technoculture203-09

While at work I began talking to my boss about Facebook. Recently we had a increase of absentees and my boss began to joke about checking their Facebook pages. This got me thinking about whether or not he should be allowed or had the right to check it out. I questioned him and he said why not, its public and since he has access, he has the ability to look into what they put on their pages. I then began to wonder whether he’s been checking my page out whenever I called in sick, I have to admit I have pulled "sickies" in the past and began wondering whether he’s looked me up in Facebook to see whether or not I was legitimately absent due to medical reasons.

I agree with Boyd and that the cost of social convergence is our privacy, we lose the control over information, for instance the newsfeeds on Facebook, although all the information was public for anyone to see, it wasn’t as exposed and in your face as it is now, it’s all somewhat advertised so whenever you make a change to your page, add a group or leave a comment on someone’s page it’s like “HEY, LOOK I JUST DID!” I guess I have to agree that whatever information we choose to upload online it should be accessible and to anyone, but maybe only those who I choose to.

I know that the internet is a public place and if I choose to upload something then I should be prepared for others to see it. Or if you still don’t have the balls then use a fake name lol. It’s like wearing a hideous knitted jumper I got for Christmas from my grandmother, when I wear it out while shopping I can’t really stop people from staring because I chose to wear it out where everyone can see me, so if you choose to put info up online then be prepared for people to read. One thing is sure, I’m going to be a lot more cautious the next time I call in sick.

The boss might be watching!

At the beginning of the year we learnt about 'master slave dialect ‘and today, when my cell phone broke, I realized that I agree with Luke when he says we both love and hate technology and that by having a slave this meant that I was weakened and became dependant on technology.

Well in a sense my cell phone was my slave. It could do all the things I could not or did not want to do. It could send a message to someone who was too far away for me to talk to directly, it could do things that I became too lazy to do, like remember cell phone numbers off the top of my head and it would wake me up in the morning with an annoying shrill song that got louder and louder. But like a bad master, I abused it, I dropped it a dozen times, I never let it ‘sleep’, it was constantly on, or being charged. It began to get tired and sometimes it would not receive messages if it had not been turned off recently. I got annoyed, even though I knew it needed to be turned off more often, I couldn’t help but feel angry and only ever quickly turned it on and off when it refused to receive messages. Even when it was only doing what was required of it by waking me up in the morning; I blamed the technology for disrupting my sleep. In this way I hated it

Only when it finally had enough of the abuse and it refused to turn on, I realized that I love my cell phone despite, hating it earlier on. As my slave I had become so dependent on it that without realizing it, until it died.

Here's the link to the full version (various formats available) of the Google doco I showed an excerpt of in yesterday's lecture:
http://www.archive.org/details/Google-Documentary_GameHacked.com

nsIt was quite interesting to learn in today’s lecture how Google has become a “Corporate Power”. Google has grown immensely since its birth in 1996 as a research project. To this date, Google has become the default search engine, image finder, email client, map locator and news source for some people. Think….. How many times have you heard someone say to you “I’ll Google it”? I have yet to hear someone say “I’ll Yahoo! it”.

I believe that Google’s image will grow bigger and bigger as the years go on due to its dominance in the internet world. Even Apple’s iPod Touch is helping to spread Google’s image and services to become the internet superpower is it currently known as. The Apple iPod touch comes with Google Maps and Youtube applications. Both applications are owned and operated by Google. In addition, the Google mobile search page was the default homepage when I first logged onto the internet from my iPod Touch.

It seems that our internet worlds are run by Google. It now seems that there is even a Google Phone, which is said to rival the iPhone, oddly enough. Who knows what Google may attempt to do next. They might even branch into becoming an internet service provider or even launch their own operating system to challenge Microsoft’s Windows operating systems and Apple’s MAC operating systems. I guess we will have to wait and see what Google’s future holds.

As someone who is very anti social network sites for the very fact that I don't want to have my life on the internet, I felt foolish hearing Ian Brown talk about Google's data mining, in particular Gmail - which I actively hold an account with. I instantly had thoughts of getting rid of my account... But was unsure in this age of cloud computing if there were any free email systems that didn't mine data?

In our consumer society it is always important to try and stay aware of what is going on behind the scenes of corporate superpowers, but what was previously cheap labor in third world countries (and still is), in today's world of digital capitalism it is much harder to see the inner workings of the digital superpowers. As danah boyd showed in last weeks reading, privacy as well as social parameters are being redefined online and it seems that people are (slowly) becoming aware of this.

Data mining on the internet has a lot of concern surrounding potential consequences, but it seems as if these are building up to real threats of privacy and this growing consciousness is gaining more focus across the board as who the miners are comes to light. Interestingly, the supposed "Google killer" search engine Cuil, launched last year by ex-Google employees, does not collect user search data or IP addresses, however this quite admirable fact has not helped them, with a decreasing rank of 12,000 in terms of traffic in August this year.

As digital superpowers such as Google attempt to create an all encompassing digital empire and push the boundaries of mapping and controlling data on the net, it is important to stay stay alert: who is watching us online? Is my online activity going to affect me later on? And what I think is imperative, should we be preempting the risks presented by such comprehensive and invasive digital data mining?

By Yvonne Monday 28/09/2009
During the semester break, I travelled south island of New Zealand in 8 days. It would be a rush time to visit south island. I had to say the technology bring a big surprise to us. Firstly, we used Google map to decide our travelling plan, it can tell us exactly distance from each city, how long we can get the destination from one city to other city by driving. By the way I mentioned that if you drive your own car please do a pre-trip inspection. Then we start to book the motel from AA website (Automobile Association http://www.aa.co.nz/travel/Pages/default.aspx ). It is fantasying that AA travel recommend some holiday ideas including online booking hotel/motel, restaurants and activities. It also gives us an idea of nearby city/town, for instance, after visiting Christchurch, we go the Hanmer Springs as it points out in 101 must do’s for Kiwis.
Secondly, we used GPS (global position system) tracking to avoid some useless road trip. It was not surprising that the duration/distance of GPS is exactly the same to the road information sign. Furthermore, the GPS not only provide the travelling map, but also it can explore the place which indicates the petrol, cash director, restaurants, hotel /motel. It avoids people with blind searching from any of this information above especially you are a traveler or on the night time. Lastly, I want to talk about the small plane experience. This is the first time I travel only own ten seats flight from Queenstown to Milford Sound. and then by cruises for watching the penguin. It's hard to explain how great the view is. So great!
At the end, I’d like to say the technology has already changed the world in our life. The relationship between technology and human are close and close nowadays. If there is no such of these technologies, we will miss so many great things in our life. Also, my real experience tells that I can not live without internet even in 8 days. It makes me sick for the internet. Because, the Internet has already become a part of our everyday life.

Microsoft's grinning robots or the Brotherhood of the Mac. Which is worse?

The Guardian's Charlie Brooker on how his hatred for the new Windows 7 campaign is eclipsed by his utter contempt for Mac-lovers:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/28/charlie-brooker-microsoft-mac-windows

Facebook introduced its New Feed in 2006. As I started using Facebook after this time, I have never experienced the site without this feature. boyd's essay on the topic takes a somewhat negative view of the News Feed feature, calling it a "privacy trainwreck". She claims that privacy is a sense of control over one's information; the context of it, and the audience who recieves this information (2008). For me, privacy is about the things that I choose to keep to myself, or that I reveal to only my closest friends and family members. boyd (2008), as well as many others, state that the introduction of News Feeds blows this sense of privacy out of the water because what you do on Facebook is then shown to everyone that you are connected to on the website.

boyd's essay mentions a Facebook group called Students Against Facebook News Feeds. With 177, 191 members of the group, it's easy to see that many people are against Facebook displaying their actions via News Feeds to everyone on their friend list. I stumbled on an article by the man who was behind this Facebook group. In the article (available here), Ben Parr (2008) writes that he has changed his opinion on privacy on the internet, even turning to Twitter, which arguably gives you less privacy than Facebook. Parr argues now, after having changed his mind on the News Feed that the feature actually allows more control over privacy; you choose what you want to post, knowing that others will see, and you keep what you want to keep private by not posting it at all.

I have never had a problem with Facebook's News Feed. Having always used Facebook with its News Feed, I am used to the fact that all the people on my friend list can see what I am doing. I know what I post may be read by everyone I am connected to. Yet, it does not bother me. I have nothing to hide, and if I did, why would I post it on Facebook anyway?

Media interactivity has been publicized as a positive development, not only in its entertainment value but educationally as well. The cyberspace of the Internet can be like a playground for the youth. Cyberspace can be a training ground for young entrepreneurs and visions of teens becoming rich abound. For an example, Youngbiz.com provides interactive content information on stock options, careers and money matters. If used appropriately, it can be a space where anyone can try out other points of view, explore other parts of ourselves. At the same time, the exploration is reasonably freely permitted and usually with high anonymity.

However, on the other hand, globally and nationally speaking, there are a number of serious concerns that need to be addressed with interactive video games and youth interaction with the cyberspace. According to Mary Frances Fitzgerald, youth are the first generation in cyberspace and sometimes, it is shocking what the vulnerable youth capable of doing online. These issues include concerns about youth identity and dangers of video game addiction that have emerged to the society. With regard to the effects of Internet human rights violations, the highest rate of respondent victims indicated psychological shock, such as, anger, depression, and anxiety as the consequences of these violations. For technological control, youth addiction problems related to Internet games and chatting have to be prevented by adopting a ‘usage time limit system’. Also, to regulate the inflow of harmful content, filtering programs for youth needs to be widely distributed and appropriately adopted. Thus in the populations of wired youth can be saved in the modern reality.

“Users may be able to choose from millions of sites, but most go to only a few. This isn’t an accident or the result of savvy branding. It’s because Internet traffic follows a winner-take-all pattern that is much more ruthless than people realise. Relying on links and search engines, most people are directed to a few successful sites; the rest remain invisible to the majority of users. The result is that there’s an even greater media concentration online than in the offline world.”

As a result, almost all diversity found on blogs or other website is virtually ignored and as the author mentions:

“Freedom of the online press [...] is only guaranteed for those who enjoy large circulation. Put it another way, freedom of speech means little if no one can hear you”.

The article also goes on about how major websites tend to link to similar popular sites, and that smaller independent also tend to link to the bigger ones. Failure to engage in collaborations such as cross promotions in their own blogs therefor e make it very hard for independent or alternative people to make their voices heard in a place where there is such an overload of information.

(Source: Sharing the Wealth: an online commons for the non-profit sector - Jeff Chester and Gary O.Larson, Center for Digital Democracy)

In my essay, I argued that although social network site, such as facebook and myspace allow the performance and exploration of self-identity, there is also a great dilemma regarding social privacy in the way that we may not wish certain people to see certain contents. This indistinguishable cut between our personal and private life relates to issues of privacy and new media. This week we are shown a comedic parody video of how Google treats people who choose to Opt-out like prisoners, it is funny but in a sense the underlining context of online security are also quite serious. Although Opting out is not the most rewarding way to deal with the problems of online privacy, and the cyber-world has not yet come claim our privacy like Big Brother, but there are real concerns and consequences regarding online privacy. As for now, as Michael Zimmer suggests in “The Externalities of Search 2.0”, the best way to go forward is accept the inevitable and logical trade-offs of online privacy, not opting out, but to participate in social network sites while work hard to keep privacy, which would require co-operations and governments to consider the issues of privacy more serious.

After my computer showed me a lovely blue screen in the middle of writing my assignment, I have decided that technology and I do not have a good relationship. As was mentioned in our first lecture, relationships with technology can sometimes be irritating. However most of the time, I believe technology is truly marvellous.

For example, Skype an easy to use online video calling website, which is free, and designed to allow Skype members to keep in touch. Is an easy way to maintain long distance relationships and does not offer the extras that other networking sites require such as creating detailed profiles which in contrast social networking site Facebook does. Facebook allows relationships to be made or continued, and suggests that users create an extensive identity online as a way of expressing their personality, not just a means of keeping in contact.

Another instance of bad technology use for me was miraculously deleting 250 odd photos and please don’t suggest simply checking the recycle bin, it is still a tender subject. So, should I be ashamed of this relationship I have with technology considering I am a 21st century person living in the digital age? I consider how you use the technology you have to be of importance, whilst also allowing for good and bad days.

This week’s reading addressed the issues of exposure and invasion in regards to internet privacy with the main example of the Facebook "privacy trainwreck' due to its introduction of the news feed feature in 2006. Following this example, the controversy raised in regards to other social networks such as the popular (in Russia) Russian network (www.odnoklassniki.ru) was just as bad if not worse. Recently there has been a political scandal over this site for revealing a lot more than just personal information.
The site itself came out in 2004 and proved to be very popular with the Russian public to the point where even politicians as well as members of the military joined into this social network (which is made primarily for the purposes of reconnecting and keeping in touch with old class mates). Following the sites exposure, the militaries’ base primary location was very soon found and compromised by a few members of the opposition at the time. The reason for this was that young military troops would reveal all there is to know about who they are and where they serve for the purposes of social networking with their friends and family outside of the army as well as with their peers serving in other military camps. In some way this is understandable: Because the service in the Russian army is restricted from family visitations etc. the troops used the internet as a primary source of contact with their family and peers forgetting that this information could be revealed to either friend or foe that can put it to negative use.
And who would have ever thought that such a harmless, friendly, social site could have revealed something of such confidential national importance!
This once again reinforces the idea that the information that we distribute over the net can be used against us not only in relation to personal matters, but to an even greater magnitude which may not only put our own privacy at risk.

In the early years, Web surfing meant going from site to site and reading what was on each page. Today's Web users are much more active. They add content, interact with others, and personalize sites. Site owners are making websites more flexible while encouraging users to participate.

Web surfing was mostly passive. Users read pages and followed links. In this model, the site owner was in charge, and visitors took what was offered. Interaction was limited to simple chartrooms and forums. Adding to the problems were slow connection speeds which made it hard to upload content. In the early 2000s, that model started changing. With faster connection speeds users could easily upload content. Users, instead of site owners were becoming a site's most important members.

The more active users become the more democratic the Web is. Sites like “YouTube”, for videos, and “Flickr”, for photos-are built with user-added content. Millions of people write their own blogs. On"wiki"sites, such as “Wikipedia”, members add, change, and delete information and on social networking sites like “MySpace” and “Face book”, people meet and build new communities. Then there are sites like “Reddit” which collect links to online articles. They let user’s vote- getters rising to the top. Now that's democracy in action.

As people's expectations of the Internet have changed, the sites are becoming more interactive. For example, people can change “My Yahoo” page to make it look the way they want. Stores like Amazon encourage people to write product reviews. News sites like CNN run polls asking for people's opinions. All these sites go out of their way to place the user at the centre.

The internet has become a kind of alternative to one's real life, so much so that meeting people online, finding romance and keeping in contact with offline friends, reducing by comparison the time one spends outside of cyberspace. It is no wonder then that even something as important as healthcare has been transferred to the internet, albeit in a rather flawed fashion.

So after last week's lecture I found myself quite paranoid and unwilling to go on sites that I usually went on in fear of being 'watched'. Now, I've known about internet surveillance for awhile but I did not know about the extent of it until quite recently. This made me think about a point in the lecture on how internet users can be considered either ignorant of the privacy issues on the web or that they simply accept it. I wondered which category I fit in. Certainly I knew about trackers like cookies and spyware, but I did not know on what sites you could be exposed to them. Originally I believed it was only on the more seedier sites that they existed and so I tended to avoid those. Eventually I found out (from an episode of 'Boston Legal') that most sites have cookies that track your progress in cyberspace, this however did not detour my use of the net, I simply took certain measures to lessen the extent of surveillance on my computer by deleting the cookies and temporary internet files. I have no idea if this has any effect whatsoever but it does make me feel slightly more secure.

So am I ignorant to the privacy issues or am I just trading off privacy for convinient social contact? I think a bit of both. I know it exists but I'm blissfully unaware of how it properly opperates. If we all had sufficient knowledge of how and where we are being tracked perhaps we would all be more careful with what we put up on the net? http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/03/wireds-top-inte/ This site addresses what the author(s) believe are the top threats on the net dealing with privacy and censorship. It identifies ways in which hackers and governments can keep track of people.

The internet is one of the most convinient tools to keep in contact with people, and while being spied upon is not a good thing, as long as you do not do anything particularly illegal you should have nothing to worry about, but still the idea of being watched is disconcerting as we have no idea as to who could be watching.

I met up with an ex from high school while shopping and what I thought would be an awkward situation turned out to be quite pleasant. I sometimes wondered what had become of her because the last I heard she had left the country, but she was in town visiting family. Our brief conversation ended and she said that she would look for me on Facebook and add me as a friend.

Strong and weak ties are what our friends list on Facebook consist of. Now between these two comparing those on my Friends list it would be difficult for someone determine who my strong ties were unless someone checked who I interact with regularly (so really the chances of her finding out who I’ve been with were slim, phew!) Social network research classifies ties as strong or weak, heterogeneous or homogenous.

So in the real world our friendship or relationship with someone has a lot more depth, a bit more intricate whereas on social networks it’s quite broad and general and it works best for something like Facebook. I mean who would walk around with a sign saying "Hi everyone, this is my friend!" So strong and weak ties are sustained on social network sites and useful for understanding the technology that can best support them, unfortunately that could possibly include an ex girlfriend!

If you want "strong ties" with you ex again, you might want to watch the clip below for some tips.

Good luck

This week’s lecture about ‘Privacy in the Digital Age,’ along with other readings about new media, has reasserted the belief in me that privacy is, in itself, a ‘catch 22.’ It’s not something we think about very often; we just assume that our computers will block out viruses, prevent hackers from taking our information, and run smoothly. It barely registers in my thought process that every place I go, every link I click, and every email I send is being stored somewhere. And this someplace I can’t get to. Technology has created a false sense of security blanket around us where we pick up our bread crumbs; delete our website histories and emails, which makes us feel like they are gone. But they’re not, and I have a background suspicion that somebody somewhere has access to this information without my suspicion.

Another thing about privacy: I remember a few months back seeing those Facebook applications asking people if they wanted to know who was stalking them:

http://www.facebook.com/tos.php?api_key=aae88392431fd95ab7e63e73dbdcc92a&next=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.eaststar.com%2Ffbookapps%2Fstalker%2F%3F_fb_fromhash%3D540ee3139715a747a07c7ecd5396ee1b&v=1.0&canvas

This meant, of course, that people would be able to see whose pages I had been visiting, which is completely terrifying. I’m thinking to myself, “Oh, crap. But have the people I look at I don’t even know how I got to their page in the first place.” After initially being frightened, I realized that this application was fake and, in fact, only showed the past people’s walls I had written on, or something like that. But this doesn’t convince me that there isn’t something out there that is keeping tabs on the people I look at; this keeps me somewhat claustrophobic of technology.

When Luke played the video on Monday that challenged old media corporations to “listen” to users. It got me thinking, do we really need to worry too much about traditional media companies like News Corp, Time Warner, Viacom and CBS taking monopolistic positions in the new media sphere.

I think not. In the last decade or so, we have seen some of the largest and arguably most unsuccessful mergers of all time. CBS has bought CNET, News Corp purchased MySpace and AOL merged with Time Warner. The results of these moves have been average at best and disastrous in the worst instance.

Many of the critics of these moves equate careless acquisitions to empire building by majority shareholding magnates such as News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch, and Viacom’s Sumner Redstone. But let’s not forget the largest and (arguably) most tragic (in a sort of your dad singing Dire Straits and posting it on YouTube kind of way) merger of all time. With AOL and Time Warner neither had a majority shareholder. The two merged at the peak of the dot-com boom with an eye to creating synergy and a new 21^st century media organization to rule them all. But since then AOL has crumbled (and is about to be spun off and relisted on the stock exchange) and Time Warner’s print publications have faced a circulation death spiral (a trend not unique to Time Warner, but illustrative of plunging revenue all the same).

With this in mind, we might look at News Corp’s $500 Million dollar acquisition of MySpace, an acquisition mostly funded by borrowing against News Corp’s other core assets. News Corp has taken huge write-downs on the MySpace acquisition and its other online ventures, as has Sumner Redstone, who has just had to sell a large proportion of his stake in CBS and Viacom to pay off debt. So here’s my point, as revenue drops in traditional media, and the credit markets remain tighter due to increased regulation, soon it will not be a case of old media trying to buy relevance in New Media, but rather them no longer being able to afford to.

Clay Shirky: How Twitter can make history
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_iN_QubRs0&feature=channel_page

From an article in the Guardian:

‘If you wanted to try and cover everywhere, you'd need a whole army of people watching CCTV," ... "That's essentially the driver for this technology - it's automation, it's doing things more efficiently.’” (Orwell, 2009)

This really ties in with the Western world’s obsession with efficiency. The example in the aricle about preventing bike theft implied that this technology would save time and prevent theft. However, how much money would be put in to this CCTV imaging processing technology just so that the city of London can boast that they have no more bikes being stolen?

The article also notes that these camera will be able to notice when people are acting “strangely.” Who decides what strange is? It seems to me that we are quickly entering a world in which our expression and our movements will be watched and processed by government standards. Being able to track individuals and see their every move is not something that should be able to be bought and sold within companies to the highest bidder.

Is technology like this going to create a society of fear? If you knew that a camera was watching you for behavior anomalies, it would make sense that you would try not to stand out. Scientists are saying that CCTV will soon be able to detect how different people what, what colors make a person stand out in a crowd, and what behaviors are “abnormal” so what is next? Where do we draw line with trying to protect ourselves and lose our identity?

Out of several other new media forms, the one I believe as the most influential in terms of portraying self-identity is the Internet. This is particularly so because young people today are identifying themselves in SNS's. Internet can therefore act as the platform for ordinary people to become influential.

I would like to briefly talk about the recently issue that arise from the comment posted on MySpace by a famous Korean singer that became a problem. The comments were discrimination of Korean society that made the citizens and even fans very upsetting. Of course this comment was discovered by some anonymous blogger who found something that was written four years ago. Even though Jay (the singer) was Korean who lived in America for a long time his identity performed on MySpace as American who has discriminated Korea caused him to withdraw himself out of the group and bringing himself back to America. Even though people were behaving rather irrational the image of one individual portrayed in this SNS created a case that could not be altered. It allows the Internet and particularly the SNS’s to articulate or play some kind of authenticity which in this case involved bloggers whom rather acted as proxy for other bloggers that ultimately ended up destroying ones’ career.

What I thought interesting about this incident is my understanding of self-identity is something that shouldn’t be ignored in any media forms particularly in the Internet but one that should be clearly performed by individuals. It is necessary to be aware of the consequences that might lead to such miscellaneous by choosing to be someone that suits best at one time.

This morning a talk show, Rachael Ray, caught my attention. A guest on the show had her own online blog focusing on people's hairstyles. It made me realize we can become whoever we want to on the internet. This lady was not a professional but, through this blog, she helped people find their perfect hairstyle by posting photos of celebrities as examples. People on the blog would vote which celebrity had the best haircut for the blogger, and some got over a 1000 votes. It makes me think, do people actually care about a random person's haircut? And if the answer is yes, then could we not make a similar blog where the topic of conversation was more important than people's hairstyles? I would think that it was the hairdresser's job to tell people what haircut suits them, and not a woman with a blog who has nothing to do with the profession.

Could some random person also start a blog and become a doctor without knowing anything about medicine? Wouldn’t it be dangerous for people to rely on a blog like this?

Nevertheless, I find it interesting how the internet is allowing people to become whoever they want even pursue any career they want. It can even lead to fame for some people. However, this also means the internet is increasingly becoming a substitute for the real thing, and people who actually are educated within a specific field might find themselves without a job. With this, the internet is encouraging more of a "do it yourself" attitude, where one can for example search for how to unclog the drain, and it will give you the answer so that you can do it yourself, instead of having to call a plumber and pay a lot of money to have it done. Does this then mean that more businesses across the world will lose customers for the internet?

The shifting concept of privacy in the digital age was addressed in this week’s lecture. As a self professed techno-idiot, I found the subject of data mining both sneaky and most of all enlightening. Yes, I had wondered before about the advertisements which popped up on the side of my Facebook profile, and how more often than not they were advertisements for something snow related. How did they know about my love for the snow? Well it turns out that they have bloody well been following me around the internet, so to speak, haven’t they! But in all honestly, it doesn’t particularly bother me that this (data mining) is occurring, I mean they aren’t harming me by doing this, in this particular situation. However, this is not to say that I feel I am unaffected by any privacy threat in the digital age, (the availability of spy software shocked me) I am only speaking on the issue of data mining. What I am now able to rethink is what information I choose to freely disclose in cyberspace.

I came across a relevant article on The New Zealand Herald website- the article discusses the shutdown of Facebook's privacy violating 'Beacon' tracking system which once operated a highly questionable user tracking system with regard to privacy- ‘Beacon’ informed friends of sites visited, as well as online purchases made. Here is the link:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10598830
I look forward to finding out what power moves the NZ$13.44 million foundation might be able to put together for the future of online privacy, safety and security.

In every article I could find, Facebook admitted that some identity theft has taken place but there were few idea given on how to protect yourself from this happening. Things such as changing security settings and making sure you only accept friends as 'friends' online certainly limits the risk of being taken for granted.
However, even with these settings people can still view your profile and many of the people who are getting targeted in these cases are people who have not changed their settings, perhaps they don't know how. I think that it would be a reasonable step for Facebook administrators to change the automatic security setting to optimal level of security for users.
If this was to happen then at least Facebook / any social network site and in turn new technologies would not be able to be held accountable for such acts. It would be down to the person. If someone changes their profile public it would be the same as going out and leaving you ID somewhere with you address and list of favourite things.

Online social networking, particularly MySpace and Facebook, has become a popular way for people to maintain connections with friends both local and long distance. The internet community is quickly changing and evolving as more of the world comes online. Such sites are increasingly popular across various demographics, with millions of users worldwide. Social network websites make personal information publicly accessible, while also allowing the user to portray a particular identity through individualized profiles in virtual space. A feature of SNS profiles is the possibility for users to see the number and identity of other user’s contacts. What Donath and Boyd argue is that "Public displays of connection" serve as important identity signals that help people navigate the networked social world, in that an extended network may serve to validate identity information presented in profiles. This sense of context and online identity can be of particular importance for individuals who perceive themselves as lacking such in the real world.

I was on Facebook the today and was looking at the different profile picture that my friends had and with reference to the second lecture, I noticed the differences in the profile pictures of males and females and how they allow for the performance of gender. I did a small survey of 10 of my facebook friends, 5 of each sex at random and here are my results...

Females:
-1 had pictures only of them self in poses that could be interpreted as sexually suggestive due to the facial expression and body language, were wearing makeup etc and had taken the photo them self.
-4 had photos of them with a group of friends while looking happy while dressed up at a party/town/ball.

Males:
-1 had a photo of a female celebrity in a bikini.
-1 had a photo of their car.
-1 had a photo of them with their friends pulling a face that is not commonly associated with being attractive (although both guys are actually real babes... which is subjective of course...)
-2 had a photo of them with a group of their mates drinking alcohol.

Although the number of people of surveyed was small, I summarised from this was that females had photos where they appeared the most attractive or in a light which showed them as feminine while males had photos which showed them as masculine by having profile photos containing things commonly associated with masculinity (women as sex objects, drinking, cars etc) and also not caring as much about their personal appearance as females (having a profile photo which shows them not looking so attractive...). These photos allow for the performance of gender by both sexes picking a picture which shows them performing gender by having associations with attributes commonly linked to masculinity and femininity.

A fairly recent technolgical development is micro chipping pets. This consist of an owner taking his/her own pet to the vet, where the pet would receive a small injection, this injection would contain a minuscule microchip, which would then be injected somewhere on the animal (often the back of the neck for cats or dogs). The chip contains a small number which can is a unique code to specify the pets breed, sex, age and the owners contact details and address. This is a solution for those pets that get lost, and certain places with specific scanning equipment can pick up the unique code.


In lectures, the idea that humans could wear technology, suggested that technology was becoming such a strong part of us and that we are cyborgs. The idea cyborg was contested in tutorials. People disliked the idea of being an actual ‘cyborg’, because it sounded to them as though technology was so invasive, and viewed a cyborg as a part human part machine notion. In lectures Luke said that a kind of cyborg is wearable technology. This is certainly the case of micro chipping our pets, except even more extreme is the idea that this technology isn’t just wearable it’s almost irremovable.

‘Is easy and no errors will be possible, (only vets and specialists could remove the chip, with the right medical equipment and with some difficulty, even for them).'

www.chippet.com/why.htm

Although the technology itself does not directly control the pets movements, the information, the (practically) irremovable chip contains, does give humans a huge amount of control over their pets that they never would have had initially. This means that despite how many times a pet gets lost, they can always be found if they fall into the care of a place that has a scanner which would activate the chip. That includes pounds or anything of the sort. Although finding pets that go astray is usually a positive thing, it is still alarming to witness the type of control humans have over their pets because of such a small insertion of a chip.

The idea of the chips is alarming because of what they could be used for. What is to stop the government placing chips under the skins of humans?

Rob Spence, a Canadian film maker has taken surveillance to a new and even scarier level by implanting a camera into his eyes socket. Spence who refers to himself as an "eyeborg" is producing a documentary about surveillance by acting as a miniature big brother.

Published in Sunday's Boston Globe, the article Project 'Gaydar': An MIT experiment raises new questions about online privacy tells of two students' research project in which they "trained" a computer to look at three Facebook attributes (gender, "Interested In," and friend lists) to determine whether or not the list of friends can successfully determine one's sexual orientation. Using the formula gleaned from this, they examined subjects who did not list an "Interested In," and all 10 cases in which they knew the subject was a gay man were confirmed by their formula.

TVNZ must be following our schedule... In this article on tonight's news several new levels of biometric technologies are looking likely to be introduced for airport security - and possibly other uses.

Backing up the lecture content, the article explains that "the way you walk, even the way you type are unique characteristics." This is another (potentially concerning?) example of how the human body being increasingly equated to data in the digital age. Of course these cybernetic technologies also exemplify the need to rethink the notion of privacy and how it operates in today's 'surveilance society.'

Personally I have experienced the "SmartGate" technology in Australia which was incredibly smooth (and saved me a tonne of time). One might worry about the increasing amount of machines taking human jobs, however Immigration New Zealand believes that this technology is vital for reducing identity theft.

Despite NZ being typically low down the trickle chain, these developments do need to be kept in check. Hence it is reassuring to see Privacy Commissioner Marie Schroff's voiced concern over this biometric data being shared between organizations. In a world where you cant simply wipe your fingerprints away, we ourselves as well as our activities are becoming increasingly digitized hence more easily traceable, we must remain on our toes in assessing who's watching?

In discussing SNS by demographic we looked at the idea that Facebook is used by more sophisticated users such as university students whereas MySpace is used more by lower social economic groups and more expressive users. There has been some interesting research released which tends to support the claim that MySpace does hold an appeal to a certain sector of the population, at least in the U.S. The reason given is that the users largely populate smaller cities and communities and thus they are ‘not anywhere near the media hubs (except Atlanta) and far away from those elite opinion-makers in coastal urban areas’. The author of this piece has some further MySpace research findings here. So rather than suffering a crisis as suggested in some reports, MySpace is still holding steady in popularity according to this research, yet there does seem to be some level of disregard for the 11th most visited site in the world. Looking further into this here (transcript here) is a video of a talk by ethnographer Danah Boyd who suggests that the differing demographics of the SNS are in fact representations of online access and media literacy within our offline world. If what we are creating online is simply a reflection of the class differences we have offline, then we need to be more discerning about what we are being told about a very competitive market. It is certainly possible that the demise of MySpace is being talked up precisely because of a lack of engagement with the media elite, or that because its users are of a lower social economic grouping that the media overlooks the importance of MySpace to the online community.

These links arise out of today's lecture on privacy.

The first is a Facebook quiz developed by the ACLU that provides an insight into the the way such quizzes enable third parties to access data about you and your friends even if it is tagged as private. (Obviously, you have to be registered with Facebook to do the quiz!):

http://apps.facebook.com/aclunc_privacy_quiz/.

The second is a discussion with John Palfrey (co-author of the book "Born Digital") entitled "Does Anyone Care About Privacy Anymore?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qif_mpmxpfU

From the reading on anonymity, of the participants, Noor, wrote personal details on her personal webpage, but quickly took it down when she realised that it could be read by anyone. This is probably a perception that I think a lot of us had when we first started using the internet. Personally two or three years ago, I would not mind posting any pictures or personal information on my public mySpace page for example, but I am more careful about what I put out there, knowing that this information is easily accessed by anyone, especially with the sophistication of the search engines we have now. For example, there are many cases and studies done that have shown that many employers check details about a prospective employee online and base their decision to hire on what they “discover” about the individual. This goes for other things such as commenting or blogging anonymously don’t necessarily guarantee anonymity, as in the recent case of a model successfully suing Google to release the identity of a blogger who was defaming her (src). This goes to show that there are always ways to get around the system to expose details that were supposed to remain private.

While studying SNSs, I've analysed the ways I communicate with my friends online. I think that SNSs are good to connect with friends that you don't see everyday especially when they are overseas and I often find myself to talk more comfortably online to some friends than offline. One friend and I don't see each other often but regularly talk on facebook and like some of the readings I've read, different topics are approached at certain times without the awkward silence gap.

With Donath's reading I agree that there are hierarchies in the friendships within SNSs and I can clearly say that I visit more of my strong ties' profiles and comment on things rather than my weak ties' profiles. Although some people are concerned with the privacy of their profiles and do not want to meet new 'friends' on SNSs, it is all in the options and decisions we make in how we approve friendships and the settings we make on our profiles.

Unlike other SNSs, the korean SNS cyworld allows a different process when signing up. They have an identity verification process which requires users to type in their name followed by their korean identification number which is issued by the government to all citizens when they are born. Because cyworld is based on verified identities, in a way it is easier to recognise your actual friends and see if the person is legitimate or not.

Today, visionaries see a bright future in which technology will be so advanced that it will be able to serve as part of our e.g. extra limbs or a program which could control the human mind to learn or do things in minutes which would usually take a while for the human mind to grasp. But is the altering of human nature with the help of machinery really going to bring human kind further or make us smarter? Or perhaps it may just do the opposite. E.g. With the invention of a calculator people don’t need to think over their equations before getting to the immediate answer, hence without much thought process involved they do not learn as much as if they could have without the availability of technology. Just like maths, life is also full of equations for which rely on technological advancements to help us ‘short-cut’ our ways through them. Sure it saves time and the massive headache of having to sit there learning and solving the different tasks which life imposes upon us, yet the knowledge and the skills we develop will be far greater than that of being fully reliant on technology to it for us. Thus when receiving the question as to whether or not I would consider myself a cyborg in any way my answer would be NO. A cyborg is defined as a creature which is part human part machine. Therefore if the machine is such a significant part of this creature it would inevitably die if that part were to be taken from it. Take away my machinery or my technology and I would survive. Because no matter how far technology advances, human nature is that to which technology could never live up to.

Back home in America, TiVo is almost a decade old and nearly every household with digital cable (which is all television will be broadcast in in the near future) has some form of DVR. And while it's no longer a matter of life and death when a commitment keeps you away from your favorite show, the reality is that the benefits of these services don't change the fact that it's better to watch things as they happen in real time.

With the impending launch of TIVO in New Zealand, cancelling your dinner date because tuning in at 8:30 on a Tuesday night as your favourite show is playing (which is more important) is hugely a thing of the past. VCRs started the revolution, yet relying on myself or my technophobe mum to try to figure out a VCR’s future recording function heavily delayed the impending death of “appointment TV”. – One failed recording of Roswell confirmed that every Tuesday at 8:30, my eyes were glued to the TV set. Fast-forward ten years and people are drastically different in their TV watching patterns – one guy from class doesn’t even have a TV in his house (shock horror!) and the outcome is that water-cooler conversation doesn’t cover what happened last week in Outrageous Fortune (poor Sheryl) it is what is happening or what we hear through the internet. (Obama called Kanye a jackarse! – click here to listen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCdDKEFFU7Q) TVbythenumbers has released a study showing that TV watcher numbers are down by 20% and sites like YouTube and Hulu are collecting the dropping numbers. Which makes sense as I personally must know what is the latest goss in Gossip Girl – not the delayed by centuries NZ GG but the up to the very minute GG in America; YouTube is the answer to Generation Ys need of wanting everything now, now, now. Luckily TIVO will be launching in NZ first week of October. Young people (and old) of New Zealand should embrace themselves – it is going to be fantastic. TIVO offers viewers the function to pause rewind and replay live TV, record whole series (perfect for the occasional Sunday omnibus), high def imaging (perfect for viewing Heath Ledger up close and personal), and the ability to record TV and store on an internal hard drive. And yes, this is exactly what MySky offers currently but TIVO also offers broadband movies!* Even TIVO recognizes the move award from appointment TV to the internet. The revolution will also bring families back together. As the sets are so expensive it will be years before households have more than one thus households will sit together in the lounge, ending the days of people hibernating in their rooms to watch TV as let’s face it everyone has at least three or four extra TV sets with Warehouse bunny ears around the house. Mind you as a poor student my household will definitely not be getting a TIVO set for a while – so you might need to hang around for appointment TV to be finally dead.
*Yes, there is a catch – you must be with Telecom.

Tivo is finally coming to New Zealand!! However, the catch is that it will be sold through Telecom and only Telecom members will get the full benefits of this nifty device.
If you don’t know what Tivo is, it’s a nice piece of technology that will let you record two digital television channels whilst watching a third. Also, you will be able to download television shows or movies at the same time so the Tivo box will need to be connected to the internet for these functions as well as for viewing the 14 day electronic TV guide, downloading software updates and for the ability to program the machine to record shows over the internet. The machine will be compatible with Freeview HD so users will need a UHF aerial install to be able to use the device.

So what will this mean for everybody with DVD-recorders or for the people who have just splashed out big bucks for the recently released Freeview HD recorders? I believe that people will still be able to use their DVD-recorders, but they will not be able to enjoy the luxury of recording 2 channels at once and recording in high definition. For the people who have bought the Freeview HD recorders, it seems like they have just wasted a whole lot of cash since Tivo will be sold for a slightly cheaper cost.

One major problem with downloading movies or television shows over the internet in New Zealand is that it eats up all your broadband data. To make Tivo a success, the company has teamed up with Telecom so Tivo related downloads will not count towards Telecom users’ broadband data allowances. This is a plus for Telecom, because it most likely will persuade broadband users to switch to Telecom as their broadband provider.

Tivo will be sold in New Zealand for a one-off cost for $899 in November at Telecom outlets. There are no ongoing subscription fees.