11. Extra credit: student under surveillance

from week of 11/26 and the article http://www.infowars.com/preliminary-injunction-sought-in-school-rfid-tracking-badge-case/


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As a society we have reached a crossroads. Will we embrace technology as a tool to manipulate each other or will we use technology to help move the society forward? This question is not really aimed at the general public because most people have no say in this decision. This question is aimed at the government and at the companies who possess the technology, which will direct the society into the future. This is a question that asks whether or not we as a society can overcome the few greedy people at the head of companies that would use all of the new technology for complete surveillance and control. This topic comes into view because of a recent event at a school in Texas. The school requires all students to where badges that contain location devices so that the school may track all students. The general idea is to increase attendance in order to receive money from the state government for having good attendance. This initial goal seems reasonable and beneficial until on looks at the consequences of such an action. The students are being taught that being under surveillance at all times is something that is perfectly normal. The school is essentially taking away many of the rights of the students as soon as they step on the school’s campus. While all school essentially takes away rights from students in this way, this is on a new level that is on the same level as trapping the student on campus. How are student supposed to learn if they feel like they are trapped on campus? Students will learn that being under constant surveillance is normal and they will bring this ideal into their adult lives, which will accelerate the current society to one that does not respect the rights of the people. The society will turn into that of the book 1984.

10, Extra Credit: Microsoft Kinect Surveillance

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from week of 11/5 using the article: http://www.geekwire.com/2012/microsoft-diskinect-freeloading-tv-viewers/

Large companies seem to be now be putting out all of their surveillance technology towards monitoring the public in order to put forth advertisements catered towards the user. While this data is generally harmless to most people, as the monitoring reaches new heights a person’s freedom starts to come into question. Many users are downloading and watching movies for free illegally which can be seen as harmful to the economy and the entire social structure, I don’t this is the case any longer. As society evolves to become more open and free with these sharing technology new social norms have to be adopted. The surveillance technology released by these companies, the same that has cased an open technology revolution, is now starting to be used to watch and restrict the people. One of the main culprits recently is Microsoft and the possibility of using their kinect peripheral in order to identify media consumers. The purpose of this recognition technology is to monitor movie-viewing rights and to limit movie viewing for restricted material. The second purpose can be seen as a major plus for parents who let their children view their movies through an Xbox. The price seems to be though that Microsoft knows exactly who is viewing media at any given time through an Xbox. This is an enormous invasion of privacy. People are barely okay with companies using data about them that they input into a computer themselves. This could also evolve into someone always knowing exactly what you’re doing and where you are doing it. Companies will have a complete surveillance of your person. The government will of course want this information and suddenly the government has complete control of every person who uses any type of technology and the people have lost power. This seems like a problem that is far in the future, but why should we let anything that could so easily help achieve this vision come into existence.   

Copyright

Question: How is the length of trademarks determined? Especially for protecting the rights of company icons such as Mickey Mouse or Mario?

My standing on copyright and the related fields are that copyright laws should be strictly adhered to and enforced. However, revisions to the laws concerning remixed media need to be created in order to combat current trends.

Digital Divide

When I hear digital divide I think about a sort of wall between those who are knowledgeable about technology and those who aren't. This wall exists in several different ways, first in between groups in a certain society where some of the population has opportunities and some doesn't, this is present in 1st world countries where a group of minorities may not have the means to have access to technology. The second way this wall can exist is a difference between 1st world and 3rd world countries where an entire country may not have the means to provide the technology while the 1st world country has the power to deploy these technologies. 

What I found interesting about the video was that the community had more pressing matters such as clean water that were not being attended to while a computer was brought in. I also thought that with the professor only coming back after long intervals who would check on the computer and see if it was still performing correctly? What would happen if something went wrong with the computer?

speaker series: Digital Media Design, Gender & Games

From the week of 11/5

Speaker: Yasmin Kafai

As technology ages a need for collective understanding arises. Computers and technology have become so widespread and such an integral part of society that it is no longer enough that only a few people know the ins and outs of technology. How is society supposed to go about educating the public and developing an overall wanting in the general public to learn how to use technology? The idea is to combine aesthetics, design and technology into a single entity. By creating this combination then I believe the fear of advanced technology and coding will disappear and people will want to learn about technology. Many companies have done already with their products in order to make them seem more accessible to the general public. Companies like apple, Google, and Microsoft are designing their newer products to be simple. Learning technologies need to start being designed this way. People don’t want to learn how to code if they are only building boring products and their coding environment is technical and hard to understand. Once technology and aesthetics are combined then the entire public will have the opportunity to become advanced with technology.
    Another question comes in this educating process. How do we bring women into computing and technology? This question is rooted deeply in a social aspect, which we as a society have pushed on ourselves for thousand of years and can’t seem to completely abolish. This social aspect of course is how women are thought of and treated. This idea is something that has been ingrained and will not go away with just equality in the work place. Women and men are thought to be different when referring to technical and artistic skills. Women have always been thought of as more artistic while men have been thought of technical. The idea that men can’t be artistic has slowly disappeared and is now completely gone, but somehow the idea that women can’t be technical won’t seem to go away. Slowly women are becoming more engaged in engineering and technical projects. The way to engage women and get them more interested in working technically is to not only combine aesthetics and art with technology just as I stated above, but also to stop the separation of the two genders completely in work, learning and stop stereotypes when the girls are young. The idea that girls shouldn’t play video games or design using Legos is absurd and the continuation of the idea that women should be left only to artistic jobs. Once we stop this early implantation of stereotyping ideas in the children than women can thrive in a technical community. They will want to be part of the community rather than not learning technology early because they think this isn’t right for them.

Music & digital media: moral standing on music sharing

I have no qualms with sharing music online. I feel like all music should be available to everyone for free no matter what and money for the artist should be made through concerts and exhibitions. I feel this way because buying music is much too expensive, I would stream all of my music before I would buy any of it. I find pandora to be an extremely useful music resource because I listen to music that I would have never discovered without it.

9. extra credit: me & my shadow

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From Me & My Shadow from week of 10/29

https://myshadow.org/#

We live in an era where everyone is tracked all the time and his or her information is constantly being recorded despite whether or not that person wants anything about him on the Internet. The only way to avoid this of course is to never use the Internet, use a cell phone or any other device that accesses the Internet or uses any outward communication in any way. Many people nowadays are asking if we should allow these companies to harvest this information and sell it without our permission. Technically they do have our permission, but most people do not know the extent at which the information is being used since they do not read the small print in the agreements. I want to ask if we should care. As long as this information is secure and not given to those who would use that information to steal from us then why would be care? Yes the occasional annoying ad at the side your screen will appear with an item that you looked at the day before, but are any of these ads hurting us. Our information being sold to ad companies seems like a small price to pay for the use of an information and connection source that gives us access to anything we can dream of. The Internet has become an incredibly powerful resource, but one with a price. This price is something that fights against what humans have thought is only their right since the beginning of time. A person’s privacy being invaded goes against everything we know, but what if we didn’t ever know a time of privacy, then the internet would seem like a power without a cost. The other part of this privacy is that the information that is being used only goes to people who are trying to sell us things, this information is not going to the people we know so again why should we care that this information is being utilized?