Wired Politics :: Internet Web Cyberspace Essays

The Internet is a unique global communications strong point used today by billions of people all over the world. It is the comparable observation of Steve Case, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of America Online as reported in the article titled AOL Chairman Web Shapes Politics, by Eun-Kyung Kim, an associated press writer for the Los Angeles Times. Steve Case stated that the Internet plays the role of a catalyst for real social and political change in a worldwide scale. One of its great strengths is the ease with which it spans the globe. Information flows as effortlessly from Washington to Russia as from hotshot building to another in naked-made York, and through five or more countries all in one day. No one can imagine that five years ago, the orb Wide Web barely existed and that e was just the fifth garner of the alphabet. Case predicted that the times have changed and that the next U.S. president will tack the Internet Century and that it is the presidents job to di spatch sure the era helps make lives better around the world. Case emphasized the importance of reinventing the giving medications policies on results impact by a newly connected nation. Free expression on the Internet, if protected and maintained, enhances democracy, culture and economy not just in the linked States but also in a global scale. The Internet is a democratizing medium, uniquely suited to the promotion of human rights, but threatened by governmental restrictions. These observations by Steve Case can be compared to Jon Katz article, The Netizen Birth of a Digital Nation, where they both shared the same opinion on the issue concerning the publics right to know about information collected, disseminated and maintained by the government in order to increase public accountability and awareness. Unfortunately, in the united States, domestic policies have not been fully supportive of these rights. The US relation back has enacted censorship legislation attempting to cont rol the content on the Internet and lay out the freedom of communication through the Communications Decency Act of 1996. Fortunately for the new digital nation, these laws have been ruled unconstitutional by the courts yet members of sexual congress continue to press other restrictive measures and proposals. Both Case and Katz guess that government-mandated use of blocking and filtering can restrict freedom of expression and bound access to information. Katz emphasized freedom on the Internet more than anything on his article.