Cyberitas

Like Jessica, I had my first foray into the tech world at a young age (“back in the day…”), and with each passing year and generation, that starting age is plummeting.  (I’d like to point out that the age at which I wrote a post on Xanga was younger than Jessica’s, since I’m obviously way cooler than her.)

While navigating the labyrinth that we call the web, I was plagued with a variety of pressing questions. Was there anyone tracking my browser history, and if so, who was it? What did they want with my information? Was downloading that image and then reposting it on my Xanga legal? Should I have talked crap about that classmate on MySpace and Facebook? Are we truly anonymous online? What is the meaning of life? These were the questions that kept me awake at night as I was in the sixth grade.

As you may or may not have been able to tell, the last paragraph is a complete lie. Unfortunately, I, like the vast majority of young internet users, did not care for and did not care to understand some of the issues that ‘netizens’ face on a daily basis. However, I became more and more conscious about these issues during the last few years of high school as I started reading Engadget and TechCrunch.

I’m also a freshman at Harvard College, and am currently enrolled in the same freshman seminar – Cyberspace in Court – as Jessica. Together, we’re here to share some information we wish we had known when we started out navigating through the jungle of the internet.