Schwartz and Thompson

In the first article by Schwartz, I think that the Supreme Court decision about virtual reality child pornography was the right decision from a legal standpoint; but in my opinion even though this form of pornography does not directly hurt children it may in the long run. If the Supreme Court says that this virtual experience is okay, then child predators may be worse than they were before there was a form of legal child pornography. The main point of this article is to point out the importance of drawing a clear line between what is a virtual experience and what is reality.

In the second article by Thompson, I thought that the hacker, Kevin Mitnick was very interesting, he seemed to want to obey what the courts ordered him to do but it was clear that he was only doing it to get by, it seemed to me that he wont stop hacking, because he seemed to like the attention. This was apparent by the examples of the inmate paying him 5 million cash for hacking, the Alias guest appearance, and the story he told of how exactly he could get your email password.

Thoreau

When reading this article and trying to relate it back to the past ideas I had trouble. I would have to consider Thoreau a cyber punk of his time, going against the current of society by telling his time that they only make themselves miserable. He says that people get trapped into labor and this is a mistake. He says that people are caught up in superfluous things so that the finer fruits cannot be enjoyed. The main quote I took out of the article was “For the improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man’s existence; as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors.” Basically, I understood this to mean that as he says, we only need the basic things in life, and that everything else we consume our lives with imprisons us. For example, I worked this summer in order to buy a computer. It is this mentality that traps us as a people, as I could have used that time, instead of working to smell the roses. I guess I would disagree with his viewpoint. I personally believe in the idea that hard work makes you appreciate something more, so it seems no problem to me that I worked all summer to get something that I enjoy. The life of survival he talks about seems more in tune with an animal’s life, and one I believe not meant for a society. It is true that because of our lifestyle we have lost certain aspects, our necessities become more, for example his explanation of the people around the fire. But I still wouldn’t want to live a life he describes.