Episode 3, The Cost of Free, expounded my knowledge on how Internet providers gain profit. I knew advertising was the answer but I never really knew the whole story. It didn’t come to my mind what happens after that. I was only seeing Adam’s finger in the puzzle that is The Creation. Little did I know, there’s so much more to it than I thought there is. All this time, I had been oblivious of the consequences when using the Internet.
I consider myself lucky enough to be part of the transition stage— from the oblivious Internet users to the soon-to-be-well-informed produsers. This now is the turning point of a new Internet age. From the classic html-based websites to the Java-applications that is popping anywhere. I’m glad this transition is happening. But this has got to happen rapidly.
The World Wide Web is changing the way we live. From the old-school family TV-time comes the new family time which composes of all the family members in one room facing a laptop and typing all the way into cyberspace. This happens in real life. It happened to my family. It reshapes friendships. It reshapes our approach to school. It reshaped almost everything. Everything is reachable. Everything is Google-able. This posts serious setbacks on our social and personal lives. More and more people spend more time on the Internet than spending time with real people hanging out in the offline world. Everyone is unknowingly becoming more impersonal by the day. We have let many people (especially corporations) invade our privacy without us knowing.
It reshapes learning. The Internet generation has been touted as the pancake generation. We have been labeled as the generation who no longer look into and know by heart one area of Interest but we are the people who spread ourselves too thinly in to various fields of interest. That is a reason why Einsteins, Shakespeares and Hemingways do not exist in today’s technological age.
Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach. I seriously think that Internet studies should be offered starting in the primary level education until tertiary levels (there should even be specialized courses too). I have cousins as young as 6 who can already surf through cartoonnetwork.com without parental help. Internet users are becoming younger and younger. This means that the people “sold” by Internet providers are becoming younger and younger, more naïve every year. We should start incorporating Internet studies into the educational system NOW This way, the people exploited using the Internet should decrease to zero. The solution here is not limiting Internet. The Internet isn’t the Internet if there are boundaries. The essence will be lost if that happens. The Internet should not be ceased otherwise—chaos. The World Wide Web should not have boundaries. You don’t burn the whole house in order to roast the pig. The answer here is proper usage and knowledge. Where to start but at the educational systems we already have? Controlling and regulating the Internet is also not the answer. A more complex issue arises—who will control and regulate it? The government? I don’t think so. (Think: Marcos era). So. Let’s. Get. Moving. Everyone should know the real face(s) of the Internet. This way, people are allowed to think for themselves and start acting themselves and start spreading the same message we are trying to communicate. Let the ripple effect continue. Pay it forward.
I have sources!
http://www.wisegeek.com/who-are-pancake-people.htm
I actually do agree with what you're trying to propose here. And I also think the Internet has rapidly changed the way we behave as humans. But, when you think about it, is the knowledge on the internet enough? Knowing that it's a growing world and it grows at rates unimaginable, how can we be so sure that whatever we know now is enough for us to educate the younger ones? And more importantly, does our country have the budget to include this in our education systems? All we can really do now is hope and do our part. :)
ReplyDelete-Jara Lucero