Republic of the Philippines

LAGUNA STATE POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY

Los Baos Campus
Los Baos, Laguna

A TERM PAPER
ON
MISUNDERSTANDING IN THE
INTERNET

In Partial of Fulfilment
Of the Requirements in
Computer Operating System and Applications
For the Degree Master of Arts in Education
Major in Physical Education

By

CHEM JAYDER M. CABUNGCAL

April 2017

PART I
Introduction
 The growth of the internet has been spectacular. There are now more
1.5 billion internet users across the globe, about one quarter of the worlds
population. This is certainly a new phenomenon that is of enormous
significance for the economic, political and social life of contemporary
societies. Misunderstanding the Internet is a polemical, sociologically
and historically informed textbook that aims to challenge both popular
myths and existing academic orthodoxies around the internet.

In Misunderstanding the Internet, three authors from Goldsmiths,

University of London, set out to debunk the prevailing utopian- libertarian
view of the Internet, and its purported transformational power over society.

It offers a correctional antidote to excessive claims for the Internets

revolutionary potential to create a new digital economy and new digital
society. Having undone this misunderstanding, they go on to create an
essential guide arguably the essential guide to understanding the
Internets relationship to the economy, society, and polity at large.

It has been produced in an environment that may contain traces of

Marxism. This is not a criticism: a central and valid (Marxist) theme is that
power matters, and that the Internet is equally adept at amplifying power
and inequality as it is at flattening or bypassing them. Internet technology is
neither inherently democratic nor despotic, but has an effect that is largely,
if not entirely, driven by the context into which it is deployed. Everything that
really matters is path-dependent, not technologically-predefined.

The book is divided into three parts, which in turn explore the history
and sociopolitical context of the Internet; its direct relationship to economic
and political sources of power, and how new social media enable (or hinder)
engagement with those sources of power in order to foster opposition to the
status quo.

In the first part of the book, James Curran demolishes the four pillars of
the temple of received Internet wisdom: that the Internet transforms the
economy, promotes global understanding, rejuvenates democracy, and lastly
fosters a renaissance of journalism. Instead, the Internet era is marked by
the increasing market power of existing large corporations, and intense
market concentration of e-commerce platforms. A Tower of Babel separates
us into linguistic islands, and no machine translation can bridge the cultural
channels separating them.
Democracy is, if anything, designed to give voice to the weak and powerless:
the Internet broadly fails to achieve this due to educational and economic
barriers. Journalism remains concentrated within existing media structures,
with the attention economy firmly reinforcing old hierarchies of visibility and
reach. The picture is not uniformly dismal, and Curran picks out notable
examples where there have been significant (albeit less than
transformational) impacts on politics and society.

This is followed by a re-telling of the Internets history, taking particular

care not to anchor it in a purely Westernized framing. First steps are fateful:
the Internet was the product of an unholy alliance between academics and
the military both seeking to evade central control for diametrically
opposing reasons. The Internet was never set on path towards democratic
empowerment and engagement.

We are reminded that an essential enabling technology the Web

was a product of a European public service ethos. The subsequent
commercialization of the Internet has turned it into a mass- surveillance and
tracking system. Those adhering to loftier ideals of openness and
transparency in software have met with limited success. The Internets
supposed role in revolutions and the release of women from repression is
mostly marginal, and often regressive. Curran concludes that society exerts,
in general, a greater influence on the Internet than the other way round.
This should come as no surprise, as the same thing happened when
newspapers emerged.

Turning attention toward the self-anointed carriers of the Internet

zeitgeist, Des Freedman writes a devastating critique of the self-organizing,
distance-transcending, scarcity-ignoring hype. This disintermediated world of
peer-production by nonhierarchical organizations certainly exists but it is
counterpointed by a far greater increase in the efficiency and power of
existing capitalist modes of ownership and production. Creativity and culture
are commodified; the gift and attention economy are subsumed by systems
of the cash profit economy. Employees of modern Internet giants perform
intellectual labors under terms a medieval guild worker would reject. The
new gatekeepers of aggregation and attention have a dominance that the
old gatekeepers could only dream of.
 Freeman follows this with a review of how the Internet is regulated.
Whilst acknowledging the insights of Lessig, Benkler, and Zittrain, he rejects
the idea that the Internet transcends or evades national sovereign
structures. Self-regulatory bodies tend to be weak or captured by corporate
interests.

The centralization of power through intermediaries makes the Internet

receptive to existing state regulatory systems, even if those tend to conceive
of people as consumers rather than citizens. Only democratic and
representative states have both the means and legitimacy to regulate the
Internet.

Concluding the main body of the book, Natalie Fenton makes an

excellent case against the politically transformative power of social media.
These services are the sucrose and saccharin of the digital world: attractive
but lacking life-nourishing power for society as a whole. Systems of mass
self-communication are structured subtly to serve the advertising and
commercial ends of their owners. This cultural capitalism rewards the
accumulation of contacts and information by private organizations with little
thought to civic engagement issues. Small organizations have small voices,
and protest tends towards invisibility. Fenton plausibly argues that social
media will replicate and entrench inequalities, and that it is a mistake to
assume that networks are inherently liberatory.

In a highlight of the book, Fenton goes on to describe how social media

reinforces political fragmentation and inhibits solidarity among the
disenfranchised, whilst providing an illusion of direct control through self-
expression. The revolution will neither be televised nor socially mediated.

Finally, the book ends with a jointly authored prescription of the what
that needs to occur to realize a more just and inclusive digitally-mediated
society. The prescription is for institution- building to re-balance the power of
state and corporate interests with those of civil society and the public at
large. It would, regrettably, have been a more powerful call to action if the
book had stopped three paragraphs earlier, leaving the how to be
considered elsewhere. The proposals for new Internet taxes feel under-
developed and mis-targeted.

If there is a philosophical criticism to be leveled at the premise of the

book, it is that it may unwittingly fall into the same trap as the targets of its
critique, while implicitly assuming that we should be seeing substantive
change in Internet time. When Chinas Premier Chou En Lai was asked in
1972 whether the French Revolution had been a good thing or a bad thing,
he replied, Its too early to tell. Likewise, the digital revolution has only just
begun to truly reshape society and the economy.

In Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital, Carlota Perez

presents a compelling model of how these revolutions unfold. They begin
with an installation period of three generations, during which the basic
technology is developed.
For the information technology and communications revolution, this
corresponds broadly to the period since the transistor was invented in 1947.
This is followed by a turning point of around ten years, which includes a
financial bubble and crash. Thereafter, society and the economy reconfigure
around the new technology, and a golden age emerges. This later
deployment period is similarly around 70 years in length.

Nonetheless, this much-needed book is well timed, well researched,

and well argued. It should be considered essential reading for students of
media and the political economy of the digital era. It is also highly relevant to
policymakers, as well as a rewarding and challenging read for a wider
informed and interested audience. Indeed, it provoked a storm of note-taking
and idea-making for this reviewer, all of which exceeds the space available
to recount here. Therefore I hope you take that as a prompt to engage with
this valuable and timely contribution to our (mis)understanding of the
information society.

PART II
You Couldnt Make It Up: The Dangers of Misunderstanding the
Power of the Internet

The internet can make people that wouldnt have necessarily become
famous, worldwide superstars, one news story can become a trending topic
on one of the most widely known social mediums in a matter of hours, and
relationships, jobs and sanity can all be taken with one click of a button.

Here are some funny, sad and downright stupid examples of why the
Internet must be used wisely.

Facebook: The number one passion killer.

 Since the arrival of Facebook and the word got around, its since
overtaken Google as the most visited website in the world. For the most part,
people use it for chatting, the occasional profile snoop and of course,
organizing intimate social events in the wide open space of the worldwide
web.

Unfortunately, some people have decided that theyd rather use the
website to pick up dates, which is fine; except when they are already In a
Relationship.

Recent studies have shown that many marriages have ended in divorce
due to Facebook infidelity. Whether its by finding previous love interests or
simply striking up new ones by Poking Loling or Liking, the truth is the
number of people thinking they are being discreet (again by using the World
Wide Web) are rudely mistaken. Private messages and outright flirting via
Facebook has decreased trust within relationships and increased the legal
fees for divorce lawyers.

So, next time you wish to Poke the boy from school who always had
lovely blue eyes and borrowed a pencil from you in Maths, think of your
partner on the sofa next to you, probably snoring, farting or both, and
perhaps weigh up whether its really worth it?

The YouTube Success: Leave the Camera Alone!!

You may not know the names Chris Crocker, or the kid from Trois-
Rivieres, Quebec, or even Harry and Charlie. But I bet if I mentioned Leave
Britney Alone!, Star Wars Kid and Charlie bit my finger! youd all know
exactly what videos I was talking about.

As annoying it is to know who these people are, they prove outright

what power the internet has over the destiny of some people in the world.
Whether or not you yourself have seen these videos, youll most certainly
have heard someone talking about them; most likely from watching Channel
4s RudeTube.
 The sad thing is, they havent just had their 15 minutes of fame they
are online for life. So next time you think about uploading a video or your
friend skateboarding with a firework in his back pocket, maybe just rethink
about the consequences and keep in mind the mental affect this will have on
your future children.

Call a Doctor: Or just get an online Medical diagnosis

Even if you are normally a rational person in everyday life, finding

something abnormal on your body may spur irrational panic. Unfortunately,
this is where every computer should be buried and never dug back up.

Sadly more often than not the first thing people do is log on, type in
the abnormality and self-diagnose their rash, lump or spot; often with
frightening consequences.

Whether you know of a reliable website or not, the internet is the

worst place to turn when calmness is required; its likely to provoke the
complete opposite. If you are ever in doubt in regards to your health, go old
school and pick up the phone, make a doctors appointment or if in a real
emergency, get down A&E rather than relying on Wikipedia.

Email: To, CC, BCC and downright foolishness.

Weve all done it. Sent an email to the wrong person and then sent a
follow up email explaining that weve sent it to the wrong person; just in case
they didnt know.

However, there has been recent news in the UK of two men being
suspended from their place of work due to emails regarding one of their
female flat mates.

Harry and Sebastian swapped emails discussing Jenni, the ex-girlfriend

and current flat mate of Harry. Sebastian was interested in dating Jenni and
was finding out if Harry would mind. Unfortunately Harry CCd Jenni in on the
emails in which he used offensive language to describe her and the fact they
didnt get on.
 As with everything online, it didnt take much for this to then go viral
which then led to the suspension.

Lesson learnt; if you dont want the whole world to know what you
think of someone dont put it in black and white.

PART III
The Internet: a powerful resource if you know how to use it

We have all heard the buzz: How the Internet has changed the world;
how social networks are allowing young people to voice their aspirations and
organize to bring real changes on the ground; and how the developing world
is awash in mobile phones and hyper-connected youngsters.

Yes, many possibilities have opened up, even in remote parts of the
world, because of the Internet. Recently I was in the mountain town of
Phaplu, forced to stay way longer than expected, due to weather related
airline delays. Yet the (albeit terribly slow) Internet connection ensured I
could be somewhat productive.

But I had never paused to think about the value of my ability to

harness the Internet, or the process by which I had acquired it, until I saw my
friend having difficulties with that process. She is navigating applications to
the United States for a higher education degree. She is more privileged than
most, graduating from a prestigious medical school in Nepal, and having
constant access to the Internet at home.

Yet, until her graduate school application process, she had never used
the Internet as a resource that could help further her education or career. For
her, it was a way to connect with friends and relatives on Facebook (nothing
wrong with that) and a place to watch funny videos, or play games.

I realized that many in Nepal look for study-abroad opportunities

through higher education consultancies that charge hefty fees, in part
because they are unaware that this information is available on those
universities websites, for FREE.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that learning how to use
the Internet as a resource was almost like learning a language -- it required
immersion and from the familiarity that makes me recognize subtle cues that
help me see whether a site is credible.

Conclusion

The Internet has had an enormous impact on education, economic,

society and everyday life, streamlining access to information and making it
easier for individuals to learn.

The Internet has also made access to information and communication

far easier. Rather than searching the library, users can access vast amounts
of information from home computers. Internet access has a huge impact on
businesses, allowing employees to work remotely from home and
communicate more efficiently.

Even healthcare is another field greatly affected by the advent of the

Internet. Whether you know of a reliable website or not, the internet is the
worst place to turn when calmness is required; its likely to provoke the
complete opposite.

Politics and government are another area in which the Internet is

important. Government organizations use the Internet to improve
organization and communication, and voters can go online to gain more
information about current issues.

However, the use of social media platforms to bully individuals is one

of the worst aspects of the Internet. The Internet allows people to publish
anonymously harmful comments that they might not say in person. In
addition, the Internet allows people to impersonate other people or create an
online persona with the intention of committing a crime.

Another negative aspect of the Internet is that it facilitates the spread

of private pictures and information. This is something that especially affects
teens and children.

The Internet also allows people to self-diagnose medical conditions,

which is not always in a person's best interests. Because the Internet is full of
false information, researching medical information online can have severe
consequences.
 Lastly, the Internet facilitates fraud. Fake websites often are used to
lure people into providing sensitive information used to steal identities.

References:
http://www.martingeddes.com/book-review-misunderstanding-the-internet/

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/dangers-of-misunderstanding-the-
power-of-theinternet/29301/

http://blogs.worldbank.org/youthink/internet-powerful-resource-if-you-know-
how-use-it

https://www.google.com.ph/search?
q=tips+to+avoiding+problems+using+internet&rlz