4. Using the internet

Complete this extract from a guide to using the Internet with the following:

on-line	web page	sites
chat room	download	newsgroup

The World Wide Web is made up of millions of (1) …… created by anybody from multimedia corporations to ordinary people like you and me. On the web you can read (2) …. Newspapers or magazines; you can watch videos, (3) …. Music or buy anything from a CD to a holiday. You can go into a (4)…….. and talk to other people all over the world or join a (5)…. for more serious debate. If you are really ambitious you might even like to try creating your own (6) ….. . Then you can show your holiday pictures to the whole world!

5. R eading

Celebrities like Angelina Jolie try to make people aware that differences still exist between those with access to information and those without.

There is a gap between those individuals and those communities that have do not have access to the information technologies that are transforming our lives.

This gap is thedigital divide.

Being on the privileged side of the divide means new jobs, access to education, new modes of community building, ease of access to global markets and to computers and telecommunication networks. Who is on which side of the divide? Look at the graph below and read the text to find out.

6. Speaking

Do you agree with the statement below? Does the Net and virtual friendships cause this feeling of isolation among tens? Explain.

“The Internet is your friend but it shouldn’t be your only friend”

L esson 43.

1. Speaking

C omment on the cartoon:

2 . Reading

Read the following text.

THE NET

H er driver’s license, her credit cards, her bank accounts, her identity, deleted!

Like all of us, Angela Bennett (Sandra Bullock) lives in the age of information on the privileged side of the divide. Every trace of her existence is computerized. Everything about her is encoded somewhere on a complex network of information. It’s something Angela had never thought about … until the day she was deleted.

With the explosion of technological advances in the last few years, The Net is a story virtually torn from today’s headlines. It takes place in a world in which anything, from ordering a pizza to retrieving records from half-way across the planet, can be accomplished through the vast and complicated map of phone lines and computers known as the Internet; a world in which, with the right knowledge and the right program, a good hacker can log into remote computers and alter any information they choose: flight plans, medical and criminal records, top secret government information, even someone’s identity …

Sandra Bullock stars as Angela Bennett, Cathedral Systems’ top analyst. As a well-paid freelancer, she spends her days ironing out bugs in games designed for adolescent boys or tracking down viruses hacked into unsuspecting systems, and her nights “chatting” with other shy cyber-jockeys on the Net. She’s quite happy with her sheltered, if somewhat lonely routine … until the very life she’s made for herself pushes her headlong into the middle of a murderous web of corruption and conspiracy.