English 5365 Week Eleven Post
Topic: What is the dark side of the Web, and how does it play into your paper about style and technology?
According to Baron, the dark side of the web is "a space where pedophiles, misogynists, racists, anti-Semites, white supremacists, skinheads, holocaust deniers, Ku Klux Klan members, survivalists, violent opponents of abortion, and antigovernment militias gather to promote their particular brands of evil" (pp 207-208). We can add Internet fraud, child pornography, and a host of other things to that list. While Internet fraud and child pornography are subject to laws that enact punishments because they are illegal, many other things on that list are protected by the First Amendment. Baron does not advocate banning these sites. If he did, it would be a bit hypocritical since he adds censorship of the web by governments, such as China, to his description of the dark side of the web. We cannot censor it, but we should be aware of how to combat its influences on our children, by education and rational discussion.
Unless one counts someone hacking into a publisher's system and stealing unpublished work or authors assuming that anything downloaded from the web in the in the public domain, the dark side of the web had little impact on my job or even my daily life. I know to delete phishing e-mails and I have virus and spam filters. My employer has an extremely annoying program to block dangerous sites that will more often than not block useful sites as well. It once blocked Merriam-Webster's site. Imagine how annoyed an office full of technical editors were to find that they could not access the "approved" dictionary for our business.
I may need to install some kind of blocking software at home because my 6 year-old stepson stumbled onto some sites that he should not have. I asked him, "What are you looking at?" He says, with a panicked, confused expression, "I don't know!"
I also don't yet see the dark side of the web playing into my paper; though, that may change as I get farther in my research and exploration.
According to Baron, the dark side of the web is "a space where pedophiles, misogynists, racists, anti-Semites, white supremacists, skinheads, holocaust deniers, Ku Klux Klan members, survivalists, violent opponents of abortion, and antigovernment militias gather to promote their particular brands of evil" (pp 207-208). We can add Internet fraud, child pornography, and a host of other things to that list. While Internet fraud and child pornography are subject to laws that enact punishments because they are illegal, many other things on that list are protected by the First Amendment. Baron does not advocate banning these sites. If he did, it would be a bit hypocritical since he adds censorship of the web by governments, such as China, to his description of the dark side of the web. We cannot censor it, but we should be aware of how to combat its influences on our children, by education and rational discussion.
Unless one counts someone hacking into a publisher's system and stealing unpublished work or authors assuming that anything downloaded from the web in the in the public domain, the dark side of the web had little impact on my job or even my daily life. I know to delete phishing e-mails and I have virus and spam filters. My employer has an extremely annoying program to block dangerous sites that will more often than not block useful sites as well. It once blocked Merriam-Webster's site. Imagine how annoyed an office full of technical editors were to find that they could not access the "approved" dictionary for our business.
I may need to install some kind of blocking software at home because my 6 year-old stepson stumbled onto some sites that he should not have. I asked him, "What are you looking at?" He says, with a panicked, confused expression, "I don't know!"
I also don't yet see the dark side of the web playing into my paper; though, that may change as I get farther in my research and exploration.
posted by Jessica Badger at
2:42 PM
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