The Dark Net

     The internet is a vast space in which different people can interact together. It is full of so much content that people often don’t think about what they don’t have direct access to. What they don’t have access to are discrete networks protected by protocol, encryption, or some set of algorithms that can only be accessed by individuals with access to a program or algorithm to make it accessible. This is similar to standard encryption in that only those entrusted with the key can access different sites. However, this is where the similarities stop. When one accesses a dark net server, it is seldom as simple as entering some secret password. Secondly, when accessing the dark net, one’s IP address is obscured so that when a user accesses their intended destination, (another website protected by the Dark Net) their identity is masked and any way to trace them is seemingly impossible. Furthermore, since these websites are masked by the dark net, they too will go undetected, so standard searches won’t pick up on them. This level of obscurity makes it easy to engage in illegal activity such as buying anything from drugs to weapons to even requesting the services of willing criminals. Of course, not all activity through the dark net is illegal. People can acquire regularly obtainable merchandise from sites on a dark net, they are just doing so with the extra privacy a dark net can provide. Ironically, though not all that difficult to believe is the fact that government agencies use these to keep their activity quiet. Additionally, in 2014 Carnegie Mellon and the FBI have discovered a way to unmask certain dark net users, a topic generating a lot of buzz in the recent news over privacy and security issues.    

What makes a Community?

Does Technology Provide?

com·mu·ni·ty

kəˈmyo͞onədē/

     noun

1. a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common.

2. a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=community+definition

According to Google, these are the two definitions for what make a community. Though one can argue that the technology does not provide enough to allow a community to exist there are many things that technology is getting right. First of all, my main reason in favor of technology providing ways to form a community include giving individuals the ability to share their ideas with others in a way that might not be made possible without technology such as this Blog which is being typed and read. this can be done from any time and anywhere, so long as there is a way to access to this post. This can not be said of more traditional communities where ideas are shared in a localized spot.

On the other hand, my main reason against technology providing a way to form community is its polarizing effect in which people are more inclined to be part of communities that share their ideals but are seldom inclined to opening themselves to contradictory view points and resolving issues. In a traditional community individuals would be more inclined to remain unified as they have more than one interest to hold them together (and hopefully gain skills to resolve these issues), but in an online community, one can just change their affiliation by joining another community since each are only held together by one interest and no longer have to interact with their previous affiliation.

 

To conclude, I do agree that technology does provide new ways to create community amongst its users, but I have some concerns with individuals not gaining certain social skills that one would gain from a traditional community. Instead of having one unified community, technology has created many smaller specialized communities.

 

 

 

Convergence:

The Intersection of ingenuity and versatility

Throughout the course of the class, the idea of different studies of thought and innovations coming together and forming the internet and the world wide web has been key. The world wide web as we know it is an entity constantly evolving with each original thought someone shares and the ideas that spark from them. not only is it growing in terms of content but also from a technological standpoint as new hardware and software are constantly being applied to make it run faster, work harder, and become more intelligent. This of course is not just true in todays standards but has been true since its conception as the internet's evolution has been made possible by not just by one idea (though some ideas have been essential) but by many ideas and technologies coming together. Whether these new technologies are generated for the purpose of  users going online or even bringing the internet into the real world, the internet continues to interact with the individual in seemingly impossible ways. Some of these technologies include what has and is being discovered in computer science such as  Turing's first computing machines and Burners-Lee's fundamental HTTP and TCP/IP to what is being created now at places like Microsoft and Google. Other such technologies include communication such as Bells early forms of telecommunication, leading to the use of cables to allow multiple computing machines to communicate. This of course was improved upon with the use of radio waves and satellites, each needing an understanding in Physics. Today, these and many more disciplines are being implemented and improved upon to make the internet what we need it to be all made possible by Convergence.