4. Extra Credit: Crow Sourcing

From Crow sourcing from week of 9/24

The Internet has become not just a collective knowledge base, but also a collective base for jokes, idioms and general human observation interactions. I am referring to the explosion of the usage and popularity of the meme. The meme has become a tool to point out an observation to everyone around him or her. These observations can be anything from the general lateness of a bus at a college bus stop or an observation of the tendencies of a prominent political figure. These memes have opened a doorway to a more casual Internet usage and a feeling of closeness with people with whom you encounter on the Internet. This closeness resides in the fact that memes provide a common ground of perspective and hilarity between people. This recent development has opened an avenue for people to converse and build a knowledge base concerning topics that really do not matter in the scope of everyday life, but may provide a mutual interest. An example of this is crow sourcing. This name is a play on words from crowd sourcing, this site has people exploring and inventing idioms based on common animals. The content of this site is not the most important part of its existence despite exploring a topic that is not usually explored. The important idea is that people are coming together to build knowledge bases (crowd sourcing) about any topic even if it is very extract. The idea of collaboration is important in the fact that knowledge bases can be expanded quickly and include large amounts of information without bias, but also because this this idea is likely to spread to scholarly ideas and really any type of work. This is exciting because the volume and accuracy of works will increase. As this idea evolves many problems arise however. Who moderates to make sure that the information is accurate and genuine? This problem has already arisen with wikis. Who should have the power to edit and add information? Will collaborative works ever become possible let alone popular if these problems cannot be solved?

Virtual Reality Questions

 Initial Understanding: Virtual Reality is created by screens or helmets around the eyes and something to allow the user to interact with the world that they are seeing through these screens. These worlds can be anything.

From A Brief History of VR
1. Would the introduction of useable (inexpensive enough for public use and immerse enough that a people are fooled by the reality) VR be such a major shift that society couldn't handle the transition? What would happen to the morals of the people?

2. Are people ever going to be completely content by the current technology?

3. Would virtual reality world have to be monitored for illicit behavior in order to keep the minds of the public on track with the law in the real world?

Privacy and Security Questions

From the Transparency Grenade
1. Would a fear of information leaks lead to companies and governments being more open about their policies and actions?

2. Are companies only successful in many ways because they have secrets?

3. Would a concept like the transparency grenade ever become popular in multiple companies and governments?

From Device identification in online banking is privacy threat
1. Is there any way to fight privacy issues such as device identification when all banks use this technology?

2. At what time frames would banks have to terminate information about users in order for users to feel safe?

3. Is privacy or identity theft a more prevalent issue?

Open Source

Questions from Open Source vs. Proprietary
1. Will open source software ever become as popular as proprietary?

2. Is open source software promoting an interest in learning programming?

3. Can new open source software be trusted? Are bugs and the fact that the development team has no responsibilities reason enough to make open source not an option for most people?

Videos
1. The idea of free software is good because people get software that they can modify themselves for their needs, but can this idea be applied to all forms of software?

2. Is open source software the ultimate way of creation?

3. Is a certain degree of censorship and rules required for the internet to work properly and be useful to everyone?

Rheingold and Virtual Communities

Questions for Life on the Electronic Frontier
1. Has the age of true intellectual communities been lost now that all people have access to the internet?

2. Will there ever be a time where social interaction only happens through the internet?

3. Is the entity of television disappearing to be completely replaced my media consumption on the internet?

Question for Virtual Community
1. Will the internet ever truly be considered a formal meeting space?

2. How has the internet changed social behavior? Has it created split personalities?

3. Would the internet have ever become popular if it didn't apply visual appealing interfaces and dynamic interactions?

3. Extra Credit: Google and its power

Article: U.S. Government Requests For Google Users' Private Data Jump 37% In One Year, from the week of 10/1

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/06/17/u-s-government-requests-for-google-users-private-data-spike-37-in-one-year/

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Google has become more than just a software and search engine company. With the data sets based on users of their content Google has become one of the most powerful entities in the world. With the United States government now requesting information for undisclosed reasons and Google having the ability to deny this information shows a power shift. Google now has control over information that the government has no way of retrieving and is increasingly worried about getting. This power shift does not only apply to Google, many of the large companies (most of them making or distributing technology) have a certain disposition and control over the common people that the government cannot hope to have. This control is fueled by a more modern knowledge of the working of current day situations and people as well as an obvious expertise on current technology and a loyal following of people. All of this power the government wants access to, but as Google has shown with its denial of access to private information, the companies actually hold an incredible amount of power. These companies also have access to large sums of money. The combined power of these companies is similar to Rockefeller and the power his empire held in the early 1900’s. The government is currently in a huge amount of debt and these companies could hold the key too a door out.

            The data that Google hold is also invaluable because of data sets and holds on user posted content because other countries want access to this information. Users can post political ideals and comments on Google without fear of these being taken down because that would violate free speech in America. Therefore people can post political comments and spread ideas without fear of their own government. The data sets on other countries are powerful agents against enemy states and this information is collected at a civilian level without regard to that country’s government. The article mentioned a case such as this when Google used information of China in an investigation.  

Data Mining Reading Questions

Reading: A Deep Dive into Facebook and Datalogix: What's Actually Getting Shared and How You Can Opt Out
1. Are large sample sizes a way for companies to bypass security and privacy concerns when collecting data?

2. Should a company following and collecting data from random people without them knowing be illegal?

3. What kind of rules should be in place to stop a company like datalogix collecting data on individual people?