Fuels of the Good and Dark Sides of the Internet

     We spent this week delving into the more malicious side of the Internet. Ideas like surveillance, identity theft, and censorship covered the verbal landscape, touching on areas in which the majority of Americans are particularly sensitive to. However, what is the overall force that is pushing initiatives such as these? How about the forces that drive expression, freedom of sharing, and anonymity?

     This debacle was inevitable.

      Throughout history, there has always been the basic power struggle between the rulers and the ones who adhere to their leadership. There was probably tribal leaders in the cave days who would punish members of the tribe who communicated with other tribes. Likewise, we have the shady North Korea, who casts a thicker overcast on their peoples' eyes than State College clouds.

     Entertainment is enjoyable. It can bring a divergence away from homework, and it can bring people together to bond in a game. However, people in our country tend to overdo it I think. According to Time Magazine, Americans spend over half their free time watching television and literally spend about $706 billion dollars on entertainment in 2004 (Entertainment Spending). That figure I highly doubt has changed with the improvement of cell phones, video players, video games, and music players.

       So these television screens and other entertainment are like the "bread and circuses" Dr. Tapia mentioned in class. When so many of people our age (of all ages really) take part in entertainment to such an extreme degree, do you really expect them to know how to interpret national issues when they have never done so before? It's like asking one who has been using a bike for their whole lives to now use a car with no practice. The identity theft instill a sense of fear of being online, so they will seek out for organizations to protect them, not before giving them their information! The surveillance will cause paranoia, so people will one day be afraid to surf the web on controversial things, thus being a kind of censorship in itself. The censorship where your search results are modified for you that we spoke of in class was interesting. Any kind of filter is indeed a censorship, and the Internet can be censored in a covert manner like this so people will not notice.

     Yet, there is also the side that yearns for freedom of expression and anonymity. In other words, it is what the Internet originally represented. It was a lower quality user interface because Google searches didn't tailor themselves to your interests and so on. Don't worry, the horror drowns me too. However, it created a sense of freedom to explore without any feeling of someone looking at monitor of what you are doing (well besides ISP personnel). I would think that most people want that kind of online environment. However, it is not in the interest of those who hold the influence right now. Censoring messages and keeping checks on people helps maintain the status quo, and those who benefit from the status quo the most are those having surf and turf on their personal yacht. Of course the RIAA will try to find people who share music files since they lose money out of their pockets! Keep the wage earners in line to continue to make money for your institutions; is this not like China? How else could you control over a billion people on a giant national landscape with the advent of the Internet?

     In the end, this struggle between Internet freedom and Internet control is a by-product of class struggle. Those in power would rather maintain current way of things as they benefit from it. People on the outside of power circles who like to find unique things and have a sense of potency at their fingertips that they lack elsewhere. The fact that you have a world's worth of knowledge and opinions right on a screen gives a feeling of insight. But, why would a ruling body want to hear contradicting opinions? Thus there is censorship and surveillance. A person's fingers can type to entertainment and education, but those same fingers can also block millions from exploring the Web.