The Internet: Good or Bad?

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Given how vulnerable the internet makes everyone due to things like its apparent utility in recruitment of the gullible to stupid causes, would it not be better for everyone who is not certain tech giants, if internet were shut down? Or, do benefits such as new media, and having more text based forms of social interaction, outweigh all the negatives?

Last edited by Nebogipfel on 17 Jan 2016, 7:17 pm, edited 9 times in total.

A. Tools are neither 'Good' nor 'Bad'.
B. The Internet is a tool.
: : The Internet is neither good nor bad.

I vote mostly bad. It's good because it gets to connect you to your friends. The bad side is trolls and bullies on the "Internet", and the people who died due to online cyberbullying. And I heard of one person who got killed on the "Craigslist" website. And there are the hackers who try to hack your account to pose as you and ruin your social relationships with friends- not cool at all!

That's like saying that the telephone system is bad because people use the telephone to make crank calls, threats, and insults. You are referring to some of the users of the Internet, and not the Internet itself. My ex-wife, for instance, says that the Internet is evil because there is too much information on it, when the information she may be referring to is what has been used to refute her self-centered opinions.

I was gonna make a thread about this....

I think on balance, it's bad. Here's why:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... story.html

This is how/why we have so many people thinking Obama is a Muslim, vaccines are bad, the US Army is gonna take over Texas, etc.

This is a very dangerous trend.

And if we didn't have the internet film there would be propaganda films, flyers and a lot more bias in the newspapers to make up for it and get people riled up. I mean what would you suggest? Also its not soley the internet that leads people to believe this crap plenty of politicians feed the rhetoric in their speeches on the t.v media, which isn't going to go away without the internet.

The Internet is evil, and I like it.

Some of the things mentioned, false beliefs and such need to be exposed.

We are new to this Madness of Crowds, but there were books on the subject, printed on paper, long before the Internet.

The final version, good ideas drive out the bad, after the decades of riots in the streets, lynching, arson.

We are not decades from list servers, text only.

Ann Landers wrote a newspaper article about how innocent young girls lost their virginity to Anima characters pretending to be real people on the Internet, so Beware!

Many cultures said they lost the ability to control what the young were exposed to, when writing came along.

Guttenberg unleashed the Press of Satan, and the novels of Jane Austin exposed delicate young women to the ideas of choosing their own husbands.

It has been downhill since, movies, talkies, color, TV, which were all one sided.

Public Debate starting in school gave a chance to shame people into never speaking again.

This very web site is dedicated to people who do not speak in public, mostly because they never go out in public.

The decline continues and we have not even gotten to my web site, "Meet Yourself, A Guide To Introspection."

Like Odo and The Great Link, being dissolved here gives a chance to discover which of your vile ideas and foul perceptions are universal, and which make up your identity.

Group Therapy is a means of getting people with like problems together to, Reinforce Each Other?

The Internet exceeds Diverse, reaches near Random, and brings together people who would never be in the same room. It is not just wrong ideas being discussed badly, it is the struggle to do so while being attacked by Psychopaths and SJW Crybullys.

Maintaining your own identity, something most have not studied, while navigating posts that intend to prove everybody is wrong, is a delicate dance.

The Internet is evil because it is filled with raw, unexplored, people.

Some only go where everyone agrees, My Little Pony sites. Some do not expect conflict in the anonymous world, The Home Schooled. Some think there is a Right Answer, mostly Christians and Card Carrying Americans and Socialists.

What To Do? Mostly it is covered in my new book, "How To Fake Being Human In A Pack of Rabid Hairless Ground Apes."

Remember, they are more afraid of you, than you are of them.

The internet doesn't make anyone vulnerable as it has no agency. Users make themselves vulnerable by accessing the internet without taking precautions. As for the benefits:

2011
http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/high_t ... ransformer
http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/high_t ... et_matters

2015
http://www.bcg.com/news/press/1may2015- ... onomy.aspx

That's without considering the multitude of advantages the internet provides on a social level. Then, of course, there is the reduction in youth crime rates that coincide with the increase in power and accessibility of technology and information, games and entertainment.

There is some data that suggests that juveniles who have access to M-rated games might be more inclined to delinquency, but that's more of a parenting issue than a tech issue. Nor is it directly relevant to this discussion.

Thus far the internet has not directly physically harmed anyone and it is entirely up to the user if they wish to opt-in or out.



Indeed.

I'm going with "good" because I like the access to information that the internet provides. I know there is a tonne of misinformation out there, but you can learn how to differentiate between reliable and unreliable sources. I remember the days of the card catalog. This is way better.

I also like the ease of communication which it facilitates. This can be used for harm, but I'd have to say it's worth it.

As someone who became an adult and then some before the Internet was invented, I think it is the most awesome thing that has happened in my lifetime. Like it must have been at the time of the printing press invention, only much more. It will always be used for good and bad, just like everything else human create. Meanwhile, back to surfing...

The only vulnerabilities I see are related to personal security like identity theft.
Do people get stupid ideas in their gullible little peanut brains due to information on the internet? Yes, but who cares? There are other sources of stupidity that have been around for centuries, even eons. The internet’s not going to be shut down because the sheeple can't sort out the information they receive.

You mean they allowed someone to get to them when they could have simply ignored the posts of the troll/cyberbully. Instead they kept feeding the troll and letting the troll get to them. If you knowingly feed a troll, whatever happens as a result is 50% your fault.

That much aside, I cannot for the life of me imagine myself or anyone else being driven to suicide by in internet troll or bully. If anything I've found them to be anywhere from mildly annoying to flat out hilarious and I counter-troll them for my amusement. Hell, I'd miss them dearly.


Craigslist didn’t kill them someone using Craigslist as a tool did it by luring their prey into a trap. The victim should have been more cautious. If it weren’t for the sheep wolves would starve, so let’s not be sheep.


People screw themselves when they put links to their Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin accounts on message boards. Also, no one needs to know your name, where you live, and where you work. To do any of the above is setting yourself up for a fall.

Call me a victim blamer but when the victim generously hands ammunition to their assailants then the accusation is accurate and I have no remorse over it.

As a short closure summary; the internet is only what you make it.

Good.

Unlike other media, the internet is not a "mass-medium", by definition of the term.
What makes it differ is that it is not a medium through which one group communicates TO a mass of people, but that it allows the mass to communicate back. ..definitions....

Anyway, as walter benjamin writes about the artwork in times of its reproducability, mass-media are propaganda, and the ability of the mass to counter by producing its own content is the only way to defeat the powers of the few.

That said, it seems people are not enlightened enough (yet?) to judge the information they are receiving.

But I love it. Everyday, it answers my questions about just everything, from " at what ratio of fat to water can almost any liquid be beaten into a creamy foam" (~30%; google chocolate chantilly) over "what type of glue can I use on a not 100% fat-free surface?" (Poly-vinyl-acetate based glue) to "is muon-scatter-radiography really as new as the video on the guardian website tells me it is?" (No).

But I realize, I might be alone with using the internet as a library, not as a pub/swinger club.

I think the way it's increased people's access to education (who want it of course) and the way it's also been a great source for character-checking and getting word around about different kinds of chicanery whether individual, political, economic, etc.. has been a big deal.

Essentially with it it's very difficult for any sort of nefarious secrets to be kept, the damage there perhaps being that you have some people sniffing out 30 such purported secrets when maybe only one of them is legit.

Lots also gets said about a generation drowning in data, lost on their phones, social skills deteriorating, etc..

Like any other change I'd say it's had its ups and downs. Better in a lot of ways, worse in others, but mostly I think the only place it's been worse is in the addiction and maladjustment department - that's the kind of thing that tends to inspire the sort of warning-poster memes, it becomes the last generation's faux pas, and people start finding equilibrium - or at least till the next greatest thing since sliced bread comes along and everyone lines up to abuse that instead!

Let's start a mass movement to shut down the internet!

And the perfect recruiting tool to spread our movement is....the Internet!

No privacy whatsoever. On the one hand, you can aquire knowledge and use the internet as a communication tool, not talking about entertainment. There's so much to the internet I think it will never be abandoned unless better solution found.

On the other hand, the internet is full of psychopaths, abusers in general, and yeah... no privacy. Google and facebook are "free" not because they're being thoughtful. nah-ah. Those mega organizations will sell you no problem to large corporations giving them all of your personal details, pictures and surfing habbits. sigh.