Learning, With New Technologies

 An interesting article by Levy, Nardick, Turner & McWatters in the recent issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education's Digital Campus talks about the stress technology imposes to students. Of course the standard story with learning is that you're doing your homework and at the same time surfing the Web searching for news you don't really care about, Skyping, MSNing, checking your mail, listening to music and, well, just hanging on Facebook. Maybe one should also add YouTubeing. In fact I'm doing it right now, multitasking I believe it is called, but you can call it time wasting if you prefer; and I must admit I was doing it every time while I was reading and critically assessing the articles for the assignments, doing tool experiences and all other stuff for the New Media course.

That's why in May I started to print out the articles, going to a cafe place and reading them there. To my surprise it took me astounding little time to read them. :o And somehow like I understood them better. The trouble was transfusing that to a digital written form. Once again I found myself multitasking. There's just no escape!

But that comes, like the authors of the article say, with being a member of the Net Generation. Many students today are in fact aware and are concerned with the role of new technologies in their lives. A study they conducted on 300 students at six colleges shows that students are aware of, and seemingly frustrated by, the amount of time they spend online. Many of them feel pressure and are stressed out. "I don't have a coping mechanism, there are so many things: e-mail, personal e-mail, texting, news." one of the students said.

And it's true, oh how it's true! Time management isn't a merit of the Net Generation. Especially considering the limitations of a 24 hour day and the amount of stuff you have to do. How can you not comment on a friend's photo, look up what's happening in Manchuria, or see a new You Tube sensation that everyone's talking about?

So is it all a waste of time? Not necessarily, as another Digital Campus article shows new technologies can lead to fascinating results. David Silver describes his experience with online education. In his course Green Media, about making media about making food, he asked his students to go Twitter and tweet and check their classmates' tweets about the course. He states three reasons for Twitter; first it's a public account and the larger Tweeter community has access to their work and the larger the potential readership is the better the student's works are; second, tweeting under their real names makes them more responsible for their work; and third it simplifies course management replacing classroom technologies.

The results of the class were, as Silver puts it, exciting. Not only were the students thrilled the openness of Twitter as a public network made ti possible for the project to reach and inspire audiences. That's how Katherine Harris from San Jose State University learned about this project and integrated it to her own class. An example how sharing and openness nature of the Net can be beneficial.

In the end it's simply a matter of the viewpoint. As with everything else so with learning technologies and online education. New possibilities make new threats, but also new opportunities. Don't underestimate but don't also overestimate the Web, as in everyday life so in your learning environment, try to do your best. :)

Yes, It Leaks

Balkan Leaks is an interesting initiative which emerged from WikiLeaks. Although mainly addressing issues in Bulgaria other interesting documents can be found. 

Welcome

[bulgarian cyr] [serbian cyr] [serbian lat]

Dear friends,

Following the example of the whistleblowers site Wikileaks we opened this site to promote transparency and fight the nexus of organized crime and political corruption in the Balkan states.
We are deeply convinced that we're not alone in this battle. There are plenty of people out there that want to change the Balkans for good and are ready to take on the challenge. We're offering them a hand.
If you have any confidential documents related to political, criminal or financial topics and you want to share them with the press in a secure, anonymous way, you can use our secured and encrypted upload server. We will review the documents and publish them after checking the information.
To submit just follow those simple steps:

1. Download and install the Tor Browser Bundle for your system.
2. Launch the Tor browser and connect to our tor enabled server: http://4loue2imox5prywc.onion/upload/index.php
3. Wait! Tor is secure, but slow :-( If it really takes too long to join the page reload the tor browser. 
4. Upload the files and disconnect.

Tor is working in such a way that nobody, including the administrators of the site can't guess who is the real submitter.
Tor offers a pretty high level of security and anonymity, but if you wish to do even better follow the recommendation:

• do not use your home or work internet connection for submitting;
• use a public, password free WiFi point;
• if possible, use a VPN connection to a server outside your home country.

Please, respect the following requirements for your uploads:

• Upload only documents which are either:
  • not available in the public space or
  • are in the public space but reveal data not known from previous journalistic investigations.
• Please, join a short description of your uploads;
• Name and number the documents in a comprehensive way;
• Do not upload opinions and allegations without document proofs.

Please, prefer the PDF format.
Thank you for your contribution.

The Balkan Leaks team

Sony and the IT Pirates

Ambroise Garneray Kent battling Confiance

In the 16th and 17th century piracy was at is peak. With enormous wealth being transported from America to Spain pirates in the Caribbean saw a significant source of profit. As if this wasn't enough Spain also had the Barbary Corsairs in the Mediterranean to fear. People of that period surely had to sympathize with the Habsburgs as today's people surely sympathize with Sony.

When Sony announced a breach in the PlayStation Network on April 26th 75 million users were surprised, shocked and indignant. They admitted "a compromise of personal information as a result of an illegal intrusion on its systems". This meant personal information (names, addresses, etc.), account information (login names, passwords, transactional histories) and even credit card information of 75 million Sony costumers are in a place were there shouldn't be.

This is inconvenient both for the company and for their costumers. Yet the damage is not that big as media would have you believe. Analysts predict $ 3 million a week loss in profit plus whatever they need to give to restore trust (predicted to cost less than $ 50 million). For a $ 88 billion a year revenue company "that's hardly back-snapping" as Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter puts it.

There is a naive opinion that a corporation of such extend as Sony was not prepared for a situation like this. In the end the circumstances are fairly simple, the company decided to save money because the probability of a breach like this to happen and its financial impacts were evaluated as small.

If you need someone to sympathize with perhaps a better choice are the users of the PSN? Of course IT piracy seems more drastic than other forms of information mining but all is fair in love and war. It is absurd to mix emotions and business. People should be aware that the minute they give their information to some IT service they risk its abuse. That is why there are protocols of credit card theft. Corporations have been monitoring e-mails, personal websites and SNS profiles for a long time in order to get valuable information for themselves. In the world of business there are only interests. 

Honestly I can't see why a situation like this caused so much media fuss. Business intelligence has been around for decades. Costumer information is the new gold.

If you are a PSN user the question is how to protect yourself form IT pirates in the future? Of course you could use a alias, fake username, fake address and someone elses credit card but the actual solution is far more simple. You can learn it from history, when Spain is down turn to France/England or in this case just buy an X-box. :) Chances are they already bought your information.

Does Mickey Mouse Hate the Internet

Mickey Mouse© is getting pretty old. Animators Walt and Ub created "him" in 1928, "he" debuted in the animated movie Steamboat Willie and over the years was featured in a number of movies but became most famous for being the official icon of the Walt Disney Company. Although "he" was "born" on the 18th of November 1928 "he" is still protected by copyright, at least until 2023. This means that for example any copying of a picture of Mickey© is illegal. For instance if you would follow the hypertext above to the site and you would click the picture with the right button of your mouse, having shown the toolbar you would go to Copy Image which saves a copy of it on your computer, you would be doing a felony against WD and his Company. Even worse if you would print it on your shirt.

In the US copyright was regulated within the Copyright Act of 1976 under which copyright lasted 50 years after the authors death. With the so called "Mickey Mouse Protection Act" (officially the Copyright Term Extension Act) from 1998 copyright terms in the US were extended for 20 years having now 70 years after the authors death or 95 years after publication. A similar bill was passed in the EU with copyright also lasting 70 years. There should be no doubt that that before 2023 there will be another Copyright Term Extension Act.

Copyright is as the word says the right to copy which is by law given to the author. Only he, or a subject given authorisation by him, can make copies of certain material. This was spouse to encourage further development and creativity and it had its logic appliance in the material world. But with the coming of the cyber-era in the institution of copyright entered problems.

Certainly there can't be a person who uses the Internet who has never violated copyright material. Even if one does not wish to engage in peer-to-peer sharing. Just by taking a picture that you liked and copying it you could of not knowingly violated someone's copyright.

Mickey and Friends

On the one hand you can argue that the institution itself is pointless because society and creativity never benefited from it. Yes someone would became rich but how does that benefit society. As John Oswald sad "if creativity is a field, copyright is the fence". Following the story of shared economy one may be fain to see the Internet as a bearer of a new kind of sharing activity. Copyright does not fit in there, or does it? The anti-copyright movement is based on information technology and so far the law is having major difficulties in catching (up with) it. Yet one should not underestimate The Mickey Mouse Company (and Friends), the only thing that is micky mouse about it is their mascot.

The Case for Collaborative Consumption

I recently stumbled on this video on TED Talks.

http://www.ted.com

Rachel Botsman talks about collaborative consumption. Her main argument is that technology is enabling trust between strangers. New media has enabled us to mimic the ties that happened face-to-face on a cyber level. Social networking sites and real time technologies are taking us back. After all we are primates and it is in our nature to share. We are widening our world to share which is creating an economy of "what's mine is yours". She calls this collaborative consumption.

From this notion emerges the concept of reputation capital which is going to became more and more important in the future.

So is this spouse to signal the end of capitalism as we know it, or is this just a variant of production capitalism? But them where is the production, or is this the final shift from production to consumption, a line capitalism was following. Hmm? I'll let you decide for yourself. Certainly this takes consumption to a new form.

New Signatures

Leaving a comment on a blog post can be a strange occasion. There are always people who are fain to leaving their comments. As if their opinion mattered. Some comments are good some are bad, some are compliments some are insults, some try to be humorous some are serious... There are all kinds of comments but the thing they have in common is the fact that you never know the people who writhe them. The chat-room, news portal, blog and You Tube comments are anonymous. Yes people can be signed with their real names but that does not help much because you do not know the person.

A famous literate compared these comments to the ones people leave in public toilets. He was right they are the same. If you look at their meanings and rhetoric you can not separate ones from the others. They are all written in the same sphere both private and public.

Although it was meant so the comparison is not necessarily negative. People express themselves in various ways. The trouble is not knowing who is behind the writhing. It is a situation like when you change your mobile telephone device and lose your contacts list so now you are communicating with a number. When you know who is behind the number (who it belongs to) you can communicate appropriately. When you do not...

One of the problems in modern communication is that you can never be sure who is on the other side. This is not a new problem in communications. In history that is why people started using signatures and stamps. The signature is a very powerful tool. It means the person is behind the statements. When you sign your name you validate what is written. Even today the traditional signature is a much desired institution. Its notability can be best regarded in the legal system.

In online communication that is anonymous you do not know who is behind the words. That is why such statements can be loose and rude but it gives the liberty to say something what otherwise might not been said. Whether this is good or bad is not the question. Some people have the need to express something they can not stand behind. It should not be taken to seriously. Serious comes with a signature and a stamp.

Still when you communicate with someone you need to have some assurance your communicating with the right person. This is a trouble new media struggled with a long time. How do you stand behind something in an online environment. Is online communication doomed to frivolity. Because serious comes with a signature.

That may be the reason why more and more people are attracted to communication through social network sites. What is a SNS profile if not a signature. It is not just signed by the profile information but by visual material and a contact network. In other words on MySpace, Facebook... your friends list stands behind you confirming your identity.

As do Donath and Boyd write "public displays of connection present the center of identity performance and are typically viewed as a signal of the reliability of one's identity claims" (2006: 73).

So how can posting a comment on a blog be a strange occasion. When you recognize someone you know from a comment in a strange place, on a blog you even did not know the other person reads. When you read the signature although it isn't there. It happened to me once on a popular blog, not a place were you would expect to find someone you know. I read the comment and thought "it's like ... wrote this, that's his thinking". The strange thing was it later turned out to be true.

Why Do People Write Blogs?

There are some people who get paid for writing blogs. Mostly they are journalists but it's not a necessity. They have agreements in which their obligations are agreed. In it it's said that they have to post something every week, or twice a week... That it has to have so many words and other editorial stuff of witch I'm not familiar with. It is a contract between an employer and an employee because that is what they are. The people who write these blogs are doing journalistic work. They might be talented and it might be fun and they might enjoy it but it is still paid work.

If they worked for a printed newspaper and not let's say a news portal their blogs would be called columns and they would not be bloggers but columnists. After all how different is a blog from a column. The main difference is that in a blog you get to leave a comment at the end if you want, but basically we can talk about a blog as it were a column.

So if we have agreed  upon a blog being  an internet column and if we've agreed that some people get paid for writing them then the following question emerges. What about all others? What about all the bloggers who do not get paid?

Well I do not get paid for writing this blog (maybe I should :D) but since it's a course requirement it can still be classified as work. So everyone else, who is not a professional blogger or a student of the New Media and Society course, people who write blogs recreationally, why do they write them?

As ungrateful as it is to go and generalize  individual motives on a macro-level perhaps that is exactly what should be done. Or not.

Instead an experiment can be proposed. Select any blog service and search for a random blog. Do not go to the suggested blogs just pick a random blog. After that pick another... What can be induced from the results?

Well I did the experiment. I selected a blog service by writing "blog" on Google and went with the first one which was Blog.com. Then I wrote the first thing I thought of on the search bar. :)

  Source: http://blog.com/search/?qs=me

I got 101 320 results but followed the first one and learned "why you shouldn't eat Parrot Fish" at Reef-World Blog.

Then I wrote the next thing that I thought of and got 3 233 results.

Source: http://blog.com/search/?qs=bored

Well this is an interesting blog. I found out what is one of three bad dreamer's new years resolutions  at Only boring people get bored.

Then I selected the option Random Blog and got John Kendall who asked me "did I draft my terminal tweet".

...

As someone recently said the "desire is the limit" but this is enough for illustration. Now it is your turn.

These are my results.Feel free to check them out and learn "why you shouldn't eat Parrot Fish".

• http://reefworld.blog.com
• http://ibadreamer.blog.com
• http://funnymusic.blog.com
• http://johnkendal.blog.com

What can bee induced from all this? Only that for what ever reason they write them people like writing their own columns. I know this because there are so many blogs.