Writing can be a daunting task at times. Coming up with an idea and having to convey it through writing is difficult for any person. You want to portray the whole experience to others, but you are limited by the words you have learnt. Helen Keller must have had a similar experience to this while writing "The Story of My Life" because she only knew the words Miss. Sullivan had taught her and the ones she had read in books. During her time, there wasn't as much freedom to explore new words and topics, as resources were limited to libraries and book stores. In many of the libraries and book stores, the resources were dependent on the size of the building and the topics the owners wanted to supply. Helen Keller also required the resources to be in braille, which took longer to provide. In contrast, today we have a variety of resources to help us with our writing. We have dictionaries, as well as thesaurus', built into programs such as Word to help us expand and define our thoughts. We can also search for any topic or word on Google and learn about it in seconds. This allows us to have a greater understanding of topics and express ourselves more clearly than Helen Keller could.
Another aspect of writing that would pose a challenge for Helen Keller is editing. Writing on a typewriter or a piece of paper limits the ability to move sentences and fix poor grammar (as you can see in my jumbled mess below). The fact that she had to rely on Miss. Sullivan to help with editing, could have also made it more difficult to identify mistakes if the writing was portrayed to her incorrectly. Writing on computers in today's society eliminates the inability to change sentences around, you can now write a whole paragraph in one area of a document and later copy and paste it into a new area. Editing has also become easier with spell check because it points out errors that may go unnoticed by underlining the error and bringing it to your attention. Therefore, with technology, writing has become more extensive and grammatically correct.
When I
first started to use the internet, I believed that anonymity was beneficial for
society. It allowed individuals to freely view websites, like Google, without
requiring them to disclose their personal information. My views on anonymity
have changed since then because many websites now require people to create an
account in order to use their services. The need for profile creation forces
people to share their personal information which results in less anonymity. In
order to counter the lost anonymity, individuals may disguise or lie about who
and what they are, creating a false image for them to hide behind.
The dog
cartoon mentioned on Cthargo's blog is a perfect example of this. The dog may create a
fake profile portraying him as a person, ultimately making people believe him
because there is no evidence to suggest otherwise. The dog is therefore
tricking others into believing he is something else in order to obtain more
anonymity.
Social networking sites such as Facebook, are subject to this need for more anonymity through fake accounts. These fake accounts allow people to talk to others somewhat anonymously and
acquire information from them. This is known as Catfishing.
An example of
Catfishing appeared on the MTV
show Catfish. In this instance, a woman named Sunny believed she had been
talking to a man online, when in reality she was talking to a woman who had
created the account to find a female partner. There have also been cases
reported where sex offenders
create a fake Facebook profile to
try and lure underage girls to “meet them”. In both of these cases, anonymity
has been achieved at the expense of others. Instead of these individuals
displaying their true age and/or gender, they are hiding behind someone else,
creating a false image that is anonymous for themselves but does not appear so
to others. This can deeply humiliate and hurt others when they discover they
have been tricked. Therefore, a system has to be established to prevent such
distrust on the internet.
Measures have been taken by police, news reporters and
parents against fake online profiles to prevent individuals from getting
involved in the situations mentioned above. In some communities, police have
been using fake profiles for the sole purpose of catching sex offenders online. They create a profile resembling a young girl and monitor
her friend requests and inbox to identify if a sex offender is approaching her
and arrest them. News reporters are involved in prevention by alerting the
community of possible threats and encouraging parents to talk to their children
about dangers online, as well as reminding other individuals to be cautious.
Through announcements made by news reporters and the need for general safety,
parents are working with children to help them understand what is safe and what
is not safe online. They also encourage their children to be open with them and
let them know if someone is threatening them or wants to meet them. Through
these measures and the awareness of others, the “anonymity” of fake profile
users will be limited, creating a safer online community.
