Rotary Club Debating Competition
Why the Internet Needs Refurbishment
The Internet. What a tool, what a token, what a topic. A stroke of brilliance from a man living right here in the UK. It’s your partner, a necessity in your daily routine, the backbone of modern society today, and the digital age we seem to be living in. Most people don’t even get out of bed in the morning before checking their emails, Facebook,Twitter, weather or news, or all of them at once. Yes, it’s fantastic, a virtually free encyclopaedia of knowledge you sometimes never even knew you wanted to have, but is it really all smiles and celebrations? Is the internet really perfect? Deep inside, everyone knows it isn’t, those little things preventing the internet from really crossing the threshold of true innovation, true brilliance, and true perfection. In fact, that frustration really makes you want to pick up your computer, phone or tablet, throw it against the wall and never look back, and that, is why the internet, as we know it today, needs a bit of refurbishment. Here are three things we all know about, in and around the web — logging in, emails and what I like to call “the tough stuff”- which really… push your buttons.
Firstly, it’s the very strenuous, yet frustratingly, always necessary, process of logging in. Okay, let me break this down for you. After reaching the login screen, you type in your email address as the username – easy, nothing to it. Next… is the password. Right. Contrary to popular belief, passwords are more than just some secret word you’ve coined to keep your stuff private.
Due to the brain boxes of the world deciding to use the word ‘username’ as their username, and the word ‘password’ as their password, getting hacked and not understanding why, websites like Mozilla firefox have decided it’s a good idea for your password to contain… a plethora of different characters.
So as if remembering your passwords is bad enough, you now have to create ones that must contain an uppercase letter, a lowercase letter, a number, and probably a hieroglyphic, a roman numeral, and a partridge in a pear tree. Thanks Mozilla. Anyway, you carefully create your password, note it down somewhere you hope won’t go missing, and proceed to the next stage: the security question. Just in case your password isn’t secure enough, the security question is the last line of defence, asking you to pick a secret word based on a list of questions. The problem is, the answers… are impossible to remember.
Picture this: What is the last name of your favourite childhood friend? How am I supposed to remember the last name of my favourite childhood friend? Who is my favourite childhood friend? What was I thinking the moment I made this code word? Ugh! You end up just using the same security word for every security question ever kind of defeating the purpose. It’s not safe, but you remember it. Finally, after ticking off the terms and conditions (what they entail, we will never know), you confirm everything, wipe the sweat from your brow, and slump back into your chair. It’s over. You’ve done it, but clearly, the login process is way too strenuous, making it the perfect aspect to be refurbished.
Once we’ve logged into our website we encounter the second problem: emails. Sure, they’re controlled, private and free for everyone, but therein lies the problem. See, some emails… are more powerful than you think. Some emails, have more leverage in your life than any other means of fate. Some emails are so strong, they can singlehandedly kill your closest family members, or give you millions of pounds, just by sharing them to five other people. What are they, you ask? Chain; emails: the bane of human existence, able to change the fate of the universe… if you don’t share it to others. For example:“This picture is cursed, and this girl (insert scary photo of scary girl) is hiding in your closet. If you don’t forward this to twelve people, she will kill you in your sleep.” First of all, why does a little girl in my closet care about whether or not I’ve forwarded an email? Why would that prevent her from killing me? You’d think she’d do it anyway. Second, what kind of person would go out of their way, to create something like that? Terrorising the lives of others, for cheap entertainment? You could ask the same about horror movie makers, or the guy who made up clowns, but to sum up, this was not the best idea. Along with spam emails, from websites you’ve probably only clicked on once by accident, problems with email need to be fixed.
Thirdly, it’s the tough stuff. Aside from the bores of logging in, and the perils and annoyances of email, the internet can be very dangerous. Viruses – impossible to track, and very difficult to get rid of, they attach themselves to files and destroy hundreds of hours of work. Then there’s the threat of people, who aren’t who they say they are in social networking, claiming to be younger than they really are, with different motives than they say they have, easily able to access everything they need to know about you to do real damage, and that, in itself, is definitely wrong. If nothing else, stopping child predators alone is the most important thing on the internet, that needs to be dealt with.
To sum up, from the strenuous process of logging in, to spam and chain letters on email, to viruses and child predators, the internet does have its flaws, which is why I feel refurbishment is needed. However, just because the web has flaws doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s one of the most important advances in technology, ever created on earth. If you can’t see that, every second as you forwards an email, or log into a website, it’s you – not the internet- who truly needs the refurbishment. Thank you.
Spencer Caminsky
