Week 7: Essay Topic

For my essay topic, I have chosen to write about something other than the options listed on Learning@Griffith.  I’ll be doing my essay on the negative aspects of Facebook.  Specifically, I will be focusing my paper on how people are losing their due to their inappropriate posts or pictures

I am also going to cite cases where fake accounts were made to torment/murder other Facebook users.  Today’s generation relies on Facebook as an everyday resource for communication, but people don’t realize that this social network can also do a lot of harm if not operated with caution.  My goal is to bring awareness to these dangers and outline ways to prevent such happenings.    

Week 6 Lecture Response: Me... A Hacker?

In week six of lecture, Professor Stockwell talked about how our generation is becoming hackers without even knowing it.  In other words, “citizen hacking” is becoming very common now these days. Stockwell isn’t proposing that we all have the capacity to break through the firewalls of government, corporate and security service networks.  But rather, I believe he was suggesting that there is a new ‘hacker ethos’ that applies to those who are repurposing the media machine to open and extend debate beyond traditional national and social borders.

He says that: This new form of politics connects to its public via “viral campaigning” using music, humour, fuzzy logic, ambush promotion and interactivity to infect populations with arguments that generate political debate and take off on a life of their own (Stockwell 2008:8).

Stockwell is inferring that by merely clicking on a youtube video, watching it, and sharing it with a larger audience, you, yourself, have become a citizen hacker by posting a specific item or concept online for others to see.  Shocking, right?  Looks like we’re all guilt of “citizen hacking” then!    

Blankenship, L. 1986. The Hacker Manifesto http://www.yak.net/fqa/120.html  accessed 30 August 2012.   

Week 6 Tutorial: Political Action

Sign an e-petition.

As I mentioned in class, I went online and signed an e-petition to request the House of the Legislative Assembly of Queensland to introduce legislation for putting a ban on single use light weight plastic bags at all retail shops in Queensland by the end of 2012.

E-petition site:

http://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/work-of-assembly/petitions/e-petitions

Respond to a professional blogger at a major news site.

I responded to Mayor Tom Tate’s blog.  I’ll be honest, I’m not big into politics, and being I’m from America and have little knowledge of Australian politics, I just told the Mayor to keep up the good work. 

What is Barak Obama up to today?  Can you contact him?
I figured the best way to see what Obama was up to on a more personal level was to read his most recent tweets.  He tweeted a lot about his new campaign efforts and used twitter as a way of spreading the word.  I cannot directly contact Obama.  Although his websites include forms that can be filled out and sent in, it’s still not him who reads the questions or concerns.  There is a long line of people the forms has to get through before it would ever reach the president, which is highly unlikely! 

What are the Australian Government's plans to censor the Internet (the so-called "Clean Feed")?

Upon researching the term “Clean Feed,” I found that the government’s “Clean Feed” filter is its efforts to filter out sites that lack registered URLs, which significantly reduces the potential for illegal sites.

What place does censorship have in a democracy?

Censorship in democracy is a very controversial issue.  While freedom of speech is the essence of democracy, there are still some things that just can’t be said or posted on the Internet.  Not censoring highly graphic or vulgar posts may then be beaching other freedoms, like robbing a child of his or her innocence.

When will the NBN get to your place? What are the benefits?

The NBN provides speeds 100 times faster than the current average speed.  According to the official NBN website for my area, the NBN will get to my place by December 2013.

Find out who your local, state and federal representatives are. Send one a message.

Local Representative: Cameron Caldwell

State Representative: Michael Crandon (I sent him a message.)

Federal representative: Stuart Robert.

Look up the Queensland or Australian Hansard to find the last time your local member spoke in parliament.

Michael Crandon spoke in parliament on August 23, 2012.

Reference: Michael Crandon, Public Service and other legislation amendment bill, 23rd August, 2012.

http://www.parliament.qld.gov.au, Accessed 2/9/12

Let your local member know what you think about their last speech.
I found that the easiest way to contact Crandon was to visit his personal website.  Again, I have found this specific tutorial to be harder than the rest because I don’t know much about Australian politics.  From what I read on his Twitter page though, he seems to be a strong communicator, so I told him to keep up the good work on his speeches.   

http://crandon4coomera.com.au/contact.html

Week 5 Lecture Response: Facebook isn't as "friendly" as it seems

In week 5 of lecture, we talked a lot about the privacy issues pertinent to various social networks.  I found specifically Facebook’s “Terms and Services” very interesting and was shocked to learn I had significantly less privacy than I had thought.

First off, as a user, Facebook keeps all its rights to your content and postings after you remove it from Facebook.  Even more alarming, they keep all its rights to your stuff even after you deactivate your account.  All the other social networks end the rights to your content when you remove it from their site or delete your account.

Secondly, Facebook claims it can do whatever it wants with your content if you put a “Share on Facebook” link on your web page.  As we all know, your Facebook friends can post links in Facebook to your content just by copying and pasting the URL, but if you want to save them by posting a link on your page, Facebook claims that you’ve granted them a whole mess of rights.  So lets say you share a YouTube video of yourself on your page.  Facebook now has the right to do as it pleases to that video.  Scary, huh?

Thirdly, nowhere in Facebook’s “Terms and Services” does it state that you, as a user, own your content.  Most other social networking sites state that.  Oh, but wait, it get’s better!  Facebook also neglects to inform you that you’re giving other Facebook users rights to your Facebook content, too.  With that being said, it’s important to make sure you know and trust your facebook friends with the content you’re posting on an everyday basis.  You never know how a “friend” might take your content and use it against you.     

"Facebook's Privacy Issues Are Even Deeper Than We Know." Forbes. N.p., 8 Aug 2011. Web. 11 Aug 2012. <http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2011/08/08/facebooks-privacy-issues-are-even-deeper-than-we-knew/>.

Week 5 Tutorial: Social Media Survey

To find out more about social media, I created a survey using Survey Monkey and posted the link on my Facebook page and also emailed the survey to friends and family from back home.

I asked the participants the following questions:

1. What social networking site do you use the most?
2. How often do you use this social networking site?
3. Do you see the site you’re using maintaining its popularity or being replaced by something better?

4. Do you feel safe on your social networking site?
5.  Do you have friends who don’t use a social networking site, and if so, what’s their reasoning for not doing so?

Upon evaluating the answers, I found that the majority of people:

1. Use Facebook
2. Use social networks every day

3. Think their social networking site will eventually be outshined by a new invention
4. Don’t always feel safe on their site but use it anyways
5. Don’t have friends who don’t have social network accounts

Although I tried to avoid having only Facebook users respond to my survey by emailing this survey out instead of just posting it on Facebook, 33 out of the 34 responders claimed to use Facebook as their main source for social networking.  This just comes to show Facebook’s popularity and the constant usage despite its privacy concerns.      

  

Week 4 Tutorial: Cyberpunk Timeline

I created my cyberpunk timeline using the material from Professor Stockwell's power point lecture.  I found these events to be most significant:

December 16, 1982:

Blade Runner is released, giving birth to Cyberpunk

November 1, 1983:

Bruce Bethke creates the term "cyberpunk" with a book titled the same; a short story titled "Cyberpunk" is published thus giving birth to the phrase

July 1, 1984:
William Gibson publishes book "Neuromancer" sparking Cyberpunk in to society

February 25, 1988:

"Wall Street" is released in 1987 (1988 in Australian cinemas); Wall Street elaborates on key ideas brought up in the book "Neuromancer"

January 1, 1992:

Highlander II - explores the realms and real world applications of Cyberpunk

I had trouble using the site provided in the tutorial.  I tried to make an account with Wrike numerous times, but the site never sent me an email with my login name and password so I had to just make one on my own.  I even emailed my concerns to Wrike but never heard back.  

Week 4 Lecture Response: Cybernetics 101

In week 4 of the lecture, we explored the concept of cybernetics.  Cybernetics is the study of communication, command and control in living organisms, machines and organizations.   As I mentioned in a previous blog, the Shannon and Weaver model of communication is also a product of cybernetic thinking.  Some of the key-concepts for cybernetics include the use of positive and negative feedback, which are actions that occur not through choice but because all other options are restricted, producing noise through the flow of information. 

Cybernetics is about having a goal and taking action to achieve that goal.  To measure the progress of this goal, you must receive feedback.  Moreover, Practitioners of cybernetics use models of organizations, feedback, goals, and conversation to understand the capacity and limits of any system (technological, biological, or social).  They consider powerful descriptions as the most important result.

Today, cybernetics is commonly misunderstood for two main reasons.  One, being that there is a high level of difficulty in grasping its identity and boundaries.  Because the nature of its concepts and the breadth of its applications make it difficult for non-practitioners to form a clear concept of cybernetics, its concepts and viewpoints seep into many other disciplines, such as sociology and psychology to design methods and post-modern thought.  Two, being that the prefix "cyb" or "cyber" is a referent to either robots ("cyborgs") or the Internet ("cyberspace"), which further dilutes its meaning to everyone except for cybernetics experts. 

Nevertheless, the concepts and origins of cybernetics have become of greater interest recently as Artificial Intelligence (AI) researchers have failed to create intelligent machines.  As a result, this has increased curiosity toward alternative views of what a brain does.  Ultimately, cybernetics studies systems of control as a concept, attempting to discover the basic principles of Artificial Intelligence; so once researchers figure out these principles, cybernetics will become much more comprehensive to the average person. 


"American Society for Cybernetics." Cybernetics. N.p., 12 Apr 2012. Web. 12 Aug 2012. <http://www.asc-cybernetics.org/>.

Week 3 Lecture Response: The Concept of Cyberspace

What is Cyberspace and why do people engage in it?

Cyberspace is a conceptual space where words, relationships, data, wealth and power are manifested by people using Computer Mediated Communication technologies.  But the question still remains: Is it a "consensual hallucination" or another form of reality?  Or, could it be a third order activity that is real enough when you can make a living out of it?  We must distinguish the virtual communities of cyberspace from virtual reality.  Ultimately, an artificial world that exists only in a computer cannot be defined as reality.

Still, Cyberspace is a very difficult term to define, because it sits at the interconnection of reality and imagination, the hardware and the software, logic assembly of silicon and electricity on the desk and the wetware between one’s ears.  To break it down, Karl Popper identified the nature of reality by dividing it into three worlds.

World 1: the objective material world of natural things and their physical properties

World 2: subjective consciousness: intentions, calculations, feelings, thoughts, dreams, memories, etc in individual minds

World 3: the public structures produced by living minds interacting with each other and the real world

William Gibson’s concept of Cyberspace is perhaps more comprehensive: "A consensual hallucination. A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding..."

In today’s society, people are starting to create new lives such as those created in the online virtual world called Second Life, a game that allows users to fulfill their wishes no matter how unrealistic they may be.  The computer-generated character the individual creates can be as young and beautiful as he or she wishes.  It can walk, fly and talk to other characters.  The game is driven by personal expression, creativity and ownership; but even more interestingly is the fact that the game has commerce and allows its users to make money upon their desire.  But how does someone justify spending real money for imaginary stuff?  I guess if someone were that entranced in the game, it would seem worth it.  Essentially, people use cyberspace to escape a life they’re unhappy with by creating a life they’ve always fantasized about.    

"New Life in Cyberspace." CBS News. N.p., 28 Nov 2010. Web. 10 Aug 2012. <http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=3547970n>.

Week 3 Tutorial: Goodbye, Myspace!

Myspace is a social networking site owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake.  Launched in August 2003, New Corporation bought the site for $580 million in 2005.  By early 2008, Myspace attracted 230,000 users per day, reaching its peak of $110 million members.  Myspace was the most visited social networking site in the world, surpassing Google in 2006; however, like all produce past their prime, Myspace hit its expiration date.  In April 2008, Facebook surpassed Myspace in the number of unique worldwide visitors.  Although Myspace made over $800 million during the 2008 fiscal year, the number of users and accounts had drastically decreased since then.

Myspace offers free accounts to users worldwide.  Members are allowed to share as much or little information about themselves as they please.  The site enables users to: upload picture and videos, link to others sites, customize their homepage with decorative wallpaper, attach a theme song to their page.  Users can then add anyone who has an account and begin socializing or networking.

Although Facebook has far outshined Myspace in the popularity contest, Myspace was indeed one of the biggest movements to hit the Internet.  So where, you ask, did Myspace go wrong?  To put it simply, the site is far too limiting.  While Myspace allows people to share pictures, messages and comments, Facebook took this concept to a whole new level by allowing its users to share a significantly larger variety of things, like links to appealing stories, tweets and webcam posts. 

The Facebook creators knew what their users wanted before they knew they wanted it; and when Facebook came out, those users realized their need for the possibilities Facebook provided.  While Facebook became a trend worldwide, web access through mobile phones became more popular, and made the network even more convenient to access.  Moreover, when users saw all their friends switching over to Facebook, they, too, wanted to see what all the hype was about.       

Today, our society keeps engaged and attached to this social media network because of its immediacy, mobility and accessibility of its content, which is something Myspace lacks.  Although Myspace is ancient history in today’s generation, it most definitely influenced Facebook and the way we use technology today.       

. "Myspace Takes Over Facebook." The Age. N.p., 14 Aug 2001. Web. 2 Aug 2012. <http://www.theage.com.au/news/web/facebook-takes-over-myspaces-world/2008/08/14/1218307068919.html>.

Week 2 Lecture Response: Communication and its models

In week two, we defined communication and identified some of the basic models.  According to professor Stockwell, “Communication is any process that transfers, transmits or makes information known to other people.”  Approximately two and a half thousand years ago, Aristotle defined communication in terms of the speaker producing a message that is heard by the listener.  Here, Aristotle implies that communication is simplistic, face to face, and has a common background. 

It is no surprise, however, that today’s society has adopted more complicated sources of communication, which calls for a more complex model to explain such transfers and transmissions.  The Shannon and Weaver model of communication explains such a notion in its entirety.  This model embodies the concepts of information source, message, transmitter, signal, channel, noise, receiver, information destination, probability of error, encoding, decoding, information rate and channel capacity.  It suggests that, “The speaker produces an effect on the transmitter which sends a message (which is degraded by the noise of the transmission process) that is intercepted by the receiver which converts it into an effect that is heard by the listener.”

This model does not allow for the difference in codes through the use of metaphors, so instead, the Shannon and Weaver model proposes two other aspects of the communication process: intersubjectivity and intertextuality.  Intersubjectivity is when the listener interprets the message and changes it as they send it along.  Here, communication is between people and they always want to argue about things, interpreting them in the light of their own experience.  Meanwhile, the active audience produces feedback.  With intertextuality, no message is ever complete.  Moreover, any message gains its meaning from all the other messages that person has previously received and sent.

As each decade passes, new communication technologies are becoming more and more interactive, which only emphasizes this ongoing problem of interpretation.  This makes me wonder: In the next couple of decades, will it be time to formulate a new and improved model of communication due to the increased complexity of the way we communicate?    

"Shannon and Weaver Model of Communication."Communication Theory. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Aug 2012. <http://communicationtheory.org/shannon-and-weaver-model-of-communication/>.

Week 1 Lecture Response: Origins of Technology

In the first lecture, Professor Stockwell talked about the origins of technology and the role it plays in today’s society.  First comes first, what exactly is technology?  According to Dictionary.com, technology is the making, modification, usage and knowledge of tools, machines, systems and methods of organization in order to solve a problem, improve a preexisting solution to a problem or perform a specific function.  In more simplistic terms, however, technology is the study of mechanical arts and their application to the world. 

Marshall McLuhan, whose academic works are viewed as a cornerstone of the study of media theory, states that technologies are merely extensions of the human body.  Whereas a tool is the extension of the hand, a wheel is the extension of the leg, and a book is an extension of the eye.  This is a very interesting way of theorizing about how technologies originated.  By extensions of the human body, I believe McLuhan means extensions of parts of the body that are used for acting on or protecting oneself from the environment or regulating bodily functions.  These basic types of extensions of the body, McLuhan claims, were introduced during the mechanical age.  Weapons such as bows, spears and knives are viewed as extensions of hands, nails, and teeth during this time period. 

The senses, however, are the central nervous system, and, according to McLuhan, are higher cognitive functions that aren’t defined as parts of the body.  McLuhan analyzed media as extensions of the senses, particularly those of sight and sound. With that being said, the radio and telephone function as long-distance ears, and visual media, including writing and print, are extensions of the visual function. 

Even more interestingly, electric media are analyzed as extension of the information processing functions of the central nervous system. This means that electric media take over functions of information management, storage and retrieval normally performed by the central nervous system.  Ultimately, McLuhan envisioned an era in which human intelligence and creativity would be automated and translated into information functions performed by machines, and based off of the way our society utilizes technology today, McLuhan’s theory was correct.

"Marshall McLuhan." Historica-Dominion Institute. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 July 2012. <https://www.historica-dominion.ca/content/heritage-minutes/marshall-mcluhan>.