It’s not “It”; It’s “Us”

The expansion of the Internet has brought us new wonders and at the same time, new horrors. The acquirement of new technology and access to a vast amount of information on the web seem so wonderful but thinking about these things closely reveals terrors that somehow make us doubt the web.

            Virtual revolution episodes 3 and 4, the Cost of Free and HomoInterneticus , have made me think of the activities I have been doing on the Internet. A lot of people around me had been using the Internet for various purposes and I did not see any harm this has done to them so I used to think that I could use this technology as long as I want, in whatever way that I fancy. That was before I became aware of the consequences of putting and extracting information from the web.

            In this generation, i see a lot of my friends connected on Social Networking Sites from Friendster to Facebook. Signing up in these sites, and any other sites that asks for memberships, requires the user to enter personal information that identifies them as a person. I am aware that the information required is so crucial that it can be used against me by the administrator of the site but I put it in anyway. Other SNS users are not even hesitant to enter whatever information is asked from them. Even there is a "Terms of Agreement" that one must read and check before signing up on a particular site, it is usually ignored. I, myself, just ignore every "Terms of Agreement" because I am too lazy to read the small characters and long document when all I just want is to gain access to the site and to the information and services that I need from the website.

            Stephen Fry said that the reward we get from the internet is so great that whatever the risk is, we try to contain it. I think there is a cathartic feeling in being able to express one's self online that whatever the risk is, people do not mind at all. However, people not minding the risk and people not aware of the risks are two different cases that I think deserve to be looked at.

            The internet is so free and I think there is no way of controlling and regulating it in the near future. A lot of people have access to the web and a lot of information has been stored already. Differences among government policies in different nations also affect the regulation and policing over the internet. If we cannot change the way things go in the internet, then I think, change should first be directed to us, the people who use the web and contribute greatly on its expansion. We should find a way to inform the people of the consequences of our online activities. We should understand what really happens to the information we exchange online. The vast number of adolescents who usually go online or go to internet cafes to access the web may not be fully aware of these consequences.

            Dr. Krotoski posed a question whether the internet enriches or distorts humanity. Maybe I am just a real humanist and I believe that humans are on top of anything, most especially technology. I do not fully subscribe to Marshal McLuhan’s Technological Determinism. Technology can shape our culture only if we let it. The way we interact and communicate changes through time because of the emergence of new technologies but being the creators of this technology, having a higher faculty of thinking than the machines, we should know better up to what extent we can let these technologies shape the way we think, speak and act. If the technology is capable of “shaping” us, then, we too, must be able to reshape the technology and this digital revolution so as to save our humanity.

            Maybe we should focus our vision not on what this digital era is doing to us, rather, we should focus our vision to what we are doing in this generation, what we are doing to this phenomena, what we are doing because of this evolution, and what we should do today and on the coming years of human existence as we continue to co-exist with these technology and inter-connectivity.

Sources:

Virtual Revolution episode 3 The Cost of Free

Virtual Revolution episode 4 Homo-Interneticus

Technological Determinism at http://www.allsands.com/Misc2/technologicalde_ubp_gn.htm

http://news.cnet.com/i/tim/2011/01/19/child.jpg

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/77/197704394_46c3cc1b19.jpg

http://www.worldofstock.com/slides/CON3004.jpg

Pancakes

I grew up with the Internet. I saw how it gained media attention and eventually, media scrutiny. Looking back, I was always passive when using the Internet. I never really thought about what’s going on behind the free space. I never really cared until that time I realized I was using it more than I had to— getting hitched with social-networking sites and I started to rely on Google more than anything in the world.

Episode 3, The Cost of Free, expounded my knowledge on how Internet providers gain profit. I knew advertising was the answer but I never really knew the whole story. It didn’t come to my mind what happens after that. I was only seeing Adam’s finger in the puzzle that is The Creation. Little did I know, there’s so much more to it than I thought there is. All this time, I had been oblivious of the consequences when using the Internet.

I consider myself lucky enough to be part of the transition stage— from the oblivious Internet users to the soon-to-be-well-informed produsers. This now is the turning point of a new Internet age. From the classic html-based websites to the Java-applications that is popping anywhere. I’m glad this transition is happening. But this has got to happen rapidly.

I didn’t know that individual persons using a particular computer could be traced—where a particular user lives, what he does for a living or how many kids one has. However, it’s not just those. It can also track every webpage you have been (and will be) visiting. This makes me think of a project—classifying personality-types based on the websites he/she visits. But wait, somebody else is already doing that! They use these kinds of information and package them in a way presentable to advertisers. The next thing you know, there’s already a stress-relieving vacation package ad smiling at your next Facebook log-in. For every sign up page which requires your name and other personal things, you are gradually decreasing your privacy level. Thinking of the countless social-network sites, fan pages, blog sites and other Internet sign-ups, I think I might just gave up my privacy to the millions of anonymous users out there. Quite creepy.

The World Wide Web is changing the way we live. From the old-school family TV-time comes the new family time which composes of all the family members in one room facing a laptop and typing all the way into cyberspace. This happens in real life. It happened to my family. It reshapes friendships. It reshapes our approach to school. It reshaped almost everything. Everything is reachable. Everything is Google-able. This posts serious setbacks on our social and personal lives. More and more people spend more time on the Internet than spending time with real people hanging out in the offline world. Everyone is unknowingly becoming more impersonal by the day. We have let many people (especially corporations) invade our privacy without us knowing.

It reshapes learning. The Internet generation has been touted as the pancake generation. We have been labeled as the generation who no longer look into and know by heart one area of Interest but we are the people who spread ourselves too thinly in to various fields of interest. That is a reason why Einsteins, Shakespeares and Hemingways do not exist in today’s technological age.

Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach. I seriously think that Internet studies should be offered starting in the primary level education until tertiary levels (there should even be specialized courses too). I have cousins as young as 6 who can already surf through cartoonnetwork.com without parental help. Internet users are becoming younger and younger. This means that the people “sold” by Internet providers are becoming younger and younger, more naïve every year. We should start incorporating Internet studies into the educational system NOW This way, the people exploited using the Internet should decrease to zero. The solution here is not limiting Internet. The Internet isn’t the Internet if there are boundaries. The essence will be lost if that happens. The Internet should not be ceased otherwise—chaos. The World Wide Web should not have boundaries. You don’t burn the whole house in order to roast the pig. The answer here is proper usage and knowledge. Where to start but at the educational systems we already have? Controlling and regulating the Internet is also not the answer. A more complex issue arises—who will control and regulate it? The government? I don’t think so. (Think: Marcos era). So. Let’s. Get. Moving. Everyone should know the real face(s) of the Internet. This way, people are allowed to think for themselves and start acting themselves and start spreading the same message we are trying to communicate. Let the ripple effect continue. Pay it forward.

I have sources!

http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf

http://www.wisegeek.com/who-are-pancake-people.htm

http://www.google.com.ph/imglanding?q=facebook+is+creepy&um=1&hl=tl&tbs=isch:1&tbnid=QQqumEx21bJ3VM:&imgrefurl=http://www.shoeboxblog.com/%253Fp%253D17306&imgurl=http://www.shoeboxblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/facebook-tip.jpg&ei=tcdPTb7_BM7Bce_W9PsF&zoom=1&w=886&h=880&iact=hc&oei=psdPTerZIY3YuAOfxoTjDw&esq=2&page=2&tbnh=175&tbnw=176&start=26&ndsp=18&ved=1t:429,r:8,s:26&biw=1279&bih=680

False Panic: Is the Internet something we should really be afraid of?

It’s just so hyped up right now because it’s something new. It’s something new that’s starting to infect the whole world. As with anything new, people are normally critical, doubtful, scared, curious. About what it can bring and what it can do. We’re just excited. In particular, I think people who have lived most of their lives in a none-digital world before are the ones who have more cynicism for the Internet. But for kids born in the digital age, the so called ‘digital natives’, this is all normal and alright. What the might and fright old people feel about the Internet is something not so big for these kids. Maybe we’re just building something up. Maybe we’re just imagining a monster, when there is really none.

I believe the Internet is something good, and is something that brings more good than bad. I think the doubts about the Internet are from extremist views, and furthermore, are still might be’s as of now. It’s like Stephen Fry’s analogy of the Internet and the car. When the car was new, everyone was terrified with how people die while using it. But cars are still present today.

Analogy

How about the world where there was no television yet. People got their information in more difficult and in slower means. Entertainment on the other hand was obtained infrequently, often in vaudeville shows, or in comics, or in panoramas. When television came in, information was more easily available. Information and entertainment started to be quickly disseminated and broadcasted. I’m sure people had lots of feelings of threat and worry over what the television might bring to people, and true enough there were, and up to an extent there still are; like the TV as becoming the idiot box of teenagers instead of an information medium, the proliferation of junk in TV as they say, the poor regulation of values and morals in television, leading to assumptions that TV has a tendency to corrupt minds, teens spending more time watching TV instead of reading books, making them dumber. I myself experienced this assumption by my parents and relatives. I was a voracious television consumer of cartoons and Disney characters, and later on HBO movies.

But look at how television came out to be now. Is there still anyone scared of those assumptions made out of television? Television has become so normal in our lives already that we aren’t so scared of its implications anymore, partly because maybe over the years, time has proved that television doesn’t make people’s lives abnormal. It’s true that there are good and bad sides of it, and the good thing is that people always grow smart enough to sort out the junk from the valuable. And in the long run, television has helped humanity vastly. It has helped us more than it has hurt us. I believe the same is true with the Internet.

Now television is already regulated in different ways to solve most of the problems about content. I think it’s just a matter of time until the Internet too will be encountering balancing actions to uphold more of what is good above what is bad about the intricacies of the medium.

Depth

More use of the Internet doesn’t mean that the way people think has less depth now. For me, you cannot generalize the effects of the Internet. The effects of the web differ with the differences in people; differences in demographics, social status, educational attainment, age, attitude per se, and web literacy. I believe how the Internet affects individuals are relative to these factors, and to a whole lot more others. In my opinion, there are people who have more depth in their stands and realizations of particular topics because of the Internet. Since the Internet gives people the power to access, almost all parts of a topic, and all related and relevant sides to it, it even helps people make better and more in-depth judgments. Again this is true only to some people, but refutes the negative generalization about how the web affects how we think.

Acceptance

We shouldn’t be scared with the changes the Internet brings. Humanity, life, is that way. People change. Life changes. Culture changes. The change the Internet brings is the same kind of thing television brought before, it’s just a different object now. Like television, the Internet is just a new medium for communication, not to mention that it’s better, faster, more interactive and more accommodating of all formats. People communicated differently before there was television, and we’ve evolved to communicate the way we are now, after it. We wouldn’t have developed this way without the television, radio, telephone, and all the other technological innovations that seemed bizarre then but has lead to so much development now.

Things are naturally progressive. From weak one becomes stronger, from dim one becomes smarter, from foolish one becomes wiser, from slow one becomes faster. We shouldn’t be surprised that the world is heading the faster way. I believe in a world that is faster. When we have reached the fastest, well, maybe things will revert back to being slow. Like how broadcasting developed into narrowcasting, and maybe will revert back to broadcasting again. But, we just have to accept that this is the kind of change we’re having now. So what if this is the change we’re heading to. Are we going stop it? No. We can’t even stop it. We just have to accept it, and maybe learn to use it effectively and more positively than negatively. Regulate it? Yes maybe. But we can’t stop the Internet and the changes it brings. We just have to be ready for it and open to what it can bring. 


Sources:
The Virtual Revolution Episodes 3 & 4
Palfrey, John, G., Born Digital, New York: Basic Books, 2008.


Faith

The Cost of Free

The Virtual Revolution Episode 3 is all about how the web destroys the myth of free internet services. It illustrates how commerce has come to dominate virtually all aspects of web provision, allied to their increasingly sophisticated tactics to gather data/information on all web-users. 

"The Product Online is not the content, the Product online is YOU"- Douglass Rushkoff.

The World Wide Web’s evolution brought great impact to our society. It allows free access to information and gives us the benefit to be easily connected with people around the world. It  also offers us free access to media unlike television and print whereas we need to pay in order to get access with.

As I watched the episode 3 of the Virtual Revolution, I got confused with what was really the cost of this free access .  Is the cost of logging in our social networking sites, higher than the cost we pay for watching a movie inside a movie house? or is it even higher than the cost  we pay for buying a television set?...

The question that confused me a lot was: Is free access to the Internet really for free? 

After I watched the third episode of the Virtual Revolution, I came up with a conclusion that in the web, Nothing is free. 

The internet serves as medium for online business, and we as web consumers are their primary target. Lots of companies around the world are investing on the web to place their products online.

Facebook is one example. As we know, this social networking site is designed to serve as a vehicle for the free flow of information. It serves as the extension of our physical life. It mirrors who we are in the real world to the cyber world. We put our personal profile, our likes and interest, thoughts in mind in this site. Its features also allows us to share information more efficiently. But then again, we must be aware of its downside. What we put in our account are automatically owned by the Web. Meaning, the photos and blogs that we posted, and the videos that we uploaded are all properties of World Wide Web.

 

 

In the episode 3 of the Virtual Revolution it says that our thought and desires expressed on the web are traced, tracked and traded in pursuit of profit. It is very alarming because most of the web users are unaware of this. The web is like a panopticon whereas we are all under surveillance. Here, the prisons are positioned around a tower, whereas they are being watched and guarded by authorities.  The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe prisoners without the incarcerated being able to tell whether they are being watched. 

In the context of the web, we are alike with those prisons that are being observed without being noticed. The web has the power to trace us and access our personal information. As what Doughlass Rushkoff says “The Product Online is not the content, the product online is you” explains that we, the users of the web are the product of the Online World.  How we interact with the applications fed in the internet gives hint to big companies investing their business online of what our interests are. The data from our account is used to target us with advertising catered to our tastes. They then think for strategies to use to promote their products in a subtle way for us to consume without being noticed. These strategies can be seen among various websites wherein all online advertisements are being posted in almost every page. 

According to Alex Krotoski, our online life is a trade. We pay for a free web with the currency of information of who we are as a user. 

We are all consumers of the World Wide Web. Meaning, we are all under its power and surveillance. But then again,  it's up to us whether we resist or not. At this point, the most powerful resistance that we could do is to be responsible and critical of what to put online. 

Sources:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B37wW9CGWyY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5ShMZ0Xy2Q

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2208601394

Posted by: Kath Gabaon

 

Issues of the Web and the Homo Interneticus' Web experience

Photo available here. 

No copyright infringement nor plagiarism intended.

Used here non-commercially, for academic purposes only.

            The Web has offered us a lot of things. We get to meet and socialize with our friends and to our relatives even beyond local or national boundaries; we get to shop even if we are inside our home or in offices; we get to be informed and updated about current events even if we don’t get it from traditional media; and we get to earn degrees even if we do not go to schools or universities to attend hours of lectures. These innovations are not new in the world of the digital natives[1]. These have now been embedded in our culture.  

            These phenomena have been part of us already because we grew up with the Web; however there are still a lot of issues and limitations that are associated with it, as presented in the third and fourth episodes of the Virtual Revolution.

            The first issue is the way we share information. True enough that the Web has opened an avenue to democratize information to everyone who needs it. Personally, the Web has been vital especially to my academics because of it, I can easily access all the information that I needed in a very little span of time and in just a simple click I get all the data I need for a class. But this has its own disadvantage to me because I do not get all the pertinent information that is essential for my course.  The result of my Web behaviour examination maybe true about my being a Web Ostrich which is a fast searcher but does not get accurate results[2]. Another reason maybe because of the internet’s wide range of choices for a searcher, it leaves him at lost with all the available data on the Web.

            The second issue that the Web has as shown in the documentary is that it does not leave a borderline between our public and personal self anymore.

There are a lot of things that people do on the web which are very, very intimate. In a way, you know what somebody’s browsing on the Web, you’ll find out whether somebody is gay and wondering about coming-out, looking other people’s stories… These are all kinds of very, very sensitive things that people do on the web.[3]

            I agree with Sir Tim Berners Lee with his point that we do a lot of things on the web that are very sensitive and very intimate. I believe that it is truly an intrusion to one’s privacy if other people will know your actions within the internet especially if it is unsolicited and worse, the person who uses the web does not have any idea that he is being monitored by somebody. I interviewed some of my friends about their reactions and insights if they were being monitored or surveillance is running while they are surfing the Web, and the result of the interview was against the surveillance. My friend Dane, whose face really turned into awe as I told her about it, said that she cannot believe it. She only thought that Dilnet, the internet provider inside the University of the Philippines Diliman campus, was the only one who can monitor the sites that the students can visit. And that she cannot believe that even at her own personal house, she is still monitored by someone. “Akala ko Dilnet lang ang may kakayahang i-check and mga websites that we visit. I really can’t believe this.Are you really sure, baka naman mali lang source mo,” Dane added during the interview.  

            “In return for a Free Web, our privacy has become a commodity. We are economic units in what has become the new commercial frontier,” said Dr. Aleks Krotoski. I could believe that this is the real happening or the real business on the Web. The documentary said that it is a way for some companies on the Web to determine the needs and to have a clear psychographics of their market and audience. Dr. Krotoski demonstrated in the show how Google scans every message of an individual and how it gives recommendations to you for you to click. And by clicking it, Google earns. According to Dr. Krotoski, that since we are not spending for the services of Google, they need to earn back and through advertising, they earn a relatively very high amount of cash and that it is the cost of free services we get from it.  

             Knowing this from the documentary, I could not believe how I was betrayed by the Web, or by the people behind this phenomenon! All this time I thought my actions on the web are surveillance-free and that I can search about anything and watch almost anything online! What about the things I posted on my blogs?! What about my personal details?! What about my personal photos that should only be kept offline?! I think the most dangerous piece of information that could be traded about me is that my dad owns a lot of guns and weapons of various calibres. These photos were uploaded in one of my accounts in SNSs. Now we are in danger especially if this information is traded to our enemies or to people who are against my dad.

            If I am Google and be able to have this tactic, and for me as a form of revenge for getting this data about me, I will trade the information or even the sites being visited by the Unites States of America President Barack Obama. And that I will trade that information to the country who wanted to have a insight on how to take over the current stature of USA as the most powerful country in the world.

            Another issue presented to us by the documentary The Virtual Revolution is the Web’s power to reshape humanity. The very rampant way on how the Web reshapes humanity is the devaluation of friendship. As Dr. Aleks Krotoski said in the show that Facebook gives friendship a lesser value and importance than what it used to have when it was not yet created.  I think this is true. On this date, I have 2,116 friends in Facebook, and the quarter of it I personally do not know. I do not send as much messages on the Facebook walls of my really close friends, but of classmates and acquaintances yes. Maybe this also agrees with what the author of Here Comes Everybody said that no one has really friends that can reach up to thousands.

            Another fact that was stated in the documentary is that the Web makes us immortal. On one side this is an advantage for us especially to those whose research relies on archives. It is also an avenue to know our roots by this feature, we are free to look at photos that our relatives in the past.

Once it’s on the Web, it is almost impossible to erase. All our interactions on the Web from our Facebook and Twitter status updates, to news that we share with family and friends, to gossip that’s spread about us, will be on line for ever. The web effectively makes us immortal. The upside is that we can live on. There are thousands of dead people who are still receiving updates and even being poked on Facebook. But the downside is that young people, who are growing up in public by living so much of their lives on the web, will have to face living with all their youthful indiscretions that can be accessed by anyone.[4]

            I agree with Dr. Krotoski’s point that it makes us immortal however that it also has disadvantages especially if your credibility and personality is at stake. Blogging, uploading photos and videos, and posting almost anything on your Facebook wall, and tweeting almost every other second maybe a normal activity to do especially in our age today. But do we realize what the implications might lead to when our children and grandchildren saw and read these posts? I do not think so. Maybe we are not informed about this, and we cannot do anything with these posts anymore because according to Professor Nigel Shadbolt of University of Southampton, these remains as our digital fingerprint which is as much as valuable as our genetic fingerprint.[5]

            With these issues, I believe there is a strong need for us to guide and educate our children properly on their internet usage especially those who just use the Web for granted. However, I believe that we should not limit the Web because the real essence or the real purpose of the internet which is to provide unlimited information and data will be diminished. My suggestion will be to just properly educate the users and the ones who guide these users for them to know the advantages and disadvantages of using the Web and that if we have a high level of internet literacy, we then can have no problem with whatever panics it might cause.

---

[1] John Palfrey and Urs Gasser. Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives. (Basic Books; 2008)

[2] Web Behaviour Test by BBC. Read my results at http://upcybernomads.blogspot.com/2011/01/when-my-offline-self-meets-my-online.html.

[3] Tim Berners Lee in episode 3 of The Virtual Revolution

[4] Dr. Aleks Krotoski in the 3^rd Episode of The Virtual Revolution

[5] Interviewed on the 3^rd Episode of The Virtual Revolution