Does internet democratise the consumer? Is privacy a concern?

Under the growing influence of the internet and technology, I find it difficult to state it does not democratize the consumer. Today, most countries are under the influence of democratic and capitalistic leadership especially in the United States which is the most powerful and influential country in the world of the century. With the help of the most powerful communication tool of the internet, these democratic countries will spread their democratic values to other consumers from other countries. The internet may not even need to democratize the consumer at all, since majority of consumers of the internet live in a democratic society and are already democratized. However, it is no doubt internet can easily spread information and globalize the democratic values across consumers. Naturally animals will seldom travel alone in the wilderness and prefer to follow the herd, how can we not say countries themselves will not do the same thing? Democracy is the growing powerful form of government and is clearly the "herd" of this wilderness with the United States on its side. In China and North Korea, they control the amount of media that gets presented to the public in order to preserve their government. I believe this is mainly because they fear that the internet may democratize China's internet consumers and cause a rebellion against the government since it is not a fully or at all a democratic government.

I believe privacy is a concern because if the internet can spread democratic values with ease than it can spread privacy invasion as well. With the constant activities occurring on the internet, some of these activities and information will attract attention. Many people these days include many valuable information such as credit cards and account numbers to perform online transactions. Quite often, people will attempt to obtain these private information by posing as a representative of the credit card company or bank. Also, there has been issue about government or organizations monitoring the internet and infringing the privacy rights of the consumers. Internet may have its benefits and but it has its misfortunes too.

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Here are some photos of my adventure in exploring Itune applications!





I accessed the application store easily since I have an Ipod and the application itself. They offer a range of application and put them in a list of free and payable sections. It doesn't really surprise me that the top applications downloaded mainly consist of games. :D