Internets 40th Birthday

On October 29th, 1969 the first message was sent between to computers. It marks the birth of the internet. It is amazing how much the Internet has evolved over the past 40 years. i don't think any of the people who started the Internet could have known exactly how much the internet as changed our society. It has affected everything from school to business to entertainment. traditional news sources are going out of business because of the convenience th internet offers. Over 1 billion people are online and last year google claimed over 1 trillion pages existed. it is hard to imagine everyday life without the internet. I even find myself freaking out if my internet connection fails. I get almost all of my news online, from weather to major events. I use it for banking, studying, watching movies, and connecting with people. After all the problems people claim the internet causes I still think the Internet is a major milestone in todays society. It makes everything so much easier, and who wouldn't want things to be easier?
http://www.pcworld.com/article/174667/happy_40th_birthday_internet.html

Why not talk about my research topic?

Since I have my research essay on my mind I figured a blog about my topic would be fitting. my topic is Children and the Internet. I think it is important to introduce children to the internet and all the benefits it provides while they are "young and impressionable." Some people say no, that children should be taught in the tradtional "chalk and blackboard" fashion that all the great minds had. Well, why would you not help kids become acquainted with something that will literally be part of their everyday life...for the rest of their life? Lets face it, technology can provide teaching tools that have never been available before, why not utilize them. With the invention of the smartboard and other equally useful new tools children have the ability to learn and recieve information in ways that they are more likely to remember. Not only are grade school teachers emplying these tactics, but college campuses everywhere are making entire committees in charge of getting the newest educational technologies available for the use of their students. Below is a link to one of many webpages I found that have are specifically intended to teach good ways of implementing technology in schools and businesses.http://www.cmu.edu/teaching/technology/

Technology Threats

These days many of the threats this country and individuals face come from the new technology we have. In the past, scandals like watergate shook the nation because confidential information was leaked. It seems with the ease there is in hacking into anyones information the government has to work harder on protecting information relating to homeland security and also protecting individuals information. The article in this link is about peoples personal home routers being vulnerable to attack.http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10383543-245.html?tag=newsLatestHeadlinesArea.0 "Blogger Brian Chen reported last week on a security hole affecting about 67,000 combo modem/router devices that could allow anyone to access Time Warner customers' private networks, snoop on sensitive data, and direct users to malicious Web sites." I think more needs to be done to prevent people from being able to access our personal information. If nothing is done than I think it would be wise to restrict what one posts on the internet and things like internet banking would be better left to actually banks, even though some convenience would be lost. Also another point would be people spreading viruses. I know personally our home computer has been so loaded with viruses that it would not even start, mostly due to my brother clicking on scams and links. Anyways, although computers and the internet provide many benefits, people should be more aware of their vulnerability when surfing the internet.

Windows 7 is here

I decided to do a blog about the release of windows seven and how people respond to releases of new technology. We all hear the hype when a new product is being released, "the "new" iphone, its so much better than the last." I find it sort of comical the reactions some people have to these new technologies, some people who may have gotton an iphone only months earlier feel it is necessary to get rid of it in favor of the new one, "that is so much better." http://www.pcworld.com/article/174341/windows_7s_opening_weekend.html. This is a link to a major news website where a story/review of windows seven is a major headline."Weekend sales results for Windows 7 were not available at the time of this writing, but Microsoft did release its quarterly earnings report on Friday. Although the company's revenue was down compared to this time last year, Redmond still did better than most analysts expected. A good chunk of the company's revenue was attributed to Windows 7 pre-sales worth about $3 billion, according to WindowsITPro." Maybe people should be more concerned with what I consider real news, such as the war in Iraq (oh yea remember that?) or the recession we are facing rather than the glitches and compatability issues windows seven is facing. On almost any news webpage you can find an article about windows seven.

Facebook Addiction
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/04/23/ep.facebook.addict/index.html
I wanted to look at articles about people who are addicted to social networking after I heard on the news awhile back about a mother who neglected her children for weeks while she was on the internet. The first article is from CNN. It has another story of a mother who wouldn't help her daughter with homework because she was "busy" facebooking. the article quotes a boss who had three problems with employees using facebook during the workday in one week. The article explains what users should look out for as signs of addiction: You lose sleep over facebook, you spend more than an hour a day on facebook, you become obsessed with old loves, you ignore work in favor of facebook, the thought of leaving facebook leaves you in a cold sweat. I found several other websites that actually treat facebook addiction as a serious disease, just like alcoholism and drug addiction. ex.http://www.addictioninfo.org/articles/2171/1/Potential-Facebook-addiction/Page1.html. Personally i don't think spending an hour on facebook a day would qualify someone as being addicted, mostly because it is just another way of keeping in touch and talking to people. If someone spent an hour a day talking on the phone or talking to people in person you wouldn't say they were addicted to anything.