Websites That Help Us

Nowadays, all we seem to hear about the internet and the growing technology is that they are somehow negatively affecting our lives. Too much information, too little privacy, too much nonsense, too much dependency, too little validity....you get the picture.  Yet, there are so many positives that the world wide web has brought us.

For instance, etsy.com is a site which draws on people's entreprenuerial spirits. It's a place people can buy and sell handmade and/or vintage products. Obviously, it doesn't deal with people who want to wholesale masses of products. In actuality, it deals with the individuals who only desire to make a few bucks from their hobbies of making jewelry, clothes, accessories, and etc. It brings together people from all over the United States, as well as the globe and it's pretty cool to just browse through the kind of things other people can make without crazy expertise. This site is a similar one to Ebay.com, except etsy deals with direct sales whereas ebay deals with optimizing profits through auctions.

I cannot go through the pros of the internet without mentioning SPARKNOTES!!!! A prime example of information sharing, it is possibly the best thing ever since sliced bread. I love how it was first developed by students at Harvard as a small project and became this gigantic enterprise, helping middle/high school and even college students everywhere. Can you imagine having to read all the books we were supposed to have read during the past several years? (hahahaha)

Besides facebook, myspace, twitter, and tumblr that are international, there are social networking sites for individual countries. For example, cyworld.co.kr is a social networking site specifically for South Koreans. Although some may say that it is too limited, it is actually great that it is limited to just one ethnicity, since it makes it easier for people to connect as a small tight-knit community. It also has a mechanism that makes it more private than the social networking sites that we readily use, which helps to make it even more personal.

The most interesting way internet has provided good to the public is the website where we can see the nearby sex offenders (if there are any). This acts as a deterrant in some ways, since people will know that being labeled a sex offender will stay with them forever on this site, and that the information will be available to anyone. Parents can find out possible threats by logging on to the site and can inform their kids about the dangers, if they wanted to. Some may argue that having the information about sex offenders public may be unfair to minor offenders or those who were 'wrongly' convicted, but for the greater good, I think that this is a great idea.

The three properties of internet that I learned in my Comp Apps class says a lot of about the advantages of it: universal language, open technology, and separation of layers. These indicate that people from around the globe can come together and operate with the same language without any hindrance. With the internet, it has become possible to interact freely (for the most part) with those we wouldn't have had the chance to deal with before.