The Internet Tells All

guardian.co.uk

The world is an internet forum
Racial and sexual insults? Death threats for voting for healthcare reform? It's the kind of thing that happens every day online

Colin Horgan
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 27 March 2010 11.00 GMT

By now we've all heard of the protesters shouted racial and sexual epithets at some House Democrats as they made their way to hear President Obama speak to his party this weekend to encourage them to pass the healthcare reform bill. Emanuel Cleaver was apparently spat on, Barney Frank was called a faggot, and John Lewis was called the N-word. And on Wednesday, CBS released some of the messages left for Bart Stupak, calling him, among other things, "a baby-killing motherfucker" for his decision to support the healthcare bill that President Obama signed into law on Monday. At least 10 members of Congress have received death threats.

I hardly find this surprising. Not because I'm a liberal, and not because I feel that these people are the crazy fringe elements of the world looking for a place to vent. And not because we saw it last summer at the town hall meetings. I'm not surprised because our tactile, physical world has become like the internet, and this kind of thing is normal there (here).

In Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan explains that, "The 'message' of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs." It's the thought process behind his famous assertion that "the medium is the message". In other words, McLuhan said, something like the railway (the medium, or "extension of ourselves") didn't introduce humans to the idea of transportation, but rather altered human perceptions and functions as they related to distance, leisure, and work...link to complete article

Giving Yourself Away on the Web

Everybody is on Facebook these days. I was asked so many times I finally joined. Yet, I don't have time to check it often. Usually I only log in when someone leaves me a message.

Now that I came back from Buenos Aires, I changed most of my passwords. I am not sure this does much good, but at least I feel I am doing something. Having a Mac also helps me feel somewhat more secure.

The sad thing is that the web is a giant history book that is tracking everything we do. I have nothing to hide, but it still feels creepy to think that a detailed record of my life is traveling all over cyberspace.

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New York Times

Editorial Notebook

Time to be Afraid of the Web?

by EDUARDO PORTER

Published: August 27, 2009

Internet users used to comfort themselves by thinking that to become victims of the pirates of the Web, they had to frequent the online porn circuit or respond to an e-mail from the widowed wife of the former central bank governor of Nigeria. The idea was that one had to do something naughty to get caught in the wrongdoers’ net, or at least go for a late-night stroll in the rough end of town.

But the conceit has become untenable. Two years ago, engineers at Google reported that about 10 percent of millions of Web pages they analyzed engaged in “drive-by downloads” of malware. Google today has about 330,000 Web sites listed as malicious, up from about 150,000 a year ago...link to complete NYT editorial