Thursday, May 27, 2010

Maybe it's time for human to evolve

During my research for essay, I read a lot of papers about how the Internet is a place for idea generation and how we should let those creation be open. If we argue that those creations are under copyright law and should be protected for idea theft, those papers that I read were saying the opposite way. Every idea was built on others. Standing on the shoulders of giants, we can see further view. In the coloborating era like what we are living in now, we are all potentially a giant to others and vice versa.
As the Internet evolved, people are earging to go online, entertainment and information companies, here I refered to music, moives and the publishing. They are crying out loud saying that ther are victim from profit losses becuase of the online piracy. Again, how did their profit come from? From selling those products, from royalty. Of course they feel threat from profit loss due to the sharing culture of the Internet. I am not saying that I don't respect those interlectual property, instead, I am trying to think of a practicall way as a win win situation for those providers and users.
Our brains have been " copyrighted" for so long that it is sometimes relatively hard for us to think outsid the box. The Internet has evolved in a light year pace and has either drag or force our old producers to accept this new medium as another channel for distribution. However, if the we humans still stay in the same profiting logic, there's no way we can gain from this strong digital tide.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

new social strutural transformation

After I found out that Obama is digitally isolated, I kept thinking about a question. In the past we structured our society with money and power, whereas in the digital era such as now, do we still structure our society with those two factors?
In the class, we've talked about how it's unfair to those people who's not online which "is the majority." If so, with almost everything is eagerly put online, what is the right for those people?
According to the statistics from Internet World Stats, the internet pentration rate in the world is currently 26.6% which is not even 1/3 of the whole population. We've always said that the internet has flatten the structure of our old society, but they way I see it, the internet is slowly build up another structure based on the accessibility for information.
We've also talked about the boarder, which I found is being challenged when the Internet became more accessible. With those information flow via internet, not only the cultrual identity of every unique country will be more vague, but the old structure that we are familiar with will probably be changed entirely.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

How scared we are to be forgotten?

It's another entry about Facebook, the major part of my foreign studying life in Sydney. This morning, I woke up, open my laptop,open my firefox and click on Facebook tab. It is a classic SOP every time I open my laptop. We kind of stop talking about how Facebook making profit, but focusing on how Facebook deprive our privacy and what happen when one tries to deactivate his account.
Last week, we talked about boarder, and how boarder is blur nowadays because of the Internet. I think Facebook is a very powerful network site that bind every single individuals together, whether in the same nation boarder or not. I love Facebook for it can update my friends latest information back home, but at the same time, I can't help to notice how Facebook has done to our social life.
Would you be friend on Facebook with a guy that just met for 2 seconds in parking lot?
What does the quality of your friend list say about you? What about the group and fan page that you join?

In the F8 conference, Facebook announced a magical app that almost tracks every foot step one makes on the Internet. As they described it, it can make us being more connected than ever!!! (Mainly to marketers, I supposed.)
In the fast improving technology world and global cloud sourcing living patterns, how lonely we are to be too scared to be forgotten?

When I tried to deactivated my Facebook account, it show several pictures of me and my friends, (some that I don't even contact with them anymore)saying, XXX will miss you.
It is funny how Facebook takes its big step to connect the reality and cyber world. Friend or no friend, I think it is time that we take second consideration of how does the word "social network" really mean. When everything seems like more convenience online, is our social life too? As its notorious issue on Facebook privacy, perhaps the reason behind is we expose our information by choice.

further reading:
Read Write Web: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/what_happens_when_you_deactivate_your_facebook_acc.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+readwriteweb+%28ReadWriteWeb%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
youtube: south park
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h26nbst_GlA&NR=1

Monday, May 3, 2010

the borders of the internet

As I read the first article from the reader, “who controls the Internet? Illusions of a border less world" by Goldsmith, J, I resembled my overseas studying experiences with the concepts of border less he mentioned. Being studying in Sydney for couple months, I realized the facts that I no longer check on the websites I used to check back home. I obtain information from the Internet; however, the information I always look for is within the border of Australia.
True, that the internet is almost a perfect medium between border and border of many countries in the world, but the region that we stay in set a invisible border. Many problems aroused in terms of internet governance due to its feature of border less; however, I think, under normal circumstances, we tend to follow the regulations in the real area that we stay in despite the wildness of the internet.