Democracy, Politics, and Technology

Flickring here, Twittering there

The future of campaigning for office in the United States is changing. We all saw it change this fall when both Barack Obama and John McCain ran for president. They both used the internet for their advantages, but it seemed like Obama had a better sense of how to use it, what SNS `s to use, how to put up websites, and put up videos. That definitely helped him in winning because he drew a lot of support form the younger people. This will be the future of campaigning for any candidate for any political seat.

Do you think campaigning through the internet is the future, and how do you see campaigning evolving on the internet?

Obama Uses Text Messaging with an Eye on Nov. 4

At Invesco field in Colorado, around 70,000 people attended the Obama rally, and about half sent a text message that night that allowed the Obama team to get their numbers in order to spread the message of Obama`s campaign in order to get their vote. If they said yes to the message the nthey asked if they wouldsend th same message to their friends so Obama can get their numbers to spread the message even more, and this kept going on and on. This technique is very smart way of garnering support for your campaign and spreading your name around the country.

Do you like this new idea of spreading your name around the country, and what other technique would you use to spread your name through the internet during an election?

How much is Youtube worth to Obama and McCain?

Just by looking at the chart of how many hours Obama and McCain spent on campaigning on Youtube shows why Obama did better in the polls than McCain. Obama really reached out to the online community and the younger people online. McCain did not take advantage of youtube like his counterpart did and that probably hurt him because his message probably didnt get out as much or wasnt heard by as many in the online or younger people.

Do you think Youtube is the first place you would start campaiging if you ran for office, or would you start somewhere else?

Twitter: An Antidote to Election Day Voting Problems?

Twitter might be the answer to the voting problems, but it needs more time develop and more time for the average Joe to become familiar with it. They need to get familiar with it in order to trust it once election time comes around. Also in order to use it we will need Twitter to be able to collect votes and keep its speed up while millions of people try to vote. So the technology will need to improve as the article says. It would save us a lot of hassle with the states that dont have up to date voting technology and hold back votes on election night. For example, Minnesota had a huge problem with votes which was resolved finally and they put the Franken in the office after recounting votes. All of this might be resolved if we could vote over Twitter or some other computer device that can log a vote right away. Maybe it will happen in the future, but we will have to see.

Do you see Twitter as a way to solve all of our voting problems and to make it a more clean process?

The Daily Me

This article shows how general news stations, general newspapers, and any other general channel is slowly going away. We want to personalize everything we see, read, and even eat. If that means only reading sports and business, or just reading the conservative politics, or just reading the weather and food section; we are all changing or personalizing what we want. It is a freedom we have been given, and it makes it more difficult for candidates that we dont like, or papers that we dont like to break our barrier and influence us. The same with our TV, the new TIVO recording system allows us to watch what we want and avoid all other channels or views. This technology helps us to personalize our lives, and makes it hard for outsiders to influence us.

Does personalizing our lives make us have tunnel vision, only seeing the things we want to see?

Web of Activism

Viral Advertising can be an up and coming way of romoting things if more people join in to promote what they want. The tools are out there now for us the average person to make a case by putting a video online to stop a local problem. Like retail companies, we can promote a local school budget increase, a road paving to fix potholes case in order to fix problems we want to be fixed. We can use Youtube, Facebook to send out videos to our local towns people to get supporters. All you need to do is take the initiative and become an activist which is not hard to do this day and age.

Have you ever supported a cause from an online facebook group, joined a campaigners facebook group, or just support a local cause that used online help to promote it?

Perspective and Spacetime

Metaforas: Structure

As the times change, our technology will always be changing too. New computer, Tv`s, programs, systems will all emerge and we must be be able to adapt. Once we adapt we all need to be creative enough to use these new tools to the extent of their capabilities. We have always had a strugge with time and space. Time cannot be measured in physical tangible objects while space can. We can structure how we use our time and structure how we can manage space all the time. Thats how we create new things in the world, and manage to do things. As the the College example, they mangaged their time to design and observe how students want to walkon their campus, and then put that structure into the space or ground by putting down pathways. Measuring someones perspective is key when trying to improve orcreate anew object in order to get it right and fix the problem. The same goeswith Cyberspace to with how we created it by managing timeand space. Many artifacts are left behind to define past dynastiesspace and what they did during their time. Some say time is measured in intervals like past intervals of great dynasties while space is mediated and always recorded considering what happened in that space during that time. Fixed spaceis defined such as our own blog and how we can be creative in that space only, or what we have been given to work with. Taylorism was the idea to make workers use less motion or movement and less time in order to get the job done quicker andmake the worker less tired. Many laws and papers have been written over time by famous scientists such as Einstein, Newton, Gallileo, and challenged many theories held deep by thechurch showing how much they cared for time and space. Laws such as Law of Gravity, Relativity, and how the earth and every other planet revoloved around the sun were created. Music in the past was conducted overtime because we could not record it in a cyberspace like today. The music was dense and took time to digest and time to listen and feel the music unlike today where we know what we are going to get. Today we can record all of this music into various spaces that they never had in the past.

Do you think you manage your time well, and the space you choose manage it in?

How has the influence of time and space helped shape our world today?

Virtual Hunting

Wow I cant believe an actual website is up and running with the purpose of allowing people right on the internet to shoot at animals. Right now it is just target practice with nothing wrong going on, but still this man will allow people to shoot animals right over the internet. That doesnt sound ethical at all to me. I am not a fan of hunting to begin with, and now they might let this happen. There are a lot of endangered animals already in the world, and if this expands to many parts of the world then we might see massive killings of animals. If you are going to hunt wouldnt you rather go out there in the field and do it rather than just sit at home. People at home might not consider the what it is like to kill an animal and they wont feel any of the feelings of guilt once they do kill one. This can end up really bad for our country if this expands.

What are your feelings towards virtual hunting, do you believe it is ethical to do this?

Virtual Iraq

This is a good idea about how to cure PTSD because many people suffer from this and have no way of fixing their fears or stress. In my mind though, if you are going to show these people the situations they were in while fighting in the war, wouldnt that just make them worse than before. This machine like the guy said allows them to see whats going on, not allow them to fight, or seek revenge so it lets them think more about the situation and to see the good out of it. I guess if they see the good out the situation then it will make them feel better about what they did and it wont bother them anymore. If it helps people get over their fears and allows them live normal lives or even go back to fight like the man said then I am all for it because I respect what our soldiers do for us.

Do you believe that this virtual reality helps out our soldiers, and do you think it will spread out of San Diego to the whole United States?

Technology and the Body

Play the Game: Grand Theft Desire

I really enjoyed this article because I used to play GTA a lot. I agree with what the author talked about; GTA is just a realm of imagination to all of us. It is a chance to step out of our body and become someone else for a short period of time. Sure the main character is black, and it takes place in Los Angeles, and we can go to Las Vegas on the strip, but I never took it as serious as some critics have. There might have been some instances along the way where people tried to bring the game to real life which is wrong because its just a game. We can step out of our lives for a little bit of time to become someone else, someone that we can never become because it is against the law. A lot of people like Hilary Clinton wanted to regulate this game because of how bad it really is. The game is really bad and young kids should not be touching this game because they probably dont understand how bad this game really is. As the author says this game offers us a chance to rebel. We cant rebel in the real world because it is very wrong, but in the game we rebel. It is all a fantasy that people enjoy to play.

Do you think that there should be regulation on GTA?

Is this Man Cheating on his Wife?

I dont think he is cheating but I dont think he is being loyal to his wife either. He spends so much time online playing Second Life that I dont understand how he has time to make a living, hang out with friends, and especially take care of his wife. He has become a virtual person because of the amount of time he spends online with his virtual wife. I couldnt have a virtual wife, to me that is cheating and it soundslike he has 2 marriages so I guess he is cheating. I feel you have 1 life to live in the real world and I dont believe that we should spend all of our time on the internet and play game like Second Life. he says that when he plays this game, his wife is watching Tv, but I believe she is feeling alone and most of all feeling like she doesnt have a husband. I dont like what he is doing with having a Second life because those games can make you feeli like your real life isnt good enough. In real life the man makes 14 dollars an hour but on second life he is an entrepreneur that is worth 1.5 million. Thats upsetting because it shows that his real life isnt that good and he would rather spend time online with his virtual wife, and virtual life.

Do you feel like he is cheating, and would you want a virtual wife?

You are Cyborg

The jistory of Cyborg is interesting, it starts off with a rat having a pump put in place to put chemicals in its body. It moved onto to superheroes with superpowers beyond our beliefs that we could never harnass. It even allowed humans to have artificial arms, legs, and even put pace makers into humans in order to extend our own lives. The most interesting case is how our military has always wanted someone with AI in order to end wars, or to take down terrorists. It has never happened and who knows if it ever will. Hopefully one day we will have some extra sense, or extra speed, or have powers where we can get injured or even save others from dying.

Have you ever wished of wielding powers for the good of society?

In Korea, A Boot Camp Cure for Web Obsession

This is an extreme way to cure internet obesession. I have never had problems with going on the internet because I didnt know about the internet when I was younger. Some of these kids do have problems especially when someone thinks that 17 hours on the computer is fine. When you start giving up in school, and start staying indoors the whole day then you have to do something to change that. Most people put their children in sports or some other activity to get them out of the house. I believe at a young age you have to play sports because it gets you out the house, allows you to meet people, get some exercise, and most of all teaches about teamwork, dedication, hardwork, and the game itself. I played a lot of sports when I was younger and continued with the one I liked the most in high school, football where I became a 1st All state selection. I dont like the idea about the boot camps but if children start rebelling against their parents and give up in the real world then something must be done, and with that point I agree with the boot camp.

Do you feel that staying on the computer a lot at a young age is okay, if not what suggestions would you give parents in order to get their kids to enjoy the real world?

Mobile Technologies

The Camera Phone

With the invention of the camera phone, many good things have come out of it and many bad things have come out of it too. The creator used it to share pictures of his newborn baby to his family and friends. Bad things have occurred as well including more photos of hazing, beatings, fights, and even nudity. The former ESPN analyst was suspended because he spread pictures of himself nude. A lot of good thingscame out of it as well such as catching criminals from ccommiting crimes, and catching dirty cops too. a lot of actors arent to happy because now people will want to take more pictures with them. I think the camera is a good invention that has its goods and bads like anything else.

Do you use your camera phone a lot, do you think the camera phone has more positives or negatives to it?

A World of Witnesses

The phone has evolved over the years, and Africa is one of the places that it has been a real positive. Instead of just using regular ballots for voting, they ended up using text messages to record the votes of the people. Three instances where mobile phones have been useful include human rights activism where people can now take videos at demonstrations, or even record videos of beatings such as Rodney Kings to get justice. Second is Health, now people can text hospitals and they can tell them where the nearest one is in their location, or report epidemics in a region. Finally, environmental monitioring such as to know if a fish is good, endangered. also, to report air quality in an area or other bad factors too.

By reading this article, it sounds like more poor coutnries are using cell phones to their benefit; do you think that there is more they can expand on with mobile technology? If so, then what do you see them doing?

Always on/Always on you The Tethered Self

This article is very true and it shows how times have evolved with technology. We all used to see those guys in the past that would wear all of these technological gadgets thinking they were weird for doing it. today, we have basically become them, except al of those gadgets are stored in a small phone. When it comes to real life, we depend on our phones and computers so much. Places where we used to go to just talk to one another like a park, a cafe, and even a trainstation have no become riddled with technology. In a park we dont enjoy a nice day, and now we are on our cell phones showing everyone how nice it is. In a cafe people would go to talk to to one another, but now we are all just screaming on our phone. The same with the train station. The author talked about when they went to Paris and his daughter texted the whole time and really missed out on all of the sights. A professor talked about how students would go to Greece to study for a semester and would be on the computer the whole time instead of seeing Greece. Basically, our lives have become networks of people. We use Facebook, Myspace, and Second Life to meet new people everyday and to feel like were not alone. When we talk on these devices now, we are connected to them and if someone tries to talk to us from the outside world, we dont hear them. Phone time has become part of our day with work, relaxation, food, sleep, and even chores. People complain that our world has become more and more complex, and then you hear someone say that they dont have time to think anymore. In a world today, we need to think in order to survive. Thats ridiculuous if you say that you have no time to think. This article was very good.

Do you feel like mobile devices are taking over most of our social place such as parks, cafes, and even taking up our time while traveling around the world?

Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs look so 2004

This article pulls in some true things that blogging isnt the same anymore because people would rather be on the other sites such as Facebook. Its hard to make a really good blog that people enjoy now a days. People want everything to be easy and done for them  already. This is comparable to the articles above because people dont want to sit around and talk anymore in social places, or use a phone where they have to learn; people want things done easily, but at the same time they want more and more features. The old way of blogging or talking to people on the streets isnt cool anymore so we need to join facebook and buy expensive phones to text. These new blogs make everything more easy for us in our lives.

If you are part of a SNS, what made you join and how do you like it?

Do you feel that blogging is in the past now with all of these new websites emerging?

Eight Reasons Why Blogging Will Be Bigger Than Ever in 2009

The article talks about how blogging will be bigger than ever due to many reasons. One is that we need a central hub for ourselves, it helps us to make a little money while the economy stinks, and as more bloggers come on the better the blogging world will become. He is trying to point out how blogging is better SNS`s because they make our lives more simple, making everything easier like a camera phone does, or a video phone does.

Are you interested in making a full time blog along with your SNS in the future?

Privacy and Surveillance

On the Record, All the Time

Todays world, many of the things we do or say could be recorded at any time and at any place. The author did a test where he wore a tape recorder with a sign that said that he was recording all the time. Some of the people who saw this werent to happy and threatend to beat him up if he didnt stop recording. Basically, he was just trying to prove a point that we dont see consciously. All of the new technology that we create, we end up recording almost all of our lives. Most of the time we dont know it or see it, but we really do. Cell phones are now equipped with cameras and voice recorders, and video cameras. We use these things all of the time when we go out to capture moments with our friends. We have digital cameras, and video cameras to tape trips or just to tape a fun night we had. Most of this stuff goes onto Facebook, or Myspace and we are throwing away our privacy. The same with doctors, and researchers; they document and tape and record everything that they do. They may lock it up in a safe place like a safe or even in a computer, but people can go in there and steal the information. The same with the government; we tape, record, and document all of our secret plans that could one day be stolen. Finally, new technologies with cell phones have GPS in them so people can watch our every move and know everything we do. I think these men who do lifelog see that when they are finished that there are just some things that we dont want to remember. The author mentioned fights with his wife, and how his son fell down the staris and he recorded the whole time at the hospital. When you start lifelogging you become someone else like your on stage all of the time. It is like those reality Tv shows that always end up bad like Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey. It usually ends up ruining relationships if your on camera 24/7.

Do you feel safe knowing that your everyday life can be taped and recorded now?

How would you feel if a GPS tracker was placed in your phone and someone could be watching your every move?

Facebook`s Beacon just the tip of the privacy iceberg

Facebook has been doing some bad things that have made many people mad. They used this Beacon ad service that was supposed to use the user of facebook and check out the websites they look at. The websites were supposed to be ones that were friendly with facebook, but they went further. Facebook started following people once they signed off Facebook or deactivated their accounts. They went to unknown websites and started spying on peoples every move. This is more than an invasion of property, because if someone is buying something online and they get a hold of the credit card number then they are stealing information. I am appalled by this and I cant believe this happened. They can go into our computer and see everything we do which is wrong. You really cant trust anything anymore and that is sad because we should have the freedom to go on Facebook  or any other website and not have to worry about being invaded by viruses or the Beacon system they were using.

How do you feel about Facebook and what they did, and do you think this calls for heavier regulation over the internet?

Narrative

Tone Language

In this article, it talks about a woman who started writing books one day, but not the normal way of writing them. She wrote a 235 page book on her cell phone. She would write about 20 pages in 2 hours while her daughter would be sleeping, and would also do it in her spare time too. I think this is fascinating how mobile phones have evolved over the years and what people are doing with them. Sometimes I feel that we are using them too much now and it takes up too much of our time. We go on the internet now, send text messages, and now write books. She did get a lot of money and is now a hot new writer in Japan. I am happy for her because I think what she did is really amazing. My fingers would probably starting hurting after one page of typing.

Do you believe people spend too much time on their phones, and writing books will keep them on even longer?

Cross platform Story Telling

Interactive television has been taking the world by storm over the years. Many producers and television networks have reached out to people to participate in their favorite television shows. A lot of people offer their ideas more than ever before on websites for the show, and critique episodes so the producers can help make it better or shut it down. The cross platform storytelling comes into play when producers try to take good stories with deep meanings and try to put them in other formats. They will create movies, video games, and could even make a television series about a narrative. Some narratives put examples in them to make you feel like your solving a murder and to see if your right. This makes you feel like your the investigator solving a big time crime. Also, producers use clues from shows like the Heores example with the piece of paper with the website on it. They went to the website, and it seemed real like it was in the show. This stuff gets people more interested in the show and really makes people feel like they are interacting with the show. The author draws to conclusion and basically says that the characters are real, the stories need to explain themselves, and to be successful, you need to be interactive with your audience.

Do you think that cross-platform media is working well in our country, do you think it sells well?

Do you follow shows to the book, critique online, or blog about episodes?

Why Lost is Genuinely New Media

The author talks about a lot of different concepts that shows like Lost have used to transform the television series. The show has websites like other shows where people can write or blog about shows and sometimes they use ideas that people have to improve the show, answer some of their questions about things they put in the show, and to see if ratings are good or bad. The show also used many “lost” items like the book that washed up shore with Hurley. The ISBN for the book was lost and the author of the book was lost as well, but it was real. This goes to show you how the TV show is expanding its boundaries to the internet more than ever before. Now they have podcasts, scenes from episodes, websites with stories made up in the show, and many more exciting things. All of this helps the ratings of a show, and makes it more interesting for the viewers too.

How would you feel if one of your critiques or ideas were used in an episode of Lost?

Saving the Story

In the future at M.I.T., they will be tackling a problem that has been bothering the movie industry for a while, keeping the story alive. Many movies today are packed with action, open ended trilogies that make tons of money. We are missing out on those stories that have a true meaning to them that many other foreign countries are embracing so well. Thats why this laboratory is coming together to figure out what will interest the population in order to make us watch a deep meaning story.

Do you enjoy deep meaningful movies, as apposed to an action thriller?

Metaforas: Narrative

People use narrative for many reasons in the world. Many stories help people express themselves creatively, they let people understand themselves a little better, and it allows people to interpret and understand something they have never witnessed before. People become attached to narratives and become characters in them. In the end of the story, we all need closure,and most of the time we can come up with our own ending. Narratives are a great thing to have, and to cherich in this world.

How do you feel about narratives, and how do you feel when you read or watch a good one?

Copyright and Creativity

The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism

The article is saying to us that over the years, plagiarism has taken place all over the world. Plagiarism has been going on for a very long time, but it only seems to be really enforced when you are in school and writing a paper. The author talks about famous stories such as Lolita which might have been stolen from the original author. Other quotes and stories have been used by other authors as well that didnt ask for permission during that time period. Even today, we see many people using older movies, stories, quotes to remake new and improved entertainment products. Many new movies were based off of old stories, or old movies. Many of todays songs use quotes from famous people, or beats from past popular songs. In the past, photography was almost a broken law if you took a picture of someone, but today we can break laws and sneak into private areas to take those million dollar photographs. All of this calls for a very extensive copyright system that protects the people and their intellectual property. They worked very hard on their work and should have it kept intact for the end of time.

Do you believe copyrights have really helped creators from losing the quality of their work, or do you think people are still copying movies, songs, and stealing famous work?

The Generational Divide in Copyright Morality

The author starts off talking about how he saw a product PyMusique and how it was used to take copyrights of itunes music for people to get for free. He goes into how that is wrong for people to do, and goes into examples of what people consider stealing of products. The deeper he goes into about stealing, and the more he rewords and changes the story, the more people believe that he was stealing. The author talked to high school kids and any question he asked only 2 hands went up at most, where when he talked to an older crowd many more hands went up at the questions that seemed wrong. This shows that todays kids will do anything to get their favorite music or movies, and dont really care about the consequences. Adults lived in a different time period without the internet and they dont realize why kids pirate music for free. The kids who do steal the music dont think its wrong at all, and see it as a way get something for free.

Do you feel that todays high schoolers think that it is okay just to steal music or movies online, and do think its okay?

Larry Lessig

The man talks about about how today our society has lost creativity and has become not a rewrite society, but a read only society. He quotes Sousa who talkedabout how music players would change our society and make us only want to listen to music and not create it anymore. This goes to show us that today people only want to hear the music and take it for themselves rather than create it. ASCAP, a law making cartel over broadcasting, was charging high rates for broadcasters to put music over the air, but once the broadcasters switched over to BMI, second best music, the cartel broke and fell apart. This looks like today where many record companies charge a lot of money to buy cd `s, but once limewire, and kazaa were out those companies lost a lot of money. He goes into talking about many SNS websites that kids use today to show their creativity by remixing movies and music together. This is how todays culture is becoming creative and he says we should embrace it because they are doing it for no money and they are being creative. The law is hunting these kids down even though they are not stealing anything, but they are just remaking older products into new products. He believes that the law should stop this because its not illegal and kids should be allowed to recreaste things in order to be creative and show their inner self to the world. This probably is illegal because the people who did make all of these products worked very hard and if they saw it changed into something they dont like they would be upset.

Are you a person who recreates music or movies, if not do you believe that this is illegal?

Readings 4-Blogging Star, Flickr, Book Deal, Youtube, WebBlogs, Keen vs. Weinberger…

All Articles will be composed into 1 Response

The art of blogging basically doesn’t make you much money or much praise either unless you are really good at it. Many celebrities such as Mark Cuban are good at blogging even though they have a very busy day job. They do it just to share information and learn from one another. The basics of blogging aren’t hard, but in order to be successful you just need to be yourself, and write about what you want to. Keeping a steady pace too is important because if you get ahead of yourself, then your readers wont want to come back not knowing when a post will be there. Finally, don’t make it an everyday job because it doesn’t pay well. Now, people who post images on Flickrwill get money for someone to buy them. That is a great service since its always good to have extra cash. Some of these photos may get up to 600 dollars and that is great. I am thinking about posting a few pictures in order to get some money. I am sure these photos are excellent and probably the photographers put so much time and effort into them too. The reason why we should all blog is that this person is going to get 300,000 dollars for there blog to be written as a book. That is a great idea to make more great books that people will read, and it is good for the founder who is going to be rich. I guess if you have a really good idea for a blog and it becomes very popular, it is always good to check if it can become a book. That is really cool, but I am sure that this doesn’t happen often at all. Ms. Digby is very lucky that she was found on the internet. I get the point I missed though, she already had a record deal in place to do these music videos. It is not like she was just being discovered. Still, it is good that she is getting recognition for her hard work. That is the opportunity the Internet gives us all. I know one of my friends wanted to play football in college and was not getting recruited, but once he put his highlight tape on Youtube the phones rang and he is now playing at a very good school. Blogs give people a place to express themselves more than anything else. They can talk about any subject they want to and people can comment back to express their own thoughts too. This is what makes blogging great because people can learn from one another just by reading someone elses blog. They can make responses to what they read to formulate their own opinion. This is how blogging has evolved over the years. It started off as just posting information, but today you can personalize your blog to fit your needs and what you want to talk about. Blogs offer people an escape from their everyday life that nothing else can really offer. sometimes in tough times today we really need that escape.

In this class so far, how do you like blogging and do you think you will continue once the class ends?

How do you like the idea of people buying photos off Flickr from yourself?

Do you think blogs can survive as a book?

Would you post any of your talents on Youtube in order to become famous?

What are your feelings when you blog about a topic that you really enjoy talking about?

Keen vs. Weinberger

The article goes back and forth with the two authors arguing about if Web 2.0 is good or is it bad. Mr. Keen talks about how the Internet and the open society is hurting our newspapers and television news. This is true because people arent watching or reading the news much anymore. The people are just reading the Internet and writing about what they want to talk about. Mr. Weinberger agrees that the Internet is not a good thing, but it isnt hurting our society. He says life on the web is like life before the web where people would do the same thing but with regular chatting. He also thinks that there are too many voices on the web to talk about certain topics, and there is no medium to control what people want to say. There is no governenance and thats why we dont trust most of the bloggers out there and what they say. Thats why we stay with most of our trusted sites. Mr. Keen believes that people should write their intellectual work and sell it for monetary value instead of putting it on blogs. Blogs offer a way to show our talents online which we havent had people do for a long time. I believe people need to show their inner talents because some of them might be too shy to show it in the real world. This is a way to express themselves online, and offer the world a piece of their own mind. I like blogs and I think it is the new way of providing information to the world.

Do you think that blogs are the new way of providing information?

Readings 3

Web 2.0

This video showed me how the web has evolved over the years. We started off with websites being in HTML where content and format were the same. Then it evolved into XML where content and format were separate then the web evolved even more. It allowed people to share content and with each other without having to format websites. This helped people share all kinds of content over the Internet and evolved the Internet into a world brain. Now everything will be changing, such as commerce, privacy, ethics that we will have to become accustomed to.

Do you think with the way the Internet is evolving that we need to add new laws for privacy?

Do you think that we need to educate the world public more about digital literacy to become more aware of these changes?

Clay Shirky

This man is trying to change the shape of the way we do business and make it more creative. He tried it out during a meeting where the companies employees had a question and through support on his web page, it was answered at the end of the meeting. He says as long as people care about products on the Internet then the longevity will be there, and he will accomplish this with his product. The Internet is always changing and I think it is for the better too. The ideas this man has about evolving the internet is very smart, and I am sure that we can only expand and make our lives better with his new ideas.

What other changes do you see coming to the Internet through business decisions, or even the way we buy things on line?

Do it Yourself

The article talks about in the early years how people were handymen around the house. They would go to Home Depot and buy tools and product to renovate their homes or fix up run down places too. This term moved onto bands and how they would give local groups a shot at their concerts to make it big through low cost spending. It finally moved onto political action where companies like Nike would get ridiculed for having child labor. Because of this they began to change because people threaten to buy local products instead of there own. Also with the fuel and global warming problem people began to buy hybrid vehicles too. The only way to change our world into what we want it to be is to do it ourselves.

In your gut feeling, where is the next place “Do it Yourself” will evolve too?

Are you a supporter of buying an electric car and being a pioneer of this new technology?

The Wisdom of Crowds

The author basically goes into a story about how all the people when they are separate aren’t that bright, but when we bring them all together we form a very smart collective of wisdom. This can be with anything is that when you go to a store to buy a drink, there will always be one there because all the workers make sure the store is stocked, unlike if there was one person there then there would be no drink. The crowd knows basically everything because all of the collective minds come together to form an answer on a topic. This can relate to the Internet because the Internet is made up of millions of people. So when someone writes a post on a blog, people can comment on it and analyze it if they don’t think it is right or if they do like it. Google is another example because the amount of pages placed on the internet, there will always be an answer for your question.

Do you think the collective thoughts brought together on the Internet is one of the best ways to learn?

Do you feel better with a project if you are in a group or alone?

The Ignorance of the Crowds

The paper was written and talked about the cathedral and the bazaar. The Cathedral is the old way of doing business and running the World Wide Web. It was built to be private and have only programmers change it, but the new bazaar allows people to change and add what they want when they want. The good things about it is that people can catch viruses quicker, the diversity of people allows it to solve problems quicker too. Some bad things include too many people to do one thing at a time, and not  a lot privacy. Overall, it creates a new encyclopedia of information for all of us to use. With todays society, we need things to be open because everyone has something to offer to make a product or a paper better than it originally was before.

Do you like the idea of an open operation system?

Do you think there is any drawbacks to leaving a system open to the public?

Banning Wikipedia as a Research Source

The article talks about what I have been taught my whole life that in High School and College, that encyclopedias are not good sources. Wikipedia is open for anyone to edit and they think that people will vandalize it and make the information false. In this case, we were not allowed to use it even though most of the time it was the most clear way to get information. Other encyclopedias are not up to date information and that’s why we weren’t allowed to use those too. If people are always updating Wikipedia with good information and keeping it truthful and relevant, I don’t know why we cant use it.

Are you for the use of Wikipedia as a source of information?

The Second Set of Readings

Metaforas: Circuit

This article states how the world has been networking over the years and how it has evolved. It all began with the human brain and how our brain was able to network and produce actions and save memories. The whole world is interconnected through the digital network and everyone has been involved. Networking used to be setting up telephone lines to communicate, setting up roads to travel distances to ship a product, and building ships and airplanes to make the shipping time smaller. Now the internet has taken over networking and has made delivery time shorter, shopping easier, and communication faster. We can all network around the world and basically express our lives on websites and feel like we were there too doing what the other person was too. There is still more to do to improve our networking through physically and digitally. Physically, we need to be able to fix social issues faster and be able to ship food, and water to third world countries to help them industrialize. Digitally, we need to make all of these tools of networking available to everyone for an affordable cost.

Do you think in the near future we can evolve our networking to be able to fix social problems quicker, send food, water and clothing to people in need?

Do you think that we can make digital networking affordable to all in order to interconnect all of our lives in order to keep up with issues all over the world?

Metaforas: World Brain

In the past, all of our ancestors would travel around the world finding exquisite things and writing about them. They would post their findings or they would end up in a library where only few people could read and analyze. The same with paintings, and novels; they would be posted in a library or an encyclopedia that people could rarely look at. That has changed today drastically. The world brain of our society today is not libraries or museums, but it is the internet. Everyone around the world has access to the internet and since they all live in different places, they all blog and write about different things. People all over the world can then analyze and learn from them to critique and make their own views on this subject. The internet has formed new ways of viewing objects we would never dream of viewing because of how much money it would take to travel there. It has also allowed us to store so much information online that we can become very knowledgeable about the world around us. It has made e-commerce extremely easy and helps us network to any part of the world. Instead of just one library or one place of learning, the Internet offers many places to learn.

What future advances do you see in our new world brain the internet?

Do you think the internet has more benefits such as helping us become knowledgeable or negatives such as foreign government enemies stealing our national defense plan?

Metaforas: The Element of the Computer

There have been many steps taken over the history of time to evolve the computer into something today that is so small and so fast. It all begins with the numbers and how they are manipulated to form algorithms or programs that could host blogs in a digital way. The old analog way would be considered like a clock the example in our first class. A physical thing that can’t be replicated perfectly loses quality unlike a digital thing. We have created so many great things from the manipulation of numbers such as computers, cell phones, cameras, iPods, etc. This helped boost our economy in the early 2000`s because of how these products simplified our life. That’s all we want from a computer, to make our life simpler. Making the computer wasn’t very simple, and all of the decimals, numbers, and calculations were far from simple. The timeline of the computer is fascinating because of how we started to store information and record information through an abacus, and now we have produced a computer.

How far can we take the computer and what advances do you see in the near future?

How has the computer, or any other digital devices important to you help simplify your life?

Metaforas: Dialog

Dialog is a big part of our age because we need to be able to communicate in order to get tasks done. Dialog is key in the digital era now because many of our work is done digitally on the computer. We buy products online, we e-mail each other to go over reports or numbers in business, we transfer pictures of events to put in newspapers, and we share writing with one another too. In dialog, we all need our own computer identity, a little marker that shows we put the post on the blog. We need a marker on the computer to highlight our work for others to view, and to highlight our accomplishments too. We need dialog to survive on the computer in order to share our ideas and work with one another to help someone solve a simple problem or stop someone from committing a terrible mistake. When the author mentions fairy tales, it’s not how you read someone’s post, but how you interpret it for the better of humanity or to help yourself to become more knowledgeable. We use dialog to learn by talking to one another on the internet and sharing ideas and thoughts. Education is big as well because we can use computers to enhance visually what a teacher is trying to teach. We talk through advertising by always having ads on the websites we view. Finally, we have dialog to play video games online and compete against one another too.

Will our enhanced dialog through digital products be enhanced to every part of our lives in the future?

At some point in time, do you think will we not go to school in a room and have classes at our homes in some virtual classroom where we can meet people from all over the world?

Timeline of the Internet

There has been great success in expanding our knowledge through space exploration with Sputnik, or just using our own knowledge to create the Internet. We have come so far that it is really astounding and we still have so much that we can still learn which is also astounding. We can do so much with the Internet that it is really a great tool to have today. Many other people also believe that by the amount of users the Internet has gained over the years. The Internet is a great invention for us and it will be a necessity for years to come.

Would you agree that the Internet is a tool that should be used by everyone, and if so how do you think the Internet has influenced your own life?