Aspects of the Internet: Final Exam Blog Post

          For my final post I would like to discuss the pros and cons of the internet. This is a very debatable subject since the internet provides everything for people. Some people would say that they can not imagine a world with out the internet, while others are quick to shake their heads in fear of the very thought of getting a Facebook account.
          The internet has many good aspects. For example, improving your literacy or cognitive skills, connecting with your peers and how the rape rate has declined because of the public internet access. You can improve your knowledge of every event in history, every theory and every aspect about life. There are some web sites such as lumosity featured in the Wall Street Journal and New York times which are said to increase your brains cognitive functions and overall health. Most of these types of web sites target the elder crowd around their 60s to help their cognitive skills such as memory which with age, we as human beings loose over time. The internet has a wide range of resources dedicated to knowledge. If you wanted to learn anything, it would be on the internet. There are even resources to help teachers teach their students online. With the many networking sources you could also learn immensely from your peers and get connected with people, who know people, who could get you your next job opportunity. I figure that it works like this:

          Many people especially those in favor of the internet have an interesting out look on the internet. In the link below it will re-direct you to a video. The video is about the views about the internet from the co-founders of YouTube and Digg. Chad Hurley, Co-Founder and CEO of Youtube, states, "...the internet is about connecting individuals...".


http://videos.howstuffworks.com/science-channel/5120-download-web-20-video.htm#mkcpgn=snag1

          Also, many would say that free porn on the internet should be on the negative aspects of the internet. After all, no parent wants their child to receive a pop-up of a pornography advertisement. But it very interesting how the rape rates have decreased as more porn availability has gone up. According to Anthony D' Amato Leighton Proffesor of Law at Northwestern University School of Law in his Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series one titled PORN UP, RAPE DOWN, he gives a very clear explanation and he gives facts about the matter.
          The negative aspects of the internet is whether or not the internet is a safe resource for gathering information.Of course there are ways to protect your self from many threats from the internet. This video below is great illustration of how this works.



           Even though everyone is capable of taking extra precautions to protect their personal information, it is undeniable that there are still ways for people to become victims of hackers and their malware. The difficulty with malware is that they take many different forms of shapes and sizes. The most common type of malware is a Trojan Horse. There is the chain letter type that when a person clicks on something, the same e-mail gets sent to every one in your address book. Then there is the painful malware that crashes your computer. Also the larger scale type of malware that when clicked on can crash many computers at the same time or even worse create a way for hackers to hack into the information at a large company. For example, the Mitsubishi Heavy malware attack and the Kawasaki Heavy malware attack. Malware is possibly the biggest example of the negative aspects of the internet. But also there is how the use of social networks could be trouble for many people. Expressing your opinions to the world is good, to some extent. There have been many incidents such as people getting fired because of facebook, a teenager getting kicked out of school, the young man getting kicked off of the football team for a facebook post. Some people have been put into jail. Police and University officials are now known to use Facebook, Myspace, Orkut, Twitter etc. for further use in court. And victims such as Rebecca Black have received death threats from people over the internet.
          In my opinion, all of their punishments were just. I also believe that not everything should be expressed publicly given that they believe in the freedom of speech or not. There are many more pros and cons about the internet, in fact it's endless since people have different opinions. My examples for positive aspects were improving your literacy or cognitive skills, connecting with people, and safety in terms of rape. My examples for negative aspects were about malware and social networking websites.