Topic 1 week 1 part B

I think websites have become such a huge influence on our daily life that it deserves it’s own blog.
According to searchsoa.com “a Web site is a related collection of World Wide Web (WWW) files that includes a beginning file called a home page. A company or an individual tells you how to get to their Web site by giving you the address of their home page. From the home page, you can get to all the other pages on their site.”

I have come to rely on websites really heavily, not just for communicating, but also for quick information such as cinema times, addresses etc. I also use websites to gain knowledge surrounding the course, looking for theorists and relevant facts. I also use websites for online banking, managing my phone bill and shopping. I shop for not only clothes, CD’s and books (which all seem to be cheaper and are more convenient to buy online) but have also experienced doing the weekly food shop online. Using websites is quick and easy, and there is a wealth of information that is unrivalled from any other place. The drawback to this is often that it can take time to find what you are looking for trawling through a lot of unrelated spam. Websites can also be a place for people with unhealthy interests, such as hate gangs and paedophilia, to meet and share information.

I have been reading a lot in various magazines about the pro-ana and pro-mia websites and forums where users share their mantras and photo’s of this extremely harmful condition and find it really interesting that this can occur uncensored, but of course there are huge issues surrounding censorship of the internet, the vastness of the internet would mean that it would be virtually impossible to do, and the level of censorship would have to be brought into question, not to mention the right to freedom of speech and self censorship. What does everyone else think about censorship of the internet? How far should filtering software go?

Also the rise of web 2.0 means that anybody can contribute to a number of sites, obviously most of it is fine and is just sharing opinion, but there are some dangerous people out there, do we need to stop their ideas being brought up or should the freedom of speech and the will and common sense of the readers mean that we shouldn’t need to?