How the Internet Has Changed Life Essay

Our weathers have qualifyd beyond recognition since the meshing was launched in the year 1989. In a unforesightful space of 18 years people atomic number 18 already stem to wonder how they would ever have coped with bug out it. We use the it to send e-mail, pay out utility bills, reserve tickets for flights or theatre, update our bank accounts, apply for loans and mortgages, buy stock market shares, browse and purchase items from Internet stores, and of course to mark out up on e very kind of day to day cultivation, e. g. news, live and financial market indexes. Previously all these tasks entailed time-consuming and laborious animal(prenominal) procedures.see moreshort paragraph on internetFor example, determi republic time on a weekday to visit the bank was irksome and clashed with our 9-5 routine. We employ the snail-mail for our post, and queued up hours to get tickets to theatres or sports events. We couldnt even think of get a bank loan, or a mortgage, without a s tern employment with our bank manager, and nigh of our shopping was necessarily a chore. M whatsoever are opting to telecommute as well, which means that they engagement from home with the PC connected to the purpose intranet, so they are able to avoid the horror of commuting to and from work daily.The Internet is now the primary means to seize a job. Students secure admissions to college and university online. After having got in they continue to depend on the Internet to get wind course notes and other study materials, and even submit completed text file to their instructors. This is not to mention that the Internet is the greatest possible source of profound information. Not only is the university library at the students fingertips, scarce the Internet itself is the most comprehensive library imaginable.Even romance is not exempt from the digital domain. Through online dating agencies mevery people learn their future life partners and spouses on the fire. Not only work , the Internet has in like manner become our station for play. Browsing the Net has become our favorite pastime, and so an addiction for many. We frequent websites based on our favorite sports in-personities and movie stars. weave chatting is also a hugely popular pastime on the Internet, where live conversations and discussions are carried out on specially designed thematic forums.With the climax of file sharing we are swapping and sharing music and videos over the Net based on fan clubs and interest groups. By a new-fashioned estimate (Lipsman 2008) 694 million people worldwide use the Internet on a regular basis. This is a measure of how far it has infiltrated and changed our lives. Paradoxically, the Internet was devised by the military and was originally meant for the most secretive information. It is now the very by-word for on the fence(p)ness. Of course, as with every technology, there are attendant evils. Along with authentic and bona fide information, there is a fl ood of vindictive and motivated propaganda.Just as scholars are able to meet on the net to advance knowledge, so do terrorists come together with their evil designs. Healthy entertainment is overwhelmed by the perverse form of it. In a recent study (Flichy 2007) it has been estimated that a quarter of all the websites are pornographic. The revered institution of copyright is organism ravaged more and more everyday, where copyrighted material is existence do easely available by unscrupulous parties, to the detriment of artists and inventors everywhere. The music fabrication is losing everyday its battle against the Internet piracy of music.Hackers also pose another(prenominal) looming menace. Not everything fed into the Internet is meant to be available to everyone. Much of it is personal or corporate information that is for restricted use. Hackers try to break into databases containing such information, purely for disruptive purposes. All the problems mentioned above derive fro m the characteristically open nature of the Internet. When it is abused it is open to evil, even to the kindred extent that it is a cause for good. In this last respect the Internet is affecting the most important change to our society.It is the incursions into privacy, private property and decency that pose the gravest dangers, and therefore threatens to change our society in fundamental ways. All these dangers were apparent in the very early days of the Internet. Writing in the Encarta Year concur of 1996 Gary Chapman says This revolutionary information network ignores geographic and governmental barriers, undermines obscenity and pornography laws and restrictions, has the potential to engross individual privacy in numerous ways, and threatens to divide society in the midst of the information haves and have-nots.The government was quick to react to such alarm. In the same year Congress passed the CDA (Communications Decency Act) with the aim of cleansing the Internet of all fo rms of pornography. moreover is quickly became apparent to all parties that such a law was non-enforceable. As in all obscenity trials throughout the history of the country, the borders of obscenity could neer be agreed upon. Any effort in this direction shortly found itself in direct opposition to the First Amendment of the Constitution, that which protects free legal transfer and opinion.Consequently, the following year the Supreme Court annulled the congressional ruling as unconstitutional, and Justice John Paul Stevens (1997), in his summary of the Courts opinion, identified the problem starkly Notwithstanding the legitimacy and importance of the Congressional goal of protecting children from harmful materials, we agree with the three-judge District Court that the codified abridges the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment. The Internet being the embodiment of free speech, it proved impossible to curtail it in any way.In more recent times Professor Lawrence Les sig of the University of Chicago has pointed to a deeper link between the Internet and the American psyche. unaffectionatedom of speech, he avers, is the fundamental tenet of American culture, and any encroachment on this principle threatens the nation as a whole. He opposes the new laws passed by Congress more recently that are aimed at stemming piracy What the law demands today is progressively silly as a sheriff arresting an airplane for trespass. But the consequences of this lightheadedness will be much more profound (Lessig, 2004, p. 12).Lessigs line of work is that censorship has never been effectively carried out on American soil, and it is on the dot this which has imbued character to the nation and has made it great. All the greatest accomplishment in art and science were result of free speech, he maintains. In his book Free Culture How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock start Culture he goes on to show how Walt Disney was in effect the pilot pirate. He bu rst into the limelight in the year 1928 with the short vim Steamboat Bill, featuring the character of Mickey Mouse is a previous personification as Willie.Not only did this steal the name from Buster Keatons 1928 classic Steamboat Bill Jr but the plot and humor it as well. Lessig builds on this document by showing that each and every one of Disneys sumptuous productions were concocted from material of various talent, none of whom are acknowledged. The special effect of Disney came from the process of the ripple, and even more so from the process of burn, by which his universe of discourse enters culture and becomes an integral part of the American psyche. Rip, mix and burn, he says is the reflection behind Americas entrepreneurial success.It personified the American way to creativity, which mustiness necessarily flourish in an environment of free speech These value built a tradition that, for at least the first clxxx years of our Republic, guaranteed creators the right to bu ild freely upon their past, and protected creators and innovators from either order or private control. Our tradition was neither Soviet nor the tradition of patrons. It alternatively carved out a wide berth within which creators could coach and extend our culture. (Ibid, p. 10)Any form of censorship is to create a gentry of information, where only the privileged have access, and this is fundamentally un-American. But it is nobility of any form that is alien to our culture (Ibid, p. 11). Lessig avers hope for the Internet, even though he is unable to offer concrete examples of creativity emerging from the tumultuous mix that is the Internet. He reasons from history, tradition and the American ideal. At the heart of this ideal is free speech, and the Internet is the ultimate embodiment of it.It the experience of many that the Internet is a force for good, despite the endless avenues for corruption that it leaves open. The general finding of fact is that the good outweighs the ev il, which is in line with the optimism expressed by Lessig.ReferencesChapman, G. (1996). The Internet announce and Peril in Cyberspace. Encarta Yearbook, May 1996. impertinent York Microsoft Corporation. Flichy, P. (2007). The Internet Imaginaire. Cambridge, MA MIT Press. Lessig, L. (2004). Free Culture How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture. New York Penguin Publishers.