Hi. Welcome to the blog for my IB English B class at Jur Hronec High School in Bratislava, Slovakia. Below you will find links to other websites and discussion questions. My students are required to comment on one of these postings every month and also respond to each other's comments. Feel free to add your two bits, but be aware that all comments are monitored before being posted.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
What if Helmholtz was an official government blogger?
This article is quite a propos given what we are reading at the moment. Does government and/or business interference in the realm of the internet concern you? What can be done about it? Is manipulation through the internet becoming too subtle for people to notice and fight against? Has the internet become mainly a tool for freedom or a tool for oppression?
The freedom of the Internet is one of our last freedoms we have. We have the feeling that the government is controlling every other aspect of our lives, that we are walking, talking, and sometimes even thinking like the government wants us, and that we cannot run away from it because in other countries there are just other governments that will make us do things they want us to do. Somehow the government got so deep into our minds we think there’s no other option but having one.
ReplyDeleteBut not online. There is no government online; we have the freedom to think and to write whatever we want, whether it is a news report about an uprising or a Glum/Sméagol fanfiction. We don’t feel threatened because of the anonymity Internet provides us, we don’t feel ashamed because it connects people with the same interests. Somehow the Internet provided us with what reality took away.
The need of a government to control us even online is understandable but not acceptable. Online is the last resort we’ve got to escape the reality, just like books were here for us before. In this aspect the government control of the Internet would have the same effect as burning books, which helped the government but most definitely didn’t make people happier.
Of course, not everything there is good. There are sites that support terrorism or sites that provide child pornography, but nobody should discriminate other users of the Internet just because of a few individuals that ruin it. It would be like closing all McDonald’s in the world because a few burgers caused food poisoning. That would never happen because McDonald’s is too profitable to close. The Internet, on the other hand, is almost for free, and there is no one except for us to fight for it.
@Kaja
DeletePersonally, I am of the same opinion as Kaja, and I think people have a right to freely express their beliefs on the internet. However, the government also have a right to regulate the content at a certain level. Like Kaja said, this mainly applies to the prevention against extremism, terrorism or other forms of undesired material. The regulation might be particularly useful, for example when considering the last year’s attacks in Norway. Long before the tragic events, Anders Breivik had published numerous articles or even a manifesto, involving his hatred towards different social groups in the country. The disaster could have been prevented, if the government had watched over the content and had taken the threats seriously.
Furthermore, I believe the internet still is a tool for freedom. It is way harder to manipulate through the internet than through other media, such as the television or radio broadcasts. The manipulation through the TV broadcasts in particular has been quite apparent in the recent weeks, in the time of the campaign for election. I might be biased, but it seemed that certain channels had only been promoting certain parties. In other words, there is limited room for independence and freedom of speech in these media. This is why freedom on the internet is essential, and why we cannot allow excess government control.