Week 12

I found this article at PC World that relates to how several different aspects of life are converging on the internet. For example, one quote that is familiar to everyone is "You've got mail!" from AOL. This quote from the early days of e-mail was the basis for a movie of this name, starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. This quote is also often used for news stories regarding AOL. Another quote, this one from the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey", occurs when HAL says "I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that." This quote made its way from the movie into everyday life, just in a slightly different form. The more common forms of the quote are "[the application] has stopped responding" or "[the application] has quit unexpectedly." The quote from "2001" may not be the most memorable, but it does illustrate an ironic aspect of modern computing, which is that sometimes computers don't work the way we want them to. A third quote has become more true than when it was first stated in 1999. This one is by Scott McNealy, who co-founded Sun Microsystems. He once said, "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it." This quote was made in response to privacy concerns over a new software package. Today, with social networking and Google, it is impossible to remain anonymous online.