A Social Situation

            Once my family finally decided to invite the Internet into our home, I spent most of my time online playing games. As I grew older, I grew more social. Upon entering high school I wanted to stay connected with my friends, personal cell phones were forbidden, and giving people your home number was both lame and a hassle.  Then came the social networks, my search for the right one was similar to that of Goldilocks in the house of the Three Bears.  

First there was Xanga, a network that focused more on blogging than connecting with friends. Sure, you could comment on your friend’s posts, but it felt awkward reaching out to someone that way.  This porridge is too hot.  After Xanga was MySpace, tailored to connecting with people but extremely customizable.  This meant that depending on how much a user saturated their profile with videos, music, pictures and other content, it would take longer to load, which in turn made me frustrated because our Internet connection was weak.   This porridge is too cold.  Finally there was Facebook.  Facebook had a cookie cutter profile outline that was not customizable, which first detested me but I grew to love it.  Facebook also gave users the opportunity to interact with each other, share videos and pictures, in an organized fashion.  Ahhh, just right.

To be honest, I didn’t believe in the “staying power” of Facebook.  I thought that everyone would move on to the next better and bigger network in a couple of months.  That’s the way it worked in the past, why wouldn’t it happen now?  Facebook lasted because it played off of some basic human needs, and continued to be user friendly.  Facebook is a paradise of equality and anonymity, an electronic commune (Grossman 2010).   Mark Zuckerberg constructed Facebook to play off of our need to stay connected with those we care about, but at the same time wanted it to be open and fair  (Kirkpatrick 2010).   Suddenly, everyone’s opinion matters, and holds equal weight.  Everyone is the same on Facebook, which is one of its basic appeals.  Zuckerberg may be somewhat socially awkward, but has pegged what people want in a social network through trial and error (Kirkpatrick, 2010).  Facebook has made it so easy to remain consistently connected to people in your network, even if it’s not your immediate network, that even the term “Facebook” has worked it’s way into everyday vocabulary as a verb, like ‘Xerox’ and ‘Kleenex’ did. “When I get home, I’ll Facebook you that video.” Or “My phone isn’t working so Facebook me if you want to hang out.”  Facebook has had such an impact on the Internet that a Facebook membership “is becoming the Internet equivalent of a passport” (Grossman 2010).

Recently, Facebook has become the subject of concern in the media.  It has been accused of violating privacy, tearing users away from physical connections with their friends, and even labeled as an addiction (Grossman 2010).  However, even with all these criticisms, Facebook is currently growing at a rate of about 700,000 people a day (Grossman 2010).  So what happens when Facebook runs out of people? It’ll move on to connecting people in different ways.  On Wednesday, April 11, Facebook announced the start of “Groups for Schools” a way to connect with people specifically in your school to share lectures, notes, and to stimulate discussion outside of the classroom (Tsukayama 2012).  It could also expand into other venues of media, like deciding what to watch on TV based on what your friends are watching (Kirkpatrick 2010).

In my opinion, Facebook is a successful company because Zuckerberg doesn’t allow them to run like any other business.  They put all their focus on their users, and roll with the punches.  Facebook has helped me procrastinate on many a homework assignment, maybe even this one, but has also kept me in touch with friends I was afraid I would lose when moving through different stages in my life.  For that, I am thankful, and is also why Facebook, for me, is just right.

Sources

Grossman, Lev. 2010. Person of the Year 2010: Mark Zuckerberg. Time Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2036 683_2037183,00.html

Kirkpatrick, D. (2010). The Facebook Effect (pp. 287 – 333). New York: Simon & Schuster.

Tsukayama, Haley. 2012. Facebook Introduces ‘Groups for Schools’. The Washington Post. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/facebook-introduces-groups-for-schools/2012/04/12/gIQAOx18CT_story.html

How Government & Greed Can Stifle Creativity On The Web

Let me be honest, I rarely get worked up over controversial issues.  I have always been able to rationalize conflicting sides of hot topics like abortion, the death penalty, and taxes.  After watching RiP: A Remix Manifesto, I was frustrated and confused as to why our government, one that boasts ideals such as “freedom”, would punish its citizens for taking old works of art, music, and entertainment and making them new again.  What’s the reasoning behind this punishment?  Greed.  The government cannot wipe out all file-sharing and remixing on the Internet, so they have to punish it.  I can understand protecting someone’s intellectual property to a certain point, but after that, all greedy reasoning becomes null and void.

Up until the Internet, the unspoken supposition was that “people couldn’t simply self-assemble” any given task either fell under jurisdiction of the state or of a competing market (Shirky, 2008).  The Internet completely flipped this assumption on its back.  The Internet was created for the sole purpose of sharing information, proving (at least for a short time) that people could self-assemble without the help or governance of markets or managers.   Not only were these people just assembling, but they were also exchanging information at a rate that was impossible via any other method.  Users were creating forums to exchange information and tips on their interests, building off of each other with their swapping of ideas.  All these forms suggest that “structured aggregation of individual interests and talents can create a kind of value that is hard to replicate with ordinary institutional forms, and impossible to create at such low cost” (Shirky 2008).   The ability to publish ideas and trade ideas slipped through the fingers of the elites and fell into the open palms of the public, or more specifically, anyone with a computer and Internet connection (Shirky, 2008). When businesses rushed in to capitalize on what had happened, there was something of a problem, in that the content aspect of the web, the cultural side, was functioning rather well without a business plan (Lainer, 2010).  Since businesses couldn’t eliminate all file sharing and information exchange over the Internet, the next best thing was to punish it, an example of “the past attempting to control the future” (Cross, 2008).

The government heavily relied on the idea of “intellectual property”, which has been present since the 19^th century (Cross, 2008).  Basically, if someone comes up with an idea, and copyrights it, you can’t use it without their permission, which usually includes a fee.  Unfortunately, Disney took it a step further by convincing the government to create the “Mickey Mouse” law, where a copyright lasts for the life of the creator, plus 70 years (Cross, 2008).  Since the creator is dead, they cannot profit from their ideas, thus it’s the license holders who are making money off an idea they didn’t even create.  This is wrong.  I watched a TED talks by Larry Lessig about how creativity is being strangled by the law, he states that recreating has become democratized, it’s the literacy for this generation (Lessig, 2007).

I believe the world would be a better place if copyright laws became less rigid.  If artists and creators agreed to embrace the idea of a creative common and chose that their work be made available freely, it could be offered freely for non-commercial use, but not for commercial use.  Cory Doctrow, a science fiction writer who embraces the Creative Common, states “making my books available for free increase the number of sales I get” (Doctrow).  Two actions a reader might take to create this better world would be, take something that you are good at, and publish it on the Internet for free.  The second thing you could do is take something someone else has put on the Internet and remix it to make it your own.  This would begin to create a public domain that creativity feeds off of.

Sources

Cross, D. (Producer), & Gaylor, B. (Director). (November 2008). RiP!: A Remix Manifesto [Motion Picture]. Canada: National Film Board of Canada.

Lainer, J. (2010). You are not a Gadget (pp. 3-23). New York: Alfred Knopf.

Shirky, C. (2008). Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organization (pp.47-80). New York: Penguin Group.

I couldn’t find how to cite case studies or TEDtalks videos so here are the links:

Doctrow, C. [Case Study] http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Case_Studies/Cory_Doctorow

Lessig, L. [TEDtalks] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q25-S7jzgs

Is Virtual Reality the Future?

            As I was reading all this information on virtual reality, it reminded me of a science fiction short story I read in high school (it kills me that I cannot remember the name of it).  The story was set in the future, as are most works of science fiction.  The upper and middle classes of humans have restricted themselves to mechanical cocoons where they virtually live out their lives.  They only know their friends and family through digital avatars and interact with them in a sensory-driven world.   Could this be our future?

            Steps have already been taken towards living in a virtual world, and the majority of them are beneficial.  The PBS documentary Digital Nation showed military personnel who can safely pilot droves from thousands of miles away through extremely dangerous territory (Dretzin 2010).  Another benefit of living in a digital world would be the cut down on travel costs.  Ever want to visit Prague? Now you virtually can!  There are a vast amount of benefits to living in a virtual world, alas with these benefits come drawbacks.

            “Cyber-addicts” is a term for people who have developed a physical need for the sensory stimulation of the Internet.  There are physical consequences to spending copious amounts of time in the digital world.  Eyesight weakens, muscles deteriorate, and joints lose their strength.  But is that all? Thomas Lenzo, a technology consultant, believes that as the quality of virtual reality increases, it will attract more users and the numbers of cyber-addicts will increase (Anderson 2006).  Unfortunately, Robert Shaw, an Internet strategy and policy advisor for the International Telecommunication Union, writes that, “the science of understanding such [Internet] dependencies is not growing as fast as the desire to implement the technologies” (Anderson 2006). 

            Is there a happy medium between fully immersing ourselves in the digital world and retaining our ties with the physical world?  Believe it or not, we are already knee deep in that middle ground.  Second Life is a online virtual world where users can create avatars and explore, be social, and interact with other members of Second Life.   Companies have begun meeting clients and holding conferences on Second Life, a virtual step forward for the business world (Dretzin 2010).  Companies say that it’s very easy to begin to rely on Second Life because it’s much cheaper than paying for travel costs, or even driving to work every day.  However, if we are given the opportunity to be whatever we want to be and do whatever we want to do, will we necessarily take that option?  A study followed a group of people on Second Life for six weeks and found that once participants became established in their social roles, they stayed in more populated areas, but also became more “habitual and sedentary, in addition to their chat frequency declining” (Harris 2009).  In addition to users delving into the digital world, programmers and inventors have tried their best to bring the digital world to the physical world.  An article in the New York Times talks about a mobile phone application where you can take photos of what you are looking at to search it on the Internet (Markoff 2011).

             Virtual reality is a step above the Internet, a mildly explored frontier that should be pioneered with caution.  Like most things I believe there are positive and negative aspects to every situation or choice, whether or not to succumb to the throes of virtual reality is no different.  Virtual reality can be acceptable in moderation but do we really want to sacrifice time in our tangible world to play pretend? 

I don’t.

Sources

Anderson, J. 2006. The Future of the Internet 2: A survey of technology thinkers and stakeholders shows they believe the internet will continue to spread in a “flattening” and improving world.  Pew Internet & American Life Project. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2006/The-Future-of-the-Internet-II.aspx

Dretzin, R. (Producer/Director) & McNally, C. (Co-Producer). (2010). Digital Nation – Life on the Frontier [Video]. United States: PBS. Excerpt retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/view/ 

Harris, H, Bailenson, J, Nielsen, A, Yee, N. 2009.  Tracking Real Behaviors in Second Life. Virtual Human Interaction Lab. Retrieved from http://vhil.stanford.edu/pubs/?OnlineWorlds=yes

Markoff, J. (2011). Augmented Reality Comes Closer to Reality. New York Times. Retrieved from http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/augmented-reality-comes-closer-to-reality/

A New Frontier

           

 Throughout history, mankind has been discovering, seizing, and searching for new frontiers to explore and conquer.  Today, the new frontier and hot topic is the Internet.  Is it good or bad?  What effect does it have on its users?  Will the Internet have a positive or negative effect of brain development?  Scientists are having a difficult time studying the Internet and user behavior as much as they would like to because technology is evolving so quickly it seems almost impossible to keep up to date on it.  This does not mean that people have begun drawing conclusions about the Internet and its effects on the brain.  Mark Bauerlein recently published a book called The Dumbest Generation, in Generation he claimed that the Internet has aided in the intellectual demise of America’s youth.  He states that instead of broadening young people’s horizons, it has contracted their horizons to themselves, more precisely to their immediate social scene (Bauerlein 12).  I agree that technology has allowed young America to focus more of their attention on the trivial twists and turns of their own social scene, but the Internet has also broadened our ability to learn.

            Up until this point in history, learning has been mostly been done with either reading books or face-to-face interaction.  The invention of the Internet made learning new material has become quick and easy, but not without some drawbacks.  Positively, the Net delivers precisely the kind of stimuli that have been shown to result in strong and rapid alterations in brain circuits and functions (Carr 116).  Digital natives, people who have grown up technology and the Internet, have displayed greater creativity, more interactive learning, heightened visual senses, faster neural shifting, just to name a few (Horstman 57).  However, technology is a double-edged sword, and by sharpening some thinking skills, it also undermines others.  Those same digital natives have displayed shorter attention spans and have a horrid multitasking habit, which inevitably leads to a fall in the quality of their work (Horstman 58, Dretzin 2010).  Digital immigrants, people who are new to the Internet and technology, display similar affects after having adjusted their minds to using computers.  The brain and its learning capabilities, especially when it comes to the internet can best be described as water that hollows out a channel for itself that “grows broader and deeper; and when it flows again, it follows the path traced by itself before.  Just so, the impressions of outer objects fashion for themselves more and more appropriate paths in the nervous system, and these vital paths recur under similar external stimulation, even if they have been interrupted for some time” (Carr 20).  The Internet is neither good nor bad, it’s simply a new path for the brain to follow and explore.  Internet ethics are up to the user.  The Net can be used for positive experiences like businesses holding virtual meetings, or negative experiences like excessive video gaming (Dretzin 2010).

            As of right now, there is no definitive answer as to whether the Internet is wholly good or ungodly evil.   Without an answer, is it smart of us to be relying on the Internet as much as our society does? Should we collectively withhold on becoming dependent of a technology we do not fully understand, is it too late?  Are we already knee deep in the tides of the Net without fully understanding its consequences?  I would like to end this paper with a quote from the PBS documentary Digital Nation: “technology isn’t good or bad, it’s complicated” (Dretzin 2010).

References

Bauerlein, M. (2008). The Dumbest Generation: How the digital age stupefies young Americans and jeopardizes our future (or, don’t trust anyone under 30. London: Penguin.

Carr, N. (2010). What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains: The Shallows. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

Dretzin, R. (Producer/Director) & McNally, C. (Co-Producer). (2010). Digital Nation – Life on the Frontier [Video]. United States: PBS. Excerpt retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/view/ 

Horstman, J. (2010). Scientific American: Brave New Brain. San Francisco: Wiley.