Smooth Criminal

So I was reading EH’s blog (yes, I am a dork, I read my professor’s blog), and decided to take the quizzes: “What Advanced Degree Should You Get?” and “What’s Your Ideal Career?”

Perhaps now I will have something to tell my parents when I go home over winter break and they bombard me with questions about what I am going to do with my life when I graduate in six months…

You Should Get a MFA (Masters of Fine Arts)

You’re a blooming artistic talent, even if you aren’t quite convinced. You’d make an incredible artist, photographer, or film maker.

Hmm… think Mama and Papa Zutty will be excited when I tell them that after spending $160,000 to fund my undergraduate career at Northwestern, I have decided to be a photographer? Well, at least this should shake up our dinner conversations…

Your Career Type: Enterprising

You are engertic, ambitious, and sociable. Your talents lie in politics, leading people, and selling things or ideas. You would make an excellent: Auctioneer - Bank President - Camp Director City Manager - Judge - Lawyer Recreation Leader - Real Estate Agent - Sales Person School Principal - Travel Agent - TV Newscaster The worst career options for your are investigative careers, like mathematician or architect.

This one I’m not too sure about… enterprising? I mean, the engertic, ambitious, and sociable qualities are right on, and I certainly agree that that I would never want to be a mathematician or architect (although I did get the trigonometry award in 11th grade)… but Camp Director? School Principal? Considering my feelings about kids, I think I’ll stick with photographer. Speaking of which, I better get started on my final project for Basic Photo…

I don’t know whether Paul Starr’s six-year-old son is wise ahead of his years or perhaps a product of his father’s expertise in the area of public policy-based computer simulations, but for some reason I have a hard time believing that the words, “What’s the cash flow?” would come from the mouth of your typical six-year-old kid. Or, for that matter, that a six-year-old would have the interest and the attention span to look over the proposed city budget in the SimCity “game” his father introduced him to a couple of weeks ago.

While I am certainly a proponent of combining the lessons learned during the school day with the endless hours spent on the Internet or playing computer or video games, I am not quite sure that complex simulation games like SimCity are truly getting their point across to such a young audience. As Starr recounts the apparent failure of SimHealth based on an “oversimplified values framework and misinformation…but the bigger problem is false pretensions.” This author later goes on to say that the conceptual framework for SimHealth is too high for someone unfamiliar with health policy, while “a child can start playing SimCity without any conceptual understanding of urban development.” My questions is: Does this child who starts playing SimCity because it is fun to pave highways and build neighborhoods actually develop an understanding of urban development, or are we giving these kids too much credit? Perhaps SimCity and SimHealth are actually equal in conceptual thresholds but SimCity offers the more salient task of building cities, regardless of the educational theories behind it.

Now being the mature, educated 21-year-old that I am, I have the sudden urge to play my version of the Sim creations, The Sims 2. Forget urban planning or health policy, I would rather get my wife in my computer family pregnant and then go mix up some cocktails for the party I will be throwing for all my closest Sim friends later on tonight. Perhaps the creators should think about changing the name to Sin City…

(As a sidenote, our usual deadline of Tuesday at 9 had come and gone by the time I remembered our assignment, so this post is my attempt to take advantage of our one free late post. However, I figured it would be rather useless to research Jason after having heard so much about him from other blogs and during his in-person visit, and thus I have tweaked the assignment a bit to instead provide some commentary on our class discussion.)

Before I jump into the juicy details of our discussion covering surveillance and the Internet, I will share with you my unsuccessful attempt to stalk Jason Gallo. After reading all of the blog posts amassing detailed information about our apparently very “googleable” guest speaker, I decided to do my own search following our class discussion. Attempting to go above and beyond the typical details about Jason’s research interests or places he has lived throughout his life, I was determined to find the retired blog of our surveillance-savvy speaker after he mentioned that none of us had stumbled upon an archived version. I turned to archive.org (thanks to EH’s comment earlier in the year that evidence of blogs and other websites no longer in existence may still exist in cyberspace). However, after typing “Jason Gallo” into the search engine and eagerly awaiting blog entries containing intimate details of our speaker’s past, the results turned up empty-handed. If only I knew the URL for his blog, my search might possibly have been a bit more successful…

Our class discussion on Wednesday, Nov. 9 exposed some rather thought-provoking dilemmas regarding the role of surveillance in our current technologically innovative society. Who knew that for a small $50 fee on zabasearch.com, bounty hunters, credit card companies, and even you or I can access a full background check (including criminal reports, lawsuits, bankruptcies, property ownership, 30-year address history, relatives and associates, professional licenses, marriage records, and more)?! Yes, Professor Hargittai, we tried to do a background check on you, but unfortunately none of your students were willing to hand over the $50

Although sometimes ignorance is bliss, I feel fortunate to have learned what will probably remain unknown to the majority of our society… the reality that we are being watched more than we think. Naively, we go about our daily routines, making online purchases, swiping our credit card before we pump our gas, assuming that all the personal information we give out about ourselves will be safeguarded and is mutually exclusive to the companies that collect the information (i.e. stores that we shop at online will not collaborate with gas stations and share information with each other). Jason revealed, however, that through a system of interconnected network databases, personal information can be passed along until a detailed profile is created. Especially in our increasingly cash-less society, surveillance-based identity theft is rampant and will continue to expand its scope until regulations such as privacy laws are enacted.

But along with privacy laws comes the question of safety—with less intrusive surveillance measures, our safety is potentially threatened. Actually, an interesting point that Jason made is that making someone aware that they are being watched (the potential threat of supervision) in fact controls their behavior. Though this doesn’t actually catch the criminal, it deters the criminal behavior from happening in the first place. What it all comes down to is a balancing act—making people feel safe, but not controlled.

(Warning: It’s a Long One…)

Although the decision to venture off to my “quiet spot” and sit alone in silence for five minutes at 2 AM might not have been the wisest choice I have ever made in my life (but certainly not the worst, either:)), I did make it home alive and in fact had an excellent experience. But before I disclose my reflections, it is necessary to issue a “Don’t Try This at Home” disclaimer, meaning, I do not recommend sitting alone at an El stop in the early hours of the morning—especially with the recent robberies and assaults occurring just blocks away. So now that the safety issue is out of the way, I will share with you a recap of my five minutes of silence and the revelations that took place in the aftermath.

After leaving a celebration of my friend’s 21st birthday (completely sober, in case you were wondering whether this assignment was completed in an altered state of mind), I made my way to the empty Foster El stop (the Purple Line was closed over the weekend due to construction). Sitting on the lone bench, I set my alarm for 2:13 AM, lit up a cigarette (we were allowed to smoke in addition to breathing, correct?), and glanced around to make sure there were no suspicious people lurking around the deserted train station (not that I would have been able to communicate with anyways, since I was already 30 seconds into the assignment).

About a minute had passed, and any previous concerns regarding my well-being subsided; now I was able to experience the remaining four minutes of comfortable silence. Armed with my imaginary baseball bat, I was prepared to slam any thoughts out of the ballpark (or at least put them on hold until the five minutes were up). What I actually experienced was the inability to completely dismiss an incoming thought, but perhaps as a form of compromise, allowed bullet points so to speak, pass through. Activity going on around me—buses dropping off passengers, strong winds blowing leaves ever so slightly, remnants of the evening rain dripping from an overhang, and my own smoking a cigarette—would flash through my head as single words. Bus, leaves, wind, rain, cigarette. I suppose this was my subconscious attempt to remember certain thought-provoking observations so that I could reflect at the end of the five minutes, while at the same time knowing that I should be putting my baseball bat to use. Well, now that I have established my “baseball bat mentality” and the difficulty in squashing all remnants of thoughts from entering my mind, I turn to the period of intense contemplation following the deafening silence of complete withdrawal from IT and communication. The following two bullet points mark memorable observations while embracing the surprising serenity of the Foster El stop at 2 AM…

- Public Forms of Transportation and Self-Reflection: for those members of society who exist without the luxury of a car, traveling by train or bus offers a rarely acknowledged advantage to driving (aside from avoiding expensive gas prices or snagging one of the few remaining popular CTA posters from its not-so-secure display case to hang proudly in your own room—not that I would advocate this illegal activity or anything)—that is, isolation, for the most part, from communication and technology (even if only temporary while cell phone bars uniformly drop from full service to no service once entering the black hole of the CTA underground tunnels). For those brave souls who capitalize on this rare opportunity of unmediated existence, those who resist the urge to pop in their iPod earbuds or whip out their Palm Pilot to pass the time and tune out their surrounding environment until arriving at their final destination, Chicago’s El and Pace buses present a technology-free environment perfect for self-reflective silence. Aside from the occasional mentally-ill, drunken homeless man at the back of the bus or the overly-friendly neighbor who invades your personal space by sitting right on top of you despite a nearly empty train, public transportation typically provides an ideal setting for shutting off all modes of communication. Although I resisted the urge to jump on the Pace bus that stopped right in front of my bench during my five minutes, I did get my weekly dose of the Purple Line shortly thereafter

- Wind Blowing, Leaves Ruffling, and Raindrops Falling—Nature’s Subtle Beauty: in our busy daily schedules and stressful lives, we rarely take the time to appreciate the beautiful environment which surrounds us. These simple elements of life—the changing colors of leaves in autumn or your reflection in a puddle after a thunderstorm—take a backseat to the more complex communication and IT innovations to which we devote out attention. During these five minutes when I was forced to notice my natural surroundings, I began to appreciate theses simple things in life which require little thought or effort to observe and yield an unparalleled sense of serenity.

Now as I sit and write this Blog in a Zen-like state of peacefulness, my mind feels clear and revitalized. I compare the chaos of the party earlier on in the evening to the calmness of the my five minute reflection, and a similar subsequent dichotomy upon entering the most popular after-hours hangout in Evanston—Burger King, of course—before heading to my final destination of the evening—the Alpha Delta Pi porch located within the typically bustling Sorority Quads. These extreme shifts between bombardment with communication and complete isolation from human existence, which I experienced back-to-back in two consecutive scenarios, enabled a personal take-home message from this assignment to pop out at me.

Our fleeting opportunities for self-reflection being consumed with text messaging, Web-surfing, and an overwhelming insistence on filling a silence viewed as uncomfortable. The result of this “fill the void mindset” is that people become trapped in a bubble—i.e., absorb themselves in activities such as iPod listening and instant messaging—eventually, we will learn to avoid eye contact with unfamiliar faces on the sidewalk (i am quite positive that some of you do this already). Ultimately, people will become oblivious to the world around them.

Life Lessons in a Nutshell: Approach the simple things in life. Take a moment to put our busy lives on hold, even for five minutes. Embrace silence rather than run away from it. I am aware that I sound like the author of a motivational book, but I truly believe that when people put these philosophies into action, this world will be a happier place.

And if you happen to have some free time in the early morning hours and are in the mood for some intense silent self-reflection, I highly recommend the Foster El stop—but you might want to bring a can of mace or a small knife just in case things get dangerous.

After reading this week’s articles surrounding the topics of copyright, piracy, and generally the right to consume cultural goods which allow the “creative class,” as labeled by Richard Florida, within our society to grow and thrive, I find myself once again asking the same disillusioned question— what is this world coming to?!

This issue is clearly no longer about stealing the creative property of artists who fear that ordinary individuals will profit from their creative genius, but instead has evolved into another way for money hungry organizations representing those in the entertainment industry to make an extra buck (or millions if we want to be accurate). And while the rich get richer, who are the innocent people forced to suffer in silence as their legal rights to sing “Puff the Magic Dragon” around the campfire are taken away?

The Girl Scouts of America, that’s who. Inspired by Lessig’s Free Culture commentary, I googled “copyright and Girl Scouts” and came across Pratie Place’s three-part blog series about “an overeager ASCAP crackdown” on our favorite cookie selling, marshmallow roasting, hideous brown, pin-clad uniform wearing Girl Scouts. In an excerpt from Lisa Bannon’s 1996 article in the Wall Street Journal, ASCAP’s chief operating officer John Lo Frumento argues, “They buy paper, twine and glue for their crafts - they can pay for the music, too. If offenders (those up-to-no good Girl Scouts by day, campfire criminals by night) keep singing without paying,” he says, “we will sue them if necessary.”

And in case you were wondering, the penalty is not a little slap on the wrist or a settlement for a couple free boxes of Thin Mints. Penalties can be as serious as $5,000 and six days in jail, while even harsher repercussions for noncompliance include fines up to $25,000 or a year in prison, or both, for major infringements. “If you make an exception for the Girl Scouts, you could set a practical precedent,” says Russell Frackman, a copyright lawyer. “You give the impression that a particular use is not an infringement, and that can be used against you in the future.”

As Healy remarks in the article on Digital Technology and Cultural Goods, “these choices will greatly affect how art and culture are consumed.” Through this author is referring to property rights regarding the Internet, this statement applies to the issue facing Girl Scouts and other innocent campfire singing citizens across America. Say goodbye to holding hands and swaying to “This Land is Your Land.” Forget patriotic renditions of “God Bless America.” And thus I repeat, what is this world coming to?!

Just as a head’s up, this post will be formatted a bit differently than those in the past– because many quotes stood out to me in these readings, I decided to offer commentary following some of the authors’ quotes pulled from the text rather than posting in paragraph format.

“When does word-of-mouse work? First, when it’s easy for the first user to make a recommendation, and second, when it’s easy for the friend to act on the recommendation. Third… it’s easy when it demonstrates the value of a new function.” -Greenstein

Well it sounds like Friendster meets all three requirements for word-of-mouse to be successful; if I remember correctly (it’s been a while since my Friendster days… so 2004), there is a feature which enables users to send invitations to friends to join Friendster through one quick email. Once the friend receives this special invitation, they simply click on a link and proceed to sign up and create an account on Friendster, and instantly they are sucked in. Finally, when Friendster was first created in 2002, this networking website was relatively innovative, seeing as how the majority of sites focused on romantic matchmaking rather than marketing their service as a friend finder.

“If users like a product, they show their friends. Using a product is also an endorsement. The product spreads by its very use. Popular or useful products get more attention, spreading from one us to the next. Both firms and users benefit from this pattern.” –Greenstein

Friendster seems to fit into the popular category more so than the useful domain, although those users who have capitalized on the service’s networking capabilities and scored a date perhaps even a long-term relationship might argue otherwise! What I am unclear of, however, is how the creators of Friendster benefit from their free networking service receiving more attention and gaining popularity? The Boyd paper didn’t mention anything about sponsors or advertisers funding the website or making any sort of profit, so I was curious if anyone knows how exactly “the firm” benefits from increased usage?

“Both mainstream and alternative press have covered the site, yet word of mouth is the dominant entry point for most people. It is important to note that users have a selfish motivation in spreading the meme, as their network grows by doing so.” –Boyd

It is interesting that Boyd decides to use the phrase “word of mouth” here, especially since the Greenstein article is fresh in my mind. However, I think that if Boyd was aware of the revolutionary term, “word-of-mouse” that Greenstein coined, she would have substituted the more well-known phrase for the technologically inclined one.

“Friendster is built on the assumption that friends-of-friends are more likely to be good dates than strangers… Unlike most dating sites, Friendster encourages users to join even if they are not looking for dates, under the assumption that they probably know a wide variety of friends who are looking and, thus, would serve as a meaningful connector and recommender.” -Boyd

I found the principles that Friendster was founded upon to be quite shocking actually, considering that I primarily used Friendster as a smaller-scale version of The Facebook (before it was created, of course). Perhaps I was an annomoly, but I used Friendster to check up on people I had already met in person and other good friends who updated their pictures regularly, and used other websites that were more well-know as dating services (and no, I am not embarrassed to admit that I a huge proponent of online dating!)

“The initial argument against Fakesters is that they collapse the network, devaluing the meaning of connections between people on the system. This argument assumes that the network’s value is in trusted links and that a Friend of a Fakester is going to be less trustworthy or compatible than the real, but virtually unknown, acquaintance of a friend.” –Boyd

This quote reminded me yet again of our discussion early on in the year regarding high school popularity and the ranking of search engine hits—would linking to a less respected website actually bring your ranking down, similarly to connecting to a Fakester devaluing your Friendsters?

“Yet, simultaneously, one must consider all of the friends, colleagues and other relations who might appear on the site. It can be argued that this means an individual will present a more truthful picture…” –Boyd

Although I know that “picture” here is meant to be interpreted as “overall representation,” this claim is also true in the case of actual photographic representation. Thus, one is prevented from pulling the old “bait-and-switch” tactic of posting a less recent, more flattering picture of oneself or even misrepresenting oneself completely with a fake picture in order to reel in the “bait,” finally revealing one’s true identity when meeting the date in person (not that I am an expert of this technique or anything… )

Man, the Daily is almost as obsessed with the internet as Professor Hargattai!! Two days in a row with Web-related news briefs in the From the Wires section—first Jesus bloggers, now Facebook prohibition—what’s next?! Updates on the latest egg boiling online technology craze? Only time will tell…

In case you haven’t been keeping up with the gossip, I’ll fill you in—apparently University of New Mexico officials made a decision last week to “ban access to Facebook.com on its campus network,” leaving 26,000 students in an uproar. Now what is left for a college student to do in the library if not to waste endless hours searching through profiles of friends and attractive strangers?! Looking on the bright side though, I have a funny feeling that the University of New Mexico grade point average might take a turn for the better…

Why, one might ask, would the anti-procrastination New Mexico administration infringe on the freedoms of their entire student population by denying access to this website? “The initial blockage came as a result of spam affecting its network offices,” a spokeswoman for the University’s Computer and Technology department said. “It had nothing to do with the site until the Dean of Students office brought up the problem of privacy protection.”

Here’s the deal: in order to register for TheFacebook.com, one is required to provide a school email address. Subsequently, the non-Web savvy U of New Mexico students proceeded to use their university password to log onto the site, “kind of a subconscious transfer,” rationalized the IT spokeswoman. Thus, the security of the transfer is questionable, bringing about the potential for confidential information to spill out. What it all comes down to, in my opinion, is not a matter of this highly respected website’s level of security, but rather an issue with the University’s students’ lack of common sense.

As a loyal Facebook user, I stand behind spokesman Chris Hughes who assures that there is NO need for students to reveal their University password to acquire an account. Siding with this spokesman who states, “I’m really not clear on what their rationale is for prohibiting access, but in any case it’s a shame,” I urge all of the devoted Facebook fans out there to send hate mail to the New Mexico students who unknowingly attempted to give your favorite website a bad rap. If nothing else, DO NOT approve friend requests from University of New Mexico students. And please, just say no to poking.

“What Would Jesus Blog?” Beats me, but apparently 135 “God bloggers” in Southern California had a field day last weekend at a three-day national conference held at Biola University. Now how do I, a Jew whose only connection with Jesus is a shared birthday, know about this first ever event for religious bloggers, one might ask? All credit goes to our very own Daily, who published a news brief in Monday’s edition (Oct. 17) of the paper with the headline, “God Bloggers Convene for Conference in Calif.” If ever I doubted the growing popularity of an online community of bloggers (aside from the dedicated authors among us in Internet and Society, of course), the proof is right before my very eyes.

According the Associated Press, this convention “marked an important benchmark for Christian bloggers, who have worked behind the scene for years to spread the Gospel and infuse politics with religion.” Talk about perfect timing—could this article coincide more closely with our discussion during Monday’s class regarding politics and the Internet? I think not.

I’m not going to lie—this whole Christian blogging conference frightens me thoroughly. But since I don’t want to stir up controversy in the blogosphere, it’ll suffice to say that I am not the world’s biggest fan of religion in general. I mean, am I wrong to be a tad disturbed by and skeptical of religious fanatics who led and attended workshops focused on “their growing influence on mainstream politics and how to manage outsiders’ perceptions?”

Further information from The Daily’s news brief announced that “the authors of evangelicaloutpost.com compared blogging to the 95 Theses posted by Martin Luther nearly 500 years ago that launched the Protestant Reformation.” Call me crazy, but the thought of a religious uprising based on 95 “uncensored and unadulterated” Christian blogs would certainly not be a pretty sight. Just one word of advice—don’t drink the Kool-Aid.

I find myself becoming increasingly frustrated as author after author attempts to convince innocent readers of underlying Internet biases (this time around, in search engines) that exist in the supposedly “democratizing force that will give voice to diverse social, economic, and cultural groups, to members of society not frequently heard in the public sphere.” The truth behind this unrealistic vision, whether one chooses to accept it or not, is this: LIFE IF NOT FAIR! Competition inherently breeds inequality, and thus the big sharks will eat the little fish and fuel the vicious cycle that makes the world go round.

When evaluating the democratic potential of the World Wide Web and questioning why search engines consistently provide access to only a select portion of the total indexable Web, never forget that just as life isn’t fair, neither is the Internet. Those who understand the system surrounding search engines are aware that every website is NOT created equal (meaning that the majority will remain invisible to the public sphere, while an elite 16% dominate individual search engines and a generally popular 42% populate the combined search engines rise)—hence, reverting back to the Darwinian mindset of my first blog post, only the strong survive. And I hate to break the news to Introna and Nissenbaum, but idealist concepts like “fairer representations of Web offerings,” “platform for social justices,” and “egalitarian and inclusive search mechanisms” just aren’t going to make the cut. Life isn’t fair, and everyone knows that life and the Internet are one in the same…

When assessing my own “technological career,” the term used by DiMaggio and Celeste to describe the “change over time in the relationships between individuals and technologies,” I feel as though I’ve lead a relatively stable IT path over the past five years, with a slightly noticeable deepening in the scope, quality, and frequency of Internet usage over the past three years since entering college. This personal testimony provides one strand of evidence for the overwhelming digital divide based on age, race, education, and (family) income—my privileged background has in essence laid the foundation for unquestioned and unlimited Internet access.

That being said, while DiMaggio and Celeste’s article presented the breakdown of demographic characteristics and trends among members of the U.S. population who adopted, deepened, or dropped out (in regards to Internet usage between 2000 and 2001) in a very precise and comprehensive manner, I was left with many questions as to the reasoning behind these voluntary and involuntary decisions to shift patterns of Internet behavior.

I was especially curious upon reaching the end of the section discussing those individuals who stopped using the Web. I haven’t actually encountered anyone who would be classified as a “dis-adopter,” so this group was particularly intriguing to me. Since socio-economic status and educational level were the primary factors characterizing this disadvantaged group, I speculated whether reasons for “dis-adoption” were based on logistical issues (such as a change in job resulting in lack of access to the Internet, or a decrease in salary forcing a family to sell their computer or prioritize spending on necessities other than Internet access), or on mental shifts in attitude toward technology (for example, frustration with limited proficiency leading to complete avoidance of the computer)…

I am sure that these are not the only two explanations behind dropping out as a Web user, so feel free to add to my hypotheses regarding why certain people dis-adopt.