Author: Grace Margaret Currier

“Long Live the Web” by Tim Berners-Lee discusses the universality of the world wide web, while also expounding on the rights associated with the Internet and its users, and the threats posed to them. He states, “the primary design principle underlying the Web’s usefulness and growth is universality” (82). Everyone has not only the right, but the freedom to access any and all information via the Internet. In recent years, this ‘freedom’ has been threatened by cable television companies, social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, and totalitarian governments. Berners elaborates on this censorship, especially by the Chinese government that prevents its citizens from accessing information that they have the right to access. Those in authoritative positions should not be allowed to determine the information that people can or cannot see. In Berners’ words, “like democracy itself, [the web] needs defending” (80). It is something worth fighting for, and something to which everyone should have equal access.

I was completely unaware of the magnitude of which ‘the Cloud’ affects global infrastructure prior to reading Ingrid Burrington’s “The Strange Geopolitics of the International Cloud.” Companies wishing to build cloud infrastructure consider locations with a desirable environmental, political and financial climate. This affects not only how we access information online, but what we access, which relates back to the issue of censorship from totalitarian governments. Burrington states, “…to talk about the Cloud’s global shape and politics is to talk about the planet’s shape and politics.” This truly is a global affair that has a profound effect on our daily lives.

“The Machine Stops” by E.M. Forster is a dystopian narrative on life in the future, during which humans are entirely dependent on, and even worship, “the Machine.” Humans live in a society in which human contact is frowned upon, as the Machine provides every resource imaginable.  Although Forster wrote this narrative in 1909 and intended it to be hyperbolic of the future, he accurately predicts the effect technology has on society. Modern technology is no longer supplemental to everyday life, but something upon which people are completely dependent. The relationship between the people of this dystopian society and the Machine compared to that of people and modern technology (computers, cell phones, the Internet, etc.) is uncanny. Although an exaggeration and a pessimistic perspective on technology’s effect on humanity, Forster is undeniably correct about our ever-growing dependence on technology and how it shapes our lives. Albeit extraordinarily convenient and efficient, the development of technology has some underlying negative components to many are unaware.