For sure, the culture is based on both the good representatives of it and the bad ones. Computer system administrators working in support teams of many different Internet companies and providers of communication always try to help other people, who are so called lamers (beginners) in this computer world still being undiscovered by many novice users. Computer “gurus” will usually give you a quality answer to all your questions; will help to solve the problems that you have. Other than that can be told about cybercriminals, like a bandit in the real world, who stole important information from the Web-sites of the companies, stole credit card numbers to take possession of rich businessmen bank accounts. An obvious case of that evil that these cybercriminals do to the Internet and to the net culture is the recent virus named Novarg, which spread widely like the epidemic over the whole Net, infecting millions of the computer systems over the little period of time.
The Internet adsorbs what is created in the reality. Last book about Harry Potter has appeared in the Net in four hours after the beginning of its sale. The group of fans has bought the book, has broken it into the parts and there and then got down to work, each one under the recognition of the relative part of the pages. Other vivid example of interaction of reality with the Internet - marriage agencies. They prosper; the number of the international marriages has considerably increased. Purchase of brides is no longer the category, like purchase of air tickets from the Internet.
One more phenomenon of the same class is acquaintance and friendship in correspondence with the possible subsequent arrival on a visit. Certainly, there is a great chance to meet the person you have ever dreamed about in the Internet and to start cyber-love relationships. However, one of the main advantages of this kind of relationships is that you cannot judge people on physical appearance. As the Sara Carlstead said, “You are able to learn about the person from the inside-out, instead of the outside-in” (Sara Carlstead 2). Evident minus in this fairly often dubious love over the Net is that the couples can tell themselves any lie and the truth will be kept somewhere hard to get from.
Speaking about the nearest future, social consequences of information can be both positive and negative. To negative it is possible to point a decrease in a cultural level with an opportunity to increase sharply the number of people being only mechanical consumers of the given information; and isolation of the individual. It is necessary to understand the process of isolation of the individual when without public regulation of information a moment will come when people will start to communicate, as a rule, indirectly - through the computer. From the positive sides I want to name a free development of an individual, development of the information and communicative society, “smart” societies.
The Internet has changed society but it has changed itself, too. It has lost its relative autonomy from the rest of the culture and has become an extension of the real world. Now there is a great opportunity to create a peace around the whole globe, connect every country together. In the words of Sherry Turkle, the Internet is an “instance of evocative computer objects and experiences bringing postmodernism down to earth” (Sherry Turkle 25).
I want to say that we are already in a network, in the world of 1’s and 0’s, but we haven’t realized it yet. A network of supermarkets, a network of railways and their ticket offices, a network of bookshops, a network of McDonald’s®, a network of polyclinics, banks, housing offices. Especially it concerns the backward countries. The more advanced the country, the more it is network-enabled.
Generally people communicate by means of a printed word. Nevertheless even then, when audio-video conferences will become effective and simple in management and use, the will be no chances of the physical contact ever - it is necessary to forget about business hand shakes, friendly pats on a back and will be neither gentle embraces, nor kisses. Limitation of touch experience in a cyberspace bears a number of significant lacks with itself - however, alongside with some unique advantages - in comparison with meetings face to face.
Scientific and technical revolution has raised the question about the use of technologies, because, in fact, consequences of their rash application began to threaten an existence of the mankind making elimination of verges between essences once been opposite. So, are erased not only the verges dividing classes, races, the nations and the states, not only borders between reality and virtuality, but also specific models of a sexual accessory vary: it is shown not only in universal emancipation, but also generally in the new attitude to sexual identification; in fact, not casually "unisex" as style of behaviour and self-expression recently became popular.
I want to finish with the words of the greatest romantic of before-network epoch of XX century, Antoine de Sent-Exupery. He wrote, “The real unique luxury - is a luxury of human intercourse”.
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Web-sites:
Project “Cyberpunk” - http://project.cyberpunk.ru.
Cyberpunk DataBase - http://www.cyberdb.by.ru.
There™ Internet-project - http://www.there.com.