Internet/ more harm than good?

[Nebulous]

The Internet is a network connecting computers across the world. It has its origins in military and academic projects dating back to the 1960s, but began to be more widely available from the end of the 1980s. The creation of the World Wide Web (1989) and web browsers (early 1990s) gave ordinary people easy ways of getting around the Internet. Over the past fifteen years, millions of different websites have been set up, giving people the chance to shop, do business, play, learn and communicate online. Over the same period it has become much easier, cheaper and faster to get online in order to do these things.

Now more than 30% of the global population have access to the Internet. Continent-wise, this breaks down as: Europe: 58.3%, North America 78.3%, Latin America 36.2%, Africa 11.4%, Asia 23.8% and Oceania 60.1%.[1] These figures are growing all the time, as technology designed to access the Internet becomes both more mobile and much cheaper to produce. The arrival of the Internet has vastly changed the way in which people search and access information. News travels more quickly than ever, and current affairs can be discussed all over the world instantaneously via forums, blogs, and social networks. Search engines like Google and Wikipedia have now become ubiquitous starting points for researching anything from minor queries to academic reports. Many people also maintain social links through the Internet with services such like Facebook, Skype, and Flickr, to name but a few. Research in the UK has shown that the average adult spends around 22 hours 15 minutes online each month.[2]

Some believe the Internet is dominating the lives of its users. Nicholas Carr in his book The Shallows: How the Internet is Changing the Way we Think, Read and Remember,[3] that all this time spend online cannot be healthy, whereas other have cheered the increased possibilities for research, meeting new people and keeping in contact with one another. The strongly contested debate remains as to whether the internet is an active force for good in society or not.

[1] Miniwatts Marketing Group, World Internet Usage and Population Statistics. 2011.
[2] BBC News, Britons Spend Nearly ‘One Day a Month Online’, 2010.
[3] Carr. The Shallows: How the Internet is Changing the Way we Think, Read and Remember. 2010
Source: http://idebate.org/debatabase/debates/science-technology/house-believes-internet-brings-more-harm-good

Your thoughts? Does the internet bring more harm than good?

 

[DrLeftover]

Several years ago, in the 1990's in fact, an old woman who worked in an office I was working out of said, and I believe this to be an exact quote:

"The Internet is nothing but dirty pictures and the space shuttle."

To a large degree, she was right.

Porn is the reason you can see ANY image on the thing, and the space program (with the input of various universities and the military) is the reason it exists at all.

 

[Dee]

I don't agree that it brings more harm than good. It's a mere tool to use when searching for information, meaning data stored in certain locations that is generally accessible to the public on a network.

It's what PEOPLE put on it and what PEOPLE search for when harm comes into the picture. The internet didn't magically come into existence with porn or gore or rape or...whatever else is on it. I think we need to learn how to use it, learn how to regulate it on an individual level (meaning inside the home, parents need to monitor it, etc). This will help to ensure the internet doesn't become an issue of domination in someone's life. It's like anything else you can get addicted to: video games, sex, alcohol, exercising, food. You do everything in moderation and you make sure you use the internet smartly for your benefit, not as a tool to harm yourself or anyone else.

 

[DrLeftover]

Thank you for a perfect lead in to the answer I gave her:

The Internet is a Tool. Nothing more, nothing less. You would not give a nine year old a circular saw and send him out into the back yard to play would you? If you did, he MIGHT build you a picnic table. But it is a damned sight more likely that you will get to see what's in the four year old magazines in your local hospital's ER waiting room.

 

[Dee]

The internet is inanimate. It exists in the form of a global system of interconnected computer systems of and from various sources. How can it be argued it's the internet's fault these people decided typing out certain (if not all) words was just too much trouble? That's the people's fault. You don't see me typn lyk dis, so not everyone is a complete and utter lazy moron. If anything, we should look at ourselves on an individual level and on the whole as a culture and a society for blame. It is people who abused this tool. It is people who are the root cause of a lot of things, and abuse of this tool is one of them.

 

[DrLeftover]

Exactly.

I've used the Latin motto "Abusus non tollit usum" on my 'adult' site for several years for precisely that reason.

http://bruthadeep.com/f3/abusus.htm