The Internet. I don’t even know what that word means. All I know is that ever since I was thirteen years old I’ve never had a day without it. Every day over a billion users around the world are online working, typing, reading, sending, subscribing, hacking, exploiting, gossiping, stalking, revealing and even committing crimes on the internet. The medium that is like no other, and many have defined as being completely neutral. It’s been called a safe-grounds, no man’s land, a utopia where any minority, any gender, any race could have a new identity, a new existence that could be incorporated into a variety of genres throughout the internet universe. What has become of interest is the question of how public or private the internet is? Millions of us who research, blog and use the resources put a lot of faith into the internet but there is still an ongoing battle between private and public interests. In some countries private is very dominant. One of the most well known being ‘The Great Firewall of China’, which gives the Chinese government authority to monitor and control their nations internet meaning any internet information entering or leaving China has to pass through government controlled gateways.
This is a matter of balancing the influence and effect of private sectors versus public sectors. The internet is now the ideal form of communication practically all throughout the world and as of lately has had influence on practically every national and international issue. Whether it is the interest of the public or private sectors and websites it seems that for the most part as of recently the public has won and has brought forth information and grounds that could not have been exposed unless on the internet. I know I don’t the whole truth of the internet and how free and open it is but I can say that for the most part I have put a lot of trust into the freedom internet over the past few years. After all someone groundbreaking truths have been revealed on the internet that could not have been revealed on any other medium.
When the film Zeitgeist was released it struck millions of people all around the world as a YouTube sensation and was one of the most notable films since Michael Moore’s infamous Fahrenheit 9/11. In its release in 2007, this was a very significant moment in the world of the internet. Since the attack of 9/11, the investigation as to what had exactly occurred during the suicide bombings was not thoroughly searched and millions of Americans had a naive idea as to what terrorist group was responsible. With religious beliefs and faith in Christianity came a lot of ignorance and prejudice towards other beliefs but Zeitgeist brought forth the facts that Christianity as a whole has many historic roots with other religions. It then came to terms with the United States economic system and unveiled what corruption played in the United States’ economic past. The reason why Peter Joseph became such a success for this film was that he boldly stated factual statements about the world through three very dangerous topics of discussion and did so through the safety of the internet, it was very audacious and such a work could have only been brought forward with the public access of the internet. Sites and social networking such as Google, Yahoo and YouTube are all internet capitalists but what is different between these internet capitalists and the media capitalists is that the information of the public is their lifeblood. A notable professor of semiotics Gunther Kress once stated. "Participation in public life and the power which that distributes depend on access to and mastery of the forms of writing". (Kress 46). The internet is a new medium that millions of us never foresaw, the connection to over a billion people all over the world open up new realms of information, communication and discovery but just like everything the internet does come with imperfections. Despite the new freedom of the internet people still have discretion and regards to people and social groups when posting or blogging and the internet has securities that vary all over the world. There will always be an ongoing battle between private and public territories on the World Wide Web but the freedom of speech will always exist.
Works Cited
- Kress, G 1998, 'Language as social practice', Communication and Culture: An Inroduction, University of New South Wales Press, Kensington
-Elgin, Bruce, and Bruce Einhorn. "BusinessWeek." BusinessWeek.com. 2006. McGraw Hill, Web. 23 Nov 2009.
-Eugene, Ian. "The World We Know Today." ianeugene-ddp.blogspot.com. 05/11/2007. Blogspot, Web. 23 Nov 2009.
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