Today in synchronized fashion a protest of PIPA/SOPA burst. Wikipedia was blacked out for the day. Several of my friends on facebook shared this: End Piracy, Not Liberty-Google. And google itself had a censorship bar across its name.
Tonight while listening to my classmates cover their respective topics in media skills, EDT 211 began to take on an ironic spin. Skills like Appropriation, Cognitive Intelligence, and Transmedia Navigation filled my imagination with such diluted possibilities. The fate of the internet hovers almost like a U.F.O saucer. The wealth of knowledge that can be utilized by all, and specifically teachers as it relates to this class may go bankrupt. Then what?!
At present, the very thought of internet censorship does have one positive aspect. It has prompted all of us to pause and recognize just how important this vehicle of information, ideas, knowledge, products is to our lives. How utterly dependent we are on this connection! For years we have traveled on the information highway without any traffic regulations.
Now we feel threatened. Our way of life. Our constitutional rights. The very mosaic of our lives--our technologically wired brains. How could we function without it?
On my way home from class, I imagined lecturing about the Constitution. How was I supposed to explain the First Amendment:
"Well class in regards to the First Amendment 'freedom of speech' was an ideal the Founding Fathers proposed. However, it has been challenged. One example of this stately hypocrisy is the censorship of the internet. Thus 'freedom of speech' is an ideal which has lost all practicality in its translation."
Until then we should just enjoy the internet. Sign the petiton and pray that Congress rethinks this whole thing.
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