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Technology is used daily in our lives. We use it to check our schedules, communicate, and even socialize. This is an awesome aspect of our lives but are we making it too easy for people to watch us? Are we giving to much of our information out to the public and to the government which watches over us? Anyone who has the interest can easily tap into what we do everyday. They can check our online purchases or our private conversations. Every Internet site you have ever accessed can be monitored. Now a little of this might be alright. But what is the line? In class we read the book 1984 and it was a prediction of what the future might look like in 1984. It showed that the governments can always tap in on people daily lives and can always keep things from the individual. The book Little Brother is a modern day take on 1984 and it helped exemplify some of the same points it just used modern day technology to do so. In the books //1984// by George Orwell and //Little Brother// by Cory Doctorow the idea of government monitoring of the individual and censoring information over technology becomes very apparent. ======

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The government can easily keep things away from the general public. They just don't have to tell us. But people think that with the use of technology in our lives it is harder for the government to censor things. In //1984// it is depicted that the government can actually use technology as an advantage to control what people know. "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." (Orwell 242) This quote shows that through censorship, the past can easily be altered. It does not actually change what happened, but the perception of what happened changes. In //1984,// Big Brother used censorship to change the public's view on it by changing what was written in the history books everywhere. He changed the books to say that he actually saved the world and he is almost godly. No one dared to oppose him on that notion. "X-NET LEADER: I COULD GET METAL ONTO AN AIRPLANE." This is one of the many headlines that was created after Marcus's press conference in //Little Brother.// Marcus had said things in a way that news-people were able to pull out snippets and make it sound bad. This isn't what the government did but it was through the influence of the government that the news broadcasting services decided to twist the words into bad things. These two things happen often in today's society. Peoples words get twisted to other people needs and government hides whatever they need from the American citizens to keep their approval. The U.S. government definitely needs to hide certain things from us such as military opperations but do they really need to hide where our tax dollars are going or the exact reason why we are occupying a certain country? Again they do most of this to keep the individual out of the loop and there-for out of the way. ======

==== The government has the power to change anything it needs to change through censorship. In 1984, the people under the government have no idea what the past is actually like. They think Big Brother was always the amazing savior of society that helped the people. They had no idea that they have no freedom or rights because they never knew better than what they have today." And when memory failed and written records were falsified—when that happened, the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested." (Orwell 88). Little Brother had a lot less censorship by the government but the society still didn't know about Treasure Island. In today's society with the technology we have we feel like there is no way the government could hide things from us. But the can, they can easily block sites so that we don't even know they are there. Take a look at the situation in China, how much does our government take out of our view? Obviously not as much but they could easily take it all down. The [|Chinese government control all of the websites that the Chinese people can access]. In China any website talking badly about China is [|blocked], any website talking about the Dalia Lama or the Tibetian conflict are blocked and outlawed. Any website promoting democracy is taken off their server. Censorship can easily happen and many of the Chinese people have no idea its happening. ====

Many laws are being attempted to put in place that are "anti-pirating" laws. These laws could help officials take websites out of our view. In 1984 Winston was able to get around government censorship by being social, talking to people in person and reading old literature, all with staying out of the view if the government. But, what if he had just conformed. "Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten." (Orwell 249) If our government decided it needed to quiet down the citizens they could easily take things out of the norms of society. They could take so much out that conversations couldn't even be held. Little brother was able to get around censorship because Marcus was able to tell his story and inform people so they would question the government. With Internet it is very easy to access other peoples stuff. Every internet site is held on a big back-ground server and nothing can be permanently deleted.media type="youtube" key="oo6JZ1wHEYQ" height="315" width="560"With that you can get to everything through a code, [|IP] code. To easily access Internet websites there is a HTML code that you can type in that is easier to remember. If a government tries to take a website down they can take away its HTML name and the common person wouldn't be able to get to it. There would still be people who could easily type in the IP code and access the information. They could then move that webpage to a new HTML code and for the short while before the government shuts down the new location people can access it again. This process could easily repeat the cycle often and the public would always have access to the site they want. Granted someone wants to spend the time to constantly move IP codes. A much easier and simpler way to get around any firewall is to use whats called a [|proxy server] which basically just scrambles the information the server is getting about what your doing so it has no idea what site you are on. Another bonus of a [|proxy server] is that it keeps everything you do private, cookies don't work and no one can follow your online "[|footprint]".

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The government can easily censor things from us but we know how, but not how much. The government can use technology against the individual and it can use it to censor things from us. How much do they censor from us though? In places like China no body gets to see anything on the web. But, we can do something about this. We can use their system against them. We can learn how to get around censorship by using the behind-the-scenes IPS codes and we can have online protests and blackouts like the one that has already happened and worked so well. Technology can be used as a bad thing but in general it is one of the best tools in our lives today so let's learn how to get past the government bans and censorship and use it like the founders and inventors meant for it to be used. ======

Doctorow, Cory. //Little Brother //. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 2008. Print.

"Internet Censorship in the People's Republic of China." //Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia //. Web. 14 Feb. 2012. <[]>.

Orwell, George. //1984 //. Madrid: J.A. Mestas, 2003. Print.

"What Is a Proxy Server? - Knowledge Base." //Home - Knowledge Base //. Web. 14 Feb. 2012. <[]>.

"Your Online Footprint| Productivity501." //Productivity501 - Maximize the Productivity in Your Work and Play. //<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;"> Web. 14 Feb. 2012. <[]>.