Internet Homework
1. Discussion Points (Use your browser to conduct research on the following) (Minimum 350 Words)
1) When looking at the chronology of the development of the Internet, which development do you believe to be the most important? Why? 2) In terms of online users, are the genders equally represented? How about for minorities? What types of resources are available online, specifically for men? How valuable to you believe these resources are? What types of resources are available online, specifically for women? How valuable to you believe these resources are? Are there resources available to specific ethnicities? 3) If you know of any good web sites with resources for men, please share the URLs and tell us why you feel the site is of value to men. If you know of any good web sites with resources for women, please share the URLs and tell us why you feel the site is of value to women. 4) How beneficial are health and medical web sites? How reliable is the information? 5) The Internet has been championed as inherently democratic. Do you agree? Are there reasons why this theory is flawed? Why? 6) Provide the URL of at least two sites that discuss the impact of the Internet on any one of the concepts discussed this week and provide a brief review of the information contained there. Did you learn anything new? Were you surprised by any of the information presented on the site?
2. Respond to this discussion
150 Words Minimum, provide direct questions if needed.
1) When looking at the chronology of the development of the Internet, which development do you believe to be the most important? Why?
I would say the most important development was the first message sent over ARPANET. A UCLA student named Charley Kline attempted to send a text message that simply said “login”. He got as far as the first two letters (“lo”) and then the system crashed. After waiting an hour to remedy the system the word “login” was successfully sent (Brown, 2017). This is so important because it laid out the framework for our modern internet.
2) In terms of online users, are the genders equally represented? How about for minorities? What types of resources are available online, specifically for men? How valuable to you believe these resources are? What types of resources are available online, specifically for women? How valuable to you believe these resources are? Are there resources available to specific ethnicities?
The genders are pretty evenly matched with 74% of men and 72% of women using the internet. Races have a little more gap than gender with 78% of white people having broadband vs 65% of black people and only 58% of Hispanic individuals (Internet, Science & Tech, 2018). The internet has different resources tailed to each sex just as some magazines, literature, media, etc. targets a specific gender and race. YouTube is great resource that can be tailored to a specific interests including race and gender. I can only speak for white men but, the resources are plentiful for us. I can’t really pass judgment if the resources are sufficient for women and minorities.
3) If you know of any good web sites with resources for men, please share the URLs and tell us why you feel the site is of value to men. If you know of any good web sites with resources for women, please share the URLs and tell us why you feel the site is of value to women.
The only site tailored to men that I know off the top of my head is www.menshealth.com. Honestly the only reason I know of them is because the magazine.
4) How beneficial are health and medical web sites? How reliable is the information?
Health and medical websites are useful but, the information is like anything else on the internet, one must get it from a reliable source.
5) The Internet has been championed as inherently democratic. Do you agree? Are there reasons why this theory is flawed? Why?
I would agree that it is a total democracy. It seems if public opinion it can tank an organization’s online presence. True democracy is a majority rules and with all the information available today via the internet everyone is more educated on events happening in society.
6) Provide the URL of at least two sites that discuss the impact of the Internet on any one of the concepts discussed this week and provide a brief review of the information contained there. Did you learn anything new? Were you surprised by any of the information presented on the site?
For my articles I chose: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/530566/the-impact-of-the-internet-on-society-a-global-perspective/ and http://thecomputersimpact.weebly.com/the-positive-and-negative-effects-of-the-internet.html. The first article discusses how the advent of the internet has shaped our culture today. All of us in the world (with the exception of North Korea) are now connected to each other and can see events happening across the world. With social media we are never really disconnected from each other. The latter article explores not only the positives but the negatives of the internet. The positives are somewhat easy to recognize in modern day: sharing of information, communication, E-Commerce, etc. The negatives have to do with new situations that are arising in this, still somewhat recent, technology. The internet opens up a new way for criminals to operate, access to illegal or inappropriate material and has revenged copyrighted material.
-Bill
Brown, M. (2017, October 29). First Message on the Internet. Retrieved March 12, 2018, from http://thisdayintechhistory.com/10/29/first-message-on-the-internet/
Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech. (2018). Internet/Broadband Fact Sheet. From http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/internet-broadband/ [Accessed
3. Respond to this discussion
150 Words Minimum, provide direct questions if needed.
A#1: To reach a web page on the internet, the user should know the exact address of the URL. A new approach is to type in key words in the internet browser and various sites will appear so that he/she could choose which best matches what they are looking for. This way is much better and easier than the past of finding websites. I think this method was the best development of the internet. Equally, also known Web 2.0, made a big step ahead in the history of internet because "Web 2.0 creates users who actively participate in writing the content that they are viewing—hence the term “user-generated content" and also because ”Web 2.0 users not only interact with content; they also are given new and easy ways to create it" (Scheiner, Evan, 2013, p. 246). Another notable progress on the nearly new history of internet is web filtering. Filter narrow research to want exactly an user wants. Scheiner and Evans exaplains that "many search engines provide a way to search for the term “exports” in Web page titles and ignore pages in which the term appears in other parts of the page"(Scheiner, Evan, 2013, p. 163).
A#2: No. Westcott advocated that "women are at greater risk than men online, the report says, as “technology is also being used for harmful purposes, for example, to perpetrate online harassment and abuse, especially towards young women” (Westcott, 2015). Krogstad claimed that are social media preferences: the "photo-sharing site is more popular among Hispanic and black internet users than among white internet users", and bout one-third (34%) of online Hispanics use Instagram, as do 38% of blacks - by comparison, only 21% of whites use the network" (Krogstad, 2015).There are different webs for men and different webs for women. And it is normal to be like this. The webs for men are more or less the webs where men could find their own interests such as: technical webs, IT webs, cars webs, sport webs, porn webs, guns webs and so on. Women have webs addressed for them like: knitting, cooking, blogs about romantic books or/and movies, gardening, fashion, modeling house, children and so on. All web resources are valuable for many reasons, but the most important should be: learning something new.
Some people will say some web sites should be denied for everyone, which I agree if this is against the law. Even here, the argument of pros and cons exists. If in the European Union (which incorporates at least 28 countries with different cultures, governments and so on) it is legal to gamble online, in the US this is illegal. Seeing the other way around: if in US buying a gun by any person (with few exceptions) is legal, in the European Union (EU) this is illegal (unless you want a hunting gun). So in the end the normal question is: who is right: US - one country or EU - 28 countries? It won't be a clear yes or a clear no for each of them. For specific ethnicities there are specific web sites. An ethnic group is a group who has in common some values like language, religion, habits, and cultural traditions - definition could be extended. Based on the fact that some religions denied presence of women in their communities (in some ways), it is obvious women are less "present" on the internet. There are specific resources for different ethnic groups and also some limitations of them. One good example is Japan, which is a "closed" country. By "closed" country it should be understood Japan does not accept many immigrants. Based on that, it will be difficult to find muslim web resources on Japanese websites, but tons on Saudi Arabia websites.
A#3: For me, a good web site is Eurosport (https://uk.sports.yahoo.com/football/). I start by saying this is my personal option. My reasons are: I love soccer, soccer is more than a game it is a religion, especially when its the world championship - most activities are paralyzed (in some parts of the globe). Probably the best reason is the information and statistics which I can find there. The best websites for women (even I do not surf them) I guess there are fashion webs. But that option could be debatable, based on the simple axiom: what is good for me might not be good for you. If a woman likes fashion webs, especially clothes and shoes, another one could be addicted by trivia webs. Who is wrong and who is right?The web sites could vary based on many criteria such as age, culture, education, and many other factors. I found that http://www.paperdroids.com/cgi-sys/suspendedpage.cgi and I am thinking this is a good web for women. It has few pages like entertainment news, women articles, book reviews, home décor ideas, lifestyle articles, web comics, tech updates, which cover a large zone of interests for women. It looks like a news aggregation site, has a search engine, has links to other sites which have options to subscribe to news by email.
A#4: Health and medical web sites are good and bad at the same time. The good part of them rely on the fact you could make medical appointments, get information about medical centers such as to what are the medical services, hours of operating and so on. The bad part is there are many webs which provide false medical information mostly about losing weight or detox your body. Unfortunately, there are people who follow their directions and end up having more problems that they had before. The medical act should be performed in a medical institution, under qualified personnel and not by any person who has a magical solution regarding losing belly fat. Some webs don’t have an author and this should raise questions about how reliable that web could be. Even so, if a medical web posted pictures of the medical personnel (doctors and nurses) who will take care of you and the results are guaranteed, that it should be checked if the that doctor is a real doctor, if he/she has a medical diploma and so on.
A#5: Not everything on the internet is reliable or true. It is not a big deal to make a webpage(s) and put it on the internet. Do to that, it requires few basic skill. People are surfing internet mostly for new information, and most of the time they have little knowledge about a topic or another. Some webs will say that flower is blue and other will say it is only green. This will generate confusion. But more research on the internet about a certain subject could give a good idea about the topic which a person looking for, in spite the fact some sites give wrong information. I agree that internet is democratic. Anyone could make his/her own web site, everyone could express his/her opinion about a topic by agreeing or disagreeing. A theory is not 100% sure, or exact, but is a person or a group of person believe. Their believe could be true or not, or could be true for a period of time. A theory is not an universal pattern. Speaking about the theory regarding if internet is democratic or not, I could say internet is cvasi-democratic. There are few reasons:
- not everybody has the same speed for surfing internet, even they wish to,
- some countries banned access to the internet for their people (China, North Korea and others),
- surfing internet is not exactly 100% safe. There are filters who are using keywords and programs who generate reports about people using some webs. This could be seen as privacy violation.
A#6: URL #1:
https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/cyber
URL #2:
https://www.gao.gov/docsearch/topic.php
The impact of the first URL is there are people who want to harm other people for different reasons, that could be seen as the dark side of the internet. By clicking on each picture everyone could find details about that person and the reason why he is wanted. Anyone could the victim of these people. Yes, I learned that this list will never be empty because tomorrow there will be new names on that list. The impact from the second one is there are governmental agencies who try to keep a safe environment for internet directly and indirectly. I was surprised that the US Government Accountability Office has reports regarding all agencies in the US.
Mircea
References
Schneider, G., P., & Evans, J. (2013). The Internet. (9th). Course Technology, Cengage Learning (Ed.). Retrieved from https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781305332607/cfi/6/2!/4/6/24/2/2@0:2.09
Westcott, L. (March 6, 2015). Even the Internet can't escape the gender gap. Retrieved from http://www.newsweek.com/even-internet-cant-escape-gender-gap-312088
Krogstad, J., M. (February 3, 2015). Social media preferences vary by race and ethnicity. Retrieved from http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/02/03/social-media-preferences-vary-by-race-and-ethnicity/