Modern Vs. Ancient Cyberspace

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.

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.

When we think of the internet and technology we usually think of all the benefits and innovations that make up our generation. We have all the information we need right on our phones. We can also be connected with anyone or with everyone at anytime of the day, but is being connected with everyone a good thing? “The Loneliness Of The Interconnected” by Charles Seife explores this idea and shines a light on the negative effects that being connected with everyone might have. Seife’s exploration of online extremism challenge Schmidt and Cohen’s optimistic portrayal of technology by analyzing how having a voice in the ocean of the internet and being connected with everyone isn’t always positive.

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

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 our generation a like without Internet is pretty unthinkable. We look at the way it makes things so much easier and helps us stay in contact with friends and relatives via email and/or social media. Robert McChensey noticed how the Internet has caused a lot of changes in America in many different aspects Users and creators of the internet predicted that it would cause the world to be more prosperous , a more equal society, and a significant amount of scientific discovery. Internet supporters and skeptics agreed and opposed this idea. McChesney writes that people do not have a clear understanding of how capitalism relates to the internet and the political economic contex of the internet

The World Wide Web was first created by Tim Berners-Lee in 1990, under the philosophy that it would begin as, and remain, an “open and free” platform of expression. It was believed that a neutral [open] web could promote innovation and development of technologies in an environment where individuals’ speech and collaboration overpowered large corporations. Recently, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have jeopardized the open nature of the web by opposing net neutrality, the idea that “all data on the internet should be treated equally by corporations, such as internet service providers, and governments, regardless of content, user, platform, application or device.”

What’s everyone doing now a day? Do you see people walking around reading a book or talking face to face with another human being? Not exactly, now a day you see people walking around with phones in their hands and worrying about what their social media status looks like. Internet has become a very large influence in everyday life, impacting life from health to political beliefs. With the elections coming up in November we see candidates heading to medias to gain publicity, but non of them have used Ron Pauls’ tactic of starting his campaign online and using the Internet to his benefit.

Theorists contend that representative government is headed for direct democracy by way of the Internet. Essentially what will happen is that representatives will no longer be needed because citizens will be able to use the Internet to make decisions. Grossman contends that “the more power [citizens] have to control their government and to involve themselves in making its decisions, the better” (41). Over the years citizens have been obtaining information through the media, newspapers, and other forms of mass media. The issues that arise with obtaining information through these sources are that the government can easily censor them. With the Internet comes “vastly expanded capacities for data collection, for computation, and for automation” (Kamark & Nye 22).

“Cyberspace is not a physical place - it defies measurement in any physical dimension or time space continuum. It is a shorthand term that refers to the environment created by the confluence of cooperative networks of computers, information systems, and telecommunication infrastructure commonly referred to as the World Wide Web” (Wingfield 2007, 45).

The universal use of the internet has broadened the channels of expression and enhanced the range of people’s activity. Compared with traditional mass media, the characteristics of network information are fast as well as cheap, and the coverage is wide due to accessing to information. Furthermore, although the internet is not a real field, it provides a platform which can make the public freely express their argument and mobilize the enthusiasm of the audience. In other words, in the virtual word of cyberspace, many love to post their secrets on the internet anonymously. To some extent, the public have the ability to carry out the expression of democracy, and it cannot limit the traditional political problems at the same time. On the other hand, the potential of the internet is that it can also connect the whole of people with different cultural backgrounds and social status. A good case is that network anonymity can overcome the identity boundaries, because of the gender, age, job positions are not visible, which is more conducive to public participation in the exchange of ideas, and

From the advent of the Internet, there came with it the opportunity for any of its users to have access to any information they seeked right at their fingertips. With this access; entertainment, market opportunities, educational information, productivity, and global communication were able to grow and flourish, however with these gains seen came with it the weakening of the once secure national strength seen in nations. In the last two decades cyberspace has been defined as the 'fifth battleground’ for international relations, with the aspects of cyber war, cyber terrorism, and cybercrime as some of the largest threats to the security of the national and international community. (Popović, 2013) With this ‘fifth battleground’ of the cyberspace thrown into the international battlegrounds of old, its effectiveness and effect on the both the modern state and the international bodies of the world, posing the question of how will this increased accessibility to the cyberspace will affect national security in the coming years?

With the development of the world wide web, substantial opportunity has arisen for people around the world, as easy and free access to an immediate audience of people is prevalent in the cyberspace. For example, most people in modern society are not only attached to, but also dependent on the internet for a number of reasons. These reasons may include things such as a resource for news or simply a way to stay connected with friends through social media. People who possess the ingenuity to effectively access this ever-growing audience have unthinkable opportunity to accomplish simply anything imaginable. This opportunity has not gone long without recognition in the political world, as candidates, political

Many people believe the Internet has become the World’s Emancipation Proclamation. They believe that this newfound cyber-freedom will free countless generations of people. These people will be of every race, creed and color, whose lives, up until now, have been restrained by the paradigm of governments. Whether it is the United States Government, or the government of a foreign nation, the Internet will be our new Underground Railroad of cyberspace.