Global Fluidity: On the Verge of an Abyss
It is common knowledge that the internet has many advantages. The purpose of this paper is to examine the opposite. By the conclusion of this paper, I will attempt to scrutinize how the capabilities of the internet have been manipulated by the ‘power elite’, placing society on the verge of a breakdown in communication. I wish to examine how the manipulation of the internet by the NSA has led to a collapse in relations between America and several other nations that perhaps may have damaging effects on the American society in terms of trade, tourism, and trust, which I shall also explore.
Communication according to Charles Horton Cooley is vastly important to man. Advances in communication expand the narrowness of past societies and allows for a basic consciousness of other institutions to develop. Before such advances in communication, members of a society would obtain information about the world only from the experiences of other members. There was no sense of any social consciousness. Along with the advancement in technology and communications, societies evolved from those portraying a narrow stream of water to those of an ocean, where there are no obstacles. As result of the internet, a man can gain as much knowledge of any subject or object he desires, allowing the growth of individuality. Communication is often referred to as the ether, or the substance that fills the space between us and our societies and perhaps the internet has been the greatest space filler of all to this day. The journey of the internet is similar to a certain law of gravity in physics, or in lay-man terms: what goes up must come down. Under this law, the object initially experiences a quick elevation, followed by a decrease in elevation velocity and inevitably, a sudden depression. To understand how the power of the Internet has contributed...