Essay 2 draft

Xiaoran Li

ENG 201-501

Essay 2# -Draft

12 August 2010

Two sides of the Internet

Internet has become more and more popular. I heard many issues that said the Internet is important for all of us, but some people said the Internet is bad for people’s life. My opinion is the Internet is just a tool. There is no good or bad for the Internet as a tool. The problem is the people who use the Internet. I think it connects a word, which is “Convenient.” Most people use Internet because it is easy to shopping online, talking online, even reading online, but some people using special skills to steal others money and personal information by using Internet.

As the 21^st century continues, it becomes more and more difficult to imagine how business can be conducted without the Internet. The Internet has participated in many areas of the business arena, especially communication. It provides a fast and easy way to transmit information over long distance. The Internet has become indispensable for the economic activities (Blank)

As we know, the Internet is an essential marketing and advertising tool for businesses. We always seeing there are a lot of advertising windows popped up when we were browsing some websites. I think everyone knows a famous shopping website online called EBay. Millions of people shopping on EBay every single day and there are innumerable goods on EBay. People even can buy virtual goods on EBay such as the currency in a popular Internet game. I call it “there’s need, then there’s supply.” According to Chris Blank’s article Why the Internet Is Important in Business? Although people can use telephone to communicate, much business are using email to contact, such as sending chart or forms. Many companies communicate with the public and to transmit messages within the company by using email. They also use instant messaging, internet telephony (through services such as Skype) and even virtual meetings.

Facebook is a very popular website that allows people contact each other easily and make friends quickly. Facebook was created in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, a student at Harvard University. According to Zuckerberg, “The idea for the website was motivated by a social need at Harvard to be able to identify people in other residential houses. Facebook has more than 7.5 million registered members at over 2,000 U.S. colleges and is the seventh-most-popular site on the entire Web with respect to total page views (Ellison, Steinfield and Lampe 2). The similar thing with Facebook we also have Myspace, Twitter and Youtube. I don’t see any people that don’t know these kinds of websites. Therefore, Internet made our earth become a Global Village. People from thousands mails away can talk and see each other online through the web cam. It really makes people from all over the world closer.

We can do business online, talk and make friends online. We also can study online.

Based on my personal experience, I am taking ENG 201 and we don’t have to writer journal and turn it in. Our professor gave us a blog web site and just let us post our assignments on the blog everyday so he only needs to check everyone’s blog. He will leave the messages on the blog showing what are today’s assignments and what will we do tomorrow. I think this is much more convenient and simple. We don’t have to write tones of paper to hand in. Instead, we just need to move our finger and type the words on blog, then we finished. Last semester, I took CIS (Computer information System). It was totally online class. The instructor didn’t even need to teach. Everything was online; we just log on the website that he gave us, and follow the programs on that website. It automatically will show you how to do the Microsoft ware. The assignments are simply easy, we can do it home or at school on anytime. Don’t you think that was so relax? I do.

I have summed up some main positive usages on the Internet. Next, I will talk about the negative effect of the Internet.

Internet addiction is a very hot topic these years. Based on the Internet usage keep increasing, some people over used Internet. To understand online gaming addiction, it is important to understand howthe addiction stems from the creation of virtual worlds. New studies have shown that immersion into online games allows users to become addicted. Kimberly Young mentioned in his article Understanding Online Gaming Addiction and Treatment Issues for Adolescents - The American Journal of Family Therapy, “In one of the most dramatic stories of online gaming addiction, in August 2005, a 28-year-old South Korean man died—not by committing suicide, but after playing the game StarCraft at an Internet caf´e for 50 hours straight” (357-358). According to the article Internet Addiction: Signs, Symptoms, Treatment, and Self-Help there are four signs and symptoms of internet addiction or computer addiction. Losing track of time online, find yourself on the Internet longer than you thought. Having trouble completing tasks at work or home, such as working late more and more but still can’t complete the work on time. Isolation from family and friends, such as you feeling no one in real life. Felling guilty or defensive about your Internet use, hide your internet use or lie about how much time you spend online.

Identity theft is a very common crime in this informationized world. What is Identity theft? It’s a crime that someone steals people’s personal information from Internet and uses it to get people’s credit card or steal other property. “This is a common ploy for ID thieves, who test out your credit card with a small charge and then, if it goes through, start making big purchases. Crooks may even use programs with algorithms that run 16-digit numbers until they get a hit.” (Kimberly, Lankford 1). After they got your information, they may call you as a company and try to fraud you to purchase or to payback bills that you don’t even know. When you doubt the bills, they will pull out your information and try to convince you they are legal company. Right after they get your trust, and your purchase, they will vanish forever.

I think everyone all heard about hacker. They can use professional programs to hack into your computer through the security holes and you don’t even realize that everything in your computer is exposed to their eyes. The common software that they use is called Troy injection. The principle behind it is similar to the story called Troy. So that’s what its name came from. The Troy can prevent itself as a safe program and go through the firewall. After it goes into your computer, it well releases many viruses to break down your security system. Then the hacker can get permission to connect to your computer and control everything. To be a hacker requires much knowledge about Internet and software. So people who are hacker are not idiot, they are smarter than you think.
To warp those things up, my point is to inform that the Internet is like a double-edge sword. As we saw in my paper, it can give incredible wealth to people; also it can bring disasters to people. It depends on how people are going to use it, such as we can’t blame on a knife because someone used it to hurt people. We should see it equally and fairly. Hopefully, people will understand the Internet and use it to make contribution for the world.