Cyberspace Offers A Revolutionary Form Of Social

Communication Constituting A New Public Sphere Of Democratic Society. Discuss. Essay, Research Paper

In this day and age we, as a global community, are growing at a super fast rate and communication is a vital tool that aids us in defeating the distance barrier.

The Internet has started to change the way of the world during this decade. More homes, companies, and schools are getting hooked online with the Internet during the past few years (Malkin & Marine). Hence making it accessible to almost everyone and predominantly used in everyday life.

By the sharing of information, the Internet has allowed a global society to exist within cyberspace. A society not run by and governments or laws but contributed to by all the users within it and accessible to everyone. As it stands now, the Internet seem to be the only truly democratic society in the world.

Cyberspace is a global community of people using computers in networks supported by the Internet. Over 17 million Web pages float throughout cyberspace (Malkin & Marine). Never before has information been so instant, and so global.

The Internet supports many forms of relaying information and communicating. From sending electronic mail (e-mail), reading the works of Shakespear, instantly talking to people on the other side of the world just by typing, listening to music, ordering food & products, paying bills, reading newspapers, and so on, the internet offers a world of information available at the users fingertips. It is an elaborate source of education, information, entertainment, and communication. Users are able to access people and information, distribute information, and experiment with new technologies and services. The Internet has become a major global infrastructure used for education, research, professional learning, public service, and business.

But the one characteristic of internet use that makes it one of the most powerful, and possibly threatening, mediums in the world is that anyone who has access to it is also able to ‘publish’ anything they wish on it.

So far, the only laws that exist in relation to what materials are allowed to be posted (published) on the Internet are the already existing laws of copyright (Hauptman, 1991). If someone wants to voice an opinion about a political issue, a personal issue or anything else, they can do it in total freedom.

A major principal of law and order is to control a certain area and population. Laws that apply to one state or province don’t necessarily apply to another. An interesting quality which the internet has, is that even in countries where freedom of speech is not a reality, the internet cant be censored by law (however, perhaps it can by fear). Hence, the Internet makes it possible to document information, which under no other circumstances would have been possible to document because of region specific laws. Cyberspace does not reside somewhere nor is it a physical thing. It has no physical boundaries and it is so vast that there is no one board able to control it, and no one organisation liable for how it is used.

The Internet has given the global community a voice. It has made cyber-democracy a reality and has given people the tools (in the way of information) to challenge ideas that are presented in the usual mediums. For example, in the past it has been mostly television and newspapers that report on national and international issues. But each television station or newspaper usually only shows one angle of the issue. For example, the media coverage during the Vietnam War was ver biased. No longer are we limited to what our government wants to show us, or to what we see in the narrow scope of national news coverage. With access to views held by other countries, cultures and organisations, people now have information that enables them to see more angles of the same situation, hence taking a certain degree of power to influence out of the governments hands (Feinberg, 1990; Kapor, 1996). It brings us one step closer to giving so called democratic countries real democracy. That can only be done when the level of information known by the governments, and the level of information known by the citizens, is brought to less of a difference.

Now the global community has a source of information that brings to them the views from all over the world concerning almost any topic. This makes it harder for governments to use propaganda and to influence the minds of its countries citizens. It makes it almost impossible to shape public perception into what the government wants it to be.

Fundamental civil liberties are as important in cyberspace as they are in traditional contexts. The right to speak and publish using a virtual pen has its roots in a long tradition. With the passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, American Congress has prepared to turn the Internet from one of the greatest resources of cultural, social, and scientific information into the online equivalent of a children’s reading room. By invoking the overboard and vague term “indecent” as the standard by which electronic communication should be censored, American Congress has insured that information providers seeking to avoid criminal prosecution will close the gates on anything but the most tame information and discussions. The American First Amendment states that no laws shall be made towards an establishme