Thursday, September 11, 2008

privacy is privacy

To me an issue that goes along with dignity has to be respect. Your dignity is upheld or destroyed according to the amount of respect people have for you. The respect that you have from people is something that you work for, you earn it. Ones dignity that has been gained throughout their life can be destroyed by one incidence that make people loose their respect for them.
I am speaking from experience because unfortunately I learnt the hard way that people always notice the bad in someone but and are quick to forget the good.
Recently there was an incident were my privacy was invaded. I had things that were very private on my student drive but someone invaded my private space and took what was supposed to be personal and private and made it public for everyone. When that happened people became very judgmental and came to their own conclusions. Yes my dignity was affected very badly!
But in that experience I have learnt that in life there are challenges that will try to bring you down as an person and affect your dignity but what is important is how you handle the situation because handling this in an decent, humble and respectful way makes you an dignified person.


IS THE INTERNET DEMOCRATIC?


According to Becky Hogge the internet is loosing its democracy. “Internet is starting to look more like a tool of control, not one of freedom.” (Hogge, 2007) This is happening as censorship and content filtering increases amongst countries. This was discovered by the ONI Open Net Initiative a joint initiative with the goal to monitor and report on the internet filtering and surveillance by nations. Countries studied are blocking different types of content in a variety of areas – political, social, human or minority rights and internal conflicts.
In 1994 the vice president Al Gore of United States used the metaphor an “information superhighway” to refer to the internet. Claiming that "The Global Information Infrastructure ...will circle the globe with information superhighways on which all people can travel. These highways ...will allow us to share information, to connect, and to communicate as a global community.
This was not a good choice of metaphor because people (citizens) have seen the opposite of this. “Traffic jams, accidents, the disintegration of post-WW II infrastructures.”(Druick, 1995).
I think yes the internet is democratic. But at the same time I feel that censorship is important and necessary I say this because since the internet is open for everyone people are free to say anything that they want to say people sometimes abuse that privilege People end up being exposed to hate speech, more especially in politics. Because everyone uses the internet children are exposed to pornography. So I disagree with Becky when he says that the internet is loosing its democracy I think it is being filtered for all the bad and unnecessary and what is being left is the content that is “clean”, helpful.

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