Depiction Of The American Dream in The Great Gatsby Essay -- The Great

As children, we have all dreamt of money, being rich; owning an extravagant mansion, magnificent cars, and being married to a prince or princess. Basically, we dream of the perfect life, with the perfect spouse. Generally, this dream is known as the American Dream, which is the belief that if one works hard, that person will succeed by becoming rich. The topic of the American Dream can be found throughout The Great Gatsby, the most prime example of this is the dream of Jay Gatsby. Gatsby’s dream is to work hard to get rich in order to win the love of Daisy Buchanan, his long lost love. Despite these beliefs, the American Dream, in it’s modern form, generally fails to make that person happy. As for Gatsby’s dream to win Daisy’s love with elaborate material possessions, his attempts eventually lead to his death. Both the noble intentions and the resulting failures of the American Dream resemble the intentions and corruption of Jay Gatsby in the novel, The Gr eat Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  F. Scott Fitzgerald included many examples of the American Dream in the novel. Myrtle Wilson is an example of this. Myrtle, who was married to George Wilson, a low income mechanic, desired money and a higher social status. This desire, which is equivalent to the desire for money in the American Dream, eventually led to the death of Myrtle. Myrtle was having an affair with Tom Buchanan in spite of the fact that he was awful to her, for example, â€Å"†¦Tom Buchanan broke her nose with hi...

Computer Hacking Essay

Abstract: Recent discussions of computer ‘hacking’ make explicit reference to the disproportionate involvement of juveniles in this form of computer crime. While criminal justice, computer security, public and popular reï ¬â€šections on hacking seldom refer to formal criminological analyses of youth offending, they nonetheless offer a range of explanations for the over-representation of young people amongst computer hackers. Such accounts of hacking can be seen to converge with criminological analyses, by stressing a range of causal factors related to gender psychology, adolescent moral development, family dysfunction and peer-group and subcultural association. The homologies between ‘lay’, ‘administrative’, ‘expert’, ‘popular’ and criminological discourses, it is suggested, offer considerable scope for developing a critical, academically-informed, and policyoriented debate on young people’s participation in computer crim e. It has been noted that ‘youthfulness’ or ‘being a teenager’ appears as ‘a constant source of fascination and concern for politicians, media commentators and academic analysts’ (Muncie 1999, p.2), not least when involvement in supposedly ‘criminal’, ‘deviant’ and ‘anti-social’ activities is concerned. Whenever anxieties erupt about new threats to the moral and social order, ‘youth’ are seldom far away from the line-up of society’s ‘usual suspects’. Society’s perennial fascination with ‘youth and crime’ has itself become the object of sociological and criminological analysis, furnishing numerous explorations of the ways in which young people and their cultural commitments have become the ‘folk devils’ in successive waves of ‘moral panics’ about crime and disorder (Young 1971; Cohen 1972; Hall et al. 1978; Pearson 1983; Hay 1995; Sp ringhall 1998). Since the 1990s, academic commentators have observed how the Internet has emerged as a new locus of criminal activity that has become the object of public and political anxieties, sometimes leading to over-reaction (Thomas and Loader 2000, p.8; Littlewood 2003). Yet again, the category of ‘youth’ has ï ¬ gured centrally in discussions of the threat, especially in relation to ‘computer hacking’, the unauthorised access to and manipulation of computer systems. Politicians, law enforcement ofï ¬ cials, computer security experts and journalists have identiï ¬ ed ‘hacking’ as a form of criminal and deviant behaviour closely associated with ‘teenagers’ (see, inter alia, Bowker 1999; DeMarco 2001; Verton 2002). This association has been cemented in the realm of popular cultural representations, with Hollywood ï ¬ lms such as Wargames (1983) and Hackers (1995) constructing the hacker as a quintessentially teenage miscreant (Levi 2001, pp.46–7). While hacking in general has garnered considerable attention from academics working in the emergent ï ¬ eld of ‘cybercrime’ studies (see Taylor 1999, 2000, 2003; Thomas 2000), and some attention has been given to questions of youth (see Furnell 2002), few connections are made with the rich and extensive criminological literature of delinquency studies. On the other hand, those specialising in the study of youth crime and delinquency have largely neglected this apparently new area of juvenile offending (for an exception, see Fream and Skinner 1997). The aim of this article is not to offer such a new account of hacking as ‘juvenile delinquency’; nor is it to contest or ‘deconstruct’ the public and popular association between youth and computer crime. Rather, the article aims to map out the different modes of reasoning by which the purported involvement of juveniles in hacking is explained across a range of ofï ¬ cial, ‘expert’ and public discourses. In other words, it aims to reconstruct the ‘folk aetiology’ by which different commentators seek to account for youth involvement in hacking. Substantively, I suggest that the kinds of accounts offered in fact map clearly onto the existing explanatory repertoires comprising the criminological canon. Implicit within most non-academic and/or non-criminological accounts of teenage hacking are recognisable criminological assumptions relating, for example, to adolescent psychological disturbance, familial breakdown, peer inï ¬â€šuence and subcultural association. Drawing out the latent or implicit criminological assumptions in these accounts of teenage hacking will help, I suggest, to gain both greater critical purchase upon their claims, and to introduce academic criminology to a set of substantive issues in youth offending that have thus far largely escaped sustained scholarly attention. The article begins with a brief discussion of deï ¬ nitional disputes about computer hacking, arguing in particular that competing constructions can be viewed as part of a process in which deviant labels are applied by authorities and contested by those young people subjected to them. The second section considers the ways in which ‘motivations’ are attributed to hackers by ‘experts’ and the public, and the ways in which young hackers themselves construct alternative narrations of their activities which use common understandings of the problematic and conï ¬â€šict-ridden relationship between youth and society. The third section considers the ways in which discourses of ‘addiction’ are mobilised, and the ways in which they make associations with illicit drug use as a behaviour commonly attributed to young people. The fourth section turns to consider the place attributed to gender in explanations of teenage hacking. The ï ¬ fth part explores the ways in which adolescence is used as an explanatory category, drawing variously upon psychologically and socially oriented understandings of developmental crisis, peer inï ¬â€šuence, and subcultural belonging. In concluding, I suggest that the apparent convergence between ‘lay’ and criminological understandings of the origins of youth offending offer considerable scope for developing a critical, academically-informed debate on young people’s participation in computer crime. Hackers and Hacking: Contested Deï ¬ nitions and the Social Construction of Deviance A few decades ago, the terms ‘hacker’ and ‘hacking’ were known only to a relatively small number of people, mainly those in the technically specialised world of computing. Today they have become ‘common knowledge’, something with which most people are familiar, if only through hearsay and exposure to mass media and popular cultural accounts. Current discussion has coalesced around a relatively clear-cut deï ¬ nition, which understands hacking as: ‘the unauthorised access and subsequent use of other people’s computer systems’ (Taylor 1999, p.xi). It is this widely accepted sense of hacking as ‘computer break-in’, and of its perpetrators as ‘break-in artists’ and ‘intruders’, that structures most media, political and criminal justice responses. However, the term has in fact undergone a series of changes in meaning over the years, and continues to be deeply contested, not least amongst those within the computing community. The term ‘hacker’ originated in the world of computer programming in the 1960s, where it was a positive label used to describe someone who was highly skilled in developing creative, elegant and effective solutions to computing problems. A ‘hack’ was, correspondingly, an innovative use of technology (especially the production of computer code or programmes) that yielded positive results and beneï ¬ ts. On this understanding, the pioneers of the Internet, those who brought computing to ‘the masses’, and the developers of new and exciting computer applications (such as video gaming), were all considered to be ‘hackers’ par excellence, the brave new pioneers of the ‘computer revolution’ (Levy 1984; Naughton 2000, p.313). These hackers were said to form a community with its own clearly deï ¬ ned ‘ethic’, one closely associated with the social and political values of the 1960s and 1970s ‘counter-culture’ and protest movements (movements themselves closely associated with youth rebellion and resistance – Muncie (1999, pp.178– 83)). Their ethic emphasised, amongst other things, the right to freely access and exchange knowledge and information; a belief in the capacity of science and technology (especially computing) to enhance individuals’ lives; a distrust of political, military and corporate authorities; and a resistance to ‘conventional’ and ‘mainstream’ lifestyles, attitudes and social hierarchies (Taylor 1999, pp.24–6; Thomas 2002). While such hackers would often engage in ‘exploration’ of others’ computer systems, they purported to do so out of curiosity, a desire to learn and discover, and to free ly share what they had found with others; damaging those systems while ‘exploring’, intentionally or otherwise, was considered both incompetent and unethical. This earlier understanding of hacking and its ethos has since largely been over-ridden by its more negative counterpart, with its stress upon intrusion, violation, theft and sabotage. Hackers of the ‘old school’ angrily refute their depiction in such terms, and use the term ‘cracker’ to distinguish the malicious type of computer enthusiast from hackers proper. Interestingly, this conï ¬â€šict between the ‘old’ and ‘new’ is often presented in inter-generational terms, with the ‘old school’ lamenting the ways in which today’s ‘youngsters’ have lost touch with the more principled and idealistic motivations of their predecessors (Taylor 1999, p.26). Some have suggested that these differences are of little more than historical interest, and insist that the current, ‘negative’ and ‘criminal’ deï ¬ nition of hacking and hackers should be adopted, since this is the dominant way in which the terms are now understood and used (Twist 2003). There is considerable value to this pragmatic approach, and through the rest of this article the terms ‘hackingâ€℠¢ and ‘hackers’ will be used to denote those illegal activities associated with computer intrusion and manipulation, and to denote those persons who engage in such activities. The contested nature of the terms is, however, worth bearing in mind, for a good criminological reason. It shows how hacking, as a form of criminal activity, is actively constructed by governments, law enforcement, the computer security industry, businesses, and media; and how the equation of such activities with ‘crime’ and ‘criminality’ is both embraced and challenged by those who engage in them. In other words, the contest over characterising hackers and hacking is a prime example of what sociologists such as Becker (1963) identify as the ‘labelling process’, the process by which categories of criminal/deviant activity and identity are socially produced. Reactions to hacking and hackers cannot be understood independently from how their meanings are socially created, negotiated and resisted. Criminal justice and other agents propagate, disseminate and utilise negative constructions of hacking as part of the ‘war on computer crime’ . Those who ï ¬ nd themselves so positioned may reject the label, insisting that they are misunderstood, and try to persuade others that they are not ‘criminals’; alternatively, they may seek out and embrace the label, and act accordingly, thereby setting in motion a process of ‘deviance ampliï ¬ cation’ (Young 1971) which ends up producing the very behaviour that the forces of ‘law and order’ are seeking to prevent. In extremis, such constructions can be seen to make hackers into ‘folk devils’ (Cohen 1972), an apparently urgent threat to society which fuels the kinds of ‘moral panic’ about computer crime alluded to in the introduction. As we shall see, such processes of labelling, negotiation and resistance are a central feature of ongoing social contestation about young people’s involvement in hacking. Hacker Motivations: ‘Insider’ and ‘Outsider’ Accounts Inquiries into crime have long dwelt on the causes and motivations behind offending behaviour – in the words of Hirschi (1969), one of the most frequently asked questions is: ‘why do they do it?’. In this respect, deliberations on computer crime are no different, with a range of actors such as journalists, academics, politicians, law enforcement operatives, and members of the public all indicating what they perceive to be the factors underlying hackers’ dedication to computer crime. Many commentators focus upon ‘motivations’, effectively viewing hackers as ‘rational actors’ (Clarke and Felson 1993) who consciously choose to engage in their illicit activities in expectation of some kind of reward or satisfaction. The motivations variously attributed to hackers are wide-ranging and often contradictory. Amongst those concerned with combating hacking activity, there is a tendency to emphasise maliciousness, vandalism, and the desire to commit wanton destruction (Kovacich 1999); attribution of such motivations from law enforcement and computer security agencies is unsurprising, as it offers the most clear-cut way of denying hacking any socially recognised legitimacy. Amongst a wider public, hackers are perceived to act on motivations ranging from self-assertion, curiosity, and thrill seeking, to greed and hooliganism (Dowland et al. 1999, p.720; Voiskounsky, Babeva and Smyslova 2000, p.71). Noteworthy here is the convergence between motives attributed for involvement in hacking and those commonly attributed to youth delinquency in general – the framing of hacking in terms of ‘vandalism’, ‘hooliganism’, ‘curiosity’ and ‘thrill seeking’ clearly references socially available constructions of juvenile offending and offenders (on à ¢â‚¬Ëœhooliganism’ see Pearson (1983); on ‘thrill seeking’ see Katz (1988); Presdee (2000)). One way in which commentators have attempted to reï ¬ ne their understandings of hacker motivations is to elicit from hackers themselves their reasons for engaging in computer crimes. There now exist a number of studies, both ‘popular’ and ‘scholarly’ in which (primarily young) hackers have been interviewed about their illicit activities (for example, Clough and Mungo 1992; Taylor 1999; Verton 2002). In addition, hackers themselves have authored texts and documents in which they elaborate upon their ethos and aims (see, for example, Dr K 2004). Such ‘insider’ accounts cite motivations very different from those cited by ‘outsiders’. In fact, they consistently invoke a rationale for hacking that explicitly mobilises the ‘hacker ethic’ of an earlier generation of computer enthusiasts. In hackers’ self-presentations, they are motivated by factors such as intellectual curiosity, the desire for expanding the boundaries of knowledge, a commitment to the free ï ¬â€šow and exchange of information, resistance to political authoritarianism and corporate domination, and the aim of improving computer security by exposing the laxity and ineptitude of those charged with safeguarding socially sensitive data. However, such accounts ‘straight from the horse’s mouth’ do not necessarily furnish insights into hacker motivations that are any more objectively true than those attributed by outside observers. As Taylor (1999) notes: ‘it is difï ¬ cult . . . to separate cleanly the ex ante motivations of hackers from their ex post justiï ¬ cations’ (p.44, italics in original). In other words, such self-attributed motivations may well be rhetorical devices mobilised by hackers to justify their law-breaking and defend themselves against accusat ions of criminality and deviance. Viewed in this way, hackers’ accounts can be seen as part of what criminologists Sykes and Matza (1957) call ‘techniques of neutralisation’. According to Sykes and Matza, ‘delinquents’ will make recourse to such techniques as a way of overcoming the inhibitions or guilt they may otherwise feel when embarking upon law-breaking activity. These techniques include strategies such as ‘denial of injury’, ‘denial of the victim’, ‘condemnation of the condemners’ and ‘appeal to higher loyalties’. The view of hackers’ self-narrations as instances of such techniques can be supported if we examine hacker accounts. A clear illustration is provided by a now famous (or infamous) document called The Conscience of a Hacker authored by ‘The Mentor’ in 1986, now better know as The Hacker’s Manifesto. In the Manifesto, its author explains hackers’ motivations by citing factors such as: the boredom experienced by ‘smart kids’ at the mercy of incompetent school teachers and ‘sadists’; the experience of being constantly dismissed by teachers and parents as ‘damn kids’ who are ‘all alike’; the desire to access a service that ‘could be dirt-cheap if it wasn’t run by proï ¬ teering gluttons’; the desire to explore and learn which is denied by ‘you’ who ‘build atomic bombs, [. . .] wage wars, [. . .] murder, cheat and lie’ (The Mentor 1986). Such reasoning clearly justiï ¬ es hacking activities by re-labelling ‘harm’ as ‘curiosity’, by suggesting that victims are in some sense ‘getting what they deserve’ as a consequence of their greed, and turning tables on accusers by claiming the ‘moral high ground’ through a citation of †˜real’ crimes committed by the legitimate political and economic establishment. Again, we see an inter-generational dimension that references commonplace understandings of ‘misunderstood youth’ and the corrupt and neglectful nature of the ‘adult world’. Thus young hackers themselves invest in and mobilise a perennial, socially available discourse about the ‘gulf ’ between ‘society’ and its ‘youth’. Discourses of Addiction: Computers, Drugs and the ‘Slippery Slope’ A second strand of thinking about hacking downplays ‘motivations’ and ‘choices’, and emphasises instead the psychological and/or social factors that seemingly dispose certain individuals or groups toward law-breaking behaviour. In such accounts, ‘free choice’ is sidelined in favour of a view of human actions as fundamentally caused by forces acting within or upon the offender. From an individualistic perspective, some psychologists have attempted to explain hacking by viewing it as an extension of compulsive computer use over which the actor has limited control. So-called ‘Internet Addiction Disorder’ is viewed as an addiction akin to alcoholism and narcotic dependence, in which the sufferer loses the capacity to exercise restraint over his or her own habituated desire (Young 1998; Young, Pistner and O’Mara 1999). Some accounts of teenage hacking draw explicit parallels with drug addiction, going so far as to suggest that engagement in relatively innocuous hacking activities can lead to more serious infractions, just as use of ‘soft’ drugs like marijuana is commonly claimed to constitute a ‘slippery slope’ leading to the use of ‘hard’ drugs like crack cocaine and heroin (Verton 2002, pp.35, 39, 41, 51).

Dubliners & stories Essay

James Joyce’s book, â€Å"Dubliners† offers a variety of stories about the city of Dublin. James wrote the collection of short fifteen stories where each story adds to the wonderful completion of the book. Each story was so different from the previous and it was very interesting to read various tales that took place in Dublin where each of the stories were kept interested and ready to read the next short story about a great love for the country and you could easily see the disappointment the writer held for some of the country people and the way they lived. I found myself glued to the pages while reading most of the stories and I would be eager to get to the next short story, and occasionally the next wasn’t quite as good, but I continued in my reading and I was never fully disappointed. Some of the stories were better than others, but as a whole, I would have to say that the book, â€Å"Dublin† was well worth the extra time I spent reading it, and I would recommend that others read the book, as well. Reading Joyce’s book is a wonderful way of learning about the country of Dublin and viewing how people live in the country. It was interesting to tour the country using a mental image that guided me along with Joyce’s words. Joyce used impressive and descriptive words to describe the surroundings in Dublin, such as â€Å"glow of a late autumn sunset† which gave me a feeling of serenity and full color description. Joyce used the color gold more than once in her writing, which I assumed was a color that she closely associated with the country of Dublin. In one of Joyce’s short stories, I found it very interesting when she told about Gallaher, from the title, â€Å"A Little Cloud† and told about the man returning from London and she had a way of clearly describing the man as dirty and dear. Gallaher brought interesting light to the short stories because he was able to bring in a different perspective of Dublin, because he wasn’t one that resided in the country. Joyce, in my opinion, possessed a love and hate relationship with Dublin. The author would tell stories of the country which left you feeling as if you never wanted to go there, but would then he would leave you feeling as if you had a deep respect for the country and the people who lived there. In the short story, â€Å"The Dead† Joyce talks about a marriage that was all wrong and failed because the relationship was full of deception and lies. The secrets destroyed the marriage, but at the same time, I liked and appreciated how the author was still able to show the love that was in the failing relationship. Joyce was able to teach me that it’s okay to still love someone, even though there are problems. I was able to see that you can still love someone, even though they are not perfect. The story made me think of unconditional love. In some of the stories, the author was able to come across strongly when she told about alcoholism and how it effected the lives of those who lived in Dublin. I was also able to feel sorry for the poor residents. It was sad how some of the Dublin citizens tried to escape the country only to end up in prison. It took some of the hope away that you had previously wished for and left a stagnant impression of Dublin. In the story, â€Å"Mother†, I found that it was depression that was the main theme of and I found it to be, less than entertaining. It was interesting to see how the author was able to move the story from ones youth to that of an adult. The author brought the words of the stories with anger at times and then gentleness with others. Joyce was able to display both good and bad emotions, from love to hate, and from depression to hope. The young characters in the story made me want to reach out to them. They seemed to be starving for affection and looked so helplessly for a means to escape from the country of Dublin. It was sad to see that hope diminish with the turning of the pages and watch as the young characters grew up to be defeated in their possibilities of escaping. The author spoke with an artistic ability with the words he chose for the story. He spoke in rhythm and it was easy to follow his writing. He had a remarkable way of describing the characters in his short stories and a means to help me closely identify with the characters. â€Å"His eyes burned with anguish and anger† was a line at the end of one story that was more frightening than entertaining. The author spoke bluntly about what he was saying I could clearly see the rage in the eyes of the person. The character, Farrington is such an angry individual in the story â€Å"Counterparts† and you can sense a hatred in his character. You had to wonder if Dublin brought out the worst in everybody. Dublin is a country that I see as oppressed through the authors writing and I don’t feel that I’d enjoy visiting the country, in fear that some of the anger and depression may rub off on me. I sense too much struggle in the daily lives of Dubliners, some which manage to survive with some hope and other characters that I just saw no hope for their eventual happiness. Joyce seemed cold and agitated in his writing when he talked about Dublin as if he had some type of hate for the country. But, in the end you have to ask yourself if he really did hate the place as much as he tried to make you believe he did. His writing was extremely creative and interesting and I’m happy that I read each of the short stories because I did learn so much the people who lived in Dublin. Their lives seemed so dull and full of despair which reminded be how fortunate I am to be able to live in a great country like The United States of America. The author very successful at opening up my imagination and I felt like I was in Dublin with the characters. I would have like to been capable of intervening for many of the characters, which is why I feel that â€Å"Dubliner† was a book that made me feel and react with several emotions. â€Å"Dubliners† by James Joyce is a story that I will always remember, but not with fondness. I will never forget the characters or the country of Dublin. I didn’t realize how old the book truly was, and I found it very impressive to read about the stories of Dublin in the early years. Joyce, James, 1914, â€Å"Dubliners† Penguin Group