Term paper on Reality Misunderstood

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Small Company Y2k Report
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Polymorphic &
Polymorphic & Cloning Computer Viruses The generation of today is growing up in a fast-growing, high-tech world which allows us to do the impossibilities of yesterday. With the help of modern telecommunications and the rapid growth of the personal computer in the average household we are able to

Reality, Misunderstood

Day by day cyberspace is becoming a more intricate part of our society. As it does, we rely on it more to manage finances, research, and to communicate. Communication in cyberspace has developed a new community for people around the world. The ability to freely communicate with people around the world through a computer has raised many questions about the reality of cyberspace. Since it is a tool of communication that millions of people use every day to converse with friends, family, and business associates it must be considered a dwelling of reality.

Although it seems like an abstract point, cyberspace is a destination millions of people visit every day to transfer real ideas and real thoughts from one real person to another, for this it must be a real place. It can be considered as an extension of many other devices, such as the telephone. These devices have been used throughout history to communicate and none have been considered to defy reality. Also, many things we consider an integral part of our lives, which define our reality, like crime and terrorism take place in cyberspace. On a more abstract thought, but still very real, cyberspace is a home to our dreams. Many people’s realities revolve around being something or someone else. Cyberspace gives these people a home for real dreams and needs they don’t get in physically. Because it is new and uncharted by many people it seems too abstract to be real, but it is an extension of many aspects of our lives and must be considered reality.

Since the invention of the telegraph we have been using machines to communicate across states or even across the world. As technology has grown so have our means of communication. The difference with cyberspace is that it is such a huge technological advance that many people cannot grasp the fundamental idea behind it. With the telegraph, telephone or fax, there was always a physical input and a physical response whether it was Morse code, voices, or a print copy. Cyberspace is translated through a computer and the only physicality is typing. The idea of a machine talking, sending, and returning a message is fundamentally the same as a telephone taking our voice, converting it, sending it, converting it back, and playing the message. But there are no arguments that a message being sent through telephone wires is not a form of reality. One way to look at it is that real information such as national secrets or death threats are sent over cyberspace. If this place was not real these secrets that could destroy governments or people would be no danger, but they are because they come from a very real place. China is one place that understands this:

“China’s no-nonsense-named State Bureau of Secrecy has issued a list of proscriptions to Internet users aimed at protecting the government’s control over the flow of information and its monopoly and power. Internet users, including those sending e-mail or participating in chat rooms are banned from sending or discussing ‘state secrets’ ”(Parks 6).

China realizes that there could be a very real danger with cyberspace if people use it to give up national secrets or plans. To control this the government is using screening methods that are much like phone taps. Cyberspace is just another tool, but much more sophisticated, we have developed to communicate with others. Given time to settle and for people to grasp the fundamentals cyberspace will, like the telephone, be considered reality.

In our society one way to define reality is through happiness and through pain. Pain is often caused by crime, which is definitely infecting cyberspace. Every day there is another story about a new virus or how a hacker crashed another computer system. This is how people use cyberspace to inflict pain on others. Since cyberspace has become such an important part of our culture it has become our government’s job to protect us from these intrusions. The same government...