words can have such a powerful impact on how you interpret things, how you feel, and how you can make others feel as well. The word choice used in the book thief demonstrates many themes throughout such as death, friendship, guilt, reason, and the struggle between. Like a tap that a child has tried it’s hardest to turn off but hasn’t quite managed. 497 first of all, i’d like to ‘thank you’ for all the books your organization has sent me. To me, books are very important to prisoners because books have the power to change lives and take one out of darkness and bring one to light. A lot of inmates as myself don’t have family or anyone on the outside to send in books or other materials and we’re at a standstill as far as learning some things that one needs to know to be successful in society.

But with the prison book program, inmates as myself can learn new and different things that help and make a major difference. The books that i have received from the prison book program, has made me more positive. The books are maturing, inspiring and encouraging me to reach my fullest potential. I thank god constantly for this program and i pray for and bless the people who have created this program as well as the people who donate and help to make all these things possible. Thank you for changing my life and leading me to a positive path that i know will help me be successful in society. I don’t have any family or friends therefore, if it wasn’t for your program, i wouldn’t have any books.

God bless you all! this essay appeared as a response to edge 's annual question, what should we be worried about? all disruptive technologies upset traditional power balances, and the internet is no exception. The standard story is that it empowers the powerless, but that's only half the story. Powerful institutions might be slow to make use of that new power, but since they are powerful, they can use it more effectively. Governments and corporations have woken up to the fact that not only can they use the internet, they can control it for their interests. Unless we start deliberately debating the future we want to live in, and information technology in enabling that world, we will end up with an internet that benefits existing power structures and not society in general. Traditional publishing books, newspapers, encyclopedias, music lost power, while amazon and others gained. The obama campaign made revolutionary use of the internet, both in 2008 and 2012.

And the internet changed social power, as we collected hundreds of friends on facebook, tweeted our way to fame, and found communities for the most obscure hobbies and interests. And some crimes became easier: impersonation fraud became identity theft, copyright violation became file sharing, and accessing censored materials political, sexual, cultural became trivially easy. Now powerful interests are looking to deliberately steer this influence to their advantage. Some corporations are creating internet environments that maximize their profitability: facebook and google, among many others.

Some industries are lobbying for laws that make their particular business models more profitable: telecom carriers want to be able to discriminate between different types of internet traffic, entertainment companies want to crack down on file sharing, advertisers want unfettered access to data about our habits and preferences. On the government side, more countries censor the internet and do so more effectively than ever before. Police forces around the world are using internet data for surveillance, with less judicial oversight and sometimes in advance of any crime. Internet surveillance both governmental and commercial is on the rise, not just in totalitarian states but in western democracies as well. Both companies and governments rely more on propaganda to create false impressions of public opinion. In 1996, cyber libertarian john perry barlow issued his declaration of the independence of cyberspace. He told governments: you have no moral right to rule us, nor do you possess any methods of enforcement that we have true reason to fear.

We believed that the internet generation, those quick to embrace the social changes this new technology brought, would swiftly outmaneuver the more ponderous institutions of the previous era. But while the unorganized and nimble were the first to make use of the new technologies, eventually the powerful behemoths woke up to the potential and they have more power to magnify. And not only does the internet change power balances, but the powerful can also change the internet. Does anyone else remember how incompetent the fbi was at investigating internet crimes in the early 1990s? or how internet users ran rings around china's censors and middle eastern secret police? or how digital cash was going to make government currencies obsolete, and internet organizing was going to make political parties obsolete? now all that feels like ancient history.

Essay on Effects of Technology on Human Life

The masses can occasionally organize around a specific issue sopa/pipa, the arab spring, and so on and can block some actions by the powerful. The unorganized go back to being unorganized, and powerful interests take back the reins. Because if we're not trying to understand how to shape the internet so that its good effects outweigh the bad, powerful interests will do all the shaping. Its history is a fortuitous accident: an initial lack of commercial interests, governmental benign neglect, military requirements for survivability and resilience, and the natural inclination of computer engineers to build open systems that work simply and easily.

This mix of forces that created yesterday's internet will not be trusted to create tomorrow's. Battles over the future of the internet are going on right now: in legislatures around the world, in international organizations like the international telecommunications union and the world trade organization, and in internet standards bodies. The internet is what we make it, and is constantly being recreated by organizations, companies, and countries with specific interests and agendas. Either we fight for a seat at the table, or the future of the internet becomes something that is done to us.