New Comm Tech

Unfortunately, I’m still in the preliminary stages of my research, so I haven’t quite yet developed an argument.  However, my research thus far seems to indicate that the Web 2.0 services are far dodgier (EN: nice academic language there) in their terms of service than sites which have been around for quite a while.  There seem to be several reasons for this including changing social attitudes towards the internet and the recent resurgence in business and marketing interest in internet ventures since the dot com bubble burst in the 1990’s.

Psychology seems to be an important factor too: people’s behaviour changes when they’re online, especially if they’re appearing as “anonymous”.  Since social networking extends far beyond the corporate grip of Facebook, examining online communities who exploit people’s ignorance and violate their privacy seems note-worthy.  Especially the recent case of Jessie Slaughter, a 12 year old girl whose home address and phone number were posted online after she posted videos of herself on Youtube, is worthy of further research.

As there aren’t many textbooks written about these subjects as of yet, most of my information is coming from academic journal articles and news items.  They have been written from many perspectives: sociology, psychology, IT and business.

This week’s lecture was titled “Censorship/Privacy in Social Media”.

Firstly, it should be mentioned that the mandatory internet filter will not be happening.  With the current political climate as it is, the scheme has almost no chance of making it through Parliament, as the LNP have taken the party stance to oppose it.  The chances of any sort of blacklist legislature making it through the House of Representatives is very unlikely, let alone the Senate. So, for now, we can sleep tight knowing that the Australian Federal Police will actually be catching paedophiles and not just pretending that they don’t exist.

Issues of privacy in regards to social networking sites has been a hot-issue this year, with Facebook receiving a lot of backlash for their constantly changing privacy policy and terms of service.  Consumer groups allege that the company shares user information with third parties.  This is why, for example, Facebook users are sometimes targeted with very specific advertising from the website.  The information is passed on by the site’s admin to said third party, so that they can gather data.

Facebook is also notoriously tricky with letting users delete their accounts, purposely for this very reason.  The site tries to trick users by only “disabling” their accounts and not permanently deleting them.  Finding the method in which to do the latter is very difficult too: when I deleted my page a year ago, the only place where I could find in order to do so was linked from the Facebook’s FAQ section.  However, the site still retains your page from anywhere to 14-21 days after you request to be removed.  They even send you frequent emails, trying to get you to log back in.  Because once you log back in (even once) they consider your request for profile deletion to be rescinded.  The whole business reminds me of a drug pusher: you try to quit, but they get on you and on you until BAM… you’re lying in an alley, OD’ing on Farmville.

However, it begs the question: just who is to blame here?  Is it the people who just click “yes” when they see the phrase “I agree to the Terms of Service” without thinking, and then go ahead and post all of their personal information online?  Or is it Facebook themselves?  Sure, they’re selling out the privacy (and in some cases safety) of millions of people in order to make money?  However, they’re doing so by exploiting the ignorance of the users who don’t have the common sense not to post their details/dirty laundry online.

Part One: Cyberpunk’d

Technology is being recycled by major companies.  It has become a budding industry: helping businesses and people safely discard old machines.  As far as postulating about what one would do with an iron lung, for example, such things haven’t been invented yet so any possible alternative uses are unknown. 

However, a future of people implanted with mircochips and barcodes is certainly a possibility.  Whether or not it would become mandatory is a different story.  If people willingly tagged themselves, life could become easier for them.  They would be potentially safer, find it easier to fly and renew drivers licenses and the likelihood of being a victim of identity theft would decrease.  The concept becomes sinister, though, when one considers the thought of the entire population forcibly being embedded with microchips.

This Orwellian scenario is entirely possible in Australia (from a legal standpoint), as we have no Bill of Rights to safeguard our civil liberties.  Invasive medical procedures being forced onto the public as a way to control us and keep us under the watchful gaze of Big Brother is a scary thought.  Our privacy would be violated even moreso than it is now, with our location and identity being monitored by the government.

Part Two:
1. Social Networking - Weaver, A.C; Morrison, B.B
In the context of today’s electronic media, social networking has come to mean individuals using the Internet and Web applications to communicate in previously impossible ways.
2. Internet Privacy - Lorrie Faith Cranor
A social experiment into the group mentality of people in a real socialible situation compared to that of an online community.
3. Defriending Facebook - Katie Hafner
Studies internet addiction and the power that Web 2.0 services have on shaping the psychology of Gen Y.

This week’s lecture was titled “Cyberpunk and William Gibson”.

Firstly, an objection to the word cyberpunk which bothers me to no end.
Cyber = my least favourite prefix on Earth, as it has been attached to almost anything remotely technological for the last 20 years by the mainstream media as a way of trying to sound “hip” (think “cybergoth”) or frightening (“cyber-terrorists”).
Punk = This guy.
 

Thus making cyberpunk almost an oxymoron.

But that’s beside the point.  Cyberpunk began as a science fiction genre, normally involving a combination of post-apocalyptic/Dystopian future combined with science fiction.  Think Robocop meets Brave New World.  It would generally involve stories about “hackers” (another despised word), artificial intelligence and corporate quasi-government forces.  Thematically, the ideas of man’s reliance on technology would play a major part in the genre.  It became almost a counter-cultural trend in the 1980’s, most notably in Ridley Scott’s 1982 film Blade Runner.

Cyberpunk prophesied that technology would, in the future, be so accessible and ingrained into our daily lives that humankind would be unable to live without it (whether physically or mentally).  In a way, that has become true for a small percent of the world.  Those of us who are fortunate enough to be able to afford technologies such as home computers, mobile phones and gaming consoles would most likely find it to be an almost inconceivable readjustment into life without them.

However, I do think the genre missed the mark, in regards to being a legitimate social commentary about the future of technology and its impact on our humanity. Like all new technologies, people were scared of computers.  Even to this day, stands the stereotype of the computer geek being an isolated, evil nerd - a mechanical Unabomber waiting to happen.  However, whenever new technologies emerge, people’s fears get the better of them and urban legends and hysteria run amok.  The Y2K bug was an example of this.

The truth is that even though we live in a time when most of the developed world is reliant on computers for various day-to-day tasks, societies inherent fear of the hacker (purported to some extent by cyberpunk) is completely unfounded.  Most people can barely work out how to install their own OS, let alone create a dystopian world of technological terror.  The kind of wacky hacker hijinks shown in modern films like Swordfish and Office Space is completely unrealistic.  Take, for example, the “hacker” currently on trial in America for using his hardcore “hacking” skills to guess Sarah Palin’s Yahoo! password: checking her birth date on Wikipedia.  Best case scenario, your “hacker” makes an afternoon by having some lulz at the expense of the ACMA (http://www.orzeszek.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/hacked-classification-board-website-content-500x311.png). 

For the essay, my chosen question will be:

Why is privacy such a contentious issue for internet users?  Discuss with reference to at least ONE social network service (or other web2.0 service).

Already, I have located three interesting sources to aid me in my research:
1. http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2006/05/70886
2. http://conferences.sigcomm.org/sigcomm/2009/workshops/wosn/papers/p7.pdf
3. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6199372.stm

This week’s lecture was titled “Virtual Philosophy” and was regarding the philosophical concept of reality.  Two main philosophers were discussed: Plato and Rene Descartes, as both spoke in depth about the nature of reality and existence (not to be confused with the yet to be reached branch of philosophy titled existentialism).

To begin, we discussed Plato’s allegory of “The Cave”, which was featured in his most famous work The Republic.  Plato communicated his message by symbolically describing a scenario where a mass of people have been chained inside of a cave for their entire lives.  They face a blank wall and can only see shadows which had been projected onto said wall from a fire behind them.  The people, having seen nothing else, believe these shadows to be real forms and assign form and meaning to them.  However, if the people were to be released from their prison, they would have no concept of what other objects and concepts were: since his/her previous “reality” would have been all that they had known.

We then continued on and reviewed Rene Descartes, who is famously quoted as saying “I think, therefore I am”.  Although this quote was not discussed in the lecture, it seems to be a relevant, concise summary of his philosophy.  A similar sentiment was expressed by Plato, who spoke that “knowledge is knowledge” - meaning that if one is conscious that one is thinking, then they are conscious that they exist.  Descartes theorized the notion of dualism: the mind and body are separate entities with a dynamic relationship that result in human action and consciousness.  The mind is logical and rational, while the body is corrupted by feeling and aesthetic.  Ultimately, the mind controls the body, however the body can be powerful enough to influence the mind.

With the ever-quickly advancing technologies of the modern world becoming available to us, philosophical questions about the nature of virtual reality are becoming far more prevalent.  With iPhones that display information about the places that you’re at (while you’re at them) and MMORPG’s that are as much a part of people’s lives as their friends and family, the lines between reality and VR and becoming increasingly blurred.  However, it can be argued that all of these VR and AR technologies exist within the same reality as ours.  They’re simply code and binary that are as real as you or I.  To put it another way: a rainbow is merely a reflection of light, however it exists as a rainbow due to how it is viewed.

This lecture was titled “Free Culture, Free Society”, and discussed Creative Commons and the idea of open source software.

International laws exist to protect the intellectual property (i.e. creative works, inventions) of people, and safeguard the right of these creators to control the financial gains and distribution of this content.  Intellectual property can be protected under several different means, including copyright, trademark and Creative Commons licenses.  It can be argued, however, that the former fosters the idea that knowledge and art are only available for the highest bidder.  Critics of copyright laws claim that artistic works belong to the masses and shouldn’t need to be licensed out. In other words, when it comes to creative content: the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

Public domain refers to works which either have no copyright, or have had its license expire.  For example, if I were to download Salvador Dali’s 1929 film un chien andalou I would be within my full legal rights to do so (and also a slightly disturbed individual).  These expiry dates vary from country-to-country.  In Australia, artistic works generally become public domain between 50-70 years after publication (depending on the medium of the work in question). 

Creative Commons, on the other hand, is almost like a comprise between these two extremes.  Creative Commons is a way to skip the intermediaries and grant copyright to the masses (with conditions, of course).  As CC like to put it, instead of “all rights reserved” they’re “some rights reserved”.  If I were to post a video online of myself narrating an epic story that I had written about a magical Labradoodle  eating cheese, I could put a CC license on it.  This would allow other people to upload and modify my content (perhaps by adding a flash video to accompany it), as long as they didn’t use said content for financial gain.  This is a pretty rad compromise, considering that in 1989, the US passed a law that meant ALL content created (even without applying for copyright) was immediately deemed so.

These themes lead into the second part of the lecture, which focused on open source software.  It’s a similar concept, except involving free software distribution.  As a way of trying to gain a monopoly on the marker, Microsoft began profiteering by selling their OS software.  Originally, programs had been copied and shared accordingly, however Microsoft changed this.  However, through the combined innovation of Richard Stallman and Linus Torvald, GNU/Linux was created.  This allowed for free software (by the use of source codes) to be distributed to those savvy enough to know of them.  Unfortunately, GNU/Linux is still somewhat of a counter-cultural concept.  Windows seems to be gaining a greater monopoly every year, especially as more and more Apple users prefer to use Windows over Mac OS.

PART ONE

My daily media consumption begins immediately.  I start my day by drinking coffee and reading the morning news on the internet (ABC News, CNN, and whatever comes up on Digg).  I’ll also check out webcomics and blogs that I follow, if I have the time.  With the exception of this Tumblr account, I don’t contribute anything towards any social networking sites, as I find most of them completely inane and without any legitimate purpose except to indulge an already overly narcissistic society (seriously - what does Facebook really DO?). 

As I leave my home, I’m bombarded with advertising from billboards, posters, T-Shirts and bumper stickers.  I contribute to this by frequently wearing T-Shirts with ThinkGeek slogans or band names on them.  As I’m traveling to work and/or uni, I use my music player to actively choose the audio content that I listen to - whether it be music, comedy or podcasts. 

In the evenings, old media tend to dominate my media consumption.  However, I incorporate these older mediums with newer technologies, e.g. reading books in PDF form or downloading/streaming TV and movies.

PART TWO

Livejournal: All content posted to Livejournal in any way is the responsibility and property of the creator.  Any content deemed illegal by their local/federal laws is the responsibility of the creator.  Livejournal reserves the right to disregard your privacy if the Party Van get on their case about your content.  If your content is deemed inappropriate for general viewing, admin may ask you to issue a warning before your posts or to amend your profile settings to “Friends Only”.  If you refuse to do so, Livejournal can banhammer you butt.  Livejournal claims no ownership or control over any content posted by users (seems like an epic win until you remember that almost everything on there is SG-1 fanfic anyway).  However, if someone else steals your content, Livejournal claims absolutely no responsibility. 

This weeks lecture was titled “Media, New Media and Social Media”.

When technology is used for social and cultural communication, it becomes a “medium of communication”… or the plural media.  This definition differs in a way from the more common usage to describe the popular venues for news journalism.

The themes of virtual community and individual identity were discussed, especially in relation to early internet usage.  Today, as nearly all of the developed world uses the internet on a regular basis, it’s much harder to identify a “virtual community” so to speak.  This can be demonstrated by looking at online social interactions: 20 years ago, people used the internet to converse about similar interests with people from across the globe.  Since Web 2.0 has become the online-norm, we use the internet to better connect with family, friends, colleagues and classmates.

Web 1.0 and 2.0 are terms coined to describe the shift in online trends after the burst of the dot com bubble in 1999.  Web 1.0 was mainly static HTML websites in the vain of Geocities and Tripod.  When 2.0 became the standard, a higher priority was placed on user-generated content and “social networking”.  Whether this shift in attitudes is a good thing or not is up for debate: at least most people making a Geocities page had at least some basic HTML/CSS knowledge (as opposed to the average Myspace atrocity).

This leads to the final point of the lecture.  There have been a wave of “professionals” recently who have been calling themselves “social media experts”.  However, these are just a particularly annoying group of marketing people who want to show business how best to optimize Web 2.0 technologies.  However, could anyone really BE a social media expert.  As TIME magazine pointed out when they named their Person of the Year in 2006… social media is made up of us.  Youtube and Facebook are possibly the most egalitarian websites on the internet.  Everyone can upload their own content and have an equal opportunity to be viewed.