Straight Up Creepin'

People’s privacy is being challenged every single day with the dramatic advances in technologies. Simson Garfinkel has brought up this fight for privacy stating, “New technology has brought extraordinary benefits to society, but it also has placed all of us in an electronic fishbowl in which our habits, tastes, and activities are watched and recorded” (pg. 323). Facebook’s privacy settings are changing every single day but, as a user of Facebook this does not mean we are safe from strangers and unwanted people from viewing the content we put out to the public. According to Forbes contributor, Chunka Mui, Facebook’s privacy problems are expanding and larger risks are in the future for Facebook users.

            The article written by Chunka Mui titled, “Facebook’s Privacy Issues Are Even Deeper than We Knew,” is about the issues regarding the actually privacy users have. Facebook has become a worldwide photo identification base according to the researchers at Carnegie Mellon University. CMU researchers did a test using Facebook’s public profiles and an off the shelf facial recognition software to see if they could match people to their profiles on Facebook and Match.com. In the results, the information that came back was a resounding: YES. People can identify strangers with generally anonymous profiles on Match.com with only their Facebook profiles. Another problem with Facebook is that it has started using its own facial identifier sparingly on certain test computers, where it automatically tags people in pictures. This new technology has authorities of Germany believing that this crosses its privacy laws.

            The research done by Carnegie Mellon University on Facebook and Facebook’s new technology is starting to breach privacy laws of its users. Simson Garfinkel writes about the importance of individual privacy stating, “Privacy isn’t just about hiding things. It’s about self-possession, autonomy, and integrity” (pg.323). I do not want people to be able to buy any type of facial recognition software off the market and be able to find a picture of me and be able to pull up my Facebook profile. Facebook’s new facial recognizer also crosses the line because how does this technology have the ability to pick out who I am in a picture full of my friends. I have a hard time believing that this software has the ability to operate without someone working behind the scenes tagging me in pictures without ever meeting me. Chunka Mui puts it simply, “Facebook, to my mind, has tarnished its brand through its insensitivity, as evidenced by its repeatedly expanding what information is public by default.” In my opinion Facebook is becoming too much of a public place where my information is floating around so that creepers everywhere can follow me without me ever knowing.

Videogames Bask in Piracy

The video game world is being taken over by software piracy that is dooming the packaged disc industry. According to many technology news outlets piracy will boost business with the pirating of videogames. Lawrence Lessig writes in his book, Free Culture, piracy is a positive in some areas of business by stating, “Many kinds of ‘piracy’ are useful and productive, to produce either new content or new ways of doing business” (pg. 66)

                In the article, “Video Game Piracy is good for Business,” from IGN, Scott Steinberg discloses the positive impact piracy will have on the developers market. The article makes a point by saying that videogames are beginning to become to expensive to users and piracy is a way to get by those costs. Free to play model video games on the Iphone and on Facebook are taking over the business of the videogame developers. Video game users want the ability to pay low costs to play the games they like when they want and expensive games just do not cut it. Scott Steinberg brings up the bold point by exclaiming piracy can potentially be a big opportunity. The opportunity he is writing about is, “When game creators stop focusing on security measures, this lowers production costs. Making titles widely available to the public may be the solution when combined with the freemium business model: Letting people pay what they want, when they want, can definitely expand gaming's reach and result in more revenue.” To put it simply if video game developers lower there costs on video games, more people will have the ability to buy the products.

                In my analysis of the article from Scott Steinberg, the journalist brings up a good point; by lowering the costs of videogames the industry will undoubtedly reach a bigger market. In today’s society people are looking for cost friendly merchandise but, with rising prices on videogames piracy is an easy way of getting these expensive games for free. Developers need to take advantage of the point Scott Steinberg is proposing. In my experience with video games, being an avid video gamer, I find myself passing on buying $60 games because the cost is just too high. Being a college student and not having the extra cash to buy video games is hampering my gaming which leads me to indulge in the free games online and on my IPod instead.  Cutting costs of video games will give the ability to reach a broader market and people who might not be able to buy them at the present cost.

How to Flickr

Flickr is an online photo organizer and media sharing application. The outline of the class project was for a group  to create a story, taking five to ten pictures telling that story, and then uploading those pictures onto Flickr.  The preparation was a simple task except for the ever changing schedules of college students. Once my group members and I got together we brainstormed ideas of what story should outline our pictures. The group that I was in was pretty easy going about what idea should be used so we came up with a suspenseful abduction. Taking the photos of the story was the next step in line. The pictures we ended up taking turned out pretty good, but now came the part of uploading these pictures onto Flickr.

                As I logged onto Flickr using the class account I had a generally bad feeling about the difficulty of uploading the photos  onto this site. To my disbelief I was terribly wrong. Once logged into Flickr they had a huge “upload picture button,” to the right of the screen. From there I clicked on the button which led me to the next page where I uploaded my photos in a blink of an eye. The process of uploading my pictures onto Flickr was easier than I thought. In all my photos I tagged the people within my group. I did this because it shows ownership of the picture and who is all present in the picture itself. Another reason why someone might tag a person in a picture would be so that person could be notified to look at the picture.

                Flickr is an effective tool in creating user-generated content along with the ability to quickly share with others. The use of Flickr has unlimited options starting with having your own content uploaded on the internet in one space. Flickr gives  upcoming artists and photographers the starting point they need to being their careers. As people look at their photos these viewers can comment on them and give feedback, to what could be better or to simply compliment the artist. The second tool that Flickr allows is the ability to share a person’s photos  with  anyone. Take for example a son who just took off for college and wanted to show his parents what he was up to. Well by uploading pictures to Flickr the two parties can view and share photos with each other almost instantly.  The many directions Flickr gives to a user is the reason why this website is an up an coming tool in many households.

How to become a President...

It’s a new day and age for politicians everywhere. John F. Kennedy explored the world of television when he was running for president and the millions of television watchers followed him into the oval office. The same can be said for the present President, Barack Obama, in which he used the internet to propel his candidacy. Author, Henry Jenkins, argues, “The new media operate with different principles than the broadcast media that dominated American politics for so long: access, participation, reciprocity, and peer-to-peer rather than one-to-many communication.” (pg.208)   The two presidents both used ground breaking tactics involving new media at the time and both have become president because of it.

                New York Times published an article regarding, President Barack Obama’s use of the internet in his election and how it changed politics for the future.  Within the article it compares the current president, Barack Obama, to John F. Kennedy who previously changed the way politicians went about their elections by introducing a television campaign. The television campaign of John F. Kennedy and the successful internet use of Barack Obama were both ground breaking innovations in the political world.  Howard Dean’s presidential campaign of 2004 had the first use of internet within it. He used the internet to gather small amounts of money from thousands of people in order to pay for main stream attention, but his downfall was the internet too.  Jeff Trippi, former coordinator for Howard Deans campaign in 2004, talked about Barack Obama’s use of the internet by stating, “The tools changed between 2004 and 2008. Barack Obama won every single caucus state that matters, and he did it because of those tools, because he was able to move thousands of people to organize.” Later in the article it brings up the fact that Barack Obama used, YouTube, as free advertisement. The President used the tools of the Web 2.0 to perfection which to many put him into the white house.

                The use of internet by President Barack Obama was exactly what the electronic-savvy culture wanted. With television beginning to become a burden because of all the advertisements and lack of control of when your show is on. President Obama used the internet which allows the media culture to access his campaign whenever he or she wants. The use of YouTube allowed media participation and encouraged users to become well acquainted with Mr. Barack Obama, himself. It is also important to note, that with the use of YouTube, when the doubters kept bashing Obama, liberals could watch the Presidents speeches over and over again because of the constant access that YouTube allows. In the future as Jeff Trippi says, “Just like Kennedy brought in the television presidency, I think we’re about to see the first wired, connected, networked presidency.”

Big Black Box Truth Someday

The black box fallacy according to Henry Jenkins is a concept that in the future there will not be one single black box that holds all the operations that everyday technology has. Within Jenkins reading he calls the concept, “… a fallacy because it reduces media change to technological change” (pg.15). By thinking of all the “little black boxes” a person might have in there house it is astronomical amount: cell phone, Xbox, play station, computer, desktop, television, and etc. To put all of these together would be a surgery-like task that only the top techies could achieve. To detail the mess of all the black boxes Henry Jenkins said, “The mass tangle of cords that sits behind your “home entertainment” center reflects the incompatibility and dysfunction that exist between the various media technologies” (pg. 15). The pile of black boxes is ultimately not going to converge into one singular “black box,” but is more simply a technological shift. The technological shift can be called, media convergence, which modifies the connection between existing technologies.

As technologies continue to advance it is hard not to believe that one big black box could fix everything.  Henry Jenkins black box fallacy seemingly is correct but, with smart phones becoming more capable of doing computer-like operations it is hard to believe. In an article from mnsbc.com, McAfee security has made an all-access security system which involves smart phones within its plan. Having the ability to put a security system on your phone makes it more like a computer. For another example, wired.com posted, the military has always wanted a computer out on the battlefield for its mapping capabilities. Instead of wearing eight pounds of equipment, the army is now reconsidering using a smart phone, which would weigh a couple ounces, for its mapping. Smart phones aren’t the only black box starting to collaborate with other technologies. Look at the Sony play station 3, it incorporates a blu-ray player along with it videogame ability. The technological world has yet to come up with just one black box but, with some of these examples it does not seem hard to believe that there will be one device one day.