Why Can't Americans Vote Online?

“Tuesday is Election Day in the United States, and although the mostly state and local races won't stir the same passions as next year's presidential contest, millions of people will cast ballots” (CNN P.1). “All of which raises the question: In an era when virtually every daily task can be done on the Internet, why can't we vote online, too” (P. 3)? This raises a good question in my eyes. We can go in and vote, we can mail in our vote, in the 21^st century with all the amazing technology, why can’t we find a secure way to vote online? “But critics, many of them in the cybersecurity world, argue that letting people cast votes from their home computers is a recipe for chaos” (P. 7). This is probably the only thing holding this feature back. But, they say other countries either are heading in this direction or have tried it. For example, the 80 countries in Canada have tried to use it, and have been successful. This is our future.

The World Wide Web

“The Web is a relatively primitive hypertext system, but it has certainly fulfilled its goal of being a pool of human knowledge – in fact, it has overflowed this original goal to become a vast sea of human knowledge” (pg. 1). This statement is obvious, we use the web every day of ourselves; well most people for that matter. There are so many uses and functions in which we gain new insight all the time. We can use it to find directions, reviews, online newspapers and journals, and much more. “W3 is the idea of boundless information world in which all items have a reference by which they can be retrieved” (pg. 3). This sounds like it would be awesome; we always do broad searches in order to find our goals. If everything was referenced according in some way, this would help everyone out so much. People wouldn’t have to search multiple places or stress over not being able to find information about something if it was all organized and easy to reference.

A Virtual Death and a real Dilemna

“One of the most touted beliefs about Internet communication is that the medium

strips away users' offline identities and leaves them free to reconstruct a tetherless

online persona.” (pg. 4). This is so true, and we hear this statement being made all the time. But, does it change how we act online? No, we still change the views of how other perceive us. I still change and and act how we want to online in order to make ourselves look better and feel better about ourselves. The online world has truly evolved from how it started out. More and more people are joining social websites online these days and creating idealistic profiles for themselves.

Mexican soccer team replaces player names with twitter handles

The impact of twitter has reached new levels. “The Mexican first division soccer team  Jaguares of Chiapas has replaced its players' names with their Twitter handles on their kits. The team issued a statement, the publication reported, saying they were aware of the influence of social media” (foxnews). They have decided this technique after a power house European team tried it out last month with success. Javier "Chicharito" Hernández of Manchester United uses Twitter to interact with his fans” (foxnews). Not only is he one of the best players for his country team Mexico, but he is a great addition to Manchester under Sir Alex, one of the greatest coaches in soccer history. So, of course he is well followed on twitter by his fans across the world. I am not as familiar with the Mexican soccer teams, but maybe with this new sponsor and promotional technique this team can become more known to the world.

Blogging: Self Presentation and Privacy

“A fundamental difference between blogs and other web-based publishing sites, such as

personalised home pages, is that rather than substituting new materials for old ones, a

blogger simply adds new posts, creating an ever-growing compilation of entries and an

archive of previous posts” (pg. 1). This is most definitely true, I am even guilty of this. Unless it something really serious, a person will always post about something new. “Expressive privacy concerns an individual’s ability to freely choose, act, self-express and socially interact” (pg. 3). You can posts your feelings about anything thing you want. The extent of how much you share if on you. So, therefore, the expressive privacy is unlimited as long as you put it out there. Findings in the research found thirteen topics that a blogger blogs about; with personal and daily life as number one, and coming in second is other. This make perfect sense when you look at everyone’s blogs and hear about people’s blogs. There is a huge gap between the stats, personal and daily life comes in at 58.4% and other comes at 11.9, as found on page six.

The End of Books

The end of books has been in question for a long, long time now. With smart phones, video transmissions, the internet, and other sources of electronics, the print media is slowly disappearing. The newspapers and books can now be heard on tape, seen in video, and read on the internet. The time of print media may be coming to a halt. I have also discussed this situation in my communications class recently. We are showing a new and fast way to see and gain knowledge we would normally get from print media, but at the same time we are saying goodbye to an “icon”. I never really read books or newspapers unless I have to for class, so I probably and not the best to discuss the important or non-importance of print media. But, the business is hurting over the last few years with all the new developments. Hopefully everyone can be happy in the long run.