A Reflective Essay on the Risks Connected with the Internet and Connectivity

During a program called "Data to Decisions the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency-_DARPA--began to evaluate computer programs that were made to look through information stored and traded through the internet. They believed that by piecing the information found on the internet together, they may be able to predict terrorist attacks and other invents that are of interest to the military. In the 1960's computers were big and slow according to today's standards. About twenty years later, Tim Berners-Lee made it possible for scientists all over the world to share and link documents. This allowed discrete networks to communicate with one another across the World Wide Web.

In the early 00's libraries were able to become digitized and made available for everyone who could access the internet. Wikipedia began to harness collective knowledge. Medical researchers were even using the internet to control clinical trials. Blogs also became popular around this era, as more people had wider topics to discuss on the internet. One of the arguments posed here is that many of the world's population has lived through this era. This meaning, that they knew nothing before the invention of global internet and connectivity. The internet arrived rather unexpectedly and has now become a defining feature of human advancement.

However, in 1998, when the company, Google, was established, everything was changed with the way information was collected. This most importantly changed how we value the information found on the internet. What lies beneath the simple query entered into a search engine are advertisers and marketers looking to harbor your information to make money. Internet users were not aware that the line from commerce to surveillance turned out to be short and straight (Halpern 3). With the introduction of social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, people began to make the private aspects of their life a little more public. Information that would otherwise be kept within the family was broadcasted online for everyone to see. Some users may think that they information they are sharing is just going to their closest friends and family. This, in fact, is false because everything you do in cyberspace leaves a trail (Halpern 3).

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The second and last argument posed here is that we have become so called "puppets" of the internet. We are funding big businesses and rather small businesses without even knowing it. Our personal information can be sold to advertisers for less than a cent and those advertisers can make much more money based off of your information. Sites like Facebook and Gmail are able to read your personal emails to create advertisements that may tailor to your interests. The internet has indifferently changed how we value information given to us and the information that we give to others. It is easier to reach those people that you thought were so far away. The internet is all across the globe and has brought people from many different countries together. There is so much useful, entertaining, inspiring, information, lucrative, and fun things on the internet (Halpern 6).

Halpern states at the end of this article that we have somehow willingly helped to create the greatest surveillance system ever imagined. The internet gives the government and businesses endless opportunities to use the information they have collected from other users. Metaphorically they are pulling our strings because we are the puppets. In an interview that I conducted with a friend, they stated that they had no idea about the complexity of the internet. It's hard to think of the internet in such a way that is bad for us since this generation has grown up to only know this. Sue Halpern being an older woman has witnessed more of the details of the advancement of global connectivity. Our generation does not have the capacity to garner the advancements of the internet since we have only seen from the establishment of Google and what is yet to come.

Reading this article has opened my eyes to begin to learn about the internet in depth. It's something I have grown up with and I know nothing else. While it being something that I grew up with, the ignorance still lies in between me and the internet. There are so many more things to think about when using the internet. The article is not a warning to scare off users, but it really does make you think how the internet really does work.

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