After watching The Internets Own Boy, I have realized that the government is gatekeeping information from us! They want no one to know what their malicious intents are with the web. They use to monitor us and keep us in check. They use it to profit off of us. If one was to break from their leash they will act quick to leash us back. Such was the case with Aaron Swartz, the internets own boy. At a young age he fell in love with the digital world as it spoke out to him; perhaps it was pleading for help. As time went on and Aaron Swartz had explored the newly fond internet he came to a realization that it is being monitored by the government and that the government was using the internet to profit off of the public by using articles that were supposed to be free for the public. Aaron felt that this was wrong. Knowledge is not a privilege but a right, a right that everyone has and the government was not enforcing that right. The internet was for everyone to use and creatively express themselves. However, how can one go about doing such things when we are being monitored and perhaps still are. Aaron Swartz tried to act “against” the government as he saw that what the government was doing was unfair and unjust. Perhaps one can come to say it was unconstitutional. I personally believe that a lot of information is monetized and tailored to make the people believe what the government want us to believe.
March 16, 2022 at 12:36 pm
I think your last sentence ties into what Swartz discovered after downloading all the Stanford University database articles: that private corporations were paying law professors to write articles that benefit them. I also think that researching how information is monetized and tailored is a great way to start off your digital research paper. The Safiya Noble video also talks about how Google search results are biased if you haven’t check that out yet.
March 16, 2022 at 12:37 pm
I definitely agree that the government can almost make us think whatever they want to simply by controlling what we see on the internet, and like you said, monetizing information. I also agree that they don’t want us to know about their intentions which is why they try to put people such as Snowden and Swartz away and shut them down.