Week 3

Will the future of the internet bring more problems to our society? To the world? It seems that the more freedoms that we have through the internet, the more problems occur out in the physical world. With security becoming more vulnerable to hackers and web junkies, it is amazing to hear of everything becoming more electronic and less paper documented. In an article I read about the future of the internet I found that because the internet is becoming extremely popular that it is very possible that it could be used in a future attack. Because a majority of our society operates electronically it wouldn't be far-fetched to believe that terrorists could attack the government through computers with the help of the internet. I know that the creation of any new security field could be breached because in order to make the security feature there is always someone who can crack it.
With the possibility of an electronic attack there is obviously going to be a heightened level of surveillance and security, which brings up another uneasy fact. Will big brother be watching everyone's move? I feel that the more free access we have electronically to the open world the tighter our freedom will be in the actual open world.
Being able to access soo much information with just one click sounds great on paper, but what happened to getting off your butt and doing real research and going to a physical library. I feel that within five years mostly everything will be electronic. The major problem with this is that our physical communication and actual social behavior will also drastically change. Our families will become a group of anti-social people only connected through blood. It is great to have this luxury of information at our finger-tips, but I hope that it won't suffocate us from the outside world, because i have a feeling that this is where it is headed.
I do believe that Google and other search engine pioneers are going in the right direction with electronic libraries, but i also feel that there might be too much information accessible to people who could use the information in a negative way.

The Dark Side of the Internet

With the internet becoming more accessible to everyone it is also becoming less secure. Although many sites offer the best security they can, it will never be enough. There is too much information being transfered through the internet for hackers to not stay away. Whether it be credit card fraud, identity theft, or a pyramid scam, there is endless possibilities for people's lives to be ruined.
I for one fall victim to the endless possibilities that the internet has to offer, and have found myself giving too much information to a site with all hopes that it won't bite me in the ass. Luckily i have avoided the dark side of the internet, but not everybody is so lucky. The TJX scam that happened recently is just one example of how problematic internet data security can be. It also reveals how our personal information is easily accessible to people who can turn on a computer. I recently came across a website that will give personal information to any citizen of the United States for the right price. That site can be found here: http://searchenginez.com/findpeople.html.
If finding information about people is this easy, I can't imagine how much worse it could get. Having your identity stolen is probably one of the most horrible things that could happen to you, and if that's only the beginning, I really don't know if i want to be part of this newer generation of techno-savy geniuses.
On the other hand, there are many positive things that can be mentioned about the security of some portions of the internet. Many companies are spending millions of dollars to protect the personal information of potential buyers. But again, the people who work for these companies usually know how to break the system, and if there is only one person that leaks information, that's all that it will take to expose personal information of thousands of people, sometimes millions.

Computer Technology and Cars

With new technology spreading across the world in what seems to be nanoseconds, there is no doubt that our cars are soon going to be driving us. With the number of computers increasing in the development of the car and the wireless capability of sending information, I wouldn't be surprised if the police were able to electronically issue a ticket from just sitting at their desks.
Finding new ways to control the legal ways of the road through your car's computer, are becoming more and more prevalent. Using a governer, which controls the speed limit a car can go, are being used more and more in every production of cars. http://www.uri.edu/personal2/pbisiak/computers_in_automobiles.htm

What's next? What can we expect in the near future towards the privacy levels in our cars? It seems like it's only getting worse. With new options like OnStar appearing in a majority of new models, the freedom to run your car the way you want to is diminishing. In an article produced by ZDnet, they talk about this exact problem and how security can be both positive and negative.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/0,1000000091,2120194,00.htm
Will we be a nation that is controlled by big brother in the near future? I feel that the smarter we get, the less freedoms we will have, and in turn, our lives will be a lot less productive.