The People's Platform By Astra Taylor Analysis

Janet Abbate’s Inventing the Internet explores the history of the Internet as "a tale of collaboration and conflict among a remarkable variety of players." (3) Abbate’s writing concentrates on the Internet’s development through social and cultural influences. The book explores the evolution of the Internet from ARPANET to global networks. The Internet’s expansion has existed within an interworking web of innovators; government and military, computer scientists, graduate students, researchers, cable and phone companies, network users, etc. The details given by Abbate affirm the book’s claim that the Internet was not

The Internet is playing a very important role in the evolution of digital technology, but although it has seen remarkable growth over the last few years, its dispersion remains highly asymmetric. It is widely believed that the so called information age will bring radical change and improvement, and countries all over the world are busy with constructing the necessary infrastructure, the "information superhighways," in order to meet the challenges of the information society of the twenty-first century. Kwame Anthony Appiah’s essay “Making Conversation” tell us about human’s conversation

He is a Canadian American who published a sociological work concerning the internet in 2011. His article that was published in the New Yorker was titled “The Information: How the Internet Gets Inside Us” where he explains the influences the internet has had on modern society. He tackles the issue of how the mass of information has altered the way people interact with each other. In this manner he has proposed 3 kinds of people who view the new digital age: Never-Better who believe we are closer to a utopia, Better-Nevers who believe that the digital age was a mistake, and the Ever-Waser who believe that the debate is what makes the digital age so good. In this vein he recounts how this is similar to when books and other printed media first became accessible to the masses. This new printed media for the people was hailed as the new great thing to uplift people from the heap. But recounts that just as reformations could come from print, then so could counter reformations. Counter to the benefits Gopnik recounts articles where the new digital age is robbing us of our creativity, focus, and connection. But again Gopnik counters this claim by suggesting that others have foretold the downfall of society from whatever technological advancement was made and yet society still exists. As such the internet’s alterations and feelings are in the little bits of us that usually go unnoticed

In his essay “The Net Is a Waste of Time,” novelist William Gibson analyzes the hidden potentials of the Internet in both its vastness and affect on society. He writes this piece at the dawn of the Internet, and during this undeveloped phase, he discusses its multitude of facts as is and will be. As hinted in the title of his essay, Gibson takes the stance that the Internet at its early stages is a waste of time -- an impressively large and complex waste of time -- but a waste of time nonetheless. He is ultimately concerned with how we are choosing to procrastinate through the Internet, and that our growing attachment and dependence on the Internet reveals a “fatal naïveté” (697) about us. Gibson also brings up the true enormity of the Web even at its premature standing, detailing how “the content of the Web aspires the absolute variety. One might find anything there. It is like rummaging in the forefront of the collective global mind” (697). Despite his concerns on what the Web might become, Gibson realizes that at the time of his writing, the Web was at a stage much like the larval stage of a butterfly’s life -- seems unassuming, but as he himself puts it, “The Web is new, and our response to it has not yet hardened” (697), and that there are “big changes afoot” (696).

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.

The use of technology has catalyzed society into an era that is increasingly interconnected yet impersonal at the same time. Despite technology’s endless list of assets, many fail to acknowledge its shortcomings when mentioning what is lost as a result of using it. Although in “Great to Watch” by Maggie Nelson, she is not afraid to share her skepticism of technology, as well as the role it plays in desensitizing individuals on a day-to-day basis. The internet is an invaluable resource to many because it is a public domain for sharing ideas, opinions, and knowledge that any and everyone can have access to. In a sense, it does not restrict what someone may see or do, and this can either be a good thing or a bad thing. The booming use of new media

These days there is a big war in politics, Republicans vs Democrats. The democrats make up 31% of our population(google), they believe in many different things than the Republicans. Some issues they disagree on are gun rights, abortion, LGBT rights, and the economy.

This text is an article by Nicholas Carr. The author discusses how the internet has changed the lives of people by requiring them to do less work and in turn making them “stupid”. In this essay, my focus will be the three appeals, the structure and the audience of this article.

One detrimental consequence of the technological society we live in is the development of new power struggles that reveal themselves in the digital divide. In the dawning of the technological age that has brought us into a globalized

Nicholas Carr’s “How technology created a global village -- and put us all at each other’s throats”, conveys the message that technology was contrived to join people together, but all it is doing is disjointing them. Conversely, a dark place was shaped online, over the years, and there is no sign of the situation resolving.

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

Over this past decade or so, people all around the globe have been granted with greater advancements in technology. From cellphones we can talk to, to 3-Dimensional televisions, we are able to pretty much do anything thanks to these high-tech products. But, should we really be grateful for these easy-to-use devices, or are they taking over the lives of millions? In the articles written by Michael Malone and Daniel Burrus, we receive an inside look on whether todays modern, wired, Web world is, or is not, benefitting society. Although both authors held pretty neutral views on the subject itself, Malone’s support towards the negative effect of technology definitely lures readers into

Since its introduction on a public scale in the 1990s, the internet has been associated with many changes in social experience. Many aspects of social life such as education, work, commerce and even personal relationships have changed through the internet. However, researchers have found that, at least in the early years, access to the internet is shaped according to gender, class, ethnicity and education. During the 1990s the typical information technology user was a white, male, professional with a background in IT. This bias in internet access was named the ‘digital divide’ to point out the implied social inequalities. It was said that the internet was

Castells, M., 2000. The Rise of the Network Society - The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture Vol. I. Cambridge, MA; Oxford, UK: Blackwell.

Just as capitalism requires the continued search for efficiencies, our interactions with technology must also become as efficient as possible. This shift from an industrial economy to a knowledge economy has led to the creation of the information worker. These information workers are defined as a social group who rely heavily on computer use, which according to Geert Lovink (2011), is a result of our economy viewing “computer use as an empowering activity resulting in more skills and increased social mobility” (p. 35). The capitalist mode of production casts the computer illiterate as unprofitable. Google, Twitter, and Facebook, which lead this knowledge economy, persuade their audiences to stay connected, and to participate in virtual worlds in an effort generate endless amounts of data, which this economy treats as currency. Those who do not participate are alienated, which reinforces the need to be constantly connected.