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.

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.

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

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.

this is the world wide web

After seeing Facebook F8 conference, knowing the three key apps that Facebook introduced: open graphic, social plug in,graph API, all to make every facebook users, or facebook users to-be be more connected to each other. I came to a question, who will be the most benefit by those new apps? Advertisers, marketers...and every entities that try to sell and be visible.
I rememebr when I first used Facebook, I was certainly thrilled and stunning to find out how myself and all the friends whether past or present, are so connected. Then again, there came a time that I realized what Facebook has done to make everyone too well connected to lose a level of privacy of one's own.
Certainly, as a marketer, I would be extremely excited to know how easy for me now to target my audiences and to directly communicate to them and all the potential market that they will bring. However, as a user, I can't help but notice the huge amount of private information that we've slowly lost. We've always thought that we still have control of what information we are willing to reveal via internet, but not anymore, in the case of facebook.
Do people care about their personal information being revealed? Or, because of te advanced technology with phones and the internet, people somehow get so distant and yet want to be connected to everyone so badly that they just willing to share everything at every moment? Last year, there were some people saying it might be possible for Facebook to finally disappear due to people get sick of being visible all the time and thus stop updating and sharing. From the statistcs of Facebook users growth, I don't think this will happen in a nearby future.

further readings:
http://apps.facebook.com/feightlive/
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/live_blog_mark_zuckerbergs_f8_keynote.php
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebooks_privacy_move_violates_contract_with_user.php

to stop the unstopable in China?

Pirate bay, emule, you name it, people have heard about it. Piracy issue is always there especially in a country that has no limit of internet bandwidth in Asian area or European countries. When I first came to Australia, I struggled a lot with the limited internet bandwidth because of my internet using habits back in Taiwan. The country that I came from has a sub culture that no one speaks out but everyone kind of understand it, the downloading culture amongst young people. Why didn't our government do something about this? Yes, they did. But, let’s face it, it's fairly hard and costing to track down which IP is downloading and nail it down.
When reading all those news about how China censors the internet, something interesting struck me. It's a fact that everyone know that China is the biggest pirate country either online or offline. The software I used to view the latest movies or TV series is from China. It seems like, China does care about how it public think politically and protect them from those "evil" information that they don't need to know about. But it doesn't really care about how the world thinks of it as the biggest pirate kingdom and let every of its illegal sites being used or get out of its "Wall."
China filters almost everything to "protect" it public, but none of it stops it public to be intellectual thieves.

cloud sourcing and the ancient wisdom.

The future technology pattern is verifing the old asian wisdom. Evern Since I was little I've taught the wisdom of "Three cobblers with their wits combined equal Zhuge Liang the mast mind."Somehow, not till recently as the concept of collaboration going popular that I pick up this saying again.
As google annouced its new google doc, which added co-editing function and the popularity of wiki-, the internet further proved this old asian saying. Team work was a trend, collabortive knowledge is now happening in every fields of works, especially in the world of internet. Open source is a key issue for developing softwares.It is, indeed, very interesting to find the perfect match between our old wisdom with modern technology trend.
Fighting by oneself is relatively hard then coopoerating with others. Not too long ago, there was a project, providing a shareholder structure that open to everyone. With only a little amount of money from each individual, this project was able to run and make profit and finally reture the profit to each "shareholders." This is the power of colaborating, and only in the world of the Internet can this power be practiced beyond national borders.