The Fifth Estate

I saw The Fifth Estate this weekend! It was so interesting and such a fantastic film. I'm so fascinated by WikiLeaks and how controversial the website is. It was cool seeing how it all go started and the behind the story behind what the public saw at the time. My recent creation of this blog and enrollment in my Internet Studies class has fueled my interest in this movie. Because of this class, I learned about WikiLeaks and how it has affected our culture. It will be interesting to see how it continues to change and affect the world in the future. Below is a trailer of the movie! Everyone should go!

internet memes

Made a meme for the first time today! My freshman year when App Atate Memes came out, and I remember it consuming an entire day at the library when I was supposed to be studying. I still haven't fully mastered the art of meme making, but it's been fun to play around with.

Essay 1: Social Media is Making us Anti-Social

Social media is changing the way in which we communicate with each other. We thrive off of “likes” and notifications that are making us superficial and self-centered. In Michael Wesch’s lecture on YouTube called “An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube,” Wesch discusses how media “mediate human relations.” I think that the new media of the Internet has changed the way we communicate, and in turn, changed the relationships we maintain.

            According to Wesch’s lecture, “media is not content”(11:59). By this he means that the act of communicating is only meaningful when there is meaningful content. Take Facebook, for example. It is one of the largest and most popular social media sites. In a college atmosphere especially, I’ve noticed that I have more friends with Facebook profiles than without. I know that I personally rely on Facebook to keep up with friends that I don’t see often. Two of my best friends are studying abroad in Spain right now, and because it is hard to keep in touch with them on the phone, Facebook is very convenient. I message them when I’m thinking of them, and the posts and pictures on their profiles help me to stay updated on their adventures. They also have a Tumblr blog where they post pictures and stories about their time in Spain. These technologies help me to feel like my friends aren’t so far away. However, no amount of online chats and “liked” pictures are equal to a genuine face-to-face conversation with a friend. Wesch argues that the Internet allows for a deep state of community because everyone can be a part of it and it’s easier for people to communicate (30:40). He thinks that the distance helps us to form more strong connections because we can connect more easily. Although I agree with him in many ways, I do not think that this distance helps to make stronger connections. On the contrary, these connections are more shallow and meaningless than ever. Wesch himself says that “connecting deeply without the responsibilities of a deep connection” is what people are looking for online (30:45). He thinks that this is a positive thing that helps create community, but I think it is negative. Online communication takes little effort, and because of it’s short-term, 160 characters format, it is hard to say anything with meaning. In Sherry Turkle’s TED Talk titled “Connected but Alone?” she describes this as the Goldilocks Effect. Technology keeps us “close, but not too close”(5:56). Writing “Happy Birthday” on an old friend’s Facebook wall is not equivalent to picking out a card, writing them a note, and mailing it. That takes too much effort for this generation’s superficial Facebook “friendships.” We write “Happy Birthday” on an old friend’s wall because we want them to think that we still care. Suddenly, it doesn’t matter if you’re feelings are real, you just want everyone online to believe the illusion that you care; it’s all a show. According to Turkle, the problem with face-to-face conversations is that they “take place in real time, and you can’t control what you’re going to say” (6:20). The distance provided by the Internet gives us more control over the conversations because we can revise and rewrite our responses before sending them. We can decide what would make us sound cool or what the other person would want to hear. Real conversations don’t allow for this time to sit and consider your replies. Online, you only reveal as much of yourself as you want, and only receive the information given to you. Relationships can not be based only on short messages and comments because they lack real content. Although I am able to stay updated on the activies of my friends in Spain through social media, I still feel disconnect with them.

            These shallow online conversations not only affect the relationships we have with others, but also the relationships we have with ourselves. Facebook is notorious for causing “hyper self-awareness” as Wesch would describe it (26:20). Facebook makes us aware of how people view us, and because Facebook is all about what you post on your profile, it can make people overly conscious of what people think of them. People believe that the number of “likes” on a picture determines how pretty or popular they are, and they base what they post off of what they think would get them the most “likes.” This is an easy way to let someone know that you are thinking of them, but without real conversation social media becomes more a form of entertainment than communication. This surface level conversation doesn’t work for actually getting to know each other. Since we now rely so heavily on social media, we are forgetting how to have real conversations that make real connections. Social media is making us isolated and ironically anti-social. Kids would rather sit on a computer in a chat room than go outside and play. Turkle claims that technology is compromising our “capacity for self-reflection” because “we use conversations with each other to learn how to have conversations with ourselves”(8:38). Because we lack deep discussions with people, we cannot have deep reflexive discussions with ourselves. Also, technology and the Internet is a part of our everyday lives. Between cell phones, school email accounts, and Facebook the Internet is hard to escape.

We often think of the internet as though it has been around forever, but it’s still very new and the affects that this media has on the world are still being revealed. Few would have guessed that technology would be sucha large part of every day life today. Although new technology is good, social media has made us shallow, lazy communicators. We have access to the world, and yet we are more alone than ever. 

Works Cited

Wesch, Michael. “An Anthropological Introduction to Youtube.” Library of Congress, Washington D.C. June 23, 2008.

Turkle, Sherry. “Connected, but alone?” TED Talks. April 3, 2012.

Silk Road

At the beginning of my internet studies class we learned about how the internet works and how the World Wide Web connects everyone through the internet. When learning about this, I instantly thought of the internet's version of the black market, Silk Road. When I asked my teacher about Silk Road he had no idea what I was talking about, so I did a little research on my own. I found this online article that explains everything anyone would need to know about the Silk Road marketplace. I thought it was very strange how easy it was for me to find this information. I didn't think much about Silk Road again until I heard that earlier this week the million dollar deep web marketplace was shut down. Attached is a link to an article I found about Silk Road's shut down in the L.A. Times. I think that the most interesting part of it all is that Ross William Ulbricht was a regular, 29-year old dude, and now a multimillionaire who will spend the rest of his life in prison. It makes you realize how the internet can level the playing field, so to speak. When you get on the computer no one knows who you are or where you come from. This middle-aged, white American man living in San Francisco was basically the world's largest drug lord. This, along with my previous research on Anonymous, have made me realize that there is still a lot that we're still figuring out in the World Wide Web. Amateur hackers and local computer nerds are becoming the trailblazers in discovering new ways to use the internet, and it seems that the government and it's attempted regulation can't keep up. Maybe the reason that technology and the internet's popularity have exploded so quickly in the past couple years is because for the first time the entire world is doing research and experiments with this new technology. Everyone, every mind, every group has the ability to use the World Wide Web, and because of this the possibilities in the future are virtually endless.

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/oct/02/business/la-fi-silk-road-bitcoin-20131003

Wiki Wars

Today, I challenged a friend in a wikirace. In a wikirace, the goal is to get from one wikipedia page to another, only using hyperlinks. The game seems much easier than it actually is. Out of the four rounds I played, I only successfully completed one. We tried different variations of the rules; for example, we played one round where we couldn't go back to the previous page, one where you could search words on the page, and a round where we tried to complete the race in a specific amount of time. The only race that I successfully won was going from Tie-Dye" to Cat. Heres a screenshot of the history of how I got from the one page to another:

Directly after this success, we tried another round going from "Beer Bong" to "Jonny Cash." This was the round that we timed, and we tried to complete the race in 3 minutes. This made the game even more stressful but fun. In the end, neither of us reached the end goal. Here's my history:

I didn't have much luck with the time limit, but neither did my opponent. Although she was much closer to "Johnny Cash," she didn't make it in the time limit either. Here is her history:

Both of us went in different directions when trying to meet our goal. I'm sure we could have found a way if we hadn't been timed and kept going, but at that point both of us had pretty much hit a wall. Its so entertaining to see the different routs that opponents go in order to reach their goal wikipedia page.

Anonymous

I found an article from the New York Times website titled U.S. Accuses 13 Hackers in Web Attacks. This article explains how a group of rogue hackers have been attacking major companies and organizations. The group calls itself Anonymous, and it is much larger than the 13 hackers who were caught. Anonymous apparently has thousands of members and supporters all over the world. I had never heard of Anonymous before this, so I decided to look into the group a little more. I first found this wikipedia page, and it explains the basics of the group. It is a loosely controlled, totally anonymous group of people determined to exploit all hidden government, political, and corporate secrets. Along with this, they consider themselves social activists, having electronically attacked many different websites in order to voice what they felt was injustice. I continued to do some googling, and came across an anonymous youtube channel where I found this video:

After hearing of what the group Anonymous is already capable of, it makes me wonder what more they could do. What are they planning next? There are also so many of them, and the number seems to be growing. Could groups like these be the basis of the next big civilian revolution? Anonymous is strictly "non-violent," but what makes them dangerous is their ability to communicate and plan their attacks over the internet. If this group or another similar group were to become violent, there would be little hope in stopping them. However, the other most dangerous part about Anonymous is purely that everyone is anonymous. This keeps them from all meeting in person, but it gives members the freedom of saying what they feel with no consequences. This is crucial because the hackers who steal information for websites like Wikileaks do not want their names to be known because of the seriousness of the leaked information.

Generally, I agree with Anonymous's ideas about how the government is hiding things from us, and I agree that something should be done about it. I have the right as an American citizen to know EVERYTHING about the government that controls most of my life, and all humans has the basic right of free speech. I say, cheers to you, Anonymous. 

Tim Berners-Lee has a Twitter

and I think it's hilarious. I only think this because Tim Berners-Lee is so different from my idea of a typical twitter user. I just can't imagine him seeing something and saying, "I'm gonna tweet that." I looked over his recent tweets, and they were all very serious and smart-sounding. I feel like most people use twitter as more entertainment than informational. I just keep thinking of other famous people on twitter, like Miley Cyrus, who use their twitter to show the world their "true selves." In reality they're promoting themselves and trying to entertain their fan base. Berners-Lee uses it to share articles and take part in discussions. Isn't that really what social media is made for anyways? He seems to be the only one to know that. I also think it's funny that he still hasn't changed any of the settings on his twitter. He still has the standard template that twitter gives you. He invented the web, so I know he can probably figure out how to change the background color for his twitter profile. I assume he did this because he felt that the information he was tweeting was more important than how edgy his profile is. It's strange to me though that he has so few followers and tweets so little. You would think that most of his fans would be online, but while Miley has 14,291,313 followers, Berners-Lee has 146,045. Miley Cyrus has literally over 97 times more followers. lyke wut. This guy invented the world wide web; he is a genius who's contribution to the world was the access to the world. Yet, he has less followers than a half-naked 20 year old girl. 

but really whats new.

Adventures in Pinterest

Our assignment for this week was to join a new social network. It took me a minute to think of one to join because I'm already on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr. I decided on Pinterest. Its the one social network that I have been avoiding since it became popular. I never saw the need to make a Pinterest for myself because I was already a part of so many other social networks. On Pinterest, you make different "boards" for your profile. The boards are similar to a folder on your desktop or email. Pinterest users post different things to themed boards. The "pins" that you post can be anything from cooking recipes to fashion advice to pictures of cute animals. Anyone can upload a pin, and anyone can re-pin. After making my first pin (a precious pup in a cup), I was instantly sucked into Pinterest. There is such an overwhelming amount of "pins" on pinterest, and I felt like I could scroll through the homepage for days. You can search specific tags, and my favorite things to look at were DIY crafts. I should have picked a less entertaining social media to join because I have a feeling Pinterest is about to consume my time.
Heres the link to my pinterest profile. I'm still trying to figure out how everything works, but I'm excited to be part of a new network!