Wednesdays Lecture

Today’s topic of Digital democracy is an interesting one because now that every person with a computer and the internet has the ability to say what they feel to whomever else in the world wants to hear it. It allows for a much more transparent democracy because now nobodies voice is suppressed by local authorities like in North Korea where the internet has still never touched and parts of Africa who are too poor to access the internet. How ever like always the powers at be will use this free domain of information to purport false information about rival parties. However this has always happened there has always been propaganda to mislead the masses but now we as a public have the ability to ignore what is clearly propaganda and find the truth ourselves thanks to the digital age we live in. This is where the idea of free speech comes into it because although we can now find the truth if we are not allowed our freedom of speech how can we relay this information to the powers at be? For a transparent digital democracy freedom of speech needs to a basic right. Growing up with the Internet I always had dreams to be able to do what hackers did how they could get into hidden parts of the internet and computers. I first started learning HTML at about the age of 13 as my mum was a computer teacher. But unfortunately that’s where it stopped. But films like Hackers were a great education growing up that these people are not out to harm things they are just after the truth.