Week 13 - The Internet of Things

Just when I thought that, social network surveillance is scary enough, it is not the scariest thing just yet. After watching the video Ted posted in the lecture, it freaked me out that now even objects are able to speak/communicate with human beings. But how would it be like if 'they' the objects, had actually been 'watching' us all these while? Won't it be equivalent to a person standing there and just watching your every move? It is really creepy to me though.


However, with that being said, I'm sure that having objects interacting with human would be the future, and it is indeed very helpful/ efficient. Especially when objects such as the oven are able to know exactly what time to switch on and start cooking a fantastic meal. Having the garage door open exactly at the time when you arrive home. It's like having everything all set and ready to go on your call, or in reality, when you push that 'start' button on your device. 


Besides that, when I first saw the demo video of the Apple iPhone 4S with the new function of Siri, it reminded me of the video in the lecture. If you haven't already watched it, please do.. 

With the new Siri function, everything's made to be easy. It could help you to organise your personal schedule and would even 'inform' you that you have a clash on your schedule. It's even possible to ask Siri to remind you to make a phone call as you reach home. It's incredibly amazing. But then, the question of whether surveillance on individual is being to tight? It's as though your identity is being put out there, in the mist of zero security.
This semester has been great, thanks Ted for sharing your knowledge with us. You're a great teacher! 

Week 12

I guess if an Apple user or an Android user were to tell which software is better, they might be biased in their opinion. However, I am a Blackberry user, so I'll try my best to give a fair share of opinion. Honestly, I don't even know why I have decided on buying a Blackberry for myself, I guess it's because of the peer pressure I got from all my smart-phone user friends. To me, owning a smart-phone seem pretty cool, and I just want to get into that 'loop' where I won't be left out. Thus, the Blackberry. But then, I slowly learnt that it was not all about being 'cool', it was instead to be able to get hold of the 'services' that was built to provide for the users. It was when I was walking around the streets of Sydney that I started to appreciate the services my Blackberry had provided me with, such as the GPS/ Google Maps, BBM, and other sorts of social related applications.

As Roth has said it in his article, "Under Android rules, everyone's their own boss." I am very envious that Apple and Android has much more applications than the Blackberry's. And the best part of all, Android's applications are created by a third-party and wait for it.... IT'S FREE! Unlike other software's application, it's either you would have to pay for it, or you will be asked a bunch of questions, in order to get through that barrier or signing up/ downloading for an application. After reading the article, it's much more clearer to me why people would much rather prefer getting a smart-phone than a laptop/ computer. With no doubt there's definitely thousands or more purchases of laptop/ computers everyday, but the smart-phones are also out there in the market. And almost everywhere I go, I'll see people of all ages on their mobile phones. Reason being, as long as the smart phones are as accessible as laptops, it would hit the market.

Applications are not Android's main concern, the concern is how the software would/ could affect the network. "Google will supply the basic starter apps, but Android's secret weapon is really the network effect." Since there are dozens of people whom are able to create new and improve applications for the smart phones, there is not much to be worried about. All they need to be focused on is the matter of whether users could enjoy the experience of using the software or would it cause them too much of a hassle. "We've learned from computers that it's really nice to have complete connectivity, to be able to connect anything in a kind of open way. We've also learned that it's really nice to be able to run any application you want to run, also in an open way. For a lot of people and a lot of the time during your life, the phone is your main computing platform. We look at those technologies and say, wow, we could do a whole lot more." (Roth, 2008) Today, it's all about the connectivity.

Week 11

Everyone wants to be heard, just like how information wants to be free. Over the years, the media and social networks has improved based on accessibility, functions and so on. The monologic media (old media), which are the radio, cable television, newspapers and other forms of news transmitter, has now been deteriorating. They still exist without a doubt, but dialogic media (new media) is taking over slowly. Eventhough the new media is taking its place in society today, the old media still does play its own role, and it does still affect the society. 

The major difference between the old media and the new media is the lack of interactive medium in old media. For example, the newspaper and television shows. News are being broadcast at the very instant, and it is in no way for audience to interact with the people over at the other end. Eventhough they do, say they write to the newspaper company or make a phone call to the television station (to claim their $10,000), it would at least take 5 minutes. Whereas on Facebook (the new media), it would only take second for a person to comment on some other person's status just within seconds, and other users could simultaneously respond/ comment to keep the flow of information going. The new media require users' involvement to get engaged with current news, latest gossips and what so ever. To me, Twitter is a great platform for users to get engage with news quickly and spread them out with minimal efforts. It is such an interactive medium, especially with the use of the hastags, it's an efficient way to get yourself updated with any issue that you're interested with.  

With the vast social network revolutions, media could hardly keep up with every single newsworthy information. Therefore, this is where activists take place. Just when you thought how great can a social networking site be, it would be as great as getting people together to protest on something worthy for sure. All it takes is for an individual to take a step further to reach out to the others whom are too afraid to speak for themselves. Vloggers such as Asmaa Mahfouz who stands up for justice are the ones who should be respected. Also, not forgetting that YouTube, a video interactive medium plays a large role as new media too. The voices of public is always many times stronger and louder than the ones from the government. This could be seen from the Arab spring protests, that majority of them were organized via Twitter and other social networks. It is amazing how a social networking platform could bring so many people together. I guess it just comes to show the amount of people who are keep on track with the news feeds and that the information posted online are constantly being watched. 

Week 9

I have always been fascinated by hacking, and have always been curious about it. More often then not, I would assume that hacking is always an evil action. Such as hacking into governmental computer system to "steal" valuable information either for personal benefits or simply just to mess up the system. However, I guess if hacking to improve one anothers' system, and to notify others' of their security system would be helpful.The hacking world and the online multi-player game world has their own new form of language/terms. This is either to avoid other users from understanding their communications or it is just a simpler way of communication among their circle of friends. The term used for this 'language' is called leetspeak. If an average person uses leetspeak on a regular basis to others who doesn't, he/ she would come across as someone who is of a lower intellect, due to the liberal use of leetspeak.

Besides that, the hacking subculture has no authority, nobody has the control over what they would do, and basically noone looks forward for a hacker and would not know it untill your system is being hacked. This is very creepy and scary to me, because we don't know when to expect a hacker, therefore the question of whether your network is secure enough floats around. With my close-mindedness, I only knew that hacking was for personal gain and not for the sake of benefiting the majority. However there is another type of hacking which is called the "civic hacking", in which got me interested; it's done to benefit/ assitant a great audience. As Crabtree had defined it as "a process of designing software in an open collaborative way." Since it has been put it out in this way, it doesn't seem much like hacking to me. It sounds like it's just another platform where users could share and design new softwares/ information to be shared with other users."The belief that information-sharing is a powerful positive good, and that it is an ethical duty of hackers to share their expertise by writing free software and facilitating access to information and to computing resources wherever possible." (Crabtree, 2003)
 
Not everyone who has the knowledge of hacking would play by the rules. Though, Assange who created Wikileaks, did the right thing. The world is full of news, everything from what you eat for lunch to global warming is considered as news, whether it be to your peers or to the society, it is still news. But it is impossible for the media to be able to get hold of every single news. Evenythough Wikileaks didn't come in to play the role of that, at least it did the nation good. To be able to dig out the dirty where it was hidden then to spread out on the World Wide Web, is incredible. Secrets like the Collateral Murder shouldn't be hidden from the public, eventhough it could potentially stir up some conflicts, but for the sake of justice, it should definitely be put out there. As Assange has described the site as "an uncensorable system for untraceable mass document leaking and public analysis".

Week 8

"Journalism is entering a time of crisis" (Bruns,2009). I have to agree with this statement up to a certain level. The society we live in today would prefer to read their daily doze of news on a digitalized form. Yes, there are still people out there who would read the news from the newspaper or other sorts of printed medium. But at least majority of them would prefer the digitalized form. I did not realized it until I've read the article from Johnson. I find how the way citizen journalism works is really fascinating. We as the citizen, choose/decide what news should or should not be published. And most importantly, we play the role of the journalist as well! As Johnson said, we would much rather prefer to find out what a celebrity had for their breakfast than to read about the London riot. Even with that, the breakfast of a celebrity is not even newsworthy, but somehow we find it interesting, and would consider that as news. And hence the term, citizen journalism.



Eventhough Twitter only allows a 140-character word limit, it didn't seem to stop the citizens from sharing the news, instead it has allowed them to keep publishing more and more news, and to have that ability to spread the news world wide is another thing to be amazed by. "The one thing you can say for certain about Twitter is that it makes a terrible first impression." (Johnson, 2009) I wouldn't say that i disagree with this. Personally, the first thing that came through my mind was "how am I supposed to write what's on my mind (was still stuck with the Facebook concept), or even how was it possible for me to deliver a news that was going to be more than that 140-characters?" Then, I slowly learnt that it was more of being able to write a statement than to write a blog-post length of words. It is because of this word limit, news was able to travel so fast from one end to the other. Furthermore, with the hastags, it seem to me that there's a new form of language created. Compare this with the print media, how weird would it be if hastags were to be printed on newspapers? Since the print media is not an interactive platform, citizens would lose their interest in print media, due to the lack of understanding of the news printed. 


"...most fascinating thing about Twitter is not what it's doing to us. It's what we're doing to it." (Johnson, 2009) Besides having users constantly inventing new topics with the hastags, Twitter has now in one way or another become the source of information for most people. I could relate to Johnson's saying that if you are seeking a background information of a celebrity, searching it one Google would be the best choice. Whereas if you are wanting to know what he or she did an hour ago, you would be on Twitter for that. Years ago, we used the internet to check our emails in regards to our own personal lives, but now we check our social feed for updates of others' lives. I guess we all have the "ambient awareness", in which we feel satisfy to have a glimpse of others' daily routines. And the best part is, we get the information without asking for it!

Week Seven

It's amazing how accessible the internet is today as we all know it.  By accessing the internet, we seek for information, to be exact, we seek for new and valuable information to be spread around. What makes it more interesting is that most of the information we seek for is free and available just a click away. There are also other ways available to obtain the information we seek for even if it's restricted/block on the website. One of the solution is, Money. I like the saying "the money in this networked economy does not follow the path of the copies. Rather it follows the path of attention, and attention has its own circuits" by Kevin Kelly. This shows that the money will flow in the path of where the information is at its hit, things that people search the most for, and talk about the most. 


On the other hand, the music industry; almost all of the songs that are heard are available for downloading on the internet. But why do we still want to pay that extra money to buy a CD which we could easily download it from the internet and most importantly, for free? I myself had actually bought several CDs' in the past, for reasons such as, owning the 'real thing', and for the sake of authenticity, such as getting a free poster/ printed lyrics in a booklet provided inside the CD cover. Plus, knowing that the money I paid for that CD will be paid to the artists themselves. We now live in a society where information wants to run free, and we can't stop that from happening. "When copies are super abundant, they become worthless. When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable." It amazes me that even when information is free, we could still find ways to sell them. But why do we do that? Why can't we just let it be free (for example, not limiting what you can/ cannot download) since it is already in such an abundance. 


The difference between the traditional media and the internet is at its opposite sides. To publish something on the newspaper or simply a print media, requires a quality filter. This is to make sure that the material/information publish out to the public is reliable, and that it's not false information. Not only is it risky, it also costs a lot of money for publication. Whereas, posting information on the internet is totally free. And I did not realized this until I heard this in the lecture; there is no quality filter! And it is true, things that we post, such as what I'm doing now, blogging, there is no such thing as a quality filter that restricts me on the information that I wish to post online. It is because there's no quality check on the internet that makes it not a 100% safe; or rather, the information obtain from the internet is not 100% reliable. But we still do it though. Why? It's because we alter the information, and we only see things the way we want it to be. 

Week Six - Convergence

"Convergence refers to a process, but not an endpoint." (Jenkins, 2004) Shows that, convergence will never come to an endpoint, just like how the information flows. It's a never ending process. People will not stop seeking for more, to demand for better services/ products. "Some fear that media is out of control; others that it is too controlled." (Jenkins, 2004) I partially would have to agree with this statement. It's true that media is sometimes out of control, because too much people from all around the world demand for different types of information, and it could get too hectic. Besides, I also believe that the media that runs around today are mostly controlled by the audience. We know what we want, therefore we request for those that we need. 


It's fascinating to see the change over the years of the device we are holding in our hands today. We should also be thankful for the technology for improving and to help invent such amazing devices for us to be using today. It's great that we're all making full use of the all the latest technology gadgets. However, do we realize that it's taking control over our lives? It's crazy how we multitask every single day of our lives, without realizing it. Just like what Jenkins had mentioned in his text, a teenager today could be doing his/her homework while having multiple windows on, on their computers. They could be listening to music, watching videos online, social networking, play multi-player games and etc. 


I myself own a smartphone, a Blackberry. To be honest, I'm not a person who full utilizes my phone. Although I know that having a smartphone it could help me perform several tasks at once, but I am not a tech-savvy type of person. But I do however use my phone a lot. I have my Facebook, Twitter, Weather channel, Whatsapp all on my home page. So in short, I do multitask all the time, and I come to realized that, I won't begin or conclude my day without checking my social feeds. Am I addicted to social network? I think it's more of having new information coming to me, and to notice how great is the information flow is. Without it, it just wouldn't feel right. "No one knows everything, everyone knows something, all knowledge resides in humanity." (Jenkins, 2004) 

Week Five - Copy it the RIGHT way.

You might or might not agree with me, but I think that the habit of copyrighting or not, it sort of became a cultural thing. As for example, I have been singing the 'Happy Birthday' song for almost all your life, and for people like me who just found out that the song is actually owned by the Time Warner Production, what if they demolish the song, and that no ones in existant is allow to sing it? Doesn't it feels like it's taking away part of our culture?

Eventhough it's important that before we take or copy anything from others, we should knowledge the existence of Copyright and understand the consequences of it, I think there's definitely people out there who doesn't obey the rules. Honestly, I would admit that I hardly ever paid any attention to the concept of copyright. The closest to it that I know of is Plagiarism. Which I believe is only at the slightest bit similar. The reason why I hardly paid any attention to it, is because when I 'take' somebody's idea while writing an essay, I would cite them, and make a list of references, which we're constantly told by our tutors. Unlike copyright, you might have been told about it, but the rest is up to you to do your research on it.

With copyright, sometimes it is hard for an artist to sell their music out to the public, therefore they would outsource and search for various ways for them to 'sell' their music indirectly. A common example would be free downloading from iTunes Store, Napster and etc. Although I would say that I don't really know how they would earn they money by allowing public to download their music for free, but somehow they do. I found this cool graph that shows how much artists in the UK earn online. Click Here
So do artists earn more money by allowing the public to download their music for free, or is it just a way for them to gain popularity? However, would you rather live in a world where people could take your ideas freely without permission, and face no consequences? OR would you prefer to be in a world where you can easily be caught, even if you took a bite on others' idea without having the permission from them?

Natalie

Week Four

The readings this week had mentioned a lot about being prepared with new information and to not get surprised when we encounter the situation the following day at work. As Bradwall stated, "technologies do not exist in a vacuum", therefore the flow of information is constantly being passed around. It is wide opened out there, where it's easily possible for everyone to retrieve it. Nowadays, "employees have and want more control over their work", it seems like employees are demanding for more with their employers. Besides that, they're also trying to get their work to compromise with them, rather then compromising with work. 

I have to agree with the reading written by Gregg, it is easy to relate to. The reason why, is because the people around me does it all the time, therefore it's nothing new to me that is surprising. "... flexible work practices new media devices enable increase work hours for many employees by invading personal and leisure time (cf Towers et al., 2006). Without blaming the technology, I would say that situations like these are somehow a cause-and-effect kind of thing. We build the internet, invent mobile phones, laptop, and everything else that connects us to the internet, and then with all these that we own individually, it slowly affects our daily life without even realizing it. 

It's interesting how often we're unable to distinguish how much time should we be spending as 'work time' and having the rest as leisure in the internet. I'm sure we all would at least know a person who is like that. My mum working in HSBC as an IT Executive, most of the time she brings work back home. Everytime I take a peek on her laptop screen, it's always on Outlook Express, forever checking her emails. I have always wondered why does she have endless loads of emails coming through her inbox. Sometimes she gets to work from home, but it wasn't such a big difference than working at the office. She usually gets off work at 5pm, but she would stay online at least a quarter pass 5 to make sure she gets all her email responses, and to feel like she's satisfied with the work she's done that day.  

Funny, why would people say they get distractions while working in the office? Unless, instead of working, people are fooling around? Something to be observed. It's common that employees get extra workload almost everyday, but why, and how? Even before starting the day at work, we already have a 'pre-work' to do. Is this what we call efficiency, by replying emails an hour before work starts? Or to be able to get more work done, so that we could leave the office earlier? Another thing that I find absurd is why do we email colleagues who sits 10 steps away from you with a short question? Sure, it's efficiency, but where are all the face-to-face interactions? Then, you'll get a one word reply from the other person, isn't that just increasing the number of emails you'll get everyday? It's hard to argue, because we demand people for being efficient, but then we lose physical contact and social interactions. Next generation will be anti-social people. 

Natalie  

Week Three - Cyberspace in the New Economy

After reading this week's reading on the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, I find it rather serious of how Barlow was taking this. Eventhough this letter was written 15 years ago, I find every word that he had mentioned was applicable today. Barlow states "Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live." At first I thought this statement was weird, but when I come to think of it, it is somehow true. The networks that we are in, are EVERYWHERE, we ARE connected at every corner, but we just don't see it. Therefore it exist in a whole different world, just not in a world where bodies live. 

Barlow also mentioned that "We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth." I agree with Barlow that this should be a world created for people to not judge others by their race, ethnicity, and other social statues. However, I would say that some people out there do not give full respect to others, or they probably make jokes of others without any harmful intentions. Racist people would make videos of others for the fun of it.

Just like this one..

Although Barlow stated that they're trying to create a world in which people could express themselves and their beliefs with others, people tend to make videos in order to MAKE their point obvious. Nevertheless, it is certainly tough to stop people from doing that having said that we are connected everywhere we go, it is definitely hard to track down each and everyone of those who are being racist or irrational on the internet. It is only fair that we get people sharing about positive and negative views. The world's not perfect. 

Besides that, the reading by Kelly was all about the new economy, and how we want everything to be about efficiency. "We now live in a new economy created by shrinking computers and expanding communications." Look around you today, who's carrying a fat, big bulky laptop around? It would be more like carrying a monitor. It's amazing how technology can shrink the size of computers/ laptops to a size in which it fits in a handbag/ bag-pack. From laptops to smart-phones, basically the reason why we go online is for the sake of retrieving new information, finding out which celebrity is getting married, being the first to 'like' your friend's facebook status. Without being consciously aware, we have created this close relationship with the internet, and it would be disappointing once we get disconnected and aren't able to search for the things that we want.

Natalie

Week Two

Well this week, I've learn more about how the internet came about, and had a glimpse of the online gaming world. I think that it is really amazing how technologies have improved drastically over the years. For instance, we now have the leisure to enjoy wireless network connection almost everywhere we go, and no more the fuss with wiring! The network used to be for the military to give and take commands, and that was all. Later on, it had progressed to be able to send out e-mails, having your own account, retrieving news and so on. But look at us today, not only are we able to do those stuff, but even more, it has gone world wide, so googling for news at the other side of the world is as easy as ABC.

There're four things listed that we do with the Internet which are; mail, discussion groups, long-distance computing, and file transfers. These are almost like our daily routine once we switch on the computer, other than that will be online gaming, social networking, or surfing the net and etc. And it will be surprising to find someone who is NOT on any social networking sites, it is just too unreal to not be in one. 

Sterling explained why do people want to be on the Internet, and the reason was simple: FREEDOM. Who wouldn't want that? Since "there are no official censors, no bosses, no board of directors, no stockholders", basically there will be no one to boss you around, therefore it's easy to express yourself on the internet, especially on social networks. Social network is a place where people would be able to share/ express themselves, whether it be blogging or bragging about their horrible lives on Facebook, it may somehow be a comfort zone to them. 

Lastly, it would be about online gaming. Personally, I do not play any online games, and don't have much interest in it, so when you guys start talking about it, I would need subtitles. However, I am often curious why are people so interested with it, I can never understand games like WoW, NEVER! Besides that, I honest hope that people who plays these games could differentiate between reality and their second world. 

I've link a video of a boy whose WoW account got deleted by his mum, and see what happens. He literally turned into a Monster! Nuff said.

Cheers,

Nat :)

Intro.

Hey guys,

Just a brief introduction of myself in this very first post. My name's Natalie, but you're welcomed to call me Nat. This is my second year in Uni, and I'm majoring in Media and Cultural Studies. I have always been interested to learn about different types of cultures and just basically, learning new fun and exciting stuff. The reason why I have decided to choose this subject, is because I would like to widen my options and views of how the world goes around, and how society functions.

Besides that I am also curious of how the internet came about, how much could we rely on the information we retrieve from the internet and most importantly, could we survive without the internet and all the social networks. 

I hope that after this session, I would be able to understand more about the society we live in.

Cheers,

Nat =D