We ingest Wi-Fi like air, as we are virtually never without it. The smartphone we cradle in our hands enables us, with a few finger touches, to explore, research and digitally download just about anything our heart desires. We are
The advent of the internet signaled a revolutionary shift for society, in which participation in massive amounts of information was easily and rapidly accessible to any connected country. This digital revolution gave rise to monolithic digital communities that dominate the web and strongly influence the globe; Twitter helped Belarusian youth organize flash-protests against their authoritarian government in 2006, while Wikileaks continues to serve as a public international clearing-house for whistle-blowers. But despite these resounding stories of success, concern is spreading that there is an underlying problem with our digitally enhanced society – especially in the western world. Widespread debate has been sparked by the digital revolution over modern technology's influence on younger generations, with experts combating each other over whether the internet is dulling or expanding young minds. This debate is not restricted to education, but extends to cover issues of morality and perspectives. Education issues are tied to lacking cultural awareness and political activism, but world-views are a separate and altogether more severe problem for the next generation. As the internet becomes more embedded in our lives, youth are retreating into the isolation of private social bubbles and turning reality into a remote abstract concept. Apathetic, amoral and disconnected youth in the western world are spreading to replace the active socially charged older generations.
Like most things, the growth of the Internet brings the bad with the good. Daily activities are being assigned to digital assistants such as Siri and fears are increasing about cellphone apps “turning us into sociopaths” Selinger, of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technology at
As technology penetrates society through Internet sites, smartphones, social networks, and other modes of technology, questions are raised as the whether lines are being crossed. People spend a vast majority of their time spreading information about themselves and others through these various types of technology. The problem with all these variations is that there is no effective way of knowing what information is being collected and how it is used. The users of this revolutionary technology cannot control the fate of this information, but can only control their choice of releasing information into the cyber world. There is no denying that as technology becomes more and more integrated into one’s life, so does the sacrificing of that person’s privacy into the cyber world. The question being raised is today’s technology depleting the level of privacy that each member of society have? In today’s society technology has reduced our privacy due to the amount of personal information released on social networks, smartphones, and street view mapping by Google. All three of these aspects include societies tendency to provide other technology users with information about daily occurrences. The information that will be provided in this paper deals with assessing how technology impacts our privacy.
The use of the Internet has exploded in the past few decades, and the age of the user is swiftly declining as well (Greenfield, Patricia, and Zheng Yan). “The spread of Internet access has been described as nine times faster than that of radio, four times faster than the personal computer, and three times faster than television” (Shields, Margie, and Behrman 5). The Internet has woven itself into people’s daily lives and has really changed culture in numerous ways. It has helped make education more accessible, especially to those in developing countries. Specifically, it has brought life-saving health practices and information to those who otherwise would have gone without it.
Godsmith, Jack, and Tim Wu. Who Controls the Internet?: Illusions of a Boarderless World. New York, 2010. Print.
Surveying the Digital Future: How the PC and Internet are changing the world. (1999, June). Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Center for Communication Policy.