Dystopias

"We figured out that people have advertised so much with their online ego, that basically a kind of avatar persona has been created so actually people start talking about killing someone like it would be a real person,"

"If you are heavily active [on the internet], by disconnecting you are losing a significant relationship. Those 30 or 40 hours of time now have to be filled with real life." Dr Block says some people can find it very gratifying, while others find they are not capable of staying disconnected. However, he believes the worst case scenario is when the decision to disconnect is made by a third party. "It can be a disaster and can even lead to suicide."

If we can't live in the moment without tweeting about it, or broadcasting all of our thoughts to our 2,000 Facebook friends, are we in danger of losing our sense of identity?

Rating Characteristics 4 Exceptional. The blog post is focused and coherently integrates examples with explanations or analysis. The post demonstrates awareness of its own limitations or implications, and it considers multiple perspectives when appropriate. The entry reflects in-depth engagement with the topic. 3 Satisfactory. The blog post is reasonably focused, and explanations or analysis are mostly based on examples or other evidence. Fewer connections are made between ideas, and though new insights are offered, they are not fully developed. The post reflects moderate engagement with the topic. 2 Underdeveloped. The blog post is mostly description or summary, without consideration of alternative perspectives, and few connections are made between ideas. The post reflects passing engagement with the topic. 1 Limited. The blog post is unfocused, or simply rehashes previous comments, and displays no evidence of student engagement with the topic. 0 No Credit. The blog post is missing or consists of one or two disconnected sentences.

digital age technology, which now allows for the psychological torment that used to be confined only to school to be relentless and omnipresent

They felt like they could do it because everybody does it. A good portion of our media culture is now based on prurient voyeurism and a constant invasion of privacy. The public disclosure of a person's most intimate secrets and moments is no longer considered shameful or condemnable -- it's just called entertainment. Why wouldn't a couple of college kids turn their classmate into an unwitting reality TV star? It's basically the same toxic horseshit they grew up watching on MTV, VH1 and E! For all they knew, maybe Tyler Clementi would've loved the mainline of notoriety. If the dipshits on Jersey Shore don't have a problem mining their most repugnant traits in the name of 15 minutes of fame -- if anyone can go to YouTube and post video of a guy complaining about how there are rapists in his neighborhood and suddenly turn that guy into a viral sensation and his complaints into a catch phrase -- why the hell can't two Rutgers freshmen live-stream a roommate in bed with a man? This is the age of the unauthorized sex tape. This is Bentham's Panopticon come to fruition on a global scale. You're always being watched. You're always on camera. You have no expectation of privacy. Clementi should have known that, right?!

anyone he personally feels deserves it and he and his website are at the forefront of America's culture of shameless voyeurism and a constant, irrepressible invasion of privacy. It's because someone like Perez Hilton has spent the past few years making himself rich by indiscriminately circulating images of Miley Cyrus's crotch to the world that the two teenagers who tortured Tyler Clementi likely didn't think that what they were doing was a big deal.

not being trained in digital citizenship never caused a problem for me. I knew what was right and wrong, and I did the right thing. Why is this being treated so differently???‎"Nobody has come out and said, 'This is how it's supposed to be.'" This is part of my issue with "education". Students are learning that they only need to do what they are told. If there's isn't a rule, it must be OK. There's no thought, no critical evaluation, no drawing of parallels that if something is wrong in this circumstance, then it must also be in this other situation. People need to be allowed (forced? certainly encouraged) to think for themselves -- and to be responsible for their own actions!

"For the most part, kids who are in college today never received any form of digital citizenship or media training when they were in high school or middle school."

Google said collecting the additional data was a mistake resulting from a piece of computer code from an experimental project that was accidentally included.

Google has acknowledged a fleet of cars, equipped with wireless equipment, inadvertently collected emails and passwords of computer users in various countries, and said it was changing its privacy practices. The company said it wants to delete the data as soon as possible. Google announced the data collection in May, but said at the time the information it collected was typically limited to "fragments" of data because the cars were always moving. Since then, regulators in several of the more than 30 countries where the cars operated have inspected the data. "It's clear from those inspections that while most of the data is fragmentary, in some instances entire emails and URLs were captured, as well as passwords," said Google's vice-president of engineering and research, Alan Eustace, in a post on Google's blog.

the intensifying cross-overs between the use of drones to deploy lethal force in the war zones of Asia and the Middle East, and their introduction within western airspace, need to be stressed. The European Defence Agency, for example, a body funded by the UK and other European governments,  is lobbying hard to support the widespread diffusion of drones within UK and EU policing and security as a  means to bolster the existing strengths of European security corporations like BAE systems, EADS and Thales within  booming global markets for armed and military drones. The global market for drones is by far the most dynamic sector in the global airline industry. The current annual market of $2.7 billion is predicted to reach $8.3 billion by 2020 and $55 billion is likely to be spent on drones in the next decade. A specific concern of the EU is that European defense and security corporations are failing to stake claims within booming global drone markets whilst US and Israeli companies clean up.

what scholars of surveillance term ‘function-creep’ is likely to be a key feature of drone deployments

 it is startling that the main concern so far in public policy debates about the introduction of military-standard surveillance drones into routine police practice in Western countries has surrounded the (very real) dangers of collision with other aircraft.

I love how fast the internet acts on shit like this.This article was posted at 2:30 today. The husband apologized by 6:30. lol

Angle's campaign had asked that the meeting not be recorded, but Barron said many students secretly videotaped the discussion on personal cell phones.

“Awesomeness” doesn’t necessarily have to mean “life-changing wisdom from the fountain of genius.” Sometimes it just means holding yourself to a higher standard in your day-to-day content and avoiding getting into a rut just for the sake of consistency. And wherever you produce content — videos, podcasts, blogs, ads, Facebook — it’s more important than ever that you focus on what you have to offer instead of searching for widgets and plug-ins and toolbars to help you offer it slightly better. The days when people would idly surf the Web, grazing on what they could find, are largely over. Today, we've largely surrendered the discovery process to our social networks, feeding off the great links our friends have found and liked enough to share. Which means that consistency and audience loyalty aren't going to be enough anymore. You're going to need to make sure that everything you create is erupting with potential to be shared. Then you'll find the process is all around a heck of a lot easier. 

a medium without a message is little more than static

By saying that NELL has "adopted" the human behaviour of tweeting you are misleading the reader. It is more likely that the software was specifically progremmed to do so and therefore has "adopted" no "human behavior". FAIL.

Warren

The Caryatids

Neuromancer

SF was never really about prediction. It was about extrapolation from the present condition, usually (in the classical traditional) to observe and comment upon the present condition. Which isn’t the same thing. "Prediction" is sf’s side effect.

Better living through categorizing my acquaintances! Then again, most of my social circles have at least one Facebook holdout—which is partly what Zuckerberg is banking on. Either a Group forgoes the convenience of Facebook for the uninitiated, or the uninitiated cracks down and joins the network. If Facebook wins even half those battles, that potentially a huge amount of growth.