Keith Demele's Blog

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.

Ahh Net Neutrality…Such a simple debate with such profound ramifications, and roots for that matter.  For those of us who have been on the web since well, forever, this debate is no doubt something of great concern.

Hampster Dance

The internet, from “ate my balls” to dancing baby, hampster dances, to napster, numa numa, to kazaa, rick rolling to you tube, torrenting to dancing cats, and now apparently, cats that look like hitler, what a wild ride it has been…A eutopia, a place governed by no law, no death squads or riot police, a place where you could reinvent yourself every day, and say what you want. Are those days dwindling, is the internet about to be put under marshal law?

The topic of net neutrality goes far beyond a simple choice, fundamentally, its the same choice which is currently being argued upon in healthcare in the US, its a train of thought. Some would say, in the simplest terms, left vs right, liberal socialism vs conservative capitalism.

To understand this issue in its entirety, one must know how the ip/tcp protocol works, one must know how ISP’s currently control to web, one must know who those companies are, how they operate, and what their buisness models, stemming back from the days of the rotary phones are. It’s not a black and white issue. I could go on for weeks about this topic, but I don’t have time for that, so lets move on. You need to be informed about every aspect, got it?

This week, as oposed to last week, and the week before it, the debate is weather to let the ISPs control the internet, & potentially the content, or to jump in and have the government play watch dog, make sure the ISPS don’t to anything to make money, god forbid.

What do I think? Well, being the only conservative, capitalist in the room, does it matter? Many of you will stop reading this……now. But, let me tell you something about myself. I work hard, very hard, I like money, and keeping money. So, logically, to me at least, I am a firm believer that you have the right to make it and keep it if you can. I believe in an open market. Many argue that open markets are bad, and flawed. However, I feel, if the consumer feels they are getting mistreated by the companies on top of their market, it is their duty to create a company that does not mis-treat them. Many feel that the government should step in and stop x company from controlling a market, I cannot express at how wrong I feel this is. It’s not the governments job. Get off your lazy hedonist rear ends, for the sake of living!

I digress, while I am a firm believer in capitalism, I do love the internet, and feel it would be a darn shame if ISPs chose to kill it in its current format (although, they would have a hell of a hard time doing it.). I don’t think they should do that, however, they have the right too, they control the switches, the government should not tell them how to run their business. The ISPs (in America) have not really impeded on this much, except for that time comcast/road runner clamped my connection, remember web TV? They are not doing it, so It’s not the governments place to do anything about it.

An interesting article on net neutrality, from the Washington post, FCC Takes Sides In Net-Neutrality Debate it appears the FCC will afterall step in and tell ISPs they cannot discriminate what content goes over their networks. Do I like the overall outcome? Yes, I would curl up in a ball and die if all I had were a few websites to go to on the web, however, do I think the government had any right to do that? No.

I’ve got to get to class so I will cut this short, this post may seemed uninformed due to the time constraint, did not touch on a lot of key issues and focused down on the political side, mostly because I was just called a facist for being a capitalist. Will drove deeper into this later I hope, both on the technical and logic side.

=Keith

Not really. It’s there, although many a folk would argue that the internet does little for democracy….

So, in the most irresponsible act I have made this year, (should tell you how fun I am), I fell asleep after an all night-er working, and missed my classes on Thursday, missing what I think was or would have been the most interesting, engaging class discussion yet this year in my emac 2321 class.

But anyway, we are supposed to find an interesting article that discusses democracy and the internet, and write about it, we are also supposed to write about how it related to the reading and discussion from last class, but that would be a little impossible since I did not attend. I am, however, told the class discussion was about democracy on the internet; the class had a spirited discussion on weather (weither?)  or not the internet was encouraging, or asphyxiating democracy. Hmm, fascinating…I would have bitten my tongue all class again. Well, I better stop procrastinating, in the time honored tradition of writing half legible, sporadic, little-effort, and discombobulated posts, lets begin shall we?

An interesting article that discusses democracy and the internet. could you be any more vague? Oh well.

Lets start off by asking what a Democracy is…

Well scratch that, there will be plenty of time for me to set up that argument in the future net neutrality stuff, here is an interesting article that covers democracy and the internet:The Internet: Foe of Democracy? by Jonathan Shaw…It’s from harvardmagazine.com, sounds smart, it must be good.

Shaw basically talks about Cass Sunstein’s position, stating the internet hurts Democracy by allowing like minded folks to get together and cohort, Sunstein says that the internet is destroying the balance of different minded people by allowing like-minded people to come together, discuss issues, and become more extreme about the issue. Its an interesting point.

Beyond the article I wish to speak a little further how I feel about the internet and democracy, First of all, the content is mostly governed by the people, however the main gatekeepers govern how people use the internet, we will get into that discussion later this semester but I felt like I should make the point. Its an illusion of Democracy. Or as the thought poped into my head earlier….Anyway, I will leave the rest for another post.

Edit:

Finally, watch this, it was just tweeted, relates to the topic I feel.

Fin.

Another EMAC 2321 Assignment…Our professor asked us too read an article by Telegraph.co.uk, entitled “50 things that are being killed by the internet“, he wants us to list 3 things we believe the internet has killed…An interesting question…

The internet has brought on fundamental change in almost every area of our lives, what can we says has been changed, and at what point do we say something has been killed? Here are 3 things which I think have been thoroughly axed by the internet:

1. Physical public forum:

The internet is thoroughly destroying peoples ability to get together, from all walks of life, and talk about important topics. This is destroying the United States political landscape. I once saw a documentary titled Split: A Divided America, and it explained this topic well. Watch it below:

2. The music store experience:

I was developing my love for music right around when Napster was live, I remember my friends brother downloading bands like Pantera and Metallica (Ironic), anyway, although I was never around to really spent time wondering the isles of music stores, I do remember it faintly, where did that go? Now we can sample music online, a bad thing? Nah, however a large part of the experience has been lost from the whole music discovery process, no longer do we have to stand around looking through millions of CD’s and taking a stack of CD’s or cassets over to the demo stand, most websites can recommend great music. Oh, yeah, what happened to the audio CD/physical audio medium? Weird!

3. Down time…

I believe the Telegraph.co.uk article mentions this, however, so true, when is the last time you went and just, “chilled out”…I can pinpoint it, I chilled out for 30 min last august when my truck broke down in canton,TX I went and got an ice cream cone from the Dairy Palace, sat outside in a rocking chair, closed my eyes and just let my mind wonder. It’s been a year, crazy. With the internet at our fingertips constantly nowadays, we are always occupied with something.

For our assignment this week we are to find three links that relate the the class and write a breif description of them, so here we go:

David Harsanyi of Reason Magazine wrote an article entitled “The Amateurs’ Hour“, in the article Mr. Harsanyi pretty much calls Andrew Keen a slob and points out where is logic is flawed.

A. Wilson of dailymail.co.uk wrote an article named “The internet is destroying the world as we know it” This doom and gloom is right there with Andrew Keens views on the new internet. Wilson actuall talks about keens book, however goes into deeper thoughts on why he agrees…Fairly interesting article.

Jeffrey J. Hardy Tells us about Cloud computing in “Cloud Computing – Challenges, Benefits, and the Future“. In this article Hardy tells us that the cloud as a non-physical identity is a mis-conception, he also tells us some of the benifits of the cloud.

EMAC 2321 assignment…When I get some time I really need to create a separate blog, and some tags for this class, sorry for those who are looking for my updates, they are around…

Preface:  To be perfectly honest, I have attempted to write this homework assignment several times now, I have so many arguments to be made against Keen and his point of view, I honestly don’t know where to begin. From comments he has made outside of his book, to comments he has made inside of his book… but I suppose that is the assignment isn’t it? Narrowing it down to just one….Yesterday my instructor covered what I had decided on doing in his sample post, so its back to square one…And I need to post the assignment now so I can get to my rigging class…

In his book, The Cult of the Amateur, Andrew Keen outlines how the internet and the web 2.0 phenomena is destroying the quality of content delivered to the masses by making the readers/viewers the artists instead of just viewers.  He is saying everyone can now contribute and it makes it hard to sift through the bad stuff on the web, to get to the good stuff. He himself says it in his book,  “The blurring of lines Between the audience and the author, between fact and fiction, between invention and reality further obscures objectivity. The cult of the amateur has made it increasingly difficult to determine the difference between reader and writer, between artist and spin doctor, between art and advertisement, between amateur and expert. The result? The decline of the quality and reliability of the information we receive, thereby distorting, if not outright corrupting our national civic conversation.” (27)

This can be seen in the influx of blogs we see today all over the internet, yes there are a ton of blogs out there with expert writers and professional staff, for example a site like tutsplus, however, the vast majority of blogs today are written by people like me, a student with no accreditation on any topic. (AKA a degree) Just have a look through any of my posts, there is not a lot of quality information being posted here. Although this does make Keen’s argument in one since, we must ask if this example truly causes a decline of the quality and reliability of the information we receive.

This example of Keen’s claim tells us so little, but so much about what keens concern about the internet actually is. On one hand, we can see that Keen is explicitly concerned about not only what kind of content is put out on the internet, but who puts it out, and how much of it is put out. He clearly sees a line between amateur and expert, and believes only experts, or at least people qualified to speak on the subject, should be publishing data on the web. One could argue that he is correct, its kind of annoying to read peoples personal blogs (although no one forces you too).

On the other hand, we can see that Keen’s concerns are rather dated. Keen does not see the communities (AKA the clouds) ability to filter such frivolous data. While, admittedly, a lot of the content put out on the web today does not hold a lot of pertinent data, they certainly do not degrade the quality  of the information we receive. Keen argues the reliability of our data is degraded by all of the information, I would not argue with that statement. Unlike print, data on the internet is not subject to as much scrutiny and criticism, leaving the author open to spread almost any information relatively freely. Now its up to the user to filter data, which brings us to a greater issue all together.

Moderation. What keeps the internet in check, how can we guarantee the content on the web will be kept honest, who keeps in check…That is a much larger question I believe keen is looking for an answer to this questionaswell. His editor keeps him in check, who keeps the web in check? Moreover, who keeps the amateurs who are making all of this money of advertisers in check? This tells us me must start thinking of the web in a whole new way. What way? I don’t think any of us know yet. However we can see with the issues poised today, keen’s train of thought does not work on the internet.

EMAC 2321 Assignment…

Today my world stood still, and I made it happen. Something I could not do yesterday. What an odd and uncomfortable experience, I must admit. They say the Earth rotates at 1000 miles per hour, it’s my firm belief that in today’s day and age we, as students plugged into the grid, should be going just as fast if not faster. For our EMAC 2321 Assignment due today, I am a great procrastinator by the way (no doubt a skill fine tuned by the likes of social networking), we are to write a blog chronicling our experience unplugging and attempting to deep read an except from Andrew Keen’s The Cult of the Amateur.  Nicholas Carr tells us we have lost the ability to do deep read in “is Google making us stupid?” Is this true?

To be quite honest, I could not bring myself to unplug until I was going to sleep at 5AM this morning, after a long day of work I figured I would do the reading and go to bed…I got a few pages in, and next thing I know I was waking up in a pile of papers strewn all over my bed. Ok, time for a regroup, that last strategy failed. I knew that I woke up and stepped off of my bed it would be impossible for me to do. So, I gathered all the papers and started reading again. I must say, Carr makes a good argument…I have not tried to read like that since maybe my freshman year in high school…I would not get into the groove of deep reading, I couldn’t find a comfortable position to be in and the young kids at the end of the street were screaming at the top of their lungs…A few pages in I found myself reading it, but thinking about something else. Regroup again, I was finally able to read the whole thing, and a little of it over again, with NO distractions. Quite amazing really. Have I lost the ability to deep reed as Carr suggests all together? No, however its definitely not an on-demand service anymore.

I think what has happened, is that the internet has taught us to communicate in a different way, a way in which we skim over information and grab what we deem is relivant, I think that is what Carr is saying, in fact, in his article “The amorality of Web 2.0″ , he reinforces that statement by saying the quality of reading we are doing has decreased greatly. He talks about, Andrew Keen’s The Cult of the Amateur As he states that web 2.0 could be bad for us, once more.

I have gone way over my allotted blogging and reading time allocations today. Off to class.