Group items tagged

Dare to do this? "Paul Miller gave up the Internet at midnight Tuesday. Miller, who was and still is a senior editor at a tech news site called The Verge, plans to stay offline for a full year. When he needs to post something to the website that employs him, he will hand his editors a thumb drive with his stories saved in offline files. If he needs to look up a phone number, he'll get on the phone and start calling people -- who hopefully know people who know the person that he's trying to reach for an interview."

DO IT!

This RSA adaptation of Evgeny Morozov's 2009 talk illustrates (and examines) the concept of "cyber-utopianism": the theory that the internet "plays a largely emancipatory role in global politics." Morozov discusses whether or not the internet predominately empowers or censors citizens by facilitating activism and allowing individuals to disseminate information more effectively.

Since Mikenna bookmarked a New York Times article about Pinterest, I've been thinking about what makes that site different (and, in my opinion, more successful) than other social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. According to this Huffington Post article, "What sets Pinterest apart and makes it so appealing is its focus on who we want to be -- not on what we're doing, where we've gone, how important we are or how beloved. While much of the content shared on existing social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare screams, 'Look at me,' Pinterest posts urge, 'Look at this.'" While I agree with that idea to some extent, I wonder if we can ever engage in social media/social networking without an air of "look at me." This made me think of Goldsmith's idea of Internet identity: "On the Internet, these tendencies move in different directions, with identity running the gamut from authenticity to total fabrication" (84). So, maybe Pinterest allows its users to create a more authentic identity for themselves while Facebook and Twitter promote more fabricated identities.

Control that extends far beyond what was discussed in "The Internet Treats Censorship as a Malfunction and Routes Around It?"

Talk on the behind-the-scenes filtering that goes on of your individual internet experience.

Consider Mcluhan's concept that electronic media creates a construct of the human nervous system. Here you'll see it in its literal form as the mapped out Internet.

This article highlights Iran's response to reports like the one found at Ars Technica that I posted earlier today. "Iran has denied online reports surfacing Tuesday that it plans to cut access to the Internet in August and replace it with a national intranet, according to a statement by the ministry of communication and information technology." But, according to the article, Iran "...does have plans to establish a 'national information network' billed as a totally closed system that would function like a sort of intranet for the Islamic republic."

This group is briefly mentioned in the chapter on Pranks in this week's reading. The fired game designer for the SIms helicopter game left and joined this group-- pretty much pranksters of an online nature. While it has little to do with video games, it has everything to do with ethos in an Internet age.

...and on that note, technology and people are getting even cozier these days. I used to think it was impressive how quickly cell phones got smaller and smarter and how quickly internet went wireless and made sharing easier. Now, inventions like this wrist control system and the idea of "smart buildings" seems to shadow earlier technology, and make us wonder if there is anything we won't try to give a technology interface-lift to.

Going back to our initial discussions on the origin of the internet, a physicist discusses the CERN VM

I know there are some coffee lovers in the class, so this is double apt. Like Four Barrel Coffee, The Daily Grind also chooses not to offer wifi to its customers. An interesting twist to the notion that the Internet is considered a hindrance to our social lives, even over coffee.

Another shrouding tactic is to use the search engine DuckDuckGo, which distinguishes itself with a "We do not track or bubble you!" policy. Bubbling is the filtering of search results based on your search history. (Bubbling also means you are less likely to see opposing points of view or be exposed to something fresh and new.) *I don't particularly care about my privacy (nothing to hide and honestly don't care whose watching), but I do care about the information being fed to me through search engines. I pride myself on doing all the research I can before supporting or criticizing a position. If google is simply feeding me what I want to hear, how do I know I have the full story? This seems like a particularly nefarious form of censorship--one that makes sense in an age of "truthiness" and pandering to ignorance. Bad google. No bubbles.

My new favorite Firefox add on that combats all the new privacy stuff unearthed about the big internet titans.

An article about Inbound Writer, software that helps writers revise their content to maximize search engine optimization. The author's conclusion: "Just like the Internet it is served across, InboundWriter is just an information source, and it can be used for good or evil."

Google's New Search Algorithm to Crack Down on 'Black Hat Webspam' By Ars Technica By Matthew Braga, Ars Technica Nefarious search engine optimizers be warned. Google is coming for you-again. Following previous changes to Google's ranking and page layout algorithms, the search giant is pushing yet another update to its algorithm this week with the hopes of curbing "black hat webspam" from creeping into search results. * Google thinks that by increasing the complexity of its algorithms, it can weed out malicious intent. Funny thing about complexity is that it tends to breed more complexity. This reminds me a bit of Bogost's book on games. This cat and mouse scenario between Google and fake SEO creators seems to lead to ever evolving code much like in natural systems where the adaptations of the prey animal to take advantage of an environment are eventually matched by a predatory animal with adaptations designed to match or exceed the prey's abilities...

A neat -WIRED- blog documenting new developments in software (mostly Internet based), also offering some tips-and-tricks kinds of features too.

Whoops

An article by one of my favorite authors on the "fact-encirclingly huge" Wikipedia.

An interesting article on educating parents, teachers, and kids on digital citizenship and safety - and integrating better digital practices and training in schools.

Questions of names and online identity come up in this article, which talks about how Google Plus has changed its policy of requiring people to use their real names when registering for accounts.

This article talks about an alternative to SOPA and PIPA written by Reddit users. There's a link to the Reddit community and Google document they're working on. Although it's difficult for me to see how this document could impact/influence any actual legislation, redditors have had some success making waves in the past. After GoDaddy announced its support for SOPA, Reddit users staged a boycott. GoDaddy ultimately changed its position.

Even though Dibs is right in saying that erasing your history does not essentially change anything, if you want to access a utopian fantasy, this could be helpful.