Notes: Blown to Bits

Chapter One: Digital Explosion

• Although data leaks are common, we give our information away because we get something back in return; the digital explosion creates both opportunity and risk.
• Bits (basic units of information in computing and telecommunication) travel almost instantaneously and take almost no space to store
• Seven truths (koans) about bits:
• It's all about bits (ex. there is no difference between texts and phone calls in the world of bits, but the law hasn't caught up with this technology)
• Perfection is normal: every copy is perfect although computers and networks can still fail; digital copies are perfect only to the extent that they can be communicated at all; networks do check to make sure bits were submitted properly
• There is want in the midst of plenty: there is a loss of information that is not online; for anything to "exist" online it must be about to be found and found quickly
• Processing is power
• More of the same can be a whole new thing: exponential change is smooth and steady but it takes little time before unnoticeable change becomes highly visible
• Nothing goes away: by 2011, we may be producing more bits than we can store; (ex. hotel key cards and loyalty cards)
• Bits move faster than thought: international help desk calls, intimate news released online, national and state borders still count
• Technology is neither good nor bad, but it can be used for good and ill-brings both opportunities and risks

Chapter Two: Naked in the Sunlight

• Orwell's 1984 describes a world of permanent surveillance, a society void of both privacy and freedom
• Are we far from that world? the bank tells the government if big withdrawals are made, "little brothers" are always watching (devices of surveillance got smaller and are put in consumer goods, but we don't worry about their uses as surveillance...ex: the camera phone)
• Footprints and Fingerprints: we can see footprints easily, but rarely pay attention to the fingerprints we make, same with technology
• Our digital cameras encode their serial number into the pictures we upload, GPS in cars allow them to be tracked, RFID in clothing, printed paper can be traced through the printer encoding
• The issue: taking bits from a car is not like taking things from a house, no warrant is necessary; no information is truly unidentifiable 
• Why we loose control of personal information: to save time (EZ pass), save money (loyalty cards, store credit cards), convenience of the customer, fun to be exposed (Facebook), we can't live any other way
• There is a difference between public and readily available: information available before by going down to city hall and searching through records is available with a click of a button online

Chapter Three: Ghosts in the Machine

• Reports including sensitive/private information are commonly redacted before they are shared, but ordinary office software makes it easy to quickly recover redacted text. This is dangerous and embarrassing to the government.
• Adobe offers security with encryption and Redax software; printing and scanning a document works too, but the text is reduced to dots and cannot be searched or used as a document
• With Word you can "track changes" to a document, to avoid put text in the body of an email not as an attachment
• Reproducing images electronically create "ghosts of the original"; they are not identical but contain enough of the original to be useful.
• A photograph is represented in bits (model by modeling, omits information) and the model is turned into an image (rendering) which brings the "ghost" back to life
• But this can also turn things that never existed into "reality" (ex. photoshopped evidence in court)
• Processing is power because of the amount of information we store now, compact disk is dying
• No one owns the internet, but everyone owns the internet; it is not hardware by protocol
• "OpenDocument Format" where multiple companies could enter into the market and read documents produce by other software
• Open Source v. Proprietary format
• Spam: mass emails are so cheap, one response is worth the cost; they can produce graphics of text to get around spam filters
• Steganography: art of sending secret messages in imperceptible ways (the message itself is not suspicious) while cryptography is the art of sending mesages that are indecipherable
• Most things on a hard drive can be recovered even if you "format" them and erase information
• Since bits have widths, information can even be detected on a zeroed disk

Chapter Four: Needles in the Haystack

• Although search engines can be used to find long lost relatives and discover things we didn't know existed, they are also used by governments to distort out picture of reality
• "Search is a new form of control over information"
• We used to give control over where we get information to authoritative sources like newspapers on record and encyclopedias, but now we give that control to search engines
• Search engines gather information about us when we search
• Search engines succeed if we are happy with the connections they make, not on the quality of information they provide because that does not come from them
• How do search engines survive? adds, if something is "sponsored" on Google, they paid to get it there
• Either users would pay, sites pay, government/nonprofit pays, or advertisers pay
• Consumer Alert through the FTC made search engines say that ads are ads
• How do they work? They search an existing index of sites, not the entire World Wide Web
• Background: Gather information by visiting sites on a regular basis (those that don't change may only be visited once a year, others are visited by spiders); keep copies ("cached", copying of some sort is permitted or web wouldn't work); build index to show what appear on each page
• Foreground: Understand query (quotation marks help clarify search), determine relevance of each possible result to the query (however relevance is inherently subjective, long documents tend to be measure more relevant than shore ones because they have more word repetitions), determine ranking of relevant results (if many pages link to one page it must be important, where a company appears in search results is a matter of life and death), present the results
• Search engines shape our view of the world through the lens of their search results
• Google: PageRank Algorithm, fast, vast storage, expanding, not much money though until AdWords, now it is pay-per-click
• "bias can be coded into a computer program"; Search Engine Optimization industry seeks to improve how particular web pages rank within major search engines
• Ex: put "JC Pennys" in white text on a white background of "Kohls" website and it will come up when users are searching for "Kohls"
• US Patriot Act can require a search company to hand over personal search records without informing you they are getting information on you
• "Information access has greater market value than information creation"

Chapter Five: Secret Bits

• Encryption: the art of encoding messages so they can't be understood by eavesdroppers or adversaries whose hands the messages might fall; de-scrambling requires the key (sequence of symbols) used to create it
• Congress has to allow banks, airlines, and online stores to use encryption or personal security is at risk; efforts to control encryption would be ineffective and costs would exceed benefit.
• Bits move through the internet in packets like exposed postcards, wireless networks allow bits to be grabbed without detection 
• Cryptography (secret writing) has been around basically since writing; Caesar Shift (three places); Substitution ciphers (one symbol for another according to uniform rule; frequency analysis can break this though)
• Can't reuse pads without risk of being deciphered, loss or interception is also a risk, big pads are hard to conceal
• Lessons for the Internet Age: Weak systems and their risks are often rationalized to try to avoid the trouble of switching to more secure alternatives.
• Bernardo Provenzana, mafia boss, stayed on run from Italian police for 43 years but a paper was found with correspondence between him and his son written in Caesar shift. He tried to switch to a new code but was traced and arrested in April 2006 (174)
• WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) and WPA (Wi-FI Protected Access)
• A cryptographic method should be considered reliable if it is widely known and seems not have been broken (Ex: encryption on DVDs was not distributed, but then it was cracked within three years after announced)
• For a long time, secure communication was practical "only for people who could arrange to meet beforehand, or who and access to a prior method of secure communication for carrying the key between them"
• Now they need a common g, private a and b, and a public A and B that can be seem by anyone and not deciphered; with this public-key encryption, anyone can send encrypted mail to anyone over an insecure publicly exposed communication path
• Digital signatures help verify a mark is probably not forged, attests to integrity and authenticity
• RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman) algorithm with public and secret keys rely on difficulty of factoring and thus have created much interest in finding fast ways to factor numbers
• Privacy? Clipper from Clinton to decrypt phone communications, US Patriot Act (Government can sift through data to look for harmful information)

Chapter 6: Balance Toppled (Who Owns the Bits?)

• Tanya Anderson (2005) Recording Industry Association of America searched her hard drive and tried to sue her for close to a million dollars for illegally downloading  songs, they had no proof (195)
• 26,000 lawsuits in five years
• MediaSentry (RIAA's investigative company), scans suspicious computers for music files and sends IP address to RIAA's Anti-Privacy group, but computers on the same network can have same IP address and some networks rotate IP addresses
• High Stakes for Infringement: 3 million dollars for 4,000 songs
• NET Act Makes Sharing a Crime: Copyright infringement not even criminal until turn of 20th c., and in 1976 Congress started enacting a series of laws to increase the penalty
• A machine at MIT (1993) was being used for file transfer and the FBI questioned it, there was no commercial motive, no crime; law needed to change so these types of cases could be prosecuted (199-200)
• Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright damages Improvement Act of 1999, penalties needed to be increased, copyright arms race was in full swing
• Peer-to-Peer Upheaval: Napster by Sean Fanning, file sharing no longer used "centralized systems", but had a central directory showing who had the songs on their computers "peer-to-peer", no passing through server, "universal jukebox"
• Specter of Secondary Liability: "how can you hold a company liable for simply publishing the locations of items on the internet?" (203), guilty of secondary copyright infringement (allowing others to infringe and profiting by infringement); "P2P"-no reliance on central authorities
• Sharing Goes Decentralized:  the central directories of Napster allowed for liability; so to get around, flooding was created (each computer has a file-sharing network of other computers, like FOAF)
• No Safe harbors: RIAA saw this as another Napster, so Grokster, Morpheus, and Kazaa were sued and finally the Supreme Court ruled in the RIAA's favor (unlike Sony v. Universal Studios where the VCR recorder remained legal  because it had many legitimate uses)
• A Question of Intent: these companies' liability came from the intent on their distribution, not the capabilities of the software
• With TiVo you can't skip commercials automatically and songs transferred from Microsoft Zune self-destruct after three plays to limit liability
• Authorized Use Only: If computer's make file sharing easy, change computers...but there are ways to encrypt information so it cannot be manipulated or distributed
• "The general technique of distributing content together with control information that restricts its use is called digital rights management (DRM)" (210) (industry specifications that detail restrictions that can be imposed=rights expression languages)
• The chip "Trusted Platform Module" keeps a computer from booting whose operating system was tampered with, but having a "world of trusted systems" could jeopardize the rapid innovation that has taken place because the infrastructure is currently open
• Forbidden Technology: anti-circumvention laws to keep people from going around copyright protection; made it illegal to talk about how to unlock iphones from AT&T network
• 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has anti-circumvention provision that "outlaws technology for bypassing copyright protection" (214) the book gives a couple lines of a program that unscrambles encrypted DVDs, by providing whole code it would violate law. Outlaw manufacturing, selling, writing, and talking about technologies that allow copyright bypass, not just outlaw infringement but bypassing; Circumvention; were allowed to undo lock-in on their mobile phones when shifting service providers then iPhone...AT&T threatened legal action against unlocking companies...unlock own phone not others.  
• need permission from companies in industry to create new technologies/products/services around DRM-restricted content
• Copyright Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of Balance

Chapter 7: You Can't Say That on the Internet

• Katherine Lester (16) went missing from her home in Michigan; she had met Jimzawi from Jericho on MySpace and went to Jordan to meet him. This led to Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) to require schools/libraries to prevent children from using on-site computers to access chat rooms/social networking sites (229-230). This would also prevent "access to online encyclopedias and bookstores"--> education not prohibition to bring safer internet...DOPA not passed into law
• "Internet is not exactly like anything else" (231): 2-way, no limit to number of channels, delivers packets of bits. 
• Transmitted information always has source and destination, may also have intermediaries, with internet there is "cloud computing" (source->ISP->Cloud->ISP->destination) who should government regulate? can control ISP, destination, source, or intermediaries
• Ex: parents of child who Pete Solis (232) assaulted tried to sue MySpace; CompuServe computer service provider had bulletin board (Rumorville) while DFA provided content. Rumorville began bashing competing company. Compuserve was the "distributor" and like a trucker, not liable, if it was, this would limit use for participatory democracy (234-235)
• Prodigy (like Compuserve but said they were like newspaper and wanted to provide family friendly content). On their bulletin board "Money Tallk" information was posted about Stratton Oakmont criminal fraud and was sued for defamation. Held responsible as publisher because they said they were. "Undercut efforts to create safe districts in Cyberspace...Don't even consider editing or censoring" (236). 
• 1st Amendment doesn't protect against censorship of obscene material: Miller v. California Miller Test 1.) community standards, appeals to prurient interest 2.) depicts or describes in offensive way sexual conduct 3.) lacks social value. Obscene if all three are yes. What is community in cyberspace
• The Thomas's bulletin board Amateur Action the "Nastiest Place on Earth". Pictures were not obscene in California but were in Tennessee and they were arrested
• Porn was not new, but the availability or digital porn made it seem new. Time Magazine didn't mention that they bulletin boards which offered images were not openly available to children. Senator Grassley (239) read article which claimed to be from Georgetown University Law School and passed into law Communications Decency Act (CDA) which criminalizes using computer that is used by minor to view/whatever offensive content and distribute such material to minors
• "court was unwilling to risk the entire Internet's promise as a vigorous marketplace of ideas to serve the narrow purpose of protecting children from indecency" (241) burden from source ISP to destination
• Good Samaritan clause in CDA allowed ISP to not be responsible for anything they did "in good faith" to protect minors, can censor without being liable (Ken Zeran...see blog)
• This clause also protected AOL twice, once when Russel used AOL to sell sexual images of little boys, AOL was notified and did not suspend his use. AOL won (246).
• Gary Dellapenta (doorman) wrote woman's address and name on a chatboard and said she wanted to be raped and gave directions how to break in to he apartment->federal anti-cyberstalking laws. (250)
• Like an annoying telephone call? 2005 law stated internet could not be used for the purpose of annoying someone
• "Given the Choice between protection from personal harm and some fool's need to spout profanities, most of us would opt for safety" (253)
• In Saudi Arabia, every web access goes through government computers to censor
• "Technological changes happen faster than legal changes" (257)

Chapter 8: Bits in the Air

• 2006 Bush talking to British Prime Minister and said the s word, most stations censored word or could get sued $300,000 by FCC; 2002 Bono said f word at Golden Globes, "offensive" (260)
• First Amendment, freedom of speech, so government isn't fast to restrict it
• FCC gained authority when there were fewer ways to distribute information, public airways scarce and needed be regulated to be used in public interest, "protecting a defenseless public from objectionable radio and television content" (260)
• Now we have an abundance of sources of information maybe in the "absence of scarcity", Congress should stop censorship entirely (261)
• James Clerk Maxwell proposed there may be waves of other frequencies that couldn't be seen like light waves. 1887 radio era began with Henrich Hertz using a wire to create a spark of electromagnetic waves. Marconi experimented with wireless transmission of messages. solved problem of telegraphs, nothing could stop wireless transmission by severing cables, BUT anyone could listen in and signals were crossed and muddled.
• Ex: titanic, Newspapers had reported all safe because one signal asked if all were safe and another gave a location of another ship.
• In 1907, Lee De Forest patented technology that allowed production of radio waves at a narrow range of frequencies and a receiver that let those through and screened out the rest.-->amateur broadcaster.
• Radio Act of 1912 limits broadcasting to license holders, government stipulates frequencies to prevent interference. Amateurs pushed to short wave
• On Nov 2, 1920 station presented election results, radio not just point-to-point communication, then World Series broadcast, sports broadcasting; regulation in 1921 (could tell "shipping lanes to use, but he couldn't keep them out of the water" (267))
• Radio Act of 1927, radio spectrum became federal property
• Brinkley "doctor" bought degree from medical school in Kansas, made it big with buck gland transplants to promise virility...opened Kansas's first radio station KFKB (country, preaching, medical advice to buy patent medicines). Court held FRC had right to not renew license, no prior restraint...central planning not going so well
• Path to Spectrum Deregulation: broadcast signals when using key fob to unlock door, regulation of these waves would have snuffed digital explosion (273)
• Spectrum allocation: changing way spectrum utilized, at first cell phones were limited by number of channels, now signal only transmitted a mile or so then sent through wire to company. SHORT DISTANCE!!
• HD radio inaudible on normal radio, uses guard bands to be filtered out from adjacent channels; secondary spectrum marketing pay per use
• Everybody shares roads with rules and regulations, commons
• Hedy Lamarr (actress) married Austrian munitions maker, left and met Mayer and Antheil in Hollywood
• Radio controlled torpedoes, broadcast noise at same frequency of signal could cause to miss mark (278), came up with idea instead to transmit signal in short burst at different frequencies (transmission couldn't be jammed by flooding a small range of frequency, and too much power to jam all frequencies at the same time; patent ignored for decade
• Spreading signals across spectrum: channel capacity (bits/second handles), "bits can be transmitted through the channel, from the source to the destination, with negligible probability of error as long as he transmission rate does not exceed the channel capacity" (281)
• Capacity of radio channel depends on frequencies an power. Bandwidth is the size of the frequency band (difference between top and bottom), channel capacity is proportional to bandwidth. Power increases exponentially with bits. Capacity depends on both bandwidth and power, more bandwidth more important than more power
• Wireless sensor networking with remote areas with hostle environments

Notes: Here Comes Everybody

Chapter 1: It takes a Village to Find a Phone

• Cell Phone Story: A woman's phone is found in a cab and stolen instead of returned; her friend used the web to retrieve it
• We've always relied on group efforts for our survival
• Forming groups has gotten a lot easier

Chapter 2: Sharing Anchors Community

• Sharing to anchor the creation of new groups
• Manager/hierarchies to simplify communication among the employees (hierarchical organization)
• New social tools lower the cost of social interaction
• Flickr
• Mermaid Parade: Flickr photos, group
• 1st photos in London Transport bombings
• Share then gather
• Coup of Thailand-restrictions on populace, but Alisara Chirapongse had her camera and web blog which offered running commentary on the event
• Org Chart: organizations reporting structure
• Draws clear and obvious lines of responsibility
• Managing resources takes resources and management challenges grow faster than organizational size
• What happens to tasks that aren't worth cost of oversight? didn't happen
• Sharing
• Cooperation: to get change they need to sync
• Collective action: undertake effort, creates responsibility, ties user id to id of group
• Tragedy of Commons: free riding

Chapter 3: Everyone Is a Media Outlet

• There have been radical changes in the overall ecosystem of information; it used to be hard to get media to consumers, but the web created a new ecosystem
• Information that is too expensive to print and deliver doesn't go into a newspaper
• Lott praised the presidential campaign of Thurmond who was pro segregation; this was not considered "press-worthy" until bloggers kept it alive; Lott made an apology which became newsworthy
• News went from institutional prerogative to part of a communications ecosystem; anyone in the developed world can publish anything anytime (globally available and readily findable)
• Journalistic privilege to uncover wrong and contribute to the safety value for reporting, what will happen because now everyone can commit acts of journalism 

Chapter 4: Publish, Then Filter

• User generated content: users create and share media, but most is not "content for general consumption"
• Old ways: 1.) Broadcast media where messages are put out for all to see and 2.) communications media that facilitates two-way communication
• Now many-to-many communication that you can't tell by the medium if message is personal or impersonal (like direct mail)
• You can't keep things private and in context; most of what is posted on line is in public but not for public
• Famous: 1.) an audience n the thousands, 2.) unable to reciprocate; have to choose who to respond to and who to ignore; egalitarianism is only possible in small social systems
• Web blog world: no authorities, only masses where messages become "an unmovable pile of river pebbles"
• No one can monitor it all; publish then filter
• Creates community of practice from latent communities which share and provide feedback
• Our social tools are a challenge to modern society
• Don't become socially interesting until they become boring/invisible

Chapter 5: Personal Motivation Meets Collaborative Production

• Wikipedia was created by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger who tried to create Nupedia (written, reviewed, and managed by experts volunteering their time)
• Seven step process was intended to set a minimum standard of quality, but this made the process extremely slow
• Sanger suggested using a wiki to create a first draft; first wiki created by Ward Cunningham in 1995
• Would allow a small group to work on a shared writing effort without needing formal management process in a user editable website
• Placeholder stub
• Wikipedia is a process not a product, so it is never finished
• Articles end up being of high quality most times and has become a general-purpose tool for gathering and distributing information quickly because people think of it as a coordinating resource
• Power Law Distribution: appears in social settings; imbalance drives large social systems rather than damaging them (no concern over reducing inequality), focusing on the average is no merely useless but harmful
• Why? exercise unused mental capacities, vanity, and desire to do a good thing
• When people care it becomes harder to harm; counters vandalism and special interests
• saves from Tragedy of Commons
• If everyone lost interest it would vanish instantly 

Chapter Six: Collective Action and Institutional Changes

• In 2002, Boston Globe featured a story on Father John Geogham, a pedophile that the bishop knew about and moved him from district to district for thirty five years
• After article, Voice of the Faithful (VOTF) formed and grew to change and reform the church
• Bishop Law resigned and there were reforms made, but it happened before and the church didn't try to reform because they treated it as an internal affair to avoid major and synchronized outrage
• Their goal was to manage fallout because  before the internet age, people couldn't easily share information or coordinate a response. Now we can forward emails (narrows the gap between intention and action) and write web blogs; collective action change as well (easier to form groups); Technology removed barriers of locality of information and barriers to group action
• Technology creates new characteristics in old institutions (ex: after movable press, scribes wrote slowly)
• Before email, we had few tools for group communication: it's free and can be sent anywhere, reduces transaction costs
• Internet is a tool to move information back and forth 
• Sir Tim Berners-Lee (1990s) invented the web
• Spread of information like model for spread of disease if 1.) likelihood of infection, 2.) likelihood of contact, or 3.) size of population increase, so does the overall spread
• Social tools don't create collective action, they remove obstacles to it
• See blog on Revolution for additional notes

Chapter Seven: Faster and Faster

• Collective action harder to get going and stop than individual action
• Groups exert a different kind of force and threat than individuals
• Leipzig, Germany (1989): protest against GDR during existing events. Small so government did nothing, others saw government doing nothing, so they joined in
• "Mass basis" is number of people who understand protest unpunished
• information cascade, see blog
• "shared awareness" understanding situation and who else has some understanding; allows groups to begin quickly and effectively; necessary for public action
• Got so big caused government to collapse
• Flash mob: a group that engages in a seemingly spontaneous but actually synchronized behavior
• They were harmless to get attention (department store gathering, supermarket freeze) and now are becoming political 
• One in Minsk, Russia over election of Lukashenko; ate ice cream and were hauled away; message was in the collective action not the behavior
• Now organizing effort invisible and immediate
• Can be documented and live forever while documenters vanish (speaking online=publishing online=connecting with others)
• Changing internal communication abilities changes capabilities
• Germans weaker than French but had radios (fast processing of information), blitzkrieg (rapid attack)
• Airlines: people stuck on plane for hours on runway with no food and stinky bathrooms, support and awareness raised in blogs on internet and comments on news stories, led to Coalition for an Airline Passenger's Bill of Rights
• Evan Williams: Blogger, audio blogging, Twitter
• Mostly for benefit of friends, not general public
• Alaa Abd El Fattan used to document arrest and organize collective action

Chapter 8 Solving Social Dilemmas

• Social dilemmas can only be optimized not completely solved
• Prisoners Dilemma: Nash Equilibrium, each choses dominant strategy and neither get the best outcome
• Robert Putnam: weakening of community in the United States
• more social capital=> better health, happiness, and earning potential
• Direct reciprocity and indirect reciprocity
• "Participation in group activities, the vehicle for creating and sustaining social capital, was on the decline in the United States"
• As it became more difficult to get together, transaction cost increased
• Internet augments realworld social life rather than providing an alternative to it, it's not a separate cyberspace
• Meetup to identify latent groups and help them come togehter
• More meetups for groups without support in the broader US
• "Modern life has raised transaction costs so high that even ancient habits of congregation have been defeated. As a result, things that used to happen as a side effect of regular life now require some overt coordination"
• Drawbacks: no longer need social support to gather (proana girls)
• Three types of social losses: jobs of those who distribute information, damage current social bargains, terrorist networks are also more resilient because of better communication tools and more flexible social structures.

Chapter Nine: Fitting Our Tools To a Small World

• The average is meaningless in the number of people each person knows like with the power law distribution: a few people account for a wildly disproportionate amount of the overall connectivity
• "The chance that you are a highly connected person is low, just as it is for everyone, but the chance that you know one is high
• Six Degrees of Separation
• Small World Network Characteristics: Small groups are densely connected, large groups are sparsely connected (connect people in groups)
• Dodgeball FOAF networking
• The larger the network the more important the highly connected individuals are in holding it together
• Social Capital is "that store of behaviors and norms in any large group that lets its members support one another
• Bonding capital is increase in depth of connection and trust
• Bridging capital is increase in connections, produces good ideas
• Howard Dean running for president, only had bonding not bridging capital (small dedicated group of supporters)
• Internet Relay Chat: real-time chat room/channel; topic-centered
• Ito set up public channel so he could be a host, exert moral suasion over proceedings

Notes: Class Meetings and Podcasts

August 8th

• Tagging and Folksonomy: instead of classic organization (folders on computer/Dewey decimal system) we classify information online with tags (keywords you can hang on things to describe content)
• While tagging alone can be personal, folksonomy makes it social allowing everyone to add meaning and find meaning in tagable items
• Articles
• Delicious is a social bookmarking site that uses tags to organize (you can view other's bookmarks)
• Folksonomy is a people's taxonomy: use tags to label/categorize
• Others can label you and define

September 13th (Google)

• Google instant gives answers to questions before you finish asking
• Google's mission: organize world's information and make it universally accessible and useful; it's the worlds largest search engine
• Google makes money through advertising
• Services: voice, picassa, youtube, health, earth, desktop, ads, gmail, news, enterprise (office applications)
• Goodies: book search (you can add books to your library), Google maps/my maps, search
• RSS News feed (really simple syndecation) subscribe to feed (can do through browser/phone/desktop)
• Google squared builds custom spreadsheets for search/general search, it's a good start
• Google Reader: subscribe to online news and blogs (one-stop) shop, look at websites you browse and look at what's updated
• Google Adpps/Goodies (docs.google.com)
• Google Benefits: free, online real-time collaboration, sharing of document, instant publication of webpages, embedding content into blogs, websites

Presentation One: Social Networking

• Social networks existed before the internet (phone trees/organizations/CB radios)
• 1997: Sixdegrees.com was the first social networking site
• Friendster dies, linkedin triumphs
• Many target specific demographics
• Myspace: safety issues hurt reputation, big with teens 
• Twitter: SMS (short message service)
• Over 70% of teens on SNS reported receiving messages from someone they didn't know
• In a survey, over 90% of undergrads used Facebook
• little chance of SNS fading in the near future
• More tagging and "object-centered" networks
• From centralized to decentralized (FOAF, Onesocialweb, noserub)
• Advantages: control over privacy, a profile that suits your needs, immune to censorship

Podcasts

• Originally for music to download overnight
• Should be free and easy to get through "Subscriptions"

Presentation 2: Web 2.0/Privacy

• New version of www, allows sharing, collaborating and interaction
• From 1.24 billion to an estimated 3.1 billion in 2012
• Privacy: an email that wasn't even sent can be tracked, web 2.0 sites mine information; the average netizen doesn't know tracking occurs
• Netizen: a person actively involved in online communities (cyber citizen)
• Hacking and Fraud, from computers to mobile devices (3x as dangerous plug-ins compared to a year earlier)
• Is web 2.0 good for privacy? no, more information available, less awareness
• only takes one time to put something online and its available forever
• Cookies: If you delete cookies your browsing experience won't be personalized
• Organizations that promote online privacy: online alliance corporation, IAB, Better Business Bureau, Trustee, EPIC, Privacy.org

November 20th & free podcast

• See blog posts about podcasts...

Group 3 Presentation: Viral Marketing

• The strategy encourages indiviuals to pass on a marketing message to others and grants the potential for exponential growth in the messages exposure and infleucnes
• Grows like a virus, started as street signs (1920s radio, 1940s tv, 1990s Internet/Websites, now social networking)
• Term popularized in 1997 by Steve Juveston for Hotmail's email practices (placed "get free email" on bottom of every email from hotmail account)
• Strategies of Viral Marketing
• 1.) give aways, 2.) provide effortless transfer to others, 3.) Scale easily from small to large (allow for rapid growth), 4.) exploit common motivations and behavior (greed, popularity, love), 5.) common/existing communication networks, 6.) take advantage of others' resources
• Case study: Grip Films uses constant contact/emails if you sign-up, buy products (1 newsletter/month)
• Facebook "friends", giveaways for "Liking"
• Twitter to give daily alerts, repost other tweets
• Blogger: for human interest (posts and pictures) 
• YouTube: post trailers and behind the scenes to gain interest
• Better search engine optimization by putting links to purchasing site
• Best Buy: manipulate social media to give tools to connect with each other and employees
• Guidelines: listen, findable, about people, make it social, authentic, trasparent, simple
• Twitter turned around "twelp force" access to brand and advice
• Benefits: reaches further, cheaper, increases visibility, combines with other strategies
• Negatives: false sites, costs money to advertise the social media tools; put in work to make videos and pages
• Wieden and Kennedy (make commercials), Kallman and Allen
• Can't control information on sites, word of mouth not always a good thing (bad spreads too)
• Page views do not equal revenue, repeated viewers
• Viral-->can't guarantee it'll be "viral", you can be social 

Cognitive Surplus (Clay Shirky) Presentation

• We have over one trillion hours of free time collectively
• 21%, 1 billion people carry around cameras
• 47%, 3 billion have active cell phone accounts
• 30%, 2 billion are online
• more interactive than passive experience
• 100 million hours to create wikipedia, but Americans spend 200 billion hours watching TV (2000 wikipedias)
• How to get to work (problem), solved by a social tool PickupPal.com; information to solve a problem quickly
• Anyone can be media through publishing; more average content published
• Tools take off that let people do what they want
• Intrinsic motivators and desire for autonomy and competence
• and extrinsic motivation
• Amateur: web, personal, moderate quality
• Facinating because of diversity of thought
• Create and share online because we want rewarding experiences
• YouTube: 12,623,040 hours of video/year; Twitter: 109,500,000,000 words/year
• Technology brings opportunity to increase ability to create together
• Culture: collective norms and behaviors in a group
• positive social interactions creates sharing
• Personal, communal, public, civic, uncoordinated (youtube), discussion forum, public, transform society
• Successful groups reward for sharing

Shirky Talk

• Africa 2007 election: media blackout/shutdown, blogs essential
• Too much--> Ushahidi created to aggregate info on a map (crisis map) open source, global deployment in three years
• Needed digital technology and human generosity
• Cognitive Surplus: ability for free time of world to go towards working together; we don't just consume anymore, we create and share (freedom to experiment)
• Social constraints created a more generous culture
• LOL cats communal (by participants fore each other)
• Ushahidi civic (for society, to make life better)

Group 4 Presentation: Fair use and the Issues of Copyright ethics in school and the workplace, and the role of free speech online

• Copyright right to make copies, license, and otherwise exploit a literary, musical, or artistic work, whether printed, audio, video etc. (1978) protected for lifetime of author/creator for 50 yrs after death
• How it's enforced: caught and charged with copyright infringement, if holder doesn't bring case for three years, can't press charges; charges decided by copyright holders
• Peer-to-peer: can share with networks, big problem in colleges
• Fair Use: no set definition, a limitation of the copyright law (fair use doctrine)
• Fair Reproduction: criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, research
• You need permission if the work is protected, you wish to exercise one of the owner's exclusive right, your use exempt or excused from liability for infringement.
• Rules of thumb: for multimedia you can include other works but use small amount and limit reproduction; research only use small segment
• Is it commercial or nonprofit educational? What is the nature of the copyrighted work? The amount of substantivity of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work. The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work 
• Guidelines: don't depend on word-count guidelines, commercial use of another's work is less likely to be considered fair use than uses that are educational or critical, factual works recieve less protection than fictional, try and add value
• When in doubt try to get permission, they are deemed to consent to fair use of their works by others.
• Ethics in Fair Use and Copyright
• taking work offline isn't tangible so it doesn't feel like stealing, still is; emerging technologies caused line of ethics and fair use to be blurred (easy to copy and paste)
• In education common breaches of ethics involve plagiarism, cheating on exams, illegally downloading software, and turning in anothers' work as own.
• 74% say they've seriously cheated, 54% say they've plagiarized, 47% say teachers ignore it
• Business: similar to education, many feel it's not about doing what is right but doing what is best for them
• Public Domain: Not covered by any copyright laws, to creatively express selves through works but cna be tken advantage of; can be sold as proprietary, make money off of you
• Copyleft: protects, always free, can get through GNU.org (not unix), gives general license
• Copy left/EFF are politically left, free and open for people
• Disney got Mikey Mouse re-copyrighted
• 5 Copyrights: distribution, reproduction, public display, public performance, modification "all rights reserved"
• Anything you make is technically copyrighted, but you can't sue unless you buy the copyright
• In 1980s when most software was proprietary, Linux was GNU's free operating system. Focused on free like liberty not price; PGP to read crypt messages
• Creative commons license: decide how work can and cannot be used-->have options share work, keep credit
• Shared culture: new technologies provide for creativity, gives producers/creators tools to make a choice about how to share/exercise copyright in more ways for access and control (Jimmy Whales, Wikipedia)
• Lawrence Lessing created CC, but what you can share online still complicated
• Free Speech online: controversy about how free speech works online; what can we say/post?
• Electronic frontier foundation want to reserve freedom online, protect people from misuse of copyright law; appeal to government, maintain first amendment rights
• Conform to the place you're in with free speech online; encourage writing online or if the fire people for talking online about boss, if you are at work you are under their rules; online postings can get you into trouble

Wikileaks

• an international new media source that publishes otherwise unavailable documents from "anonymous news sources and leaks" (Wikipedia, "Wikileaks")
• It has released documents about the Afghanistan war and the "Iraq War Logs". In November 2010 it released U.S. State Department diplomatic cables (confidential correspondence between the US State Department and it's diplomatic missions around the world, containing analysis of world leaders, assessments of host countries, and international and domestic issue discussions, labeled secret and confidential).
• Started as a wiki but no longer accepts user comments or edits, wish to reveal unethical behavior of all governments
• U.S. Justice Department investigating Wikileaks and Julian Assange (founder): could charge under Espionage Act (difficult because of freedom of the press, unless he broke laws getting information), trafficking stolen government property (but it's intellectual not physical), it could be hard to extradite to US anyway  

What might you do with access to UWB radio transmissions if you had a receiver in a car?


In chapter eight of Blown to Bits, Abelson et al. briefly mentions UWB (ultra wide brand) radio. UWB "splatter[s] radiation all across the frequencies of the radio spectrum" (Abelson, 288). UWB, according to Abelson, uses extremely low power and very large bandwidth to carry a lot of information in a short time period a small distance, so that it will not interfere with  any normal radio receiver. In the chapter, the two uses described for this technology are to connect the TV, cable box, and DVD player in your home without using cables and to transport your music library from your home audio system to your car in the driveway. 


If I had a receiver in my car, being about to transport my music library from my computer to my car would be a good use for it. It would be convenient not to have to connect my ipod to my car stereo or change CDs all the time (my CD player is in the trunk, so it's kind of a hassle). I would also probably try to transmit directions/destinations from my home computer to some handheld GPS or something in my car. Whenever I am going anywhere my first step is go to mapquest and see the way they would have me go. I like seeing clearly all the different turns they would have me take. Then I get in my car and have to retype in the address. It's not a huge inconvenience, but it would save some time just to transfer the information from my computer. If I happen to like the directions on the computer, it would be helpful to be able to transfer the entire set of directions to my navigation device in my car. 

False Advertising

What might you have done differently if you were in the position of artist Ken Zeran, mentioned in this chapter?


The story of Ken Zeran is told in chapter seven of Blown to Bits. Zeran was an artist and filmmaker who relied on his phone for his livelihood. In 1995, someone posted advertisements on an AOL bulletin board for inappropriate, offensive shirts relating to a bombing in Oklahoma City. The ad gave Zeran's phone number as the contact information even though Zeran had nothing to do with the advertisement (Abelson, 244). Ken started getting angry calls and even death threats about the shirt advertisements from Yahoo. Ken's response was to call AOL and ask them to remove the user. They did once, but whoever was responsible just made another name and posted the same false information. AOL promised to remove and prevent further postings, but did not follow through. Ken eventually got police surveillance around his home for protection. He also called one radio station that was promoting calling Ken and basically telling him off. The radio station learned of the situation and issued a retraction. Ken tried to sue AOL for defamation of character but to no avail, since AOL could not (due to precedent) be held to the same standard as a publisher. 


I probably would have tried to contact "higher ups" in the AOL company to get the content removed. I definitely would have called the police right away if people were making death threats against me. I also would have changed my phone number. It would be a different situation now than in 1995 because of the expansion of the web. Ken didn't have the same accessible tools that he anyone would now. I could switch to a business plan that focused on online and/or in person business interactions instead of on the phone. I could change my number and send messages/emails out to clients and friends that I trusted were not the culprit. It still would be a setback to change business styles abruptly, but I think with increased technology and others using technology I would be able to keep clients even if I stopped my phone service until the false advertisements stopped.

DRM-protected Content

What’s the value of a bit? It seems that going after folks who have traded songs or movies online is a huge expenditure of effort and money. Is DRM-protected content the way to go? If you don’t agree, propose another method for the distribution of digital multimedia so that content creators can still be compensated.


In chapter 6 of Blow to Bits, bits are valued pretty highly. In trying to place a dollar value on them, the RIAA decided $750 was the cost of one song downloaded illegally. I think the main point of those examples was that a bit does not have one set value, it depends on how it was obtained (one song legally only costs about dollar), who it harms, and other factors. All the information stored on a computer and transfered online is in the form of bits, so they do carry a large importance. Because most of our information and media is now online in the form of bits, it makes sense that such money and effort goes in to trying to keep these bits from spreading illegally without compensation. If the majority of people decide to steal music, record companies and artists would lose tremendously. Something has to be done, which is why individuals who have downloaded music from Napster, or suspected of it get law suits filed against them. Someone needs to be the example (Ableson et al. includes stories of people who have never owned computers getting investigated for illegally obtaining music from "their" computers).


I think, from the limited knowledge I have on the subject, that  DRM-protected media is more harm than it's worth. It seems ridiculous to buy a CD that is DRM protected, bring it home, and not be able to download it to your personal MP3 player because of the encryption on it. Many cars don't have CD players anymore, and just have an input jack for your MP3. The wikipedia article on DRM said that the Walmart online music store sold DRM protected music that was encrypted only to play on certain MP3 devices. If I buy anything, even if it's less than a dollar, I expect to be able to use it. 


I think one part of a better alternative would be education. Yes, for downloading music illegally online from sites like limewire, it's relatively known that this is illegal, but as for burning a CD for a friend, a surprising amount of people don't know that that's illegal. I was observing an elementary school classroom this summer and the computer resource teacher came into the class and asked who thought that burning a CD for someone else was wrong. The majority of the class believed it wasn't. I think that's the main problem. When people don't know it's wrong, they hesitate a lot less to actually do it. My neighbors back home used to rent videos from Blockbuster and use their VCR to make their own copies, thus paying only $4 for a movie most everyone else paid $15-$20 to own. My parents and others in the neighborhood knew about it and would always talk about how they were stealing and how that was wrong. Even though one family used technology to get out of paying full price, the majority of the neighborhood with the same technology wouldn't even consider using it for that purpose. There are always going to be people who are okay with stealing (whether from an actual store or movies online, many of which break DRM protected content to do it anyways), but I'd like to believe if everyone knew it was wrong, the vast majority of people would restrain and pay up. When buying songs online, I think it's still smart to have some sort of protection, like with iTunes you can't have your bought songs on more than three computers (or something like that) and when you plug in a new iPod to your computer, so all your old songs are replaced. I imagine it would be easy to reenter your own music if you own copies, but still these are two hurdles that would keep the "average joe" from giving numerous friends copies of songs or getting copies from others. The "non average joes" would probably be determined enough to find ways around DRM protected media anyway.

FOAF networks

What professional benefits do you see by investing some time in a FOAF-style network?


In chapter 9 of Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky describes using friend of a friend style networks. In these networks, you receive notifications of your friends and those of your friends' friends. Shirky describes using a service called dodgeball. He sent out a blast to his network saying he was going to a certain bar. His friends got messages that he'd be at the bar, but his friends' friends also got messages that their friend's friend was going to that bar. Through this service he met his friend's friend that he probably wouldn't have been able to meet otherwise, using it to "broker introductions" (219). 


I can see this kind of network have many advantages professionally. The job I had through high school, I received because one of my friends had a friend that was hiring someone to help with her graphic design business. Having "bridging" capital and friends with "bridging" capital is valuable, as Shirky describes. Having a network that is based on cultivating these connections could have professional benefits by aiding in receiving a job and moving up in companies. I think that is the main advantage, especially right now when it is statistically harder to get a job when you're qualified, connections are vital. Just how Shirky met someone he didn't already through a friend using this kind of network, we could meet future employers.

Prisoner's Dilemma and eBay

Considering the Prisoner’s Dilemma in this chapter, provide your own insight on how sites such as eBay “work” for most participants of this popular online auction site. Do they really work? Or is there too much risk?


In chapter 8 of Here Comes Everybody Shirky describes the Prisoner's Dilemma and its effect on social dilemmas. In a Prisoner's Dilemma, there are four possible scenarios: One suspect confesses and goes free while the other gets a long sentence, the other suspect confesses and goes free while the first gets a long sentence, both confess and get medium sentences, or neither confesses and they both go free. The dominant strategy for each prisoner is to confess because they will either go free or get a medium sentence instead of the full sentence. Unless there is communication (i.e. they can see each other make the decision not to confess) or an external force enforcing the arrangement (i.e. they'll get killed if they don't cooperate). This dilemma does not just apply to criminals, but also in economics and social situations.


eBay has these four scenarios as well: the seller sends the product and the buyer pays, the seller sends the product but the buyer doesn't pay, the seller doesn't send the product but the buyer pays, or the seller doesn't send the product and the buyer doesn't pay. If their is no communication or external enforcement, their dominate strategies would be for both to cheat and not pay and not send. Personally I don't chose to use eBay hardly at all because there is the possibility of this risk (and high shipping, but that's besides the point). I think eBay is able to stay running because there is the possibility for communication (emailing the seller to see if they really sent it and vice versa) and eBay has begun to act as an external enforcement mechanism. They now have a policy where you can (in theory, I've never tried) get your money back if the product isn't sent or ins't like described. Just having the threat of this enforcement helps successful transactions occur. If these kinds of sites didn't work the majority of the time, sites like this wouldn't still operate. 

Information Cascade

Look deeper into the concept of a “information cascade.” Can you cite an example of where following the actions of others was a sound idea? Where doing so ended up being a poor choice?


"Information cascade" is the term used to describe situations where a person or group of people observes the actions of another and decides to take those actions themselves because they perceive little threat. It is described by Clay Shirky in chapter 7 of "Here Comes Everybody" and is linked to shared/social awareness. Shirky describes shared awareness as having three levels: "when everybody knows something, when everybody knows hat everybody knows, and when everybody knows that everybody knows that everybody knows" (163). It allows groups to work together efficiently because you can see what's going on around you and make decisions based on what you observe and know others have observed/concluded. Shirky states that technology has limited the number of hurdles to this kind of organization. Like with flash mobs, one person texts that they're going to a department store so others hear about it and join. Then flash mobs for entertainment appear across the US because the word got around it happened once without repercussions.

I was in New Orleans a few years ago on a mission trip. Most of our group was outside getting ready to load into the cars to go get dinner, when a cop drove by on the street many yards away with his sirens while another cop yelled out of the car with a bull horn. I didn't hear him and neither did the few people around me, but others that were closer did and began running towards the church we were staying in. As they were running some of the leaders called the others inside and told them to stay where they were. I did what everyone else was doing because they were doing it. Those inside stayed inside not because they knew what was going on but because they knew we were all coming in too. Those of us who didn't hear the police found out shortly that there was a suspected shooting a couple houses down. In this situation I think it is important to follow the actions of others because they knew more of what was happening.

One example of when following the actions of others can be a poor choice is when it comes to speeding on the highway. If everyone around you is, it's so easy to start driving five, then ten, then maybe fifteen above the speed limit. They haven't gotten caught, nor are there any accidents, so it seems like a fine decision to make. Nine times out of ten nothing does happen, but there's always that chance you could get pulled over or in an accident. In most cases that involve breaking the law because everyone else is, I'd say it's not the best choice.

Revolution

Based on the quote from this chapter, “revolution doesn’t happen when society adopts new technologies--it happens when society adopts new behaviors,” do you agree or disagree? Cite examples to support your position.

In chapter six of "Here Comes Everybody", Shirky discusses the two priests in the Catholic church who molested children and were merely moved from district to district when accusations arose. As Shirky stated, the church's strategy was mainly "not for ending the abuse but for managing the fallout" (147). In 2002, the Boston Globe did covered a story on one of these priests, Father John Geoghan. The story ignited action and the formation of the group Voice of the Faithful (VOTF). This situation had arose before, they had been covered in newspapers, but why now did it ignite an organization to form and a bishop who knew about the priest to resign? The answer, as Shirky reveals, is the adoption of technology. The first email was sent between two side-by-side computers in 1971 by Ray Tomlinson. This first email didn't start a revolution, but a revolution was started in 2002 when most of country utilized email for aspect of their life. It became an invisible behavior that most practiced; therefore, the story had the ability to spread like wildfire across the United States and beyond.

For this reason, I agree with Shirky's quote, "revolution doesn't happen when society adopts new technologies--it happens when society adopts new behaviors" (160). Let's look at the revolution of communication in the past couple decades. Corded phones became wireless phones, which became cell phones. The first text message was sent almost 20 years ago, but I don't believe it started a revolution then. I don't remember anyone "texting" in my elementary school or even middle school. My parents had cellphones probably in late elementary school but they didn't have texting capabilities. Then plans phones made texting easier and wireless companies made it cheaper, now it's widespread. A New York Times article on the subject said that in 2007, the best guess (an underestimate at that) of the number to texts sent per year is 3 trillion. The utilization of texting had changed communication. You can be almost anywhere and communicate, no internet or actual talking necessary. It has even created it's own language. It seems like a revolution in communication, and although it all began with the first text message in 1992, it did not truly change communication until people began adopting it as a new behavior.

Sources:
http://inventors.about.com/od/estartinventions/a/email.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/05/technology/05iht-sms.4.8603150.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Transaction Costs

Explain and give an example of a mental transaction cost.


To understand mental transaction costs, we must first define transaction costs in general. Transaction costs are what you give up when agreeing to and following through on a bargain. Mental transaction cost is the toll of thinking through a decision. In this chapter, Anderson explains that "free" works because it eliminates mental transaction costs by eliminating the felt need to decide if something is worth paying anything at all.

It may seem weird that charging an adult one extra cent would keep them from buying something. Many adults would probably pass up a penny they saw on the street deeming it not worth the effort; they have a steady or somewhat steady source of income. When going from 0 to 1 cent, a penny makes all the difference. I think looking at young teens can help clarify this concept. Many young teens don't have jobs, so even a penny seems like a lot. Let's say a young teen is at the mall with their mom. They see a gum ball machine and instantly want a piece, but it's 5 cents. Seeing this teen only has a few quarters in her pocket, is it really worth it? They then begin having to weigh what else they could buy with cents or what they could put this five cents towards if deciding against the gum ball. What if the gum ball is stale? What if it is not the desired flavor? All of these questions and the cognitive energy used in answering them are mental transaction costs. If her mom, however, pulls out a pack of gum from her purse and offers her a piece for free, all of these costs seem to disappear.

Although adults usually make money, because of the "penny gap" (described in this weeks other blog post), these transaction costs weigh heavily on all minds when deciding to purchase something for a price.

Free

Why is “zero” such a hot-button word?


Zero is referred to as a hot-button word by Chris Anderson because it provokes a response of irrational excitement. If something is zero cents, completely free, we tend to choose it because there is no visible possibility of loss. No one wants to lose or be wrong, so if it doesn't cost anything, then we believe we can't lose anything or be making a poor decision by choosing it. As soon as the price gets raised to even a fraction of a cent (as is the case with web pages that make you pay per click), the customer likely senses the possibility of loss and has to decide whether the product is worth it. Many times they decide it's not. In human minds, the difference between $00.00 and $00.01 seems so much greater than the difference between $00.01 and $00.02. This difference causes a bend in the demand curve referred to as the "penny gap".

The "penny gap" can be seen in the chapter by one economist's experiment selling Hershey kisses and Lindt truffles. At first, the truffle was $00.15 while the kiss was $00.01, and students overwhelmingly bought more truffles because they were seen as better quality (more for your money, so it's worth the extra 14 cents). Then, the prices were lowered by 1 cent. The truffle was $00.14 while the kiss was free. Students bought more kisses than truffles in this case even though the difference in price remained constant.

These perceived benefits of having "zero" as an option make it exciting to get something for nothing. In our minds we are able to gain a product or service with no possibility of loss and that does tend to provoke a response of excitement.  

Scratch

After reading the article about Scratch and exploring the Scratch website, what are some observable benefits in creating a space to share student work?


One of the main points the article about Scratch made in reference to it's benefits was that it encourages young people (through comments and reinforcement) not just to "chat, browse, and interact  but also [to] create and invent with new media" (p. 62). When looking at the site, this was very evident. All of the projects I looked at (whether games or stories) all had comments, suggestions, and encouragement on them. It seemed like a much more positive environment then most of the YouTube comments I've seen. 


Scratch also expands the resources students have to both create new things and learn how programming works; the problem-solving strategies learned through utilizing these resources can carry over to many different aspects of life. Because simulations, games, animations, and stories can all be created using scratch, students with many different interests can find the site useful, entertaining, and educational.


For me, one of the benefits that could realistically be useful is utilizing Scratch for school projects. I plan to teach after I graduate, so I got kind of excited when the article discussed using Scratch for interactive learning. It described kids using the site to simulate life in another region or a trip to the earth's core. Students really have to learn about the topic to be able to teach and describe it to others, but by creating a program they can have fun while doing it and learn more about programming. Not only does using Scratch allow students to develop their own ideas, but they can collaborate with others to improve one another's works. This develops skills in group collaboration which are essential later in life. They can even develop companies in order to collaborate.

Our Own Wikipedia

The “power law distribution” or “long tail” phenomenon, as seen in behavior online on the Wikipedia, suggests that the concept of an average user of wikipedia is meaningless. Support your answer: how do you think a local, “JMU only” version of the Wikipedia would compare to the worldwide version? Would it be very similar? Higher quality? Less quality? Why?


Chapter five of Shirky's book describes Wikipedia in detail: how it started and why it works. In this description he discusses the graph comparing users to their contribution to Wikipedia. This graph is not a bell curve, but a "power of law distribution". Since a few select users contribute an overwhelming amount of the information while the vast majority of users only post occasionally, the graph has a steep (nearly vertical) slope starting off and then flattens out. Because of this distribution, the "average" user has no meaning.


If JMU created their own version of Wikipedia, I think it would also follow the "power law distribution" because there would be those individuals (possibly professors or very passionate students) who get really into contributing information/contribute most of it and those that only post one or two articles to meet a class requirement, because they are inspired by something they learn, or they wish to correct a typo. After it caught on, I think it would be about the same quality as the worldwide version. The same motives people have for contributing to the worldwide version are most likely present in JMU's student body and faculty: "a chance to exercise some unused mental capacities...vanity...and the desire to do a good thing" (p. 132-133). Shirky states that it becomes significantly harder to harm a wiki if even a few people care about it. The motives create interest and care which combats vandalism and unequal representation of an interest group. I also think that it would naturally be smaller than the worldwide version because fewer people are able to contribute to it.  

Wiki Summary

The important points I gathered from the wiki podcast...

• A wiki in simple terms is an editable website.
• Wikis are different from other websites because they allow visitors to change information on them and, by doing this, create and collaborate with one another, even allowing visitors to link to places that do not yet exist.
• The idea for wikis came to Ward Cunningham (the creator of wikis) from using Hypercard stacks (MAC software that allowed users to build stacks and programs on their personal computers through hyperlinked information). He wanted to find a web equivalent.
• Wikipedia, while being the largest wiki, is not the only wiki. Anyone can create a wiki through sites such as Wikispaces, PBworks, or Google Sites.
• The three important buttons to creating a wiki are edit, save, and link. Edit makes the page into an editable document, while Save turns the document back into a site that others can edit, and Link allows you to create a new page that is linked to the previous one and start the editing process again.

Big Brother

Some news reports have suggested that the Bush administration used the USA Patriot Act to look at the e-mails of American citizens without a warrant. What’s your position if this was indeed the case? Should citizens be willing to give up their privacy? Does it bother you to know that your online communications are very potentially semi-private instead of private?


I've often heard the term "Big Brother" in reference to our government "keeping tabs" on our personal information, such as phone calls and now emails. If this is the case, and the government is looking at our information without warrants, then it encroaches on our 4th amendment right which is meant to protect us from unreasonable searches and seizures, since the government would be looking at our information without a warrant. If they do get a warrant, I think web accounts, email history, and hard drives should be searched to help solve cases. Many also argue that the right to privacy should be or is implied in the 1st amendment freedoms. If this is the case, then the government would definitely be violating our right to privacy. 


I have mixed feelings on how much privacy citizens should be willing to give up and the potential semi-private nature of online communications. What if you are involved in a video game that involves killing people (since many of them do), and you are sending messages to a friend who also plays this game about the number of people you have killed. If you send a lot of these messages it will probably look suspicious to any government filters that are scanning your mail, you may be investigated, these harmless emails may be used against you some day, even though you were just talking about a game. This violation of privacy could do some harm. Personally I don't think I say things/too many things online that would be incriminating if taken out of context, so I'm not that bothered by the lack of privacy but more by the way this encroachment of privacy can escalate quickly (where will it stop?). 


Overall right now, I think the benefit outweighs my personal feelings that it isn't right to invade people's lives like that. A former teacher at my high school was arrested this summer because a parent found a Facebook message where the teacher made inappropriate innuendos towards a student. He had been violating students at different schools for decades and hadn't gotten caught, but all the evidence (incriminating emails and messages to students and uploaded/downloaded child porn) was on his computer and in cyberspace. If this information had been searched in filters looking for such key words, maybe he would have been caught sooner. I think many criminals could be caught if emails and downloaded files were monitored, so it may be worth it, I'm still debating.

Why to Be Safe with WiFi

If your mother uses wifi at home to send you e-mail, and your home network is not protected by WEP or WPA, what reasons would you suggest to her for enabling one of these two protocols at home if the liability of reading those e-mails still exists once her message leaves your home, on it’s way to school?


When a message is sent using a wireless network, the message is transmitted from a computer to a wireless router through radio signals. Similar to how radio waves from one set of walkie talkies can be intercepted by another, signals from a computer to a router can also be intercepted. Now I haven't actually tried it, but it is apparently quite easy to intercept wireless signals, especially if the "interceptor" is within the range of the wireless network. For this reason, protection by WEP or, even better, by WPA (since WEP can be more easily decoded) is a really good idea for wireless users. These protections encrypt information and messages sent so that it is hard to decode if intercepted when it is sent from the computer to the wireless network. Why is this important? Since the information can be intercepted so easily, without encryption it's a free for all. The information can be used against you, used to find identifiable information on you, and even used to steal your identity. My mom is not always careful about what she sends me in emails (sometimes its a phone number, refill prescription number, or even a password to an online account). She sees that it goes from her email account to mine and often forgets what happens in between. Sending this kind of information is never smart, but it happens. Using encryption on messages helps keep their content much more secure from onlookers, hackers, and even the government, making it much harder to decipher them.


These protections, however, only protect the information from the computer to the router. There is still liability and risk when it enters the internet and travels to me at school. This information can still be seen, but since there is so much more information being transmitted on the "wired" internet it is more difficult for her message to be seen mainly because it is more difficult for one tiny email to be noticed. This does not mean she is not vulnerable at this point, she is just much less vulnerable then when her information had not yet entered the "wired" internet and her information could be seen by just about anyone outside her house. Although Abelson states in chapter five that "risks of weak systems are often rationalized in attempts to avoid the trouble of switching to more secure alternatives", I think the trouble of switching to any protection or the most secure protection is worth the advancement in security that we will receive.

Information Disclosure

The official website for the drug Olanzapine probably didn’t mention the fact it might cause diabetic symptoms in patients. Another website obviously did. Commercials on TV now are required to mention possible side effects. Should drug companies be required to come clean about situations like the one with Eli Lilly’s Olanzapine in their commercial websites? Why or why not?


I think drug companies should be required to come clean about all side effects and possible/suspected side effects of a drug on their web sites, but I don't think discussing each legal situation is necessary (although issuing a brief statement about such legal issues would probably be wise). As the internet becomes ingrained into the fabric of society, it used more and more as a "first step" and many times the only step in acquiring information. If someone wants relief of a disorder, in this case Schizophrenia, they may start with the internet and hold to that information when seeing a doctor. If they don't read a side effect the doctor mentions in passing, it may go in one ear and out the other.


The doctor also may not know every recent controversy over every drug they prescribe (that's a little scary to think about, but for general doctors especially that would mean researching tons of drugs daily which probably doesn't happen). The prescription inserts are made in bulk on paper and then the prescription may be stored in a pharmacy, warehouse, or your medicine cabinet for weeks or months before it is used. How can these listed side effects be guaranteed accurate? They really can't. A website, however, can be updated in the matter of a few seconds (depending, of course, on the amount of change and speed of browser). By requiring companies to post information about suspected side effects (that have a fairly legitimate/documented claim) help consumers truly discover the known risks of the medications they are taking at any point in taking the drug (not just when they are first prescribed it or it is first manufactured.


The legal information however is probably so numerous and dull that most people wouldn't bother reading it all. I personally don't care so much about who sued the drug company and for how much, but about what side effect caused them to press charges. Mentioning their was a lawsuit (or multiple law suits) during a particular time frame for a certain reason would probably alleviate confusion when also coming across sites that discuss such charges, like the documents released on the web about Olanzapine and the suspected side effects of diabetes.  

Proprietary vs. Open Source Software

Some states and some companies are turning to open source software for a variety of reasons, some mentioned in this chapter. Some companies (say Microsoft) have gone on the record against open source software. Explain some of the advantages of using proprietary software and cite your advantages with websites that take or mention these positions.


Proprietary software is software for a computer that is licensed exclusively to one party with certain terms of use and licensing agreements, while open source software (OSS) allows those with a user license (not just those with copyright) to alter the software. OSS is also commonly in the public domain. Chapter 3 of Blown to Bits mentions that governments (such as Massachusetts) and different companies are trying to require Open Source Software and OpenDocument Format so documents and information can be exchanged among businesses and government offices and better software can be produced. This desire is creating a backlash of opposition against such formats.


Shawn Shell, a Principal of the technology consulting firm Consejo, Inc., states the point that proprietary software will keep software developers developing useful software. From his experience, he says he's seen many companies make a lot of money marketing OSS, "making money on support", yet they didn't make it. All of the developers don't get paid anything. If developers can't make a living off of creating these products, he argues, there is no point and they will eventually stop and find something that pays. Even if they continue making it, with no competition and compensation, the product will (most likely) not be as good. His final point in his argument that Proprietary software is not dieing out is that it this software comes with a certain security and protection. As a consumer (whether you're an individual or company) you can (to a certain extent) make sure you get what you paid for. You can call the help centers or if all else fails return the product, but with OSS Shell argues "there isn't a consistent and reliable model for ensuring that the software provided is fit for use as intended; it's everyone for themselves. There is no guarantee, warranty, or statement of suitability for any application whatsoever".With Proprietary software, the company offers support if the product fails.




Source:
Shell, S. (2005, October 14). Open Source Versus Commercial Software: Why Proprietary Software is Here to Stay. InformIT. Retrieved October 6, 2010, from http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=420290&seqNum=3

Communities of Practice

 Consider the concept of a “community of practice.” How can such a community offer opportunities for learning?


Communities of practice, Shirky states, are developing rapidly on the internet. Every latent community can become one of practice by someone posting a comment and getting a response. These communities of practice are basically where people can share common interests and work things out together. One of Shirky's examples is that of a community on Flickr where members share pictures using different photography techniques and comment on how they can improve them. This example offers a great opportunity for learning. An amateur photographer may be in this community with someone who has been doing it for years and can give them some very specific and helpful advice on how to better their work. These groups aren't just for hobbies, but there are communities for individuals struggling with certain diseases or hardships, working in the same field,  and travelling to the same places. They offer encouragement, support, feedback, and aid. These communities are often geared towards a very particular audience.


My dad works with security on computers. The companies he has worked for have the most thorough virus scanning software and firewalls that money can buy. He works with these products all day and then tries to install them on our computers. Seeing that our computers are not that great, they really bog down the speed and take forever to load and scan...it's a pain. We finally convince him of the inconvenience and he switches to normal software, but the normal setting are not good enough (he feels) to fully protect our and our computers' safety. Thankfully, he is a member to different online "communities of practice" designed for computer and safety-minded individuals to discuss how to get the most out of your anti-virus software while also having a computer that actually works. He can post what he's tried to do on our system and then other's (in his field of work) tell him how to modify it to get it working better. Personally, I am thankful to these online communities because it no longer takes thirty minutes for the computers in my house to load.

When Technology Becomes Invisible

If Shirky is right, and we’re headed to a period where social media tools like YouTube, Flickr, and social networks like Facebook become “invisible,” what’s the impact on things you spend money on as consumers? Books? Movies? Music?



In chapter 4 of Here Comes Everybody, Shirky states that technologies do not profoundly change society until they are spread so widely through society that they become "invisible". These technologies are no longer seen as exciting, but we depend on them and inherently understand them. Social media tools and networks appear to be quickly becoming this integrated into society. 


"Talkies" have become Imax 3-d motion pictures and are distributed through blue ray discs or downloaded straight to your TV, records have become mP3 downloads, and books have been uploaded to the web and are readable through Ipads and Kindles. The methods and products changed, but what we buy and why we buy (for entertainment, necessity, information, etc.) hasn't. I think the main problem that will continue to arise as social media tools and networks become more prevalent in the lack of buying that will take place. Napster is an example of this. When it first came out, it was so unique it gained enough visibility that the government stepped in and ruled it illegal and sued the company which eventually shut down. Now that these technologies are so widespread, there are tons of sites that enable you to format or record music videos from Youtube, songs from Grooveshark, full length TV episodes, and movies so they can be downloaded to any device (if you ignore safety and security risks). There is no way all of these sites can be shut down. I was aiding in a fourth grade class this summer, and they were asked to raise their hands if they had ever gotten free music on the internet. All but 3-4 kids raised their hands. When asked right after who thought this was illegal, only about 5 raised their hands. Many people don't know that downloading free music is illegal (in almost all cases). With greater prevalence of these sites there is less ability to control them and with less knowledge about copyright laws, we could be headed for a problem. Say no one downloads songs, movies, shows, or books, well we can still listen to, watch, or read them whenever we want if we have a computer or a phone with internet connection. Again like with illegal downloads, as sites become more numerous they aren't monitored as closely and more and more gets on them. This hurts the movie, film, and publishing industries. 


I think another impact may be that consumers have more of a say in what they get. Let's look at music for example. Before social networks and media sharing, record companies found "talent", recorded them, and showcased them and then consumers basically determine if they are a "hit". Now some unknown singer can post a webcam video of her singing on Youtube, post it to her Facebook page, have all her friends and other viewers post it to there's as well. If people think she's talented she can get millions of views. Then a local newspaper, talk show, or even "America's Got Talent" may notice, and before she knows it, she's a star. The consumers "voted" first by viewing and then the music industry responded. It's not all that far fetched of an idea anymore, and if networks and sharing become so prevalent to be "invisible", I think it will happen more and more.