The Internet: Everything you need to know article response

Key Points

• Although it is seen as an educational tool for children, it also is riddled with paedophiles who seek children to groom.
  
• Search engines such as Google can lead to plagiarism as well as being a reliable source of information.
• Websites such as Amazon seem to kill bookshops, as wells as online news websites which are killing newspapers, due the site’s constant availability, sophistication and cost free price.
• 27% of world’s population (1.8 billion people) use the internet everyday while the rest of population are desperate to get access to it. This shows how its resources and extensiveness is in demand.
• George Miller’s paper, Psychological Review concludes how people’s short term memory can only hold between five and nine chunks of information at any given moment.
• People have lived through revolutions such as the invention of the printing pres by
• Johannes Guttenberg, which effectively changed the world. The effectiveness of hindsight makes this possible.
• The Catholic Church was being threatened by this new media, as it gave a chance for ordinary people to read, as well as creating a new social class and gave chances to rise of modern science.
• Loads of traffic on the internet such as exchanges if move files, downloads of movies via BitTorrent, software updates and other hectic traffic.
• Internet deprives people such as music companies, book stores, newspaper companies of money due to stiff competition from the internet.
• Created by Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn who had to decide on how to design a system which could link other networks and a network which could be future proof
• Internet had to have no central ownership or control and could not be governed by any institution.
• Shaun Fanning created Napster in 1991, which gained 60 million users, but was shut down by the music industry.
• Net prone to attacks and viruses, spam, worms and other plagues of programming.
• Events such as 9/11 could take place on the net in the future.
• Internet ecosystem is constantly growing and changing with billions of publishers, writes and web savvy listeners and readers.
• Web has gone to three phases of evolution- from the original web 1.0, to web 2.0 and is heading to web 3.0 where web pages will contain enough metadata about their content to enable soft ware to make decision about it relevance and function.
• Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Google making us stupid?” in Atlantic magazine 2008 assessed whether permanent access to networked information made us turn into shallow, restless thinker with shorter attention spans.
• Nielsen concluded that the average time spent viewing a webpage is 56 seconds
• Digital technology has made it easier for users to copy, edit, remix and publish anything that is available in digital form. Millions of users have become publishers, as their work is published in site such as Flickr, YouTube and other sites.

Referring to the article surrounding the internet in The Observer, the internet has amazingly changed the lives of millions of people around the world. People rely heavily on the internet in their life, whether it be buying clothes, calling family using Skype, sending email, watching videos on YouTube and for a wider means of communication. As seen with Estonia, this is “one of the most internet dependent countries on the planet”. Though in 2007, was “shut down due an attack on its infrastructure”.

On the contrary, the internet has managed to be negative, as sites such as Google serve as an online source of information, though can also be a haven for cyber bullies and paedophiles. In accordance to this, Google and similar sites can lead to plagiarism, as most sites such as Wikipedia are not controlled, therefore can be edited by any user and can be inaccurate. Similarly, the availability of websites such as Amazon, EBay seem to effectively kill the small named bookshops. Therefore, the internet can be conveyed as being negative in this way, as businesses are ruined and livelihoods seized. In conjunction to this, the launch of file sharing sites such as Limewire seem to “ make a mockery of legal injunctions”, as they manage to disintegrate music industries and record labels, as music can be cheaply downloaded and copied to the masses, through illegal means.

As well as this, online news websites are seemingly on the same wavelength, due to the fact that news can be accessed freely online and is updated daily, thus making the internet more accessible to the masses. However, the dynamic content available on the internet may not be familiar to the older demographic, as there still is demand for physical content in the form of newspapers.

In other ways, the internet may not be all positive, as it manages to fixate audiences into gazing at the screen of monitors for an extended period of time. According to Nielsen,( a marketing research firm), the average time spent looking at a web page is 56 seconds, which expresses the exclusivity and sheer amount of information on the internet. Effectively, the internet has lead to a revolution of geared online users who surf the net constantly. In a similar way, Nicholas Carr’s article in the Atlantic magazine 2008 emphasises the fact that permanent internet access can lead to people becoming restless, shallow thinkers with short attention spans. To an extent, this statement from the article can be true, as users such as children tend to stay on the laptop or computers for long periods of time, therefore becoming more restless and unhealthy.

Since the invention of the printing press by Johannes Guttenberg in 1455, the means of communication as managed to challenge the views held by the authority, such as the Catholic Church and has managed to create opportunities for the masses of people, as people could easily read leaflets and have a more active role, which resulted I the birth of new social classes.

Due to its creation in the early 1970s, Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn (the designers) had the tough task of creating network, which could link lots of other networks and could be future proof. The result was simple. The creators had to create a system, whereby there was no central ownership or control, thus no institution could decide what the network was used for. To an extent, this would cause a disturbance, as the data pocket would amalgamate content such as porn videos, email, phone conversations and images. Therefore, the act of privacy and diversity of information would remain equal and free.

On the whole, the internet ecosystem is constantly growing and changing, with billions of publishers, writes, listeners and web savvy users. This in effect is resulting in a new phenomenon of technological age, with resources on the net slowly overtaking other forms of communication such as the newspaper. As well as this, the change witnessed from web 1.0 to web 2.0 could well lead to a new revolution classified as web 3.0 which could be more sophisticated, and could contain enough metadata to enable the software to make its own decision about its relevance and function. The internet has been able to give everyday people a chance to become part of the creative process, whether it be creating a video on YouTube to editing software and copying data, internet users begin to become more adept and efficient when using the net for different uses such as communication, freedom of speech and for other reasons.