The Internet Effects And Future Part 2

Psychologists now recognize Internet Addiction Syndrome (IAS) as ne illness that could ruin hundreds of lives. Internet addicts are people who are reported staying online from six, eight, ten or more hours a day, every day. They use the Internet as way of escaping problems or reliving distressed moods. Their usage can cause problem in their family, work and social lives. They feel anxious are irritable when offline and caved getting back online. Despite the consequences, they continue using regardless of admonishments from friends and family. Special help groups have been set developing countries to give out advice and offer links with other addicts. Internet Anonymous and Webaholics are two of the sites offering help, but only through logging onto the internet. The study of 100 students by Margaret Martin of Glasgow University found:

• One in six (16%) felt irritable, tense, depressed or restless if they were barred from using the internet.

• More than one in four (27%) felt guilty about the time they spent online.

• One in ten (10%) admitted neglecting a partner, child or work because of overuse.

• One in twenty five (4%) said it had affected their mental or physical health for the worse.

Another Ph.D. psychologist Maressa Hecht Orzack posits that people use the Internet compulsively because it so easily facilities the reward response common to addictive behaviour. “If they are lonely and need compassion, camaraderie. Or romance, it can be found immediately. If they are looking for sex or pornography, they need only to click a button. They can experience the thrill of gambling, playing interactive games from the comfort of their chairs. They can entertain fantasies by pretending to be other people, or engaging interactive, role-playing games. The reward received from these activities can manifest itself physically, so that he person beings to crave more of it.”

The effects lead to headaches, lack of concentration and tiredness. Addicts must no cut off access altogether but they should set time limits Internet usage to a set number of hours each day. Robert Kraut Doctoral Psychologist says referring on the subject: “We have evidence that people who are online for long periods of time show negative changes in how much they talk to people in their family and how many friends and acquiesces they keep in contact with. They also report small but increased amounts of loneliness, stress and depression. What we do not know is exactly why. Being online takes up time, and it may be taking time away from sleep, social contact or even eating. Our negative results are understandable if people’s interactions on the net are not as socially valuable as their other activates.”

Another considerable drawback of the Internet is that it is susceptible to hackers. Hackers are persons that have tremendous knowledge on the subject and use if to steal, cheat or misuse confidential or classified information for the sake of fun of profit. As the world increases its reliance on computer systems, we come weapon. It is called cyber-terrorism and research groups within the CIA and FBI of USA say cyber-warfare has come one of the main threats to global security.

What can be done for hacking? There are ways for corporations to safeguard against hackers and demand for safety has led to a boom industry in data security. Security measures range from user Ids and passwords to thumbprint, voiceprint or retinal scan technologies. Another approach is public key encryption, used in software packages such as Entrust.

An information systems girded with firewalls and gates, broken vertically into compartments and horizontally by access privileges, where suspicion is the norm and nothing can be trusted, will probably reduce the risk of information warfare as we know it today to negligible levels. Yet increasingly intrusive and somehow antithetical to the purpose for which science in general is purposed. It is no accident that the World Wide was invented to enable particle physicists o share knowledge.

There is another question in all minds “How would you regulate the Internet?” Computer and legal experts all agree that enforcement is difficult. Still, a committee of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police has made several recommendations. One would make it illegal to possess computer hacking programs, those used to break into computer systems. Another would I make the use of computer networks and telephone lines used in the commission of a crime a crime in itself.

The committee also recommends agreements with the United States that would allow police officials in both countries to search computer data banks. But for the time being, Binder says, the government is in no rush to rewrite the statute book. “We don’t know how it will evolve. We don’t want to stifle communication. We don’t want to shut down the Net.” The problem with regulating the Internet is that no one owns it and none controls it.

Messages are passed form computer system to computer system in railliiseconds, and the network literally resembles a web of computers and connecting telephone line. It cross borders in less time than it takes to cross most streets, and connections to Asia or Australia are as commonplace as dialing our neighbors next door. It is the Net’s very lack of frontiers that make law enforcement so difficult. Confronted with the difficulty of trying to grab onto something as amorphous as the Net, some critics and government officials are hoping that Internet service providers can police the Net themselves.

However much of the data bate about the Internet arises because it is so new. We’re just sort of walking up to it. Now that it’s an everyday thing, I’s coming to the attention of the legislators and police forces. One of the real problems with the law of the Internet is deciding, where does the offence occur?” The best guide to the way the law should work is to study the past and the present, not, to attempt to predict every possible future. As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes of the USA said long ago, “The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience. “When a new media technology emerges, the best thing to do is to wait and see what problems actually emerge, not panic about what could happen. Once we understand the actual risks, we can legislate accordingly and with full regard to the competing interests at stake.

But there is another problem that practically circulates through the Internet: The viruses. They can, move stealthily and strike without warning. Yet they have no real life of their own, and go virtually unnoticed until they find a suitable host. Computer viruses-tiny bits of programming code capable of destroying vast amounts of stored data-bear an uncannily close relationship to their biological namesake. And like natural viruses are constantly changing, making them more and more difficult to detect. It is estimated that two or three new varieties are written each day. Most experts believe that a virus is created by an immature, disenchanted computer whiz, frequently called a “cracker”.

The effects may be benign: on variation of the famous “Stoned “virus merely displays a message calling for the legalization of marijuana. Other viruses however scramble files to create a frenzy of duplication that may cause a computer’s microchips to fall. The rapid increase in computer networks, with their millions of user exchanging vast amounts of information, has only made things worse. With word-processing macros embedded in text, opening e-mail can now unleash a virus in a network or a hard disk. Web browsers can also download running code, some of it possibly malign. Distributing objects over global networks without a good way to authenticate them leads to similar risks. Crackers have also succeeded in tainting software sold by brand-name manufacturers.

A clutch of companies offer antiviral programs, capable of detecting viruses before they have the chance to spread. Such programs find the majority of viruses but virus detection is likely to remain a serious problem because of the ingenuity of crackers. One new type of virus, known as polymorphic, evades discovery by changing slightly each time it replicates itself.

Another extremely important issue about the Internet is pornography. Computer technology is providing anti-social elements and pornographers with powerful new tools for victimizing the civilization. The result is an explosive growth in the production distribution of pornography, as well as new forms of child predation worldwide. Children around the world are being sexually assaulted, molested and exploited by people who also miscue computers and related technology. The abuse is being photographed and distributed to an international marketplace of child pornography consumers via the Internet. That marketplace – along with related market Internet sites that encourage sexual abuse – is leading to new assaults against children. No longer are schools, public libraries and homes safe harbours from sexual pedophiles-people whose sexual fantasies focus and girl or boys- from around the world.

In the past porno photographs were sold at high prices through tight knit, difficult-to-access networks. Today, those illegal pictures are available for free on line at any hour of the day. Anyone with rudimentary computer skills and an interest in the martial can obtain it.