Saturday 28 August 2010

My response to The Internet: Everything you ever need to know

I believe that we are very dependent on the internet and find it hard to imagine life without it, thought it is a very recent phenomenon.

It is really difficult to realise how much of an impact it has been on our lives, but though researchers can look at the impact of the printing press, to understand the possible impact of the internet, I don't think it will give a true value to the internet's impact. This is because the impact of the internet happened a lot quicker than the printing press, due to the development of digital communication which comically, is due to the invention of the internet.

I also think, society now is very different to the society that existed back in "the Gutenberg era". From what I understand and what is greatly generalised, is that we are possibly more open minded, and maybe more understanding than they were in the past. This could explain the idea that we are "walking into the information age with our eyes open" because we do not question what the internet tells us, we just accept that is the truth. This very different response to something new could have a very different impact than the printing press and could also be the cause of the fast impact of the internet so far.

As there is no administrator of the internet, it means there is no control over the content: what is uploaded, who uploads it ect. Though the cloud has a lot of benefits such as not needing to carry storage hardware (USBs ect), it still poses a lot of security problems from fraud to pornogaphy accessible to children. Some believe that an administrator such as the Governement should control it, but I think the internet is to vast to control, and enforcing laws would be to hard to manage. And also why should one person's opinion be the one to control what the world can and cannot see?

Wednesday 25 August 2010

The internet: Everything you ever need to know summary

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jun/20/internet-everything-need-to-know

This is my summary to the article I read:

We are very dependent on the internet.

As we are living in the internet revolution, it’s hard to digest how much of an impact it has had on society.

We only see the changes through slogans, and not all times they show the REAL truth.

We could see the long term effect by looking at the past. Looking at the printing press and how it changed the way society communicated in the past, and reflect that change as a similarity of the internet.

Gutenberg’s invention changed: the authority of the Catholic Church, powered the reformation.

As the internet is still new, it is hard to tell how much long term impact there is.

The internet and the web are two different things: The internet is a network of computers, and the web is a collection of pages accessible by the internet.

People are worried that the internet is very disruptive.

Vint Cerf and Robert Khan created the internet.

The internet allows no administrators- no one person could control the internet.

And the internet would accept anything.

This is where the problems lies- there is no control leaving it to become a dangerous unstable place accessible to billions.

Tim Bernes-Lee created the web.

Shawn Fanning created Napster software for sharing music files.

Other programs have been created such as viruses, Trojans, worms, which can’t be controlled and can be so dangerous, that it could even shut down industries, a possible internet 9/11.

With all the internet’s information, it has allowed a range of media to become accessible to many.

The internet is very complex and this is what makes it difficult to control and protect its content and its audiences.

The network called the internet allowed people to store their data not on the computer hard drive itself, but in the “cloud”. This means less storage space is needed but also means lots of security and data protection problems.