When I was a child, learning meant go to school physically, carry book bag, take notes and then decide whats important to study.Lets look at today’s world. Online learning is taking over slowly and giving people the flexibility to learn from wherever they want.

Khanacademy.org started on September 2006 as a test project and vision was simple: ‘a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.’ Eight years later Khanacademy.org is a known place for free learning experience on almost all subject matter. They have early math to differential calculus, economics, finance, test prep like SAT for free. The idea revolutionized online education. Looking at their success Kaplan updated their online education system and now all the subject is available in Kaplan for comparatively less money then actual tuition fees.

As the days go on we will see more internet integration into education and making it easier for students to learn. There is also potential bad. Many teachers throughout the country feels that online education system will be taking over traditional education and students will not learn everything thoroughly and putting a lot of physical education organization out of system. I guess the future holds the key for future education system.

As we talked about in the class today about net neutrality in class today, when I came home I researched the topic out of curiosity. While researching I came upon this article from the NYTimes.

It appears that FCC after all start to move towards a Net Neutrality plan. During the vote today the plan was moved forward with a 3-2 win. So what does it mean to have Net Neutrality plan. In the article it explained:

“That essentially means that as long as an Internet service provider does not slow down the service that a consumer pays for, the provider can give faster service to a company that pays to get its content to consumers in an unimpeded manner.”

While we were doing the role playing game today about the carriers controlling controlling their bandwidth, it appeared who will win the game at the end: large corporation with huge amount of money. Very soon we will start to see it’s effect on our lives. Netflix is already increasing its fee towards new members to $8.99. At the end the consumer will get effected in long term.

Our world is connected via vast network on internet. We can virtually do almost anything on internet now a days. In this class we saw all kind of usage and purposes of internet that was revealed in last 2 years. I read an article on the New York Times named ‘Defending the Open Internet’ , Jeff Somer analyzes what can be the possible future for ‘open’ internet.

Throughout the semester we looked at our textbook and different types of videos, software or applications (on phones) that are connecting people in organizations. One can do a lot of things using internet. It is appeared that internet has appeared to be the new unfinished canvas with infinite potential. Internet can be used for good like raising money for fundraisers or getting some help with life problems. It also can be the place where terrorist gather information for their attack.

This topic will be under a lot of debate for coming future, but personally I  don’t think there will any barrier on the internet. Chinese government censors a lot and they are being criticized from everybody , but in open democratic country like USA it will be impossible to sensor internet.

If anyone has any kind of question these days first thing we do is to ask Google. Google revolutionized how we get our answers. Now it takes a fraction of a second to get a desired answer or a way to find it. There is videos, pictures and news in Google arsenal to support this huge questions and answer.

I personally take my online privacy very seriously. First of the bat i don’t put too much stuff on the internet. If I put something I don’t want other people to see than I shouldn’t put it on the internet at all. All the information we put in the internet is saved in servers and as the technology progresses so does the hackers. Anything on the internet can be hacked and access in seconds. In my browser I also chose the option ‘Do Not Track Me’ option. This option enables browsers safety feature. Every website we access saves a cookie on our browser. Cookies saves our information from the website which lets the website to make a database. Deleting cookies on a regular basis and enabling the ‘Do Not Track Me’ feature saves a little bit more privacy to content. On my social media websites I have a strict privacy set up. My profile can’t be found on any search engine and every can’t look at my profile.

We all own smart devices. Every year it is a competition between different companies to make smarter device. These smart devices run by apps. Apple is of course leading the app market closely followed by Google Android. Just like the devices, the apps are getting smarter too and as we use more and more apps everyday it is helping the apps to be even smarter.

We all face the window when installing a window saying, “_____ wants to access to your contacts” or “_____ wants use your location.” Time to time we all press ‘yes’ depending on the apps. While I was reading Molly Wood’s article, I realized how dangerous it is become in terms of privacy.

On my last blog, I was focusing on cybercrime on different websites, but this one in my opinion can have worse impact. Hackers are desperately trying to hack to phone OS systems. Apple just released IOS 7.0.6 mainly because of the security threats. We use our phones to access our emails, text messages, and even bank accounts. We definitely should be aware what apps we use in our phones and stay away from connecting our phones with insecure servers (yes that includes Starbucks Wifi as well!!)

Our life are now connected with everything via internet. As the day passes by we are becoming more and more dependable on technology,internet to be exact. Internet gave us the power to order food, shopping without the hassle of going out on a snowy day. Unfortunately everything comes with a price. The more we get involved with technology and internet, the more we put our own information out there in ‘secure’ server.

Social media became really strong after the invention of Internet. Facebook and Twitter is now something we have to have to be ‘cool.’ On NewYork Times Nicole Perlroth wrote an article that goes to explain how online shopping system is prone to attack of cyber-crime.

We can all relate to this article, because at some point we all did and will shop online. Hackers are also being mutated like flu virus, as they are cracking all the new ‘security’ technology of secure server. I personally feel really anxious to feel that in some way someone can access my personal data. I think we should all think about the things we put on the internet, because changing privacy options are not enough any more. As we cannot control the hackers from hacking or stealing our information, but we can at least control what we put through internet. A click in unwanted link can cause hell break loose on personal life.