Student: Thomas Harder
Instructor: Prof. Richard Gazan
Course: ICS 691 – Social Computing
Session 2: Assignment 1:
7 Articles and My Free Response
These weeks the reading started to give a more in-depth look at how individuals use Internet SNS and asks the questions; Can SNS address the social interactivity needs of humans? How? To William Galston, in the paper “Does the Internet Strengthen Community?” (Galston 1999), the answer depends on how well the SNS balances the conflicting desires of autonomy and connection. To begin with Galston uses Thomas Bender’s definition of a community and then looks at how the SNS will support the four main characteristics of Limited Membership, Shared Norms, Affective Ties and Mutual Obligation. In conclusion Mr. Galston summarizes that online groups can help individuals but should not be allowed to replace true communities. While I mostly agree with the spirit of Mr. Galston’s article, I still dislike the position that choice and community are competitors and that an individual can only seek one at the expense of the other. I believe that the argument is in how you perceive the little village in Portugal. I believe that more of us in the industrialized world would stay in a little village, if we were ever given the chance. But nowdays, in the “global marketplace” who grows up in a little village?
The second article “Social responsibility and the Web: A Drama Unfolds” by Linton Weeks, highlights how the more things change the more man remains the same; incidentally this is also proof that evolution is unfounded. What amazed me was that for all everyone’s complaints they just didn’t seem flat out ask her if she was okay, or if the child was okay, or if there was anything anyone can do for her. Everyone would have saved themselves a lot of grief if they would have just done the sensible thing, actually cared about her and her child and just asked a simple question. And she should know better in this age of offensensitivity (Yes, I got this word from Bloom County, I hope you are old enough to remember this ), that she was going to get blasted for posting such an “off color” joke.
I didn’t really understand the level of effort that went into the third article. In summary, if you can’t do something it will stress you out, and this will lead to depression. I suppose this is obvious. But I have yet to hear of anyone killing themselves over the fact that they have a hard time finding something on the Internet. More than likely I think the level of stress the Internet causes is a blip on someone’s stress level. I don’t think the study did a real good job at removing life’s other stressors, which I think would have a greater impact on an individual. If one places ones ego on their ability to do everything well, they are very likely to be depressed.
I found that I could agree with the first sentence of the fourth article “Strategies for a Discontinuous Future” by Umair Hague (Hague 2006), that is “bloggers blog too much”. But the article took a turn to decipher the definitions of usefulness and creativity. The author state that “usefulness is the enemy of creativity” and this is flat out nonsense. The author gives no examples to prove his point and this, in my opinion, destroys the authors’ creditability immediately. I believe that usefulness and creativity if properly draw would be perpendicular.
These weeks the reading started to give a more in-depth look at how individuals use Internet SNS and asks the questions; Can SNS address the social interactivity needs of humans? How? To William Galston, in the paper “Does the Internet Strengthen Community?” (Galston 1999), the answer depends on how well the SNS balances the conflicting desires of autonomy and connection. To begin with Galston uses Thomas Bender’s definition of a community and then looks at how the SNS will support the four main characteristics of Limited Membership, Shared Norms, Affective Ties and Mutual Obligation. In conclusion Mr. Galston summarizes that online groups can help individuals but should not be allowed to replace true communities. While I mostly agree with the spirit of Mr. Galston’s article, I still dislike the position that choice and community are competitors and that an individual can only seek one at the expense of the other. I believe that the argument is in how you perceive the little village in Portugal. I believe that more of us in the industrialized world would stay in a little village, if we were ever given the chance. But nowdays, in the “global marketplace” who grows up in a little village?
The second article “Social responsibility and the Web: A Drama Unfolds” by Linton Weeks, highlights how the more things change the more man remains the same; incidentally this is also proof that evolution is unfounded. What amazed me was that for all everyone’s complaints they just didn’t seem flat out ask her if she was okay, or if the child was okay, or if there was anything anyone can do for her. Everyone would have saved themselves a lot of grief if they would have just done the sensible thing, actually cared about her and her child and just asked a simple question. And she should know better in this age of offensensitivity (Yes, I got this word from Bloom County, I hope you are old enough to remember this ), that she was going to get blasted for posting such an “off color” joke.
I didn’t really understand the level of effort that went into the third article. In summary, if you can’t do something it will stress you out, and this will lead to depression. I suppose this is obvious. But I have yet to hear of anyone killing themselves over the fact that they have a hard time finding something on the Internet. More than likely I think the level of stress the Internet causes is a blip on someone’s stress level. I don’t think the study did a real good job at removing life’s other stressors, which I think would have a greater impact on an individual. If one places ones ego on their ability to do everything well, they are very likely to be depressed.
I found that I could agree with the first sentence of the fourth article “Strategies for a Discontinuous Future” by Umair Hague (Hague 2006), that is “bloggers blog too much”. But the article took a turn to decipher the definitions of usefulness and creativity. The author state that “usefulness is the enemy of creativity” and this is flat out nonsense. The author gives no examples to prove his point and this, in my opinion, destroys the authors’ creditability immediately. I believe that usefulness and creativity if properly draw would be perpendicular.
This would give you 4 quadrants and is a more likely valid way of categorize things, into useful and creative items. There are many useful and highly creative things, and this leads me to believe that the author may be suffering from a stunted definition of creative.
The fifth article Albrechtslund, Anders “Online Social Networking as Participatory Surveillance.” ( Albercthslund 2008); highlighted the fact that whatever is put on the net, maybe on the net forever, and it might come back to haunt an individual. Because this information is “out there” it can be viewed by friends and family, or the government, snoops and criminals. I found this particularly true on all of the sites I viewed. Many sites have profiles that can be locked, but nevertheless this information is stored somewhere. Typically this type of data resides on in a database (Oracle or SQL Server) and this database could be hacked or mined. I posted another item that discusses a recent hacking of a database, and while the critical information was believed to be still secure, how could anyone believe that since the company was vulnerable to attack? Furthermore the company admitted that the information taken could be used in phishing attacks. Additionally the article stressed the concepts of hierarchical and lateral surveillance. The most interesting is lateral surveillance, that is peer-to-peer monitoring. People use this technique to “fit in”. The observe and mimic others speech and behavour in order to not appear to be the new guy.
“Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism” by Christine Rosen (Rosen 2007) was an interesting read. She used the d word, democratic. I am not sure I understand what is meant by calling this information democratized or democratic. In fact I looked up democratic and from the definitions I found no plausible interpretation. I strongly suggest that this word be dropped or better explained. I liked the major idea that connection has become big business, it has. And after spending 20 hours on Facebook, MySpace and Second Life, I liked her idea “of a conventional individuality, of distinctive sameness.” I found myself quickly bypassing anything that was, in my opinion, gaudy and overdone. It was exciting to see a simple or well crafted page, and I think this says a lot (positive) about the person who created it. I should point out that beauty is in the eye of the beholder so perhaps I was not the intended target of the gaudy and overdone. Ms. Rosen also stressed that the idea of a change in the meaning of the word “friendship”. This idea was pointed out in earlier articles, and Ms. Rosen takes a slightly different tack, however the message bears repeating that these new friendships are not likely to have the same depth as real life connections.
I didn’t get much out of Ryan Bigge’s article “The Cost of (Anti-) Social Networks: Identity, Agency and Neo-Luddites" (Bigge 2006). Perhaps it was written at too high a social science level, I am in Computer Science and have very little desire to change my profession. But I had a very hard time drawing a point to his article. The best I could come up with is that Mr. Biggie believes that SNS’s will evolve into haves and have not’s, that is you either have a site or you don’t, and that just seems so obvious to me, that it is barely worth mentioning.
Finally, I would like to know; what does Danah Boyd have against capital letters?
References
Galston, William A. (1999). Does the Internet Strengthen Community? In Elaine Ciulla Kamarck and Joseph S. Nye, Jr. (eds.), Democracy.com? Governance in a Networked World. Hollis, NH: Hollis Publishing Co.
http://www.puaf.umd.edu/IPPP/fall1999/internet_community.htm
Weeks, Linton (2009). Social Responsibility and the Web: A Drama Unfolds. 8 January 2009. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99094257
LaRose, R., M.S. Eastin and J. Gregg (2001). Reformulating the Internet Paradox: Social Cognitive Explanations of Internet Use and Depression. Journal of Online Behavior 1(2). http://www.behavior.net/JOB/v1n2/paradox.html
Hague, Umair (2006). Usefulness and The Banality of Business. (Bubblegeneration Strategy Lab blog post). http://www.bubblegeneration.com/2006/03/usefulness-and-banality-of-business.cfm
Albrechtslund, Anders (2008). Online Social Networking as Participatory Surveillance. First Monday 13(3). http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2142/1949
Rosen, Christine (2007). Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism. The New Atlantis 17, 15-31. http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/virtual-friendship-and-the-new-narcissism
Bigge, Ryan (2006). The Cost of (Anti-) Social Networks: Identity, Agency and Neo-Luddites" First Monday 11(12). http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1421/1339
Posts
I want to add some comments to what you said about Albrechtslund's article. First, even in the dark, cold server rooms in which all of the customers' personal data are stored, their information is vulnerable to those who operate the servers. Yes, the disgruntled DBA can simply copy and paste the corporate database onto his or her thumb drive and do whatever he or she pleases with it; definitely, there are measures that companies have put in place to make certain that this scenario never happens. Also, I am sure that because the company that you mentioned admitted to what had happened, and depending on the size of the company and its influence on the market, the consequences of this event could have a ripple effect in both the business and socio-computing worlds; not only would employees lose their jobs but also relationships could be reconstructed from the data, which could be used to track down people. Second, regarding peer-to-pear monitoring, not only do people mimic others' speech and behavior just to fit in but also they tend to sometimes stretch the truth. (I take "mimicking speech" to mean the style of writing, so in this case, "stretching the truth" is different from imitation.) Of course, that is the beauty of the Internet because no one will ever know the truth, except for big corporations and the U.S. Government. :)
ReplyDeleteBJ,
ReplyDeleteIn security classes, you learn that insiders are a more dangerous threat to a companies information assets then outsiders. The reason is that they have already by-passed many of the physical security layers. This is a very valid point you raise.
Regards, Tom