Communications and Cyberspace

Hello, Class:

What is 'cyberspace'? How do we understand the content and purpose of it? Well, 'cyberspace is the idea that we are navigating through space. We spend several hours a day on the Internet doing various activities. Videos are available on YouTube so people can watch it for entertainment or to see political protests in other countries for greater freedom. We can go to yahoo.com or library.fdu.edu to search for information on important topics that can used for reports or projects. If someone has to send someone a message or to have a conversation, we can type them an e-mail on the computer. The e-mail will be at his/her mailbox within seconds rather than days. Students can get homework assignments and make postings via the Internet. They can also make comments on other postings. The Internet has become a 'universe of information'. We can shop for almsot anything, including groceries from the supermarket on-line.
Every mechandise store has a list of items online similar to what you would find at store in the physical world.

The social environments allow people to form a many-to-many relationship online. MySpace and Facebook each offer the user this oppourtunity. They can also undo the traditional ways of communication. I heard in the news not too long ago that a Washington State-based newspaper was going virtual completely.

Receiving lecture notes and homework assignment online mean we no longer go to a classroom. We can purchase textbooks online, even though they are not 'real' images. Email will cut into the workload of the U.S. postal service. They are now planning to deliver mail only five days a week instead of six. Tuesday is the day they are planning to drop. The Internet was invented by the Dept. of Defense in 1969 as a telecommunications weapon during the Cold War. When we turn on the computer, a good deal changes. "The screen of the computer is converted from an opaque frame to a transparent conduit that leads bits of data out to an amorphous electronic environment"(p. 34) With Facebook, we can see hundreds of people we have never met. But we isolate ourselves from the physical world and remain disconnected from the environment we live in. The laws of privacy apply to the virtual world as they do in the physical world. As technology evolves, the las needs to accomdate the changing environment. In the workplace, employee's emails can be monitore for system maintainace and protection of trade secrets.

Freddie