The Puppeteer

Alvin M. Ramos

Luis Palad National High School

 

“I fear that one day, all the gadgets we invented to help, will turn us all into idiots.”

 

We live in a world where in everything we do, we always look for an easier way of doing it. We hunger for the instant methods; well, we have to, in order to go with the fast pace of life today.

 

Instant messaging, instant medicines, instant foods – products of mankind’s endless longing for convenience; but if there were any better example of how instant the world has gone today, it would be the internet.

 

One click and it’s done, whatever you’re trying to do, that’s how internet works. Its prowess is infinite. It holds limitless knowledge; connects thousands of different bloodlines and races; and contains a billion years worth of history; all equivalent to 1.2 terabytes of memory.

 

For me, internet is man’s greatest achievement so far for it has given him unlimited power in his hands, a gateway to unbounded privileges. Unbounded…for now.

 

The internet poses danger too, that’s a sad reality we have to accept. This danger has forced our country’s lawmakers to start restricting the Filipinos’ power over the internet. A law called the Cybercrime Act was passed and is now being implemented. The resistance of the Filipino netizens rose of course, claiming their freedom of expression in the internet, specifically, the social networking sites; to have been stolen by this act. But as far as I’m concerned, I think this act is only a call to all of us. Is freedom worth what we do out of it?

 

In the internet, what’s done is done. If you post something on Facebook, it is shared to the whole world. If you click the like button, your opinion is broadcast among your network of friends. Your actions cannot be undone, once the world sees what you shared in the net, there is no turning back to their compliments and criticisms, however harsh they may be.

 

What if one day, out of your rage, you posted something humiliating about someone else on the Facebook, Twitter, etc? This someone is faced to the “cybermob” he could never escape nor could he defend himself from their comments. That is the danger our freedom over the internet has laid upon us. We feel like we’ve become gods so we just say whatever we want to say, because there are no limits.

 

That is why in whatever we do in the internet, social responsibility must be in there. For upon creating the internet, we created a separate world completely different from the one we live in. the laws of man are not acknowledged in the dimensions of the internet. It is entrusted to us, the gods of the internet, the responsibility of creating ethical boundaries in whatever we do in this 1.2 terabytes of memory because after all, the internet doesn’t think for itself. We always have been and always will be the controllers of what we create. If you are not ready to be a good netizen then don’t be a netizen ar all, right? Set the limits for ourselves!

 

Because in the end, a gun wasn’t invented to kill but to protect. No matter how bad an invention turned out to be it was always first designed to help. After all, it is we who decide how we put them into use, it is we who pull the strings.