Socially Awkward

For my paper topic, I would like to explore the issues with moving to a technology-centric, Internet driven society.  I am currently reading Zittrain’s The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It for my context book, and I had no idea about the number of issues that surrounded the Internet, from the basic infrastructure to less tangible issues like privacy.  For my paper, I want to take the context book one step further and pull in some concepts from Lawrence Lessig’s The Future of Ideas and Palfrey’s Born Digital, and examine how to move forward with Internet technology in an intelligent, widely-beneficial way.  I haven’t settled on the concrete issues I would like to explore, but I would like to tie in the ideas of political and corporate decisions affecting the course of Internet technology, privacy issues that arise with the proliferation of the Internet, the idea of copyright and the Internet, and how all these issues affect using technology in a library setting.

I like the idea of this paper, since I think it’s really easy to get swept up in the Internet and all the shiny tools (hi iPhone! I love you!) that accompany it.  But when we write on Facebook that we’re running to the store to pick up groceries, what are we really saying? What are we doing? Why are we doing it?  I want to explore our compulsion to trust the Internet, and give a full picture of what issues the Internet creates.