It is not too much to say that internet is essential in our lives today. Also, internet is believed to upgrade people’s life qualities with its enormous amount of information and opportunities. However, many people seem to believe in technology including internet unconditionally that sometimes they just ignore or do not even realize how much they can suffer or be controlled by it.
If we were questioned about how much truly efficient and productive time we spend surfing internet everyday, I wonder how many of people could answer to that right away with confidence. People read unhelpful things that they will eventually forget after some days as those tend to create people’s curiosity with their interesting titles. There are ads with visual and sound effects that attract people and make them spend time on looking at products they are not even going to buy. Also, underage people can easily have an access to information which might be harmful to their sentiment.
Sometimes, internet system requires people to give their personal information in order to join certain websites and get an access to what they want, and most people usually provide their information with their unconditional belief in the newest protection-technology when they do not even know how it works. On 5 August, a news was reported in New York Times, and it showed how the great technology can be abused against many numbers of people. According to the article in New York Times, 11 people were charged as they stole 41 million card numbers by scanning wireless networks of retail chains. The thieves sold the retails' customers' PINs, credit and debit card numbers and withdrew thousands of dollars from ATMs according to the article.
Internet can be used to control great numbers of people with its technology. Also, internet's virtual system easily creates mass psychology which might incite people to take an action. For example, Blackberry advertisement we discussed in class had sound and visual effects such as the constantly moving sound bars and moving pictures. Unless people purposely try to exam the advertisement as we did in class, they would simply believe what they see like narrators telling their edited stories of how their lives have gotten better with the blackberries. Even if the ad has hidden problems, and the product might not be as good as it is described in the reality, People may be persuaded to make a consumption wanting to improve their lives as those models in the ad. Also, people are likely to assume that many other people who have looked at the advertisement will do the same.
Another example is the meat negotiation concluded between the US and South Korea a few months ago. At the time it was concluded, some exports posted an article about how dangerous the mad cow disease is. In the articles, they said that there are possibilities that the meat has certain bacteria causing mad cow disease and that even a very small amount can affect humans. Since South Korea decided to import meat even more than 30 month that are considered not perfectly safe and meat is used in almost every production like make ups and baby foods, the situation of South Korea seemed very serious. After reading this, Korean citizens panicked and started to have a demonstration near the presidential residence for renegotiation.
As time passed, I could see an interesting change in articles on the internet. Experts' words were changing over time, and I read some comments of people who introduced themselves as assistants and students helping those experts, that the government authorities are pressuring the exports to publish partly corrected articles to calm people down. Today, some Korean citizens are saying the meat is actually safer than people think, while some others say the government is too busy hiding the facts and trying to control citizens using media power, as it needs the negotiation in order to meet other economic goals. This great panic all started from a few article on the internet, and personally, I am confused and do not know which side is right at this point because it seems that everything is constantly changing.
Looking at the situation for a few months, I have realized that people's reactions and opinions were swept along in various comments and articles posted by some people when those articles might not be true. After all, Korean citizens' distrusts toward the president has increased, and people are left with feelings of uneasiness not knowing which of all those information on internet they should believe.
Of course internet and technology we have today are efficient and useful in many ways. However, we need to keep reminding ourselves that we should not be affected too much, controlled and fooled by our technology but only taking advantages of it because we are the users, not targets.
New York Times article :
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/06/business/06theft.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=11%20charged&st=cse
The Newness of New Media
17 years ago
2 comments:
Jeesoo, you are doing a wonderful job of organizing your posts. You have a definable introduction, body and conclusion and this well-organized and clear structure are key to formal writing. You have not allowed your writing to become informal given the medium in which we are working and that is what I am looking for, in part anyway, throughout these posts. In some ways, you do cover many different topics and I would urge you to stay closer to one or two so that you can even more fully develop your point. For example, your argument about the meat exports to Korea and the panic that ensued because of on-line reports is very interesting and original; I want to see you linking to some of these early reports so that your readers can catch up with the story and then you could track how the articles changed to quell fears over the safety of the meat. We will cover much ground in class and often not develop certain arguments and readings to the extent that they could be because in class, I am trying to model critical reading and writing practices that then you take up in the posts. Therefore, although the temptation may be to mention several different topics in one post, try to focus and be as specific as possible to develop the interesting arguments you mention here.
Jeesoo, although your post shows valid examples about your thesis, I believe that you may not be telling the whole story. It is true that the average college student is online more times during the day than they could accurately recount. However I do not believe that the internet has all the power to influence that you are giving it in your post. Before the popularization of the internet people were still being influenced by ads on t.v., magazines and even radio. Though I agree that there are many safety issues that stem from people disclosing personal information on websites, we must also remember that the use of the internet is not as common amongst the population as we think. Many people and even schools in the U.S. and in other countries still live without internet. The articles you mentioned in your post may very well have been accessed without the use of the internet and would have causes just as much chaos as the online articles did. While I do believe that you make an excellent point, I also think that the internet is not any different than any previous technology that we have acquired, such as the radio in the early 1900s or the printing press many centuries before that. The internet will eventually become just as integrated into our culture as those afore mentioned technologies did. So while we should treat this technology with caution, we should also embrace the inevitable. We should also remember that this, like other advancements in technology were created to better our culture not to target or cause further problems.
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