What is possible?

What is possible with the internet? The internet has given people an unprecedented opportunity to communicate and collaborate ideas. In most cases, the internet is no respecter of location as people from all over the world can meet in a virtual setting to discuss an idea, share information, etc. This has allowed for ancestry work to vastly increase. FamilyTree, a FamilySearch feature, is a somewhat new feature in this area. A spokesman for FamilySearch said the following:

The Family Tree feature hopes to create a collaborative, conclusion-based, online family tree system that allows anyone to make changes, explain why, and provide evidence for their conclusion.

Only the internet could allow for so many people to simultaneously find and gather information about their ancestors. It is a amazing what can be done with the internet!

Can we trust anything with technology?

Most of us that have some awareness of the news are aware that the government has used a lot of questionable practices to collect data about people. Today, I came across news article that points to another way the government is collecting data. Apparently, the NSA and British intelligence have teamed by sharing ways to collect data from phone apps. These apps include ones commonly used such as angry birds and various social media apps. Recently, a bunch of user information was taken from the Snapchat app. Though I do not believe that any data on the internet is completely safe, one thing that I think will increase the safety of our personal information is to use different passwords for apps on our phones, because phone apps seem to be more vulnerable.

The Great Equalizer

Imagine having a very important message that you want the entire world to know about as soon as possible. Imagine that you are responsible for bringing this piece of information to the world. Now imagine you must do it without technology. That tasks seems daunting and nearly insurmountable without technology. This is why I love technology. A specific aspect of technology that I would like to express an opinion about is the internet. To me, the internet is wonderful. Everyone, regardless of age, skin color, wealth, etc, has the vast information available one the internet available to them as well as the ability to speak their mind so that anyone is able to hear their voice. In this sense, the internet is a great equalizer, in that it gives all people a voice. In Neil Postman's talk he discusses five ideas about technological change. One idea that he presented is that the mass printing of the bible undermined the authority of the church hierarchy, I believe that technology today also gives more power to the people to voice their opinions and have a voice in society.

This is a blog I created for CS 404 class!