I am a 44 year old man who has been using the Internet for 13 years since I got into the computer field. In the early days we had local bulletins boards that you could log in to and post a message or download a file. Now with the advancement of of technology we have developed sites such as this site, myspace, facebook and more different kinds of sites to meet new and interesting peple.
With these sites we have become a society that can be anonymous, but at the same time available to anyone, anywhere, and almost anytime. We have raised a society that today is capable of meeting different cultures, where in my day the only way we could meet different cultures is to travel. I grew up in a primarily traditional Italian culture. We primarily hung out with people of our own kind, we did not venture out beyond beyond our own inner circles, that is not to say that we did not allow other cultures to become part of our circles. I grew up and the end of the sixties and early seventies in what is called the peace and love generation. This is the first generation that grew up after the civil rights movement.

My generation which is now the first generation the pioneers of todays open social awareness which has led to sites such as myspace. To some myspace is to open, to accessible, to available for society misfits (sexual predators, scam artists, deviants and more...) to find out who you are and cause harm to you. The problem with this argument is that we as a society as whole have become open about who we are and what we do. So for people to say that myspace is the problem with the society today, then you better take a good look around you, because myspace was developed by people wanting to have an open form of communication with other people. In todays society we have access to so much information that we as a society cannot digest all of it at any point in time.
One of the biggest benefits of sites like myspace is that you can have an open dialog with almost anyone at any point time. These dialogs leading to new break through of idea's. With new idea's comes new opportunities, with opportunity comes creation, with creation comes advancement, with advancement comes invention, and with invention comes opportunity and the process starts all over again.
I am not a big user of the social boards, but I am an advocate for them. For if they advance opportunity, or make a difference in someones life then we as a society should embrace these boards in a positive way. If people like Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy or many other pioneers of civil rights would be proud of how far we have come in reaching out and recognizing other cultures. We still have a long way to go till we truly can say that we are past the point of discriminating against others, but if we keep reaching out to other cultures then maybe, just maybe we can say discrimination is a thing of the past.

Learn more about this author, Paul Marraffa.
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