Keith Demele's Blog

The Journalism group for our EMAC 2321 presentations assigned all students in the class to write a blog which turned a scene from a movie into a news article, using the inverted Pyramid writing structure…Here we go, its just a movie!

Two men, separated by distance and the impervious cloud of radiation falling upon them both, converse on the only two radios still known to be in existence. When does not matter, where, was of no use anymore. All that could be related were the facts. Joe Huxley advised Dr. Oaks that the radiation was still holding at 50 rads per hour, a dangerous level. He thought the radiation from the nuclear bombs would have demolished by now, days after the world ended, so it must have meant they were taking the fallout radiation from the titan missile bases west of them.

When would it be safe? It would never be safe to venture out of their fallout shelters. Unless the radiation fell below acceptable rates, 2 rads an hour…If and when they could emerge and begin to rebuild their destroyed lives and society, was unknown.

The lines and mobs waiting at the hospital entrances were unbearable, as people died left and right, casualties from an all too unintimate battle, the lucky few who had access  to care were left wondering what was going to happen, what hope was left remaining? A pregnant woman ready to deliver her child is quoted as saying:

“Hope for what? What do you think is going to happen out there? You think we’re going to sweep up the dead and fill in a couple of holes and build some supermarkets? You think all those people left alive out there are going to say, “Oh, I’m sorry. It wasn’t my fault. Let’s kiss and make up”? We knew the score. We knew all about bombs, we knew all about fallout. We knew this could happen for forty years. But nobody was interested.”

Nobody was interested, peace sells, but no one is buying…Only time will tell who lives and dies, there is no survival of the fittest when radiation is cooking you from the inside out. Only time.

Lets face it, most of us are plugged in nowadays. It’s an automatic thing, it goes along with living in our utopian 2009 society. In some form or another, we are all online and in the open. Even my ancient grandmother is online nowadays, stocking her grand children and finding out what we are up to.

For some, particularly the young urban populous, this is not a big deal…Where they go, who they know, who they are in relationships with, and what they are doing hour by hour is not considered private anymore. Is this OK? Many choose to be much more private than this, they do not wish to be out there, or as my non-computer literate business parter would say “deployed in the ecto-cyberwizard multiverse, shazbot nanu-nanu nanu-nanu”.

Some are concerned about personal information being on the web, some simply want to be a tiny blip on the human-radar. Whatever their reason, they are concerned about their privacy, they will not post their information.But why? It’s out there, a simple free background check, or search on your favorite search engine can yeild most personal information, a twenty dollar background check and search your criminal record, your credit, and even who your neighbors were, 20 years ago!

So, are users overly concerned about privacy?

In my opinion, yes. But no…bottom line, users need to face the music…It’s out there. In my opinion, although admittedly being a testosterone filled, scared of nothing, 21 year old male, my opinion is you really have nothing to actually loose nowadays. I feel the best option is transparency.

However, the topic of transparency on the web is not a simple black and white issue. One big issue when I think about privacy on the web, particularly with social networks, such as Facebook, is stalking. For many, this is not an issue, but I can see it being an issue for folks like females and celebrities. Stalking seems to come with the internet territory however. If this is an issue for you, well, your justified in becoming more private…Another major issue I see is the blur between personal and professional lives when posting personal information on the web…

I feel that one should have a separation of personal and professional life. It’s healthy. I do not feel like you should be held to the same standards you hold in the work place 24/7. If you want to post photos from a crazy weekend in Vegas, well, not Vegas, what happens in vegas, stays in Vegas. But if you want to post photos from a fun weekend in Mexico, you should be able too, without it having consequences for you in the workplace, or, at school. I feel that this blurring line between personal and professional life is a major threat today. You can find several issues in the news about students or employees who have had disiplinary measures taken for stuff they have posted online. In some instances yeah, I can see it being an issue…However if its personal it shouldnt matter.

I suppose thats the real privacy concern on the internet today…

Youtube, can you remember the internet without it? Yeah, it was a better place, was it not? I argue that youtube does nothing but plaster the web with wtf, yes, wtf. I know Keen’s got my back on this.

The fact is Youtube is a petri dish for uncensored grovel on the web, take a look at any comments for any video youtube and you will no doubt see a slury of pointless crud throwing.

Take for example, the most popular video of all time on youtube:

Charlie Bit my finger, no, not any video relating to world news, or anything of value, but at least its better than a music video or something utterly retarded like people dancing on treadmills…

Anyway, take a look at the coments on the video…

“cause ur stupid dumb? ass”

and

“u r gay”

and the classic

“u suk dik a$$ cunt biiitch. whire”

Is this the decline of western civilization? I believe so. What does the flooding of comments like these say about our society, are these 10 year old kids, or are they adults? It’s a scary thing. I am sure the creators of youtube, Steve Chen and Chad Hurley, did not intent the comment system to drove into this sludge…Honestly, I don’t know what to say about it, other than I honestly think that these people, as well a spammers, should be shot, hung, drawn, and quartered!

EDIT: Apparently, Youtube DOES censor and edit some of these comments, the bad ones seem to disappear…I suppose because this is the most popular video on youtube, but still…Bad, go look at others…

In an effort to get us to contribute to the wikipedia project, our assignment for this weekend was to edit an entry on wikipedia. I’ve actually contributed a thing or two to the project before, but none the less this is a neat assignment wich I feel probably makes my fellow classmates feel like they can contribute to something important…rather than just being an end user on another website.

Lets get down to Brass tax, due to circumstances outside of my control, my edits have been removed due to mass vandalism by my classmates, but allas, the assignment was to post and edit and see if it stuck, so heres what I posted…

First, I edited some of the descriptions on the motocross page, if you log in now and read them they are rather, bland, I elaborated on them a little bit, knowing that each section did have its own page…

My other edit was to the socialism page, specifically the section on the United States, well, I put something in there about the Obama administration and…

Not only were all of my edits removed, the edit from Socialism was removed and there was not even a history record of it (that takes a pretty high level of administration to do). Apparently, the Wiki admin removed all wiki edits made by the class. A great exercise in using our online voices professor!

We have all heard of Wikipedia by now, the free online community driven encyclopedia? If not, climb out from under the rock you are under and go check it out.. wikipedia.org

Anyway, Wikipedia has an NPOV (Neutral Point of View) policy, which states that every post must be made from a nutral point of view, that is to say, the content should be posted without bias and represented fairly from both sides of the argument, if there is one.

For our EMAC 2321 assigment today, the Professor wants us to look at a controvercial article and see wiether or not the editors and writers of the article upheld the NPOV at all times…There are the same old controvercial topics such as Obama, Global warming, 9/11, ect but lets look at something a little less mainstream…Lets look at the G20 (Group 20) summit protests in Pittsburgh..Protests that got no coverage on the news, no coverage in the papers, and hardly any coverage, even on wikipedia.

At first glance, the summit page looks rather dull: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_G-20_Pittsburgh_summit

The protest section is a rather minimal coverage over the three days of protests that took place during the summit.

The first section on the discussion page of the article happens to be Neutrality, and the first like on the page hits us with this quote:

As most articles that are about and created by the political Left, this article seems to be prone to bias. Please keep a neutral tone and remember that wikipedia is not a soap box

Which Ironically strikes me as being bias. However, lets evaluate how the editors approached a single aspect of the protest, one being the sources of information…

A user named “YardsGreen” comes forward and says:

the previous version included a distorted timeline and a curious insistence that the demonstration was peaceful

Then another user named “Dr. Cash” comes in and says:

what you put is NOT an accurate representation of what actually happened. ….. Stop trying to change this. I was there. I know what happened.

Another user “Blackngold29″ finally chimes in and says

Be careful though, personal experiences mean nothing if you can’t cite it to a reliable source

I believe these are good indications that civility and NPOV without bias is withheld in the article, any questionable material is reverted.

Although the wikipedia page is only a few paragraphs, have a look at these videos, they say much more than is said on the wikipage…

While I do not agree with the protesters anti-capitalism message, I respect their first amendment rights, and these videos are EXTREMELY harrowing, however I suppose that is another post…

Another EMAC 2321 assignment, The Professor wants us to find an article on a twitter which inplicitly suggests something…

So, take a look at this article from Tech Crunch on the Washington Post website regarding Twitter and link tracking.

Erick Schonfeld from TechCrunch.com tells us about how Twitter seemed to be implementing a sort of link click counting script witch he speculates is going to be used to tell where twitter is sending traffic. He goes onto say that although implemented in a fairly sloppy manner, such a link tracking tool could be useful, not only for them, but he says:

“All of this data would come in handy for Twitter’s planned analytics service it wants to roll out to business customers.”

This implies that he believes twitter will be mining personal data for demographic purposes being used in a new, more commercial twitter that we haven to quite seen yet. Schonfeld is implicitly saying that twitter will be collecting data on your browsing habits without your knowledge…

In our EMAC 2321 class we have been talking about Piracy on the internet, pros, cons, legal issues, all the normal conversation when the topic switches to piracy…But, I want to know how the artists or companies that are getting ripped off feel about it, who wins, who looses, why is it such a big issue?

Just an interesting note, before I begin, its very interesting to see how many of my classmates seem to have no concept of the business roll of the record or distribution company, many (admitted illigal downloaders) simply see these companies as being bad, out to take their money and nothing else. It’s a cut and dry issue for many of my generation.

To save me from having to write a book, and to save you from having to read a book, lets limit our discussion to the music industry. Both record labels, and artists.

First, lets look at the artist. The way the music industry is structured, the only real way for a band to become successful is to get signed to a major label, In order for a band to get signed to a major record label, they must sign over the rights for their music. The artist gets signed onto the label, the label compensates the artist for the rights to the music, plus whatever else is in the contract, then the label prepares and distributes the music into record stores and mp3 distribution services (like itunes) alike. Now, the artist only gets a sliver of the profits from the actual sale of music, after the physical cost of distribution, and the record label getting their cut, the artist only gets a very small fraction of each sale. Most artists will tell you they make their bread and butter on concerts and stuff like T-shirts and apparel, so they don’t feel the hit from piracy as much as the record labels do. Many are just happy their music is being heard!

Watch this clip:

Formatting wont help, but I would get a good laugh out of it…

Last week, in Emac2321, we had a class discussion/lecture about the concept of the  Panopticon. A Panopticon can be described as a building which has been designed to allow an observer to observe all occupants without the occupants awareness when they are actually being watched. They know they could be being watched, however they do not know exactly when they are being watched.  A man named Jeremy Bentham came up with the concept in 1785, originally for prisons.

The therory behind the Panopticon, says that the observed behave because they cannot tell when they are being watched. In the case of a prison, a guard, or guards, are placed in the center of a prison, and can observe each cell, however, the prisoners cannot tell when a guard is looking at them. Here is a photo of an early penopticon in cuba:(via wikedia)

The internet cannot actually be a penopticon, its not a building, however, the internet plays a vital life in forming the penopticon of the 21’s century. In the 21st century, the concept of the penopticon is what matters. Society depends and is build upon this theory.

How does the internet aid in building the penopticon of the 21st century?

Up until the last two or three decades or so, people were generally trusted to do the right thing.Technologies were not actively being developed to track and monitor peoples every move. Businesses and government really simply depended on confident researchers and detectives to find out about their customers/people. People were trusted to do the right thing, because it was the thing to do. Crimes were considered mostly in relation to social class. Much simpler times, I would argue.

But then, an interesting thing happened. Someone decided a more pro-active approach to  keeping tabs on people was needed, so it was developed. I know I am lumping the spheres of crime prevention and government oversight together but it will have to do, anyway, along came technologies being used in mainstream such as the die packs and metal detectors and the mentality of crime prevention changed dramatically. No longer was it, “you might get caught”, it was now a get “caught and everyone will know” kind of deal. People switched from the direct mentality of “its wrong to steal” to “I will get caught if I steal”. They know the dye packs will go off if they leave the store without paying for the product, if the products have them. Here in lies the penopticon effect…The ever hovering threat of getting punished.

Flash forward to today, and now Big brother is watching. Technologies such as Radio frequency identifiers, closed circuit television circuits, and GPS-Enabled phones are able to track our every move. You are being watched from every angle, every moment of the day. As a consumer, you know you are being watched, and will get caught if you steal.

But, how much information are they actually gathering on you? Are you ready for this? They know everything. Yes, even that thing you did the other night in that place, someone was watching you on a camera. Scary right? Every time you use your credit card, your being tracked, every time you use your cell phone, your being tracked. This information is made available, its a very scary thing.

Ok, so, the government can see all of this, but how much can you find out about someone else? It depends on your budget and time allowance, but pretty much anything, just a few dollars will buy you a very deep background check, and some query into some medical databases can yield your entire medical history, If your willing to break some laws, you can even get someones credit card statements. You can find anything about anyone, literally.

Yeah yeah, this isn’t quite new, this kinda stuff has been around for a few years now, so most know about it, but how does the internet help create this penopticon illusion? The better question is, how does’nt it? Without it, you would have to pull some strings to get all of this information, the internet.

Like it or not, someone knows every dirty secret you keep, they know your name, your phone number, your emails, yes, even your secret email account, they know where you live, where you work, when you usually talk on your phone, where you spend your money. There is no hiding anymore.

As a take home assignment for emac2321, we were to watch this video of Clay Shirkey at the 2008 Web 2.0 Expo, talking about Cognitive Surplus and how we can put it to use…I encourage you to watch it:

In summary, Shirkey says that society has a cognitive surplus, a mass amount of brain power that goes unused and utilized. In the past, nobody recognized it, or knew how to use it,  it was masked by the sweet taste of Gin and by billions of hours spent infront of the family television. He says society is trapped watching TV, in the ways of the past. He argues that instead of watching TV, people should be doing something, “its better to do something, than nothing”. I would say I have to agree with that statement.

However, he argues that playing a video game is more productive than watching TV. I have to disagree with him on that point. Playing a video game, and watching Television are both forms of entertainment, with the exception of educational Television programing or games. Instead of spending so many hours persuing entertainment, in my opinion, society should focus on more productive tasks. In the video, Shirkey states that people in the US spend 100 million hours watching ads on the weekend, that is one entire wikipedia project, a weekend.

Just imagine if all of that brain power was channeled into a  more productive project, what if those people spent time learning, training for a job, or even better, contributing content in a project like wikipedia, or in any other form, be it a blog, video, ect…Its impossible to imagine how far society would improve, simply by stopping to watch television.

Personally, it sickens me to see people wasting away today. Maybe I am a machine who knows, but seeing people waste hours and hours playing video games or watching TV a day kinda pisses me off. If you spent 2 hours a day, heck 20 min, reading instead of watching tv, or, researching towards your trade, you become such a better person. But, allas, who am I to call someone lazy or a bum for not doing anything with their lives. Maybe its the human condition, maybe its natural selection.

Now, I just can’t help myself from suggesting it, no matter how controversial, but just imagine how much cognitive surplus would be saved if we did away with religion as well. How much time could be saved, what would all of that money do if it went into medical research? Something to think about.

This topic is kind of self explanatory. but I thought I would bring it to yalls attention. We seem to go over it way to quickly in class.