Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Task 1

In article 1, the author mentions the challenge of reducing vulnerability to assaults on cyberspace. One of the grand challenges of engineering is to make our world a safer place. Due to the proliferation of the Internet, our “world” is not only limited to the earth. Virtual communities are also part of our “world”. Thus, to ensure the safety in the virtual world is equally important and computer engineers have the responsibility to do so.

Owning to anonymity in the virtual world, criminals can mask their identities and jeopardize others’ privacy or even money. Personal information could be stolen by the hackers for monetary purpose and just for curiosity. Online banking accounts might be stolen as well. To many people who are new to the virtual world, they do not feel safe there. This is because at any point of time, their computer system may collapse due to virus or their internet bank password may be stolen. In a sense, due to the unforeseen dangers online, many people have the resistance to accept online services. It actually slows down civilization because digitalization would eventually make our life more convenient.

Furthermore, children are vulnerable in the virtual world since they are exposed to too many dangers online. There are scores of paedophile, sexual predators online. They have masked their identities to deceive the impressionable and innocent young people. The internet is a very good platform for the young people to enrich their knowledge since they could find anything they want to learn online. Nowadays, education has become digitalized as well. Many schools has uploaded useful learning resources online and even streaming videos of some lessons. However, due to all those dangers online, the internet is not yet an ideal learning platform. If a computer is infected with virus, at any time gambling sites or even pornographic may pop out.

In conclusion, it is urgent to make the virtual world a safer and more conducive place.

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