Internet: The Downfall of Humanity
The Internet has a lot of valuable information on it, and can be a very beneficial tool to the world. I use the Internet a lot. However, I wish the Internet didn't exist. Despite all the positive things it has done for society, I feel that it is doing a lot of harm and will only continue to get worse. My areas of concern are as follows:
Ease of Information Leading to Armchair Experts - Before the Internet if you wanted to learn about something, you had to get your hands dirty. You had to go to the library and read books, consult experts in the field, attend events, etc. Now, anyone can to a basic keyword search, or skim a wiki article and come out acting like an expert on the subject, when they really don't even know the depth of it having not put in the real world legwork. This leads to poor execution and inflated egos. Knowledge has been exploited.
The Devaluing of Media - Pirated music and movies are wildly available online, and nothing can stop them being transmitted. Why save up and buy a CD and support the artist, when you can download a compressed bootleg for free? Why pay money for blueray, when you can stream the latest blockbuster on your two inch I-Touch screen? Not only do these items hurt artists and yield inferior product quality, but it leads to a saturation of accessible media. Because there is so much intangible media available at all times, many people simply download album after album indiscriminately without actually taking the time to anticipate and digest the content. The hard work of media production is becoming trivialized. The current generation is developing a media entitlement complex without actually having appreciation for the individual works themselves.
Keyboard Warrior Syndrome - Everyone's a tough guy behind a computer screen. People spend more time calling each other fags and suggesting that other people kill themselves than they actually spent having productive conversations. It's gotten to the point where mean-spirited net humor has become the happenin' thing to do. Someone disagree with you online? Let's cyber-stalk them and raid all their personal information online so we can ruin their lives. Heard about a kid dying in the news? Let's email the parents and tell them how funny it is that their kid is dead then laugh about it on a message board! Not only is this online conduct appalling, but it is my beleif that as generation Y is pretty much raised by technology, the future generation of people will only become more and more impolite and cruel in real life. It's amazing how impersonal media destroys courtesy.
Destruction of Privacy - While it is good that search engines are so thorough in their history searches, I find it a little disturbing that literally everything anyone ever does at any point online during their lifespan with be stored, transferred, or cached online forever for anyone one to see. If a picture or video were to leak online and pick up interest, it is impossible to every fully truly remove it from the Net, no matter how many organizations you have working to take it down. The Internet is more powerful than us all.
Annihilation of Attention Spans - The constant multitask, multitab, skip forward, skim through, change click click style of the Internet has cut down the actual attention spans of human beings. People only read the first few sentences, or watch the first few seconds of a video before they form their opinions. People used to watch whole movies to show friends "this one funny part", now they just watch the shortest version of the clip they can find online. People used to blog, now they only Tweet. As much as I hate to admit it, I find that I even have a hard time sitting through longs movies and reading long articles because of the way the Internet has reshaped my mind.
Outdating Everything Too Quickly - The Internet is quickly evolving. Like...really quickly. So much so, that I think people lose focus of what matters because everyone is so concerned about add bells and whistles and new versions left and right. I think this is very confusing and unnecessary to have to constantly learn new interfaces and technology at such an accelerated rate. I got my degree in Marketing just barely two years ago, and I'm pretty sure almost everything I learned is obsolete; standardized operating systems have changed (twice), print media is damn near dead, social media marketing is seemingly all that matters right now (the term was never even mentioned in my college years).
The Internet will continue to become larger and more ruthless as time continues. Save us all.
Ease of Information Leading to Armchair Experts - Before the Internet if you wanted to learn about something, you had to get your hands dirty. You had to go to the library and read books, consult experts in the field, attend events, etc. Now, anyone can to a basic keyword search, or skim a wiki article and come out acting like an expert on the subject, when they really don't even know the depth of it having not put in the real world legwork. This leads to poor execution and inflated egos. Knowledge has been exploited.
The Devaluing of Media - Pirated music and movies are wildly available online, and nothing can stop them being transmitted. Why save up and buy a CD and support the artist, when you can download a compressed bootleg for free? Why pay money for blueray, when you can stream the latest blockbuster on your two inch I-Touch screen? Not only do these items hurt artists and yield inferior product quality, but it leads to a saturation of accessible media. Because there is so much intangible media available at all times, many people simply download album after album indiscriminately without actually taking the time to anticipate and digest the content. The hard work of media production is becoming trivialized. The current generation is developing a media entitlement complex without actually having appreciation for the individual works themselves.
Keyboard Warrior Syndrome - Everyone's a tough guy behind a computer screen. People spend more time calling each other fags and suggesting that other people kill themselves than they actually spent having productive conversations. It's gotten to the point where mean-spirited net humor has become the happenin' thing to do. Someone disagree with you online? Let's cyber-stalk them and raid all their personal information online so we can ruin their lives. Heard about a kid dying in the news? Let's email the parents and tell them how funny it is that their kid is dead then laugh about it on a message board! Not only is this online conduct appalling, but it is my beleif that as generation Y is pretty much raised by technology, the future generation of people will only become more and more impolite and cruel in real life. It's amazing how impersonal media destroys courtesy.
Destruction of Privacy - While it is good that search engines are so thorough in their history searches, I find it a little disturbing that literally everything anyone ever does at any point online during their lifespan with be stored, transferred, or cached online forever for anyone one to see. If a picture or video were to leak online and pick up interest, it is impossible to every fully truly remove it from the Net, no matter how many organizations you have working to take it down. The Internet is more powerful than us all.
Annihilation of Attention Spans - The constant multitask, multitab, skip forward, skim through, change click click style of the Internet has cut down the actual attention spans of human beings. People only read the first few sentences, or watch the first few seconds of a video before they form their opinions. People used to watch whole movies to show friends "this one funny part", now they just watch the shortest version of the clip they can find online. People used to blog, now they only Tweet. As much as I hate to admit it, I find that I even have a hard time sitting through longs movies and reading long articles because of the way the Internet has reshaped my mind.
Outdating Everything Too Quickly - The Internet is quickly evolving. Like...really quickly. So much so, that I think people lose focus of what matters because everyone is so concerned about add bells and whistles and new versions left and right. I think this is very confusing and unnecessary to have to constantly learn new interfaces and technology at such an accelerated rate. I got my degree in Marketing just barely two years ago, and I'm pretty sure almost everything I learned is obsolete; standardized operating systems have changed (twice), print media is damn near dead, social media marketing is seemingly all that matters right now (the term was never even mentioned in my college years).
The Internet will continue to become larger and more ruthless as time continues. Save us all.