Can People be Friends Online?

Today's controversial question is whether, yes or no, people can be friends on the Net.

Hmm. That is a pretty good question, and all depends on the person's views. I'll go with yes, but there's a twist: There is "Friend", "friend" and friend.

A friend would be someone you know in real life from real life circumstances, for example someone you have since high school, or know from work. A "friend" would be a person that you know but aren't necessarily friends with, but you still chat, and you know how the person is, and not just the person's projection of him or herself. Finally, a "Friend" is just a random person that someone that someone that someone that your friend knows knows, or it's just this really random person that posts things you like, or it's an extremely random person that you enrolled as your friend just because you are doing a most friends on such and such social media competition.

So yeah, people can be friends online. But is it necessarily safe?

Not really. Unless you use Skype or Facetime, you don't know who is behind the screen at the other end, and you don't know wether the person is who they are supposed to be. And let's face it: "Friends", so the type of people that go in the "The friend of the friend of the friends of my friend's friend"section, also called the random people section, well, you don't know them. Actually, they might be someone posing as that person, or maybe a grown man is posing as a girl, or a girl is posing as a grown woman, or a boy is posing as a girl and vice-versa, and how are we supposed to know if they do?

Here is a link to a little YouTube clip on What Facebook is For. It's quite funny, actually.

Should People Have the Right to Download Movies/Music Off the Net for Free?

Hello readers,

So, as you could see from the post title, the technology issue today is free downloading off the net. 

As most of us know, it's illegal to download protected works for free, and it's even more illegal to download protected works for free and then distribute copies. We can get heavily fined, or get put into jail, and its not too fun. But most of the time, if the people don't distribute, they don't get caught.

Of course. As a general statement about humanity, we have a tendency of taking advantage of easy situations, even if we can get in trouble. If you can get it for cheaper, why take what costs us a dollar more (even if the cheaper thing is *rubbish*)? 

Or even worse:

If I can get it for free, why pay?

Does that phrase ring a bell? 

Hmm...

It sounds a bit like something a thief would say, right?

The point is, downloading music, videos, movies, etc. that someone owns or sells off the internet is basically stealing from the person. But of course, so what? If one person does it, it isn't such a great deal.

Yeah, but it isn't just one person that does it. As the RIAA states, "While downloading one song may not feel that serious of a crime, the accumulative impact of millions of songs downloaded illegally – and without any compensation to all the people who helped to create that song and bring it to fans – is devastating."

The statistics also say that:

- From 1999 to 2009, the value of sales in the music industry has dropped 47%, from $14.6 billion USD to $7.7 billion USD
- From 2004 to 2009, approximately 30 billion songs were downloaded illegally
- In 2009, only 37% of the songs owned by people in the US was paid for
- 95% of all free downloads were ILLEGAL

What people don't realise, it's that their actions are costing people their jobs. People actually work in the industries that are getting stolen from, and they won't be able to make any money if the industry can't pay them because almost everyone is using their product without paying. 

It is unfair for people to take without paying. Downloading a song for free that isn't supposed to be free is stealing, and stealing is illegal.  So people shouldn't have the right to download stuff for free if they aren't meant to be free. It's against the law.

Is Technology Driving Us Crazy?

Whilst I was surfing on the internet, I found an article from the Age newspaper in Australia called Log in, tune out: is technology driving us crazy? and it got me thinking.

As a "digital native", I have lived my whole life with stuff like computers, computer games, the internet, electronic games, etc. and can't really imagine my life without them. Recently, I started studying with a computer and now I type for practically everything: class notes, to have fun, to communicate with my friends, etc. I also find that my mental capacity is dumbing down and that I have become lazy, that my concentration very often fails me, I have problems solving simple maths equations without a calculator, my spelling has become pretty sloppy and I make really stupid mistakes.

To say the truth, the new generation is composed of people that are dependent on technology: in a car, we will watch movies, play on our DSs, use our mobile phone's WiFi or internet access to text our friends or surf on social network sites. At home, we play on the Wii, watch television shows or lose our time on Facebook. I mean, who isn't on social networks?

Confession time: I'm not. I never had a Facebook, or a Twitter, or a Tumbler, or anything that ressembles them. I don't need them: people tell me that it makes you feel like you belong, like if you are who you want to be, like if you are in a room full of cool people, and so on, but I do not need to feel accepted that way, to feel like if I am some person I am not or to feel as if I am in a room full of cool people. For me, social networking are for people who don't really take the time to engage in real, face to face relationships, or just feel the need to be with people 24/7 (an article, The True Costs of Facebook Addiction stated that "Avid Facebook users were also more likely to be unhappier and less content with their lives than others"). To those who'll read this and be bristling with fury, this is an opinion and not an everybody that has Facebook are dweebs campaign. To those who wonder how I manage without Facebook, as I said, I don't need it.

I believe that society is becoming more virtual than real -- and it's quite pathetic, really. People today are always in front of screens so that they can take part of virtual relationships with people that, more often than not, they don't know for real.

So yeah, I agree with the article. Technology is taking over our lives, and it's becoming a problem.