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Ever since a computer scientist named Tim Berners-Lee in 1990 created the world wide web, the internet has been advancing.  Due to Mr.Berners-Lee doing this the internet has allowed us to make meaning and pursue purpose.  From online shopping to online petitions it has brought the whole world together.  From Jennifer Earl from the University of California, Santa Barbara with her article Pursuing Social Change.  Or Bill Wasik’s “My Crowd Experiment: The Mob Project” where Bill experimented with flash mobs.  And Sam Anderson’s “In Defense of Distraction” (NEED TO READ OVER).  All these Authors have showed the uses of using the internet as a tool for meaning making and pursuing purpose.

Being able to change something in your community is something special.  But what if you can change that problem that you have in your community and every other community in the entire world?.  That is Where Jennifer Earl comes in from the University of California, Santa Barbara.  In her article Pursuing Social Change Online, The Use of Four Protest Tactics on the Internet, she talks about online petitions.  Earl states “One well-known provider of online petitions is moveon.org, which actually began with an online petition opposing the impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1998 that 500,000 people ultimately signed (Bennett & Fielding, 1999;SourceWatch, 2005).(2)”  This is one very big petition that happened.  Ultimately the petition didn’t work but 500,000 people voiced their opinions.  That is a lot.  Petitions can be any size and it can be about anything.  It doesn’t have to be about a president being impeached and they wanted to try and stop the impeachment.  The internet allows us now to try and get the whole country together, and end something.  

This is a very useful tool that the internet provides us and I think it could be one of the best uses of the internet.  She also talks about another useful thing that the internet provides us similar to petitioning.  It is called boycotting.  “A typical site hosting a boycott would include online stores (e.g., amazon.com) or offline companies (e.g., Coca-Cola)– and why (e.g., poor environmental records, poor labor practices).” (2)  This is very useful.  Maybe somebody learned about let’s say Coca-Cola not treating their workers right and they have poor work conditions someone can talk about this on one of these websites and they can start a movement.  They could truly start a big movement against Coca-Cola.  Many people like coke and they probably think that the people that are producing their drink areis being treated fairly, but they really aren’t.  This could be a huge social movement.  Having this going on would make Coca-Cola lose tons of money over something stupid.  This would force the company to dump money into making the conditions more acceptable for the workers and treat their workers better.  This is all thanks to the internet.  The internet allows me, who is in Maine, to tell someone that lives in Texas about this on one of these sites on the internet.  Then that person says that they are going to boycott the company as well and then he shares it with his friends and next thing you know the whole world knows that Coca-Cola gives its workers terrible working conditions and the whole world boycotts them.

Flash mobs are also ways that the internet is used as a tool.  In Bill Wasik’s “My Crowd Experiment:The Mob Project” he experiments with using the internet as a tool.  “I wanted to use e-mail to get people to come to some sort of show, where something surprising would happen, perhaps involving a fight; or an entire fake arts scene, maybe, some tight-knit band of fictitious young artists and writers who all lived together in a loft, and we would reel in journalists and would-be admirers eager to congratulate themselves for having discovered the next best thing.” (Wasik )(475)  What Bill is doing here is using the internet as a tool to get people to come together.  This is also a great use tool of the internet as a tool.  It allows you to communicate with others even when they aren’t with that person.  You can send text messages and do all these great things now with the internet.

SAM ANDERSON PARAGRAPH

 

The internet has many useful tools that you can use to your advantage.

CONCLUSION HOW DO WE STATE IT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT THE OTHER WAY