Is the Internet a Human Right?

The internet was a promising technological advancement designed to make the world’s information more accessible and the public’s participation in government more feasible. However, according to John Dvorak in his column titled “The False Promises of the Internet,” the stability and freedom of the internet is on a downward trend. He conveys this idea with the use of his negative connotation and his appeal to ethos.

A person up to date in today's society must acknowledge the importance and the parcticality of the internet. Just as in other areas of society, personal freedoms are stretched to the very limit on this modern invention, raising isuues in regards to what type of information the internet should be allowed to broadcast. Since its inception, the internet has spawned overnight millionaires, served as the new information medium, and even played host to some heinous crimes. The topic of greatest concern though, is in how the people legislate the division between what is obscence and what is allowable. The way that these issues are dealt with will shape the very form in which the internet and other

In Esther Dyson’s “Cyberspace: If You Don’t Love It, Leave It”, the existence of the internet is seen as potentially dangerous to today’s society. Dyson insists that the internet was once a sanctuary for tech savvy individuals such as gamers and professionals like engineers. The author focuses on the negative websites and communities that are often found offensive to the majority. She thinks the World Wide Web harbors a lot of power. This power can be accessed and conquered easily by most of the population. According to Dyson, responsibility is the key to changing the future (295). Her argument is convincing but slightly unrealistic. The internet seems to be growing into a whole other alternate universe. Society’s rapidly growing technology industry will only be harder to regulate. Most people will do what they want, when they want especially when it comes to the internet.

The internet has become a popular source used by society of a worldwide computer network that provides a variety of information and communication facilities allowing individuals to communicate with one another easily. The internet it self has brought people together but has changed the way people interact with each other, created isolation, some addiction and being unsafe. Nowadays, anything can be shared to the wide world through any device that is able to connect to the internet; where this can lead to what Charles Seife terms as “no privacy” in his article, “The Loneliness of the Interconnected.” According to Seife, the Internet’s vast interconnectivity made it possible for everyone to hear everyone else - and to be heard by everyone else.

In this paper, I will be arguing against the text by Lawrence Lessig by providing evidence and reasoning that proves that complete internet regulation would never be implemented on a global scale due to the privacy concerns that the United States would face while minimal internet regulation, like what Lessig suggests, would be unable to coexist with countries like China and Saudi Arabia who morally conflict with a global majority. Internet regulation will never be consistent in a global scheme and would require constant revision which makes it not provide enough utility to be considered when judging from Utilitarianism.

There are few places on this Earth, if any, where the possibilities are truly endless. However, if you detach yourself from the physical world and emerge into the “online” world, you find that this just might actually be accurate in this realm. The World Wide Web has had so much to offer to us since the early 1990s, but with this comes controversy. Unleashed onto a plane of seemingly immeasurable freedom of anonymity, was the world ready for such responsibility? Since those early days when new emerging technology changed our lives immensely, have we at all become a better place, or have we bitten off more than we can chew, and doomed our human relations forever? Exploring these concepts are three in-depth articles, including: “Growing Up Tethered” by Sherry Turkle, “The Loneliness of the Interconnected” by Charles Seife, and “Cybersexism” by Laurie Penny. Although it is thought that the Internet brings the world together, it actually does not help us politically, culturally, and economically like one would believe, as it makes us unable to be independent, isolates us from different points of view, and encourages real-world violence against women and other minority groups.

In her call to action, The People’s Platform; Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age, Astra Taylor addresses underlying social and economic forces of the internet and differential perspectives towards it. Taylor discusses the new internet in which content is king and, people are now the product, this is called Web 2.0. She discusses this topic from a couple viewpoints; those who would believe that the internet is truly the new people’s platform and that it is the golden age of sharing and collaboration, called the Techno-optimists. The counterparts of this interpretation of the internet are what she calls the Techno-Skeptics, who have a similar mindset in that of Nicholas Carr, an author about technology in the modern age, with the

Many people view the internet as an ultimate resource for anything they desire. The people who say that the internet is a brilliant invention for the best have reasons backing up their idea. For example, Sherry Turkle writes about such ideas explaining how the internet is an excellent tool for the better in her essay, “Can You Hear Me Now?” Turkle believes strongly that the invention of the internet is an innovation for the better and emphasizes to her readers how important it is in everyone’s lives nowadays. On the other hand, some believe exactly the opposite of Turkle’s invalid inquisition that the internet is a tool that is most definitely not for the greater good. The internet is a

Daniel Solove, a professor who specializes in internet privacy law, wrote this book to give his personal take on how the internet was transforming the way people connect through social mediums and how that could change in the future. An important thing to note about this book is that it was published in 2007, so some of the social and technological aspects of the book are slightly dated. Regardless of this though, this book provides an inquisitive perspective on the dynamic nature of the internet as a vessel of our society’s changing norms on privacy in the social sphere. Many of our learning points in class relate to topics discussed in this book and help to strengthen the context and significance of the underlying message.

The issues raised by Bennett illustrate that the Internet is still in its infancy in terms of how it is best-integrated into society and regulated by the same ethical, social, and legal principles as traditional forms of communications. It is likely that the solution lies, not in the evolution of regulations or in limitations on free speech; rather, the solution is likely to evolve naturally as subsequent generations develop a better and more nearly comprehensive understanding of how to integrate their offline and online identities in ways that maintain their privacy. Meanwhile, the deeper explanation of the contemporary digital communications

In the end, while Lyon and Hafner give us an entertaining story regarding how the Internet was discovered, we are still left wondering about what effect the Internet is actually having. True, we see all of the hard work that occurred behind the scenes in the making of the Internet in this book, but now the question must be asked: where does the Internet take us? This is a very important question in the context of where technology takes our culture, and takes humanity in general. Indeed, every piece of technology has an effect on the people within the culture. There is, after all, certain political and social consequences to the progress in technology. In his essay "Do

(Felczak et al, 2009). These rights include unfettered access to information and knowledge and the free exchange of ideas in the public sphere where everyone may participate in a mutually accountable debate, exchange of reasons, and opinions. (Habermas, 2004). In the 21st Century, the Internet has facilitated the equal opportunity for all participants to share information in a highly flexible environment. While the design of the Internet was to exist as a cooperative, non-hierarchal, communicative system for information sharing, it seamlessly developed into an extension of the public sphere. However, the advent of this new version of the public sphere came with a dark side of anonymity as exampled in the phenomena of

Carr’s factual diction demonstrates his conviction that the internet is causing people to become shallow individuals by saying that it causes a “slow erosion of our humanness and our humanity” and that it “poses a threat to our integrity as human beings.” The first half of his book covers topics about biology and technology, and how those two relates to each other. Then in the second half, he transitions into a detailed explanation about how the internet is actually harmful to us. After reading his thoughts about it, it is clear that the internet is in fact damaging to people.

In the Age of Information or the Era of the Internet, everyone is connected. Everyone carries around a computer in their pocket with more than enough computing power to send a man to the moon. Invisibly, data is constantly flowing. Virtually everything we interact with in today’s world has one thing in common: the internet. It plays a huge role in everything from sharing pictures with friends to the election. It is widely accessible and houses a wealth of information. Anyone should be able to access the network of data that is the internet. However, just as this Swiss Army Knife of innovation can be applied towards the common good, it can also be limited and used nefariously—an action that manifests itself in the form of censorship. Internet

INTRO The Darkening Web: The War for Cyberspace by Alexander Klimburg is a novel that is written around the importance as well as the relevance of the internet in today’s society regarding state safety. The claim Klimburg makes throughout the novel is that no invention at all has changed the way we live, as much as it has been changed by the creation of the Internet. Many would consider the Internet to be the greatest invention to happen to mankind, considering how easily accessible it is and how much information it holds. However, Klimburg’s novel explores the idea of cyberspace in regard to politics.