For this last minute blog post (I have no shame in admitting I waited until the last minute to do this), I read the article "An Apology for the Internet - From the People Who Made it" by Noah Kulwin. Like all people, I have my opinions regarding the internet. Unfortunately, as much as that cat might want you to believe otherwise, the internet has not destroyed neither democracy nor our privacy.
This article has a tone that is overflowing with so much accusing it makes a PETA ad look tame. It's trying so hard to make the internet appear to be the villain when it is very much not. It wants so desperately to point the finger at developers and go 'I'm the good guy, and you're the bad guy'. The writer of this article would very much like us, the reader, to believe that the wrongdoings of the internet are caused by the big developers at places like Apple or Facebook, even though it is not the case.
We have to remember that the internet is a public network and that literally, anybody with an internet connection can gain access to it. When you have something designed this way, people will always find ways to exploit it and use it in their favor. Those 'Congratulations! You won a new Laptop!' ads, I'm 100% certain those are not the doings of developers for Apple. Do you really think a company like Apple, a company quite literally fueled by innovation, would spend money paying for a division of The Geek Squad spamming computers with ads and such?
The idea that our privacy has been destroyed by the internet is one of the most ignorant things you could ever say regarding this subject. The only reason we believe that statement to be true is because nobody ever reads the Terms and Conditions that pops up whenever you sign up for literally anything online. Read through them once in a while, it helps to know what you're agreeing to.
Like all things, the internet has changed with time and has over the years, blossomed into the amazing thing we know today. If you were to ask the inventors of the internet if they intended for it to contain sites that scam you with fake ads, or sites for child pornography or places for terrorist groups to correspond, I guarantee you they would say they did not intend for the internet to have those things on it. Unfortunately, once the internet was ready, they let it out into the wild, for any and all to use, and like previously stated, when that happens, people will use it to accomplish absolutely horrible heinous things.
The Internet is an incredible invention, giving us access to an endless stream of knowledge and communication. Of course after being out in the wild for a while, people are going to find ways to use it to benefit them at the expense of others, and while I don't find what these few are doing to be right, I would not say the internet is an 'evil machine hell-bent on stealing our information and spamming us' just because a few people have used it to do so.
When you get down to the core of what the internet is, it's a network with vast amounts of information as well as communication with anyone anywhere (so long as they have a connection). To call that anything but a blessing to us as a species is simply and utterly ignorant.
-Carter Rutkoski
I could not agree more! Most people seem to look for the negatives in media rather than researching the many innovations that make our lives significantly simpler. The internet truly is a blessing and should never be overlooked for the minimal defects that are faults of the users.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the internet is not as bad as people sometimes make it out to be; however, I think a lot of people often overreact when it comes to the internet (especially the older generations) because we’ve advanced so far in technology in such a short amount of time, so I believe people are just going after the Internet because a lot of the time it’s difficult to keep up with and understand where technology is headed. I highly doubt anybody expected technology to get this advanced in so little time, and people are unsure of how to react to the fact that it did improve so much.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you. Multiple times throughout the article I kept asking myself "how is this there fault?" I compare the invention of the internet to the airplane. No one blamed the Wright Brothers for 9/11 so why should developers get blamed for the internet? You pointed out something that while I was reading the article didn't catch. That this article wasn't written because a bunch of internet creators got together and said sorry. It was written because some reporter went out, took interviews and wrote the article in a way that would make it seem neutral but is actively taking a stance. If the internet developers did actually want to apologize, however, than they sadly overlooked human behavior when making the internet.
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ReplyDeleteThis have changed my point of view on the internet being the "bad guy." This in fact changed my position because looking at it, I can tell that internet shouldn't be targeted because it gave us a gift of socially being active on social media or however it may be and freedom is what made it possible. It all depends on how we use the gift science gave us. We can not blame the internet and the developers for creating an improvement in our technology. It was our choice to make the internet look ugly not them!
ReplyDelete-Atarah Beckford