Thoughts and Ideas

[jasonnu-blog]

- Anonymous is a group of people who would gather together to protest against church anthology. One of the reasons makes this group so special is that they organize everything through an online forum. People would register on their site and agree on what to do and where to do it. Everything is decided based on majority. 

- The artifact is a picture of Anonymous's logo. It is a headless person with suit. This symbolizes one of the special things about Anonymous, they do not have leader. However, there are some groups or individuals that have higher influence or authorities compared to others. 

- Interactivity and Web 2.0 are the two obviously concepts that allow this kind of phenomenon happen. Using the internet, members are able to communicate with each other. They come together, gather ideas and act. This is also somehow resembles Effective Turn. Because of the existence of technology, people are now acting differently, even the ways they protest are constantly changing. 

[jasonnu-blog]

- In the late 1980s, a couple of guy decided to burn a wooden version of a man to express themselves. The ritual slowly becomes one of the biggest event on Earth, the Burning Man. Burning Man is a week long festival that is held in Black Rock City with over 60,00 participants. 

- The event draw people from all different backgrounds. They all gather here; no matter if a person is a dancer, a geek, an artist, etc, with a sole purpose of expressing themselves through arts. During this one week of the festival, it has been said to be a Utopia for everyone because there are no limitations on anything that anyone can do. Each individual can be themselves without being judged by the society.

- One of the interesting things about this festival is that there is no limit on a person's mind. Indeed, this is an important factor that every single employer is looking for in their workers. Knowing this, Google founders attended the festival for the first time and had been going back annually ever since. In 2001, they also found their executive chef, one of the participants at Burning Man. This also factors in for why Google has become so successful. They hire people, not only smart, but know how to break their limits, and reach to a new height. Being smart only will not get you a job at Google. In fact, Google employees are required to spend 20% of their paid time to work on their own projects. Google wants their employee to free themselves from all the restrictions and bring new things ideas and innovations to the table . 

[jasonnu-blog]

- United States of Secret part 2 talks about when there was a rumor about Verizon providing its customer's information for the government. At this point, the data that is being gathered has come to the point where it will save picture, skype, facebook, messages, etc. The magnitude was then bigger than ever. President Obama is trying to cover the traces of NSA tracking its' citizens information. During this time, Snowden, the unknown NSA insider, has decided to upload a video and talk about what kind of surveillance that the government has been done with the people. It raised up a storm inside America. Snowden was considered as a national thread and his passport was provoked. As a result, he was stuck in Russia forever. Part 2 also talks about the 9 biggest companies that are providing the government all the information just because they did not want to get in troubles with the White House or FBI or NSA. Sadly, all CEO continuously denied their cooperation with NSA. It got to the point where Google's servers were hacked without them knowing it. Splitter was used to copy information and send them back to NSA server. As NSA is getting more desperate for information, FBI was getting clearance to send out NSL without the consent from the court. Whoever received this NSL has to agree to provide all of their customers' information without letting anyone know about it. Only the CEO of Cylax stood up and fought for his cusomers' privacy. Finally, the documentary talks about cookies and how they are being used to track our daily internet's lives. 

- The artifact is a picture of a stream flowing away from a computer. It is a metaphor for the data leakage that was happening all over the country without anyone knowing about it. The business man seems very surprised about this incident. 

- Again, information would be the most related concept. Companies are trying to avoid troubles by selling their customers' information to the government. Of course, by denying it, they would pretend like they did not do it. At this point, no one knows how much we are being looked on and how much surveillance the NSA has done on us. 

[jasonnu-blog]

- United State of Secret part 1 talks about THE PROGRAM and how it was all started. There was an email from an unknown NSA insider. He sent out millions of classified information showing how the States was overusing its authority to spy on people. According to him, he was risking his life so that he could send out these files. These documents were talking about THINTHREAD and how NSA was using it "lawfully" wrong. Everything was a normal until an act of terrorists was done that killed over 3000 lives without the NSA realizing it. Micheal Hayden, the Director of NSA, went overboard while trying to come up with a way to prevent another 9/11. With the consent from President Bush, he started using THINTHREAD, without the protection code for American Citizen, to spy on everyone. The magnitude of this program went up to thousands and hundreds of millions emails, phone calls, etc. As Barack Obama was about to be elected as a President, he promised to be the most transparent President in the history of America. Yet, after looking at THINTHREAD and its magnitude, he decided to keep on running the program. As for many briefings that he had done, he miraculously lowered how gigantic this program was for people who listened to it and made them believe.

- The artifact shows a picture of two ways: a legal way and an illegal way. This happened when Micheal Hayden was first come up with the idea of gathering data on everyone's lives to prevent another national security thread. Spying on everyone is illegal. However, with a signature from President Bush, the program has been authorized, by the highest authority of America, as legal. 

- This relates to many concepts. The first one would be information. In this case, we are talking about trillions of Gbs of valuable data about people's lives are being gathered without permissions. This action is done by NSA; yet, it is very illegal and un-institutional.  The next one would be network. Thanks to such big network that NSA has, it was able to successfully perform this program.

[jasonnu-blog]

- The authors are trying to give an argument about how social media, specifically Facebook, affects students' relationship with friends and families. The research is focusing solely on international students. During significant changes such as moving to another school, learning a new language, moving to a new country, what kind of effects do Facebook have on students' new and old relationships. 

- The author did try to make an argument. However, there seems to be many faults inside the research method itself. The most important on those is the fact that different country has different social network site. For example: China uses QQ while America uses Facebook. The research was based solely on Facebook. They did not take in account for the fact that students do not necessarily have to use facebook to communicate with people. Additionally, there was such a small amount of reply to the survey (8.6%). The results that came out were almost insignificant. It was not big enough for the research to talk about the whole international student community. 

- I can relate to this as i was an international student once in Canada. For me personally, Facebook does matter a lot. I was able to keep in contact with my friends at home. It allowed me to keep myself updated to what was going on at home. At the same time, I added new friends on the SNS and created new relationships. I will be doing studying abroad soon enough. Hopefully, Facebook will help me again as it did 3 years ago :) 

[jasonnu-blog]

- The author argues how a new generation of smartphones, social software, GPS and other location-based technologies offer the ability to create new cultural spaces and publication models. The researchers creates a project called "Poetry 4U" in Melbourne, a very literacy-rich city in Australia, to understand about the relationship of social media and literacy. As a result, poetry, thanks to technology, is being used as a tool to reconnect people together. There are things that are fairly hard to say; however, through using poetry, different people can understand and reconnect with each others. 

- The artifact shows a group of different people, color coded. Everyone is different. Nevertheless, through expressing using poetry, they can connect to each others. With the help of Web 2.0, those words can even reach out further targets. More people will see and know that they are not alone. 

- Interactivity and Web 2.0 are the two concepts that interface with this reading. Web 2.0 helps spreading the words. Google maps is a example. It adds in an alternative layer to people's feelings. With interactivity, people can interact differently with the same goal.

- I think the author does make a very thoughtful project to support his argument. While using MP3 players zone you out, using poetry helps connecting with each other. With the help of technology, the connections go even further oversea. 

[jasonnu-blog]

- Rhetorical Presidency is the idea that communication is the key to governing to affect citizens with an A. To be able to communicate properly, there needs to have an emotional code (how people need to feel about that?) and a symbolic code (How can they mobilize themselves?)

- The picture of America and its president. America is one of the few countries that actually have a president instead of Prime Minister. 

- Rhetorical presidency is related to many different concepts. Web 2.0 is the biggest one. It allows the person who is running for the presidency to have access the fullest access to the public domain. For example: Barack Obama did not have such reputation. However, with such skills and organizing ability, he has utilized the web 2.0 and how people interact with the internet to put himself out there and let people know about him. As a result, he was elected as America President

[jasonnu-blog]

- Carolyn argues that anonymous comments have its own pros and cons. As for pros, readers have the right to comment and give their own opinions about a piece without being discriminated about their class, gender, race or age. However, this raises an unfairness on the article. Writers have to put down their identity for that piece; yet, readers do not. It is unfair for writer to read comments from the unknowns. Additionally, those unknown will never be taken in accountability for anything. With that being said, comments are not really affecting the writers. Comments do show writer new perspectives on their own piece; but, it does not and may never will affect how they write as well as their relationship with their editors (For example: editors will not change the articles just because they want more people to read it). 

- The artifact is a person with his head covered. He says:" You stink, farhad." This is the basic foundation of anonymous comments. People are saying things about a piece of work without anyone knowing who they actually are.  

- It is definitely talking about interactivity and the relationship between human-human and human to human through the help of technology. As being said above, comments do open up new point of views for writer. There is interaction going on thanks to the help of technology. Nevertheless, the degree of it affecting the writer's works is fairly low. 

- I think the author does put up a very interesting argument based on what are being seen and used in today's world. Nevertheless, with lots of research and survey result, the author did find out that anonymity is not affecting writer, editors and publishers in any ways. 

[jasonnu-blog]

- Sampling is a process of using existing materials to produce new products. 

- The artifact is a picture of a person who is DJ-ing which i thought the process is very much the same with sampling. DJ uses short cut of each song and connect them together in a creative way to create an old, yet new mix. 

- It is very important to understand that most of the songs that we are listening nowadays are most likely to be a copy from an another song. There were just some modifications to make the song more interesting or appealing. The concept of sampling slowly creates copy right. People are creatively making these songs/software; however, they do not want their ideas to be stolen. With copy right, sampling is almost becoming illegal as if you are using someone's music, you will be sued. 

[jasonnu-blog]

- Each idea is a property. No one wants people to steal or use their "original" ideas or inventions. That is where Copy Right law comes in actions. It is a set of laws (or agreements) that protect the creators' ideas/ inventions from being stolen or recreated. 

- It is in human nature to justify when they steal and to be terrified when their ideas are being stolen. Steven Jobs is one the example. He was not the one who invented a computer. He stole the ideas and invention  from LISA and justified it by explaining that he was just following the steps of evolution: copy, combine and transform to create the brand Apple. Yet, when Android came to place (with a great amount of similarities to Apple products), Jobs got furious and declared "war" on Android saying that Android is stealing ideas from Apple. 

- Just by the fact that companies are spending over $500,000,000,000 for patent/software copy right lawsuit, it is pretty obvious how important copy right is to the society, especially with the constant changes in social media. The laws are supposed to make things fair for people. However, it is now being used to make profits, simply because how much money can be earned from a winning patent lawsuit. It is undoubtedly that everyone needs to have protection on their products/inventions; however, with the digital freedom, there is no saying how far copy right might help or destroy the social media in the future.  

[jasonnu-blog]

Technology of choice is the ability of the internet to allow us to visualize our "human market". It gives people lots of choices. We end up comparing one individual to another. Slowly, economic value is being put priority to our old-schooled human value.  

The artifact is a picture of a dating site. Just by inserting all of your information, hobbies and such, the website will find a “perfect match” for you. The website will then filter its storage of information and give the finder a list of choices. The finder can now just sit, look and pick their other halves from tons of options. 

It is important to know about this since the technology of choice is rationalizing love and feelings. People are choosing their partners by looking at an online profile. No more physical contacts or interactions are made. Passionate feelings are being turned into meanings. “‘Oh, she likes singing.’ ’ That would be good for me.’” . With rationalization, love is now made based on logics and benefits. Slowly, everything leads to the depletion of real love  

[jasonnu-blog]

- The author argue about the usage of technology and how it relates to the stages of relationship. Facebook, IM , text messages, phone conversation. Starting from Facebook, it is the beginning where two individuals find out more about each other. When they reach the phone phase, it is when they are very close and the intimacy is at its peak.  There are also evidence about the difference in gender will affect the usage of technology. Male tends to talk in person because talking through phone is "awkward", while female prefers using phone to talk or chat with each other. With that being said, male will still conform to the norm to keep his relationship with a female. 

- The artifact includes Facebook and a phone call with profile picture. Facebook has been blurred because that stage in the relationship has been passed. Since now the two are very close, they prefer to communicate with each other using phone. 

- Again, it talks about different usage of technology. During the modern age, just by using an app means something. By using Facebook, it symbolizes the first step in the relationship. By texting and calling each other, the two are now very intimate. 

- I really like the argument that the author made. It is a little outdated because not IM on Facebook is the same thing as texting. However, everything else is very relevant. Everyone has been doing it and will keep on doing it in the future. 

[jasonnu-blog]

- Digital natives describes the generation of kids whom were born into the digital age. They have much more exposure to technology compared to other older generation as such young age. In this sense, kids are the digital natives while adults are immigrant. There is an uneven distribution of knowledge. Not everyone has the same access to the information. The ones who can access the information all the time has more privilege than the others who cannot. However, the number of people who have access is the minority. People need to understand this. 

- It shows how fast the world is changing. A 6 years old kid nowadays would have known how to use an Iphone. That is very incredible, yet a disturbing fact at the same time. Kids are now being exposed to technology in so many ways. It has become inevitable.

- I think it is important to know about this concept as in it will help to see how much the world has changed and how much it might change in the next 20 years. It could be even used to explain some conditions or behaviors kids have just because of their addiction to technologies.  

[jasonnu-blog]

- The author sets out to show everyone the relationship between algorithm and Facebook. There are 750 million Facebook users; however, there are very few that know about the existence of algorithm and its function. Based on your likes, comments, and interaction with other users, algorithm will choose/pick what will show up on your news feed. Users do not have a choice to determine what they want to see. Feeds and news are chosen automatically by algorithm. 

- The artifact shows the order of which news are shown and top stories are shown first. This is again determined based on your interaction with facebook by algorithm. The more you interact, the more likely you will be visible in others' news and feeds. 

- The article talks about how people, mostly young adults, interact with social media. Just by doing some small actions, a person might or might not have revealed a lot about themselves to the virtual world. Then social media will do its job by spreading its around and creating many side stories: bullying, inequality, etc. 

- I like the way the author argues his point. By using an old idea from Foucault "one can be seen, without ever seeing," he has partially explained how Facebook works in a certain perspective. However, Facebook is continuously growing and changing. It will take a bigger and broader research to be able to understand how Facebook actually works. 

[jasonnu-blog]

- Simulation: Technology that erases the barrier between Virtual and Reality. 

- One of the best examples for simulation is 3D movie. It allows viewer to be in the movie by visual manipulation. Hence, everyone is in the movie; yet, they are not at the same time. Everyone gets a better movies experience; supposedly, by living the movie. 

- The separation between reality and virtual is getting more blurry everyday. People are now living the technologies: PS3 game console, 3D movies, etc. Since it is becoming so regularly used by human beings, it is critical to study and learn how it might positively or negatively affect the culture and the world as a whole. 

[jasonnu-blog]

- Culture of Visualization: The world today is full of pictures. It is easier to understand something in form of visual than just plain data. There are many ways this concept can be interpreted. For example: a picture can be used to describe the data that would be really hard for people to understand or visualize. 

- This is a picture that shows where people look at when they look at a baseball player. I thought it was very interesting because it shows the different between men and woman. Some interesting facts did show up in the picture; however, it is still very stereotypical .

- It is very important to study this because it is everyone's lives now. We look at pictures through snapchat. People post pictures on Facebook. More and more data are now presented in graph or even inserted into a picture (above). It gives people an easier time to comprehend.