The Digital Divide

I'm not sure what the issue of the digital divide really is. There are computers open for free use in public libraries across the nation, and people can get to them. There are computers open for use at universities and for a small price at internet cafes. There are communities where access to the internet is widely provided, so is the issue in that people don't know how to use it?

Maybe they don't know how to access the internet, or use the programs that get you there? Or perhaps because people don't have webcams they can't post their opinions on youtube? Is it the case that perhaps someone can't make a flash cartoon because they can't afford to buy Flash? There are so many place where digital life can be divided. This is what Van Dijk apparently assesses in his introduction.

It's very easy to sit back and say, "why is this even an issue?" So what if people don't know how to use the internet. The point is, at this current point in time, not knowing how to use the internet can leave a person at a great disadvantage in the world. Certainly not being able to use the internet is not the end of the world, but you can save a lot of money by getting things that you need online, and it's definately not a bad idea to do so.

Maybe there are less superficial reasons for needing to have access to the internet, however, at this point in time I doubt there's anything important that you can do online that you can't do IRL.

On the Subject of Outsourcing and Gifting

I'm not sure how I feel about outsourcing. It seems like Friedman is lamenting it, apparently to him, it's a big problem. However, I'm not incredibly sure as to how it benefits or detriments our society or economics. At work, my boss is constantly complains about outsourcing and how it's hurting his business. Apparently it's driving down a lot of the cost in labor for his particular business, which he's having trouble keeping up with. Personally, I don't know how I feel about it. There are pro's and con's to the system. For example, outsourcing boosts employment rates of foreign countries. It also puts extra money into their economy. However, the money boosting the foreign economy is American dollars that we'll never see again. That's a real issue. Also, American jobs are being sent overseas, so we have more unemployment. There are good things and bad things when it comes to outsourcing jobs. However, what is the solution to this issue? As for the idea that the Internet is a gifting system, it makes a lot of sense. In fact, I really enjoy this concept because it is such an uncorrupted subsistence mode. The example from Kollock of lawyers giving out legal advice on a forum for free where they would charge hundreds of dollars otherwise is intriguing. Why would they do this? Perhaps because instead of being charged to answer a question, they are offering this information on their own time that they offer this information for free. It makes work into your hobby instead of your job.

****Related Link****
http://www.altruists.org/projects/ge/ explores the concept of the Internet as a gifting society. They feel that the drive to create lasting relationships is stronger than the greed and selfishness of capitalism. This is a really cool concept.

Stick it to the e-Man!

I'm a firm believer that if any organization is going to be behind on upgrading and updating technology and practice to the modern times, it is the government. Upgrades and changes cause profound social and economic problems. This is terribly unfortunate. Due to the extreme personal subject matter of politics, it takes entire generations to create social change. Updating governmental practices to practical online resources is difficult because it is being done by people who do not understand the Internet.

Government websites are often completely text-based, cluttered, unattractive, and difficult to navigate. It is certainly the case that government websites have a lot of information and a lot of purposes to serve, but there are much better ways to organize and disseminate such things.

Many government computer systems run on dated operating systems like Windows 95 or Windows 98 for a number of reasons. One would be the cost of completing a nationwide computer upgrade; licences to operating systems would need to be bought, PCs would need to be upgraded, and computer illiterates (digital immigrants) would need retraining. Another reason for not changing is that Windows 95 is a successful and more solid platform than Microsoft's more recent releases. (Or so I've been told by intelligence members of the military.)

Cornfield and Rainie discussed the lack of fundamental change in the political process due to the internet, and I feel that the reason why this hasn't happened yet is because it is such a new media. Just this election (and maybe the previous one) were members of the first group of digital natives old enough to participate in political campaigns and/or follow them online. It will become more prevalent in the future, I believe that political campaigns will be fought and won in cyberspace.

Here is a link to an article about John Edwards' Second Life campaign. Apparently, some right wing Republicans took it upon themselves to vandalize his area.

The Internet: Never Be Embarassed Again!

(My bad, i accidentally posted this in the class blog instead of my own!!)

Thanks to the anonymity of the internet, if you have medical issues that may be embarassing for you to ask your doctor about, you can look online and consult an e-doctor's opinion. More than once when I was talking to a friend about a sickness that they or someone they knew had, I would go online in order to find more information about the symptoms, treatments, cures and personal accounts of the sickness. I personally consulted medical information online before going to the doctors because generally I feel that if I can demonstrate medical understanding in front of my doctor, she might spend more time explaining to me my sickness, its symptoms, threats and treatments.Back to my original point regarding consulting advice on embarassing diseases: if a person has a sexual issue, which is generally embarassing, they can become educated without needing to talk to anyone about it. This is especially the case if a person has only curiosity that they might have a medical problem. They could look online and check the symptoms before needlessly going to the doctors.

A relevant website is www.errowid.com which is a website where people can get honest and seemingly unbiased information regarding drugs and their uses. However, this website is pretty much a community where drug users can tell eachother how to abuse substances. Regardless of this negative usage, you can also gain interesting information about over the counter and perscription drugs.

Works Cited (in the works)

Hayden, Craig, & Ball-Rokeach, Sandra (2007). Maintaining the digital hub: locating the community technology center in a communication infrastructure. New Media & Society. 235-257.

Dutta-Bergman, M (2005). Access to the internet in the context of community participation and community satisfaction. New Media & Society. 89-109.

Galimberti, C, Ignazi, S, Vercesi, P, & Riva, G (2001). Communication and Cooperation in Networked Environments: An Experimental Analysis. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 4, 131-146.

Goby, V. P. (2006).Personality and Online/Offline Choices: MBTI Profiles and Favored Communication Modes in a Singapore Study. CyberPsychology & Behavior. 9, 5-13.

(2007). Von. Retrieved June 21, 2007, from Von Web site: www.von.com

America! Fuck Yeah!

The United States has always been about making money and achieving status. After reading Lessig's article about free operating systems and free media, it made me want to leave America's so-called Democracy for Brazil! I realize that it's probably just exotic idealism, but nevertheless, the rally that he described was at the very least, moving. Gerber's Mash-ups article made American copyright laws seem diabolical and wrong when read in conjunction with Lessig's Utopian description.

While it makes sense that a company should be able to protect their brand name by putting controls on it usage and its successive programs and projects, it doesn’t seem right that the entirety of copyright law today is based on a wording mistake. It seems to me that the limitation on copying something should be lifted if it was indeed not meant to be made into legislation in the first place. The concept of the DRM being able to control very closely all digital media is a terrifying one. Even the amount of control over creative media that we have today is near regime-like status. Imagine adding more copyright control over shared media. Reading a copywritten website without first paying for the rights would be theft.

American’s strive for money and fame is leading to our cultural demise. There is no more folk culture thanks to pop. People don’t think for themselves. Our culture is consumption and complacency and excess. I really enjoyed the last quote from Lessig’s article about how in America there are important people, but in Brazil, everyone is just a citizen. If only we could let go of a bit of our ideology.

****relevant link****
on issues of entitlement:

i posted a picture of myself online and someone took the image and turned it into a lolcat. that's really cool! since i put it up, they're completely entitled to it.

check it out!

June 14, 2007 5:04 PM

Funny Link

This made me laugh, and I wanted to post it. PARTAKE IN ITS LOLNESS!!

On the Fluidity of Online Language

I just started the reading assignments for class on Tuesday and I started with the article about the difference and synthesis of spoken and written language. I'm really pleased to read an article like this, because I've always thought about how the Internet changed the written language. I completely believe that the tone and style of my writing has changed since I started using the Internet (which was a long time ago, mind you) but especially since I started blogging regularly on MySpace in order to build ethnographic writing skills.

When writing papers for class, I tend to think things through quite thoroughly, as suggested by Ferris, but thanks to the Internet, I've developed a much more postmodern tone. My typed words become spoken word, which I find is much more interesting than some of the older, more dry ethnographic works I've read. All in all, I'm fond of my Blog training. Thanks to MySpace's blog managing program, I'm able to see the number of people who read my blog per day, and per week. When I first started writing on a regular basis, I started picking up more readers. Now it's normal for me to get 200 hits on average per week on my blog. Fanfuckingtastic! It feeds both my need for illusion of celebrity, and hones my writing skills. I find what people do and do not like to read about, and I get to focus on things that I find important. Not to mention I get fantastic data to analyze later about what I do and don't find important. What one leaves out is just as important as what one includes.

****relevant link****

http://www.netlingo.com/

This is an online dictionary of internet lingo. Wonder what AWGTHTGTTA means? This site is where you'd want to go to find out.

Online Dating and Other Such Social Communities

Upon moving back onto campus this semester, I went through an interview process to judge if I was ready to do so, as my housing contract had been cancelled my freshman year for certain circumstances. When the interviewer asked me about the extent of my social interactions, the first thing that I thought of was my interactions online.

Granted, I do have real life interactions: I play an open mic in Bowie every Monday night, and I go on dates, hang out with friends, work, and attend classes where I have both friends and acquaintances. However, living in my parents' house created a situation much like the one described in Danah Boyd's talk about MySpace: the space that I lived in was controlled, and the internet was a social meeting place untouchable by my parents.

When I was required to stay in late at night for one reason or another, I was still able to make social connections through AIM, MySpace and theFacebook.

However, Cummings, Butler and Kraut suggest that social connections online are not as strong or viewed as important as actual relationships. This was suggested by my interviewer. I disagree. So long as the relationships one maintains online are with the same people one maintains IRL, they can be just as meaningful. On that same note, online relationships that are formed through other IRL friends can have the same power.

Thanks to past experience, I do not talk to people online that I don't know. However, I am perfectly happy talking to a stranger if it is someone that another of my friends reccommends. Such is the case with many of my long-distance friends who I don't see often. I feel just as close and open to these people as ones that I see offline.

****relevant link****

Microsoft has a new computer system, and it looks pretty neat! There are a few things that I've found wrong with it so far, but it's the beginning of something different and new that will change our social world.

www.microsoft.com/surface

Hey Babe, Take a Walk on the Wild Side.

The anonymity of the Internet creates an especially interesting phenomenon. Like a never ending masquerade ball, any user can behave exactly how they please. MacKinnon makes an interesting point that culturally constructed phenomena such as gender, sexual relations, communities, or in his case, rape, can be changed, avoided, or otherwise manipulated any way a user or community of users see fit.

What are the results of this ability to construct any social situation anonymously? Is the Internet an utopia where anything is possible and all social evils can be eliminated simply by constructing it that way? Probably not. Hegemonized ideology is next to impossible to eliminate; especially when the users of the Internet propagate common thought anonymously in a virtual world. It is the very anonymity that could help to break down current hegemony that supports it. People who have socially unacceptable beliefs (i.e. racism, sexual deviation, white supremacy, drug use, etc) can comfortably discuss these beliefs and create communities around them without any chance of being discovered as social deviants. Any unsuspecting online user might stumble upon these "comfort" groups and find their own comfort quickly stripped from them for their own social status. Also, the members of these groups may choose to leave their anonymity behind and meet IRL, organizing socially unacceptable behavior.

But let's turn to the subject of gender bending. This particular IRL socially unacceptable behavior is overwhelmingly prevalent online. A woman could switch genders to gain power while a man could switch for sexual exploits. Thanks to the text-based format of the Internet, anyone could be anyone. Fantastic.

****relevant link****
on issues of entitlement:

i posted a picture of myself online and someone took the image and turned it into a lolcat. that's really cool! since i put it up, they're completely entitled to it.

check it out!

this link should work

First Blog

Alright! So I made this blog for a class that I'm taking over the summer, but I also think that this'll be a good thing, because I blog *WAYYY* too much on myspace, so now I'll have a place to vent that's not a place where the future workplace can't see. Hehe.

But for now, this is a place where assignments will be done, so I hope all of you internet stalkers enjoy.