What is cyberspace? Cyberspace is the electronic medium of computer networks, in which online communication takes place (Free Dictionary). For me, I think that cyberspace is a virtual world. It is not a physical environment; all it need is just typing and clicking. There are no rules, no laws and no control in it. It also can say is a perfect world, a world that can satisfy each and everyone’s need. People can do everything and anything at cyberspace at anywhere and anytime. Everyone used cyberspace for different purposes and needs.
Get connected to the world - find information
Released Stress
Connect to the social network
Cyberspace has no central authority. Nobody owns the cyberspace. You can have total privacy in the cyberspace and you do not need to report to anyone when you use the cyberspace. The cyberspace is independent as well as you in the cyberspace. You can communicate with different people in different country without restriction and borders in cyberspace. People can also share information, files and so on on the cyberspace. Because of this, there are huge copyright issues on the cyberspace. For example, people can upload and download songs on the cyberspace for free.
According to the Barlow, cyberspace is free from law. Barlow said that “We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth.” People can do whatever they want and like on the cyberspace. No people will restrict anyone from doing anything. Basically people can do anything on cyberspace without worrying about the law.
“We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.” quoted by Barlow. This means that people have the freedom of speech that they do not have in the reality. You can post up their opinion and speak whatever they think is right on the cyberspace and you will not get arrested because there are no rules on cyberspace.
When there are no rules and law, people will tend to do things that will hurt people, post up the fake information, news to affect the peace of the world. For example, people will fake their identity in the cyberspace and try to cheat money from people. People may post up the fake information that will make people panic and affect the peace of the world. Is it good that there are no rules and laws to control the cyberspace? It is a very subjective question, for the author, he thinks that there should not be any law for the cyberspace; they are forming their own Social Contract on cyberspace. He thought that cyberspace is different from the physical world and the government had no right to set a rules or law against them.
There are some country are trying to set laws for the cyberspace to try to control it. According to Barlow, United State had created a law, the Telecommunications Reform Act. In Malaysia, there are ISA – Internal Security Act. ISA is an emergency act to fight against the terrorist and to maintain the national security. So, ISA have the rights to detent anyone that posted on the cyberspace if they found the content of the post is harmful towards the society of it will affect the peace in our country.
Everyone is equal in cyberspace
Everyone is equal in cyberspace. Everyone have the same rights on cyberspace. There are no stereotyping, no discrimination on cyberspace, people do not need to expose their identity to each other, and they have total privacy. With all this reason, people feel save while using cyberspace, they can freely speak out their thought and secrets without worrying the other parties will betray them. They can do things in the cyberspace that they are afraid to do in the real world. But is the cyberspace really safe? If it’s really safe, why there are many hackers around and there people around tend to steal people’s personal data and fake their identity?
As a conclusion, I personally think that there need some rules or laws to control the cyberspace for the sake of people not for the sake of government. We need some laws or rules to protect our rights in the cyberspace. What do you think about it? Do you think that a cyberspace without any law and rules is better?
Happy Saturday Jia Jing! :D
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I thought the 3 pictures you posted up does summarize some of the functions of the digital world! Great job!
Releasing stress is one big function, if we think about it. We are always discriminated and looked down in the reality. All that tension and stress of being stereotyped! What can we do when nobody wants to listen to us!? One way I think most of us will turn to is by using the Internet's resources, which is blogging!
Whenever something's bothering me, it's hard and awkward to share it out in reality. And I don't like things to be publicize b/c rumours will just start going crazy. One thing I always do is to turn to my blog and pour everything out. Sure, the problem doesn't get solved, but at least I feel better expressing my thoughts. :)
"When there are no rules and law, people will tend to do things that will hurt people, post up the fake information, news to affect the peace of the world."
It's great that you also focused on the negative side that the Cyberspace might offer to us. It's true about this. Information is everything on the Internet. But since everyone is equal, everyone can post up as much as they want w/o any restrictions. But if everyone does this, who can we trust?! Information dump and overload of messages! How do we pick our info properly?
One more example to add on to this is the Prince William & Kate's "Divorce". A British site made a fake news that the 2 newly weds are getting a divorce. Overnight, everything became a chaos! "Is this true?", "What! Are you serious?!" was what everyone was thinking. But in the end, it's just a fake.
Terrible isn't it?
Thanks for the reflections! :D I like your 'Criticism of Society is not a Free Speech' picture too! :))
Ya!! there are many people purposely put on the fake news just for fun. They know the power of cyberspace and they abuse the power of it in a negative way. Many people make up story and used the internet to damage the reputation of other people. If there are no law towards cyberspace, where can people to complain when their reputation being damage without any reason. =)
ReplyDeleteThe biggest advantages for cyberspace is it suitable for everyone and everyone can use it. Information can share across computers,localities,time,zones and countries. However, there is still more dark sides in cyberspace ,the hacking problem that you mention is one of them.In cyberspace,people can be anonymous that people tend to do the things that can't do in the real life.If they didn't balance it will, they will be confuse in the reality and fantasy zone. If this issue increase, it will influence the future generation and become a very important social issue.
ReplyDeleteSo,i think that the good and bad of the cyberspace really depend on the people.Everything has it prons and cons just only see which angle you decided to look into. =)
Agree upon that cyberspace everyone are the same. It didn't asked for your identity to prove who you are but rather is you use the cyberspace to prove who you are. You had point out a problem in the cyberspace which the people are now download illegally. This is not only for music but for the movies. There are a lot of website or software that helps to spread this culture.Implementation of law in cyberspace is a subjective question. But when we see cyberspace as a community, I think that law should be implement just like the real world, laws and regulation is to maintain everyone are treated fairly. Simple and straight to the point! Nice post!
ReplyDeleteCyberspace has no central authority. Nobody owns the cyberspace.
ReplyDeleteYou're right that cyberspace don't have an owner, the owner will be all the user. Users do not control each other. In cyberspace is a freedom for everyone want to search or post something, and no one can control.
When there are no rules and law, people will tend to do things that will hurt people, post up the fake information, news to affect the peace of the world.
It's truth. There were always the problems will happen in cyberspace, users claims that why always have rules to control them but why don't people think what they had did in cyberspace. Everything we just could not blame on the rules that given, peoples also need to behave themself as well.
Anyway, Cyberspace is a place for people express feeling and get freedom to post a things or find a things. It's not a place for you to misuse it and do something that can bringing harm to others.
I will think that rules and laws must be applied to cyberspace as just like a security to others.