While I understand Iran’s outrage for Google’s offensive
video, I think that cutting off your entire country to Google and Gmail is
unfair. Not only does that take away Iranian citizens access to countless of
important websites and information, but it is taking away their rights of
freedom. Iran censors the most of almost any other country. They censor sites
like Facebook and Youtube already, and now even Google! The government already
has extreme control in Iran, now they are taking complete control of the Internet
and disconnecting from the World Wide Web. This seems totalitarian to me- like
Big Brother can choose exactly what sites you go onto and is watching you the
whole time… Iranians are losing their freedom. They are being cut off from the
rest of the world, and there is nothing to be gained from this isolation. How
are curious citizens supposed to know what is happening in the rest of the
world? How will they know who they can trust if their information is all coming
from one biased source? The Internet gives us freedom we have never experienced
before, the possibilities of information we can discover are endless. Cutting
off access to this information is sad, the citizens will never be able to know
the immense knowledge out there, and they will never know anything but their
own culture. A simple feud with Google
can be solved without hurting the citizens of the country. But it sounds like
Iran has a lot more to worry about than Google since it got the Stuxnet virus. We
learned about that in class and the worm can cause mass havoc to the computer
or control systems. Iran suspected it
was US who planted the worm, naturally. I can’t say I am surprised though, they
are a very paranoid country if they cut off all ties when one disaster happens.
They are not only isolating their citizens, but isolating the country as a
whole, which is a huge global mistake.
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