Wannabe Gandhi

Recently I viewed an online video about the future of media, in the year 2014. The video is about six minutes long, and it imagines a hypotheical scenario involving Google and Amazon.

The video is somewhat outrageous, imagining that the two companies will join together, creating Googlezon, and that the New York Times will eventually sue them. However, it is also startingly realistic and possible.

It mentions an idea called “electronic paper,” which is in fact being developed and will soon be available and cheaper than normal paper. This advent of technology could transform newspapers and newsmagazines, along with books and advertising.

For more information on “electronic paper,” see this news article.

The video mentions an interesting idea called Google Grid, that it says is supposed to be released next year. The idea of a situation like “Epic,” is foretelling of a future in which individuals’ news information is categorized and filtered by a new team of Internet editors. It is both frightening and fascinating, and it makes me wonder if the Internet could head in this direction, as outrageous as it seems. It is enlightening in the wake of our discussions about Google and its increasing amount of tracking and user participation through a variety of services.

Google Base is only one step in the direction of Epic.

Regulation of Internet pornography is disconnected from the online activity of children, according to Christian Sandvig in his article, “Public Internet Access for Young Children in the Inner City.” He researched the surfing habits of children at a place of public Internet activity, and he found that the viewing of pornography was “rare to none.” He found that children are most interested in games of educational content, along with email and chat rooms.

He says that, “Content regulation, be it concerning decency or privacy, appears unlikely to resolve the problems it claims to address.” Children are the least interested in this content, according to Sandvig. Public policy regulators must look at the viewing habits of these inner city children in order to understand the dangers they face on the Internet. He found that the top 25 sites received more than 70 percent of the hits. He says that public policy needs to target the content that children are most interested in.

Though his article is informative of children’s online activities, I’m not sure it does much to address the problems of public policy. It seems to lack in explaining what the current policies are, and how they could be changed. I did not find, in his article, a hypothesis for changing the system. I would imagine that filters could be put on these public area computers, for inner city children. But I would also imagine that there are more systematic ways to control the content.

It is safe to say that children are not as interested in pornography sites. However, does this mean that regulators should stop focusing on them, and stop banning from children’s homes? It’s my own opinion that any link to pornography should be kept out of the child’s eyes, even if this means. Children should also not be aware that porn sites exist. Any indication that the sites exist will only peak their interest.

The best way to keep children from pornography, in my opinion, is to prevent them from being aware that it exists. After all, if Adam and Eve did not know that the Tree of Good and Evil existed, they might not have eaten from it. How can this be done from a level of public policy, in regards to child pornography? I’m not sure.

Thankfully, it appears that children are more interested in the gaming and email world of the internet. Let’s hope they stay in these portals.

The contention held by Paul Starr in his article, “Seductions of Sim,” is that computer simulations are here to stay, but not only as an education tool for children. They will continue to alter the way policymakers make decisions, he says. I couldn’t agree more.

Simulations present a three-dimensional way of looking at communities. Much of our lives deal with building communities, whether they are families, businesses or whole cities. Simulations are not only a fun way to explore the possibilities of decisions; they can also hold predictive power. I find it highly possible that many policy decisions could be made off of these simulations in the future.

What is most important, Starr argues, is that the black boxes or models for the games are transparent. In other words, people can best learn from the games if they are aware of the blueprint for decision-making, behind it all. Playing with simulation is one way to see the limits as well as the possibilities,” Starr says. With more players, the complexities of the simulation rise.

In addition to some of the Sim games Starr mentions in his article, I’ve also played one called SimCopter. This game takes place in a helicopter, and the player is asked to deal with crime around the city. The player can put out fires, pick up people stranded on buildings, and chase down criminals.

With all of the time I’ve wasted playing Sim games, though, I wonder if I would have learned more from spending that time in actual communities. Is there a point when a person can spend too much time playing the game, rather than acting in real communities? I’ve had some friends who sit all day in their rooms and never get away from the simulation. It’s dangerous when the simulation becomes our reality. Perhaps this is what scares me most about Sim.

There’s nothing better than a homework assignment of complete freedom, even if it’s only for five minutes. Our professor asked our class this weekend to turn off all forms and modes of communication for 300 seconds, and see what it was like. In this generation, it’s not as easy as it sounds. Here’s what happened to me:

I planned my five minutes around another activity — folding laundry in my apartment. By concentrating on this mindless activity, I allowed my mind to disconnect from the world. I lasted for about ten minutes.

During these ten minutes, I attempted to think about absolutely nothing. And it was wonderful. I was removed from the world. Nobody could contact me. I was responsible to no one.

It wasn’t such an easy task to blot everything from my mind, though. I did think about my girlfriend quite a bit. And my family. And all the phone calls I needed to make. And the emails to send. And the work to do on my computer. Ack.

Turning my cell phone off was the hardest part. How did I survive all of freshman year without one? Sure enough, when I turned on my phone, a message was waiting for me. A friend had called. I missed it.

Back to technology.

Jason Gallo: A name that could belong to anyone around the world. So how long does it take to find out information about a Jason Gallo that is in some way linked to our professor Eszter Hargittai? She told us that he was lecturing on Wednesday, and so I set out to search for information on him. The search was simple. Here are the steps I took to finding information about him. It’s a lesson in online privacy and surveillance:

Step 1: Type in “Jason Gallo” into Yahoo! Results number 1,640,000. I choose No. 7, where I see the name “Hargittai.” This could be easy. I’m linked to a blog called “My Heart’s in Accra.” There is information in the ethanzuckerman.com blog indicating that Gallo is Hargittai’s “collaborator.” Interesting. I also know that he

Step 2: I backtrack to the Yahoo results, and I click on No. 9, a paper written by Jason Gallo of Northwestern University. It’s my suspicion that this is him. http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/weblog_journalism.html. The paper is on web journalism, and the blogosphere. So, he has an interest in Internet research.

Step 3: I scroll to the bottom and find that he was in Croatia on Sept. 14, 2004. This guy must travel.

Step 4: I search for his name on Google. This is much more helpful. I see the words “Northwestern University,” in the first subject line. This is a blog by Gallo, and at the end of the blog, is a link to a biography:

Jason Gallo is a doctoral student in Northwestern Universities’ School of Communication. Voila.

Step 5: Backtrack to Google. Here is Jason’s name and biography under the second point:
“Jason Gallo is a Ph.D. student in the Media, Technology, and Society Program in the School of Communication at Northwestern University. His academic interests include surveillance, subcultures, the history of technology, and the increasing role of computer-mediated-communication in the political process. Jason is currently engaged in dissertation research on the U.S. government‚s role in promoting the convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science. A native of Washington D.C., Jason received a B.A. from the Colorado College and a M.A. from Georgetown University and has worked for both the U.S. and German postal services.”

Not too shabby.

Political culture has changed dramatically with the advent of the Internet, and Philip Howard argues that political communication has changed dramatically in the way that it is produced. He calls our election process a “hypermedia campaign” in his article on digitizing the social contract, and he discusses two web sites: databank.com and Astroturf-lobby.org. Both of these sites, he explains, mobilized campaigns through new media. He concludes that political power is gained by the manipulation of data, and that new media has created a system for politicians to focus on a wide number of issues.

He explains how when political consumers interact with new media, they create a data shadow that tracks their involvement with political campaigns. When I was in Albuquerque, NM on an internship at a newspaper, the political reporter asked me to research if any local judges donated to national political parties. Several of these judges sat on the case of Ralph Nader’s placement on the ballot, and the reporter wanted to know if the judges had any bias in political affiliation. Though none of the judges had donated, a number of other city officials were traceable. People don’t realize that their political preferences are often tracked for the public to see.

Howard also argues that the increased amount of data for political campaigns has led to a “thinned citizenship.” From this, I gather he means political consumers now have a much broader view of candidates’ stances on issues, but there is a lack of depth. There is simply so much information, that it has led to a thinned sense of understanding. He says that the typical political viewer does not spend large amounts of time engaging and contemplating politics. People get what they want, when they want it.

I wonder if this decreased sense of understanding about political candidates could lead to a lack of quality among the candidates. It seems as though candidates might be able to provide a slew of information and data, but might not have any substance behind the issues. What will happen to candidates’ characters? How will the Internet not only affect political consumers, but the politicians themselves?

Piracy has become a source of frustration for creators of intellectual property. But Lessig, in his article “Free Culture,” argues that piracy is often misunderstood as a way of stealing the innovations of others. He insists that there is value for people to build on the innovations of their predecessors, and he cites a number of examples from history to support his call for openness with “tinkering.”

He provides examples from Disney, the Japanese comic industry and Kodak to explain that improving on the previous works of others often brings about creativity and learning. He questions just how free our culture is, because it does not allow people to build upon the creations of others. He says that web blogs allow people to enter the debate about freedoms with technology.

The most interesting part of his article, I thought, was his anecdote of a college student who tinkered with search technology and included a number of music files within his database. The RIAA attempted to sue this student, along with three others that year, for a total of $100 billion, six times the company’s annual income. Lessig explains how the RIAA attempted to find out the student’s savings, and then demanded all of them.

It seems unfair to me that the RIAA could demand money from one student who tinkered with programming, when there are so many who are stealing music at colleges around the country. Granted, if I was in the RIAA’s shoes I wouldn’t know what to do. But in this case, it seems unwarranted for the organization to blame somebody for creating a search tool. Still, I question how the laws of regulation could be lifted to allow people to toy with copyrighted material. It would make it incredibly hard for any organization to govern these laws, and ensure that people aren’t simply stealing the material. What I didn’t find in Lessig’s article was a solution.

It’s a garage sale without the faces: eBay. Paul Resnick and Richard Zeckhauser’s article, “Trust Among Strangers in Internet Transactions: Empirical Analysis of eBay’s Reputation System,” “seeks to explain why buyers trust unknown sellers in the vast electronic garage sale.” The paper asserts that trust has emerged because of eBay’s system of buyer feedback. The authors collected hundred of megabytes of user comments for statistical analysis, and much of their paper is devoted to this research.

Amazingly, the article cites that 17.9 percent of all transactions had occurred between former buyer and sellers. This is actually a much higher number than I would have expected, and I suppose it’s a testament to the quality of the feedback system. This percentage alone shows that a large majority of the buyers actually return to the site when they have a good transaction experience.

I’ve used eBay several times, mostly to buy books. The most recent package that I received was so well taped and packaged, that I would have felt bad not issuing feedback. The seller even included a note within the box, reminding me to logon to the site, and record my comments. When I originally bought the box, I didn’t check the seller’s comments from other people. But after reading this article, I’ll check for other’s feedback without question.

What’s also interesting about the research is that the majority of the feedback ratings are positive. Is this because the packages are actually well marked, or is it because buyers are critical enough of their products? The article does note that when a seller receives negative comments, he/she can start a new username and account. This is no fault in the system, I would argue. As a seller, I would rather change a location than sit on a bad rating. Who’s to ensure that the ratings of the buyers are authentic? Indeed, eBay allows some loopholes for sellers to fix past mistakes. All of this is critical for an industry that functions on reputable marketing.

Friendster. Facebook. And then MySpace. Now there are networks such as Planzo.com, creating a space for community calendaring. The Internet has allowed for a hub of community networks to form. But do these communities have real value?

Danah Boyd’s article, “Friendster and Publicly Articulated Social Networking,” examines the implications of social networks, focusing on how people present themselves and how they establish connections. Her article discusses some of the reasons why people sign onto Friendster, an online community. She also writes about people who develop fake personas.

The section on “Fakesters” was especially interesting, as several groups have popped up under false profiles. This can create a lack of trust, Boyd writes, as well as adding on a social network dimension that does not exist. Facebook attempted to get around this by requiring that students, alumni and faculty provide an email address with their account that is verfied by the school. Still, at Northwestern profiles such as “The Rock,” exist. They also garner a high number of friends.

Online communities, this article presents, have largely become a source of advertisement. Facebook offers ads for a cheap price. Local bands have begun to list their information on MySpace. Boyd says that female users on Friendster often list their porn sites, and drug dealers list disguised information. I wonder whether this explosion of advertisements through online communities actually increases the number of hits to the site.

Boyd also writes of the profiling system on Friendster. The way a user defines him/herself can lead to dating and hookups. The degrees of separation often relate to the type of dating or hookup. I would have liked to see more quantitative evidence on this from Boyd.

Also, do sites such as Friendster and Facebook lead to a definition of the “self?” For example, when someone is asked to type in their favorite music listings, are they affected by what other people will think or see of them? Are people fairly consistent in their personal descriptions, or do they vary from online community to online community, depending on the audience?

With all of Mozilla’s add-on features, I’ve found that life does become a lot simpler. For example, adding the weather to the bottom of the screen, and sticking in buttons for cooking my eggs make it that much more imperative for me to be on my computer. I’m also impressed by Google’s desktop search, which does a great job of searching my Microsoft Word documents and harddrive.

I’m waiting for the day, however, when the Internet will get off the browser. Why can’t all of this be customized into the desktop, so that we don’t need a separate window to bring up information? Why can’t it all be in the operating system? I’m sure there is some program out there, already developed, which is doing just that.

Finally, it’d be nice for the browser to have an add-on button to create web pages. What if web page design was made simple through the actual browser window? This could save a great deal of time, FTPing sites to servers. With the click of a button, the Dreamweaver interface could appear on the browser window!

With all of the professor’s suggestions for browser updates, it looks like I’ll never be getting off my computer — even to cook an egg. Then again, my hand is hurting from all of the mouse movement …