Response to 2005 TIME Article

The writer addresses several issues concerning the growing popularity of the Internet. He begins by examining how it’s increasingly being utilized for commercial purposes. Needless to say, the mass of transactions carried out online has risen tremendously since 2005. The system that enables firms to obtain and verify their customers’ credit-card details was only being initiated at that time. The writer also discusses how the Net evolved from being a military research tool to a fantasy world for college students, which further leads into the argument on its security. Internet users definitely have more freedoms today than they did in 2005, primarily because controlling information exchange has become a monumental task with the sheer number of people gaining access every year. The rule that there are no rules still very much applies. However, while cyberspace has expanded, people have become better equipped to control their privacy in many virtual communities. On a different note, the writer, portending “convergence,” comments that the “Internet is becoming Balkanized, and where the mainstream culture and hacker culture clash, open battles are breaking out.” The fight between old-timers and “newbies” probably reached its peak a year or two ago when adults and even seniors began “invading” social-networking sites, the home of youth culture. Yet, in most developed nations today, age no longer segregates people on the Web. After all, we’re not far from the day when every generation will be as tech-savvy as the other. The writer ends by looking keenly at online journalism. He believes that “when writers report on their area of expertise [as they usually do on the Net]…it carries information that is frequently closer to the source than what is found in newspapers.” This is a result of their attraction to the “freewheeling, untamable soul,” as the writer calls the Internet, and is one of the reasons why print culture is on the verge of extinction today.