The Pros and Cons World Wide Web

“The World Wide Web has ensnared and enslaved more people than it has enlightened and emancipated.” Discuss.

The invention of the World Wide Web (WWW) by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 has brought great changes to the Internet. Being a system of documents which are linked together by hypertext and can be easily accessible through the Internet, it has made possible the easy sharing of knowledge and information from people all around the world, breaking the geographical boundary that had existed in sharing. However, critics are starting to argue that although it has allowed us to break the geographical boundary, it has created yet another boundary- one that limits people to the information found on the WWW, hence controlling people’s way of thinking through manipulating those information found. In addition, proponents have also raised their concerns regarding over-dependence and addiction to the WWW, rendering us as slaves of WWW rather than masters.

Indeed, the advent of WWW has allowed rapid sharing of information and this merit has more often than not been made use of by people as a propaganda tool. As all the different websites are linked to one another, extremist groups can easily find sites that share similar viewpoints and inculcate their ideologies into the creators of these websites, hence recruiting new members. An example in point of view will be the National Alliance, a Neo-Nazi organization in the United States that has a website that is linked to almost every white extremist group on the Internet. This has allowed National Alliance to expand, not only in United States, but also in other countries, such as the United Kingdom and Portugal. As these websites are further linked to other websites, it has allowed the message that the Neo-Nazi organization wants to deliver to reach out to audiences from different corners of the world. As web servers find themselves chancing upon these websites frequently, they may first enter the websites out of curiosity and...