Facebook, Kontakte, and Privacy…

Our last video conference was by far the most natural and free-flowing conversation we’ve had.  I found it very interesting that our last conversation turned unexpectedly towards Facebook, and the Russian equivalent Kontakte.  I found it even more interesting when the Russian students so nonchalantly stated that it’s a common belief that the Russian government started Kontakte to have access to the personal information available.  Almost our whole class was very taken aback by this.  Facebook users also have numerous issues with privacy and third parties gaining access to personal information.  The issue has become so prevalent that many people find it comforting to delete their Facebook accounts altogether.

Following the video conference, we continued our discussion on the issue of privacy at our last class lecture.  The truth is, digitalization was the end of privacy.  In reality, there is not a whole lot of information on Facebook that one could not easily uncover via other mediums.  In order to use Facebook, one must accept that ultimately it is an internet site.  It is unfortunate and unrealistic to expect to have the ability to post personal information on a global network, and have that information truly protected.

I was not surprised to hear the amount of students opposed to such “digital” connections and “virtual” friendships, as this is an increasingly common notion.  Many people find that networks such as Facebook and Kontakte create an artificial sense of connection.  In my reality, Facebook has allowed me to forge and maintain new connections with family and old friends.  I do not see the difference between writing a brief message on Facebook, and writing a quick e-mail.  Both are digital messages; one cannot be more artificial than the other, as they are essentially the same.  I do not feel that my conversations between friends and cousins via Facebook are in any sense superficial.  In fact, it allows us to communicate more frequently and freely.  Before Facebook, I spoke with my cousins in Italy about twice a year.  However, we now have the ability to share quick, weekly updates on our everyday lives; this is a truer bond than our prior biannual conversations that only glrazed the surface of our busy lives.  Thus, with the acceptance that any information posted on Facebook might be available to a third party, the social network is an overall positive entity that allows for personal connection over a global space.

An easy stepping stone…

We’ve talked about how the increased connectivity that the networking sites on the internet have brought to us, and have caused people to become fearful for their privacy and identities, resulted in an overcrowding of information on the internet with useless information, and how they’ve become  a way to tag anyone that has access to the internet.

However, I think its important to point out what the internet and the capabilities of these networking sites have done for the average joe. Sites like Google and Youtube have become billion dollar empires. They’re such simple designs, yet have become so popular because of what they can do for the average person, many of whom find these sites to be their sources of not just knowledge and entertainment, but as platforms to share themselves with the world!

For example, there are a number of artists and celebrities that have become overnight stars simply because of the exposure they’ve gained from sights like myspace and  youtube, where they can post any video, image, or post and blog they want to. One of my favorite musical groups, The Arctic Monkeys, were discovered after becoming popular during the beginning of the myspace extravaganza. The way they were able to branch out of nothingness and become a popular band can be owed to the connectivity of these  websites with the world around them…

In a way, these sites aren’t found, but rather, they find us. I guess this is what makes people afraid of what these sites are becoming -they’re finding a life of their own and are capable of making the information we have to make searching the internet much more interactive and accessible; however, it also makes people much more vulnerable to what the internet can do.

Either way, people need to be aware that these sites were made to provide a network that connects anyone from anywhere. As an intern at a record label this summer I utilized these networking sites to help promote and market the various artists on the label. I found that this is the easiest and most efficient way to get the names of the artists out – each week, we would have a designated goal of how many people we wanted to view and listen to our artists. Often, we would reach our goal, a goal that meant 5,000 new listeners a week!

For this reason, our world today is quite dependent on these sites, on the internet; businesses and artists need it to find success for themselves, because this new media has become the platform with which to reach out to customers, fans, whomever they may be. I can’t really imagine a world where we aren’t able to share a music file with someone from across the globe – any other way would not be so much inefficient, but more behind the times.

Nationalism is a complex entity that is both necessary and dangerous.  It is a popular conviction that nationalism is imperative to unify a country, and to actually form a national identity.  However, when nationalism tips the scale towards a blind support without understanding or reason, it becomes an inherently negative force.  After last week’s discussion about the search for Russian nationalism, I found it very interesting that one of the sources mentioned is the government.  I wonder whether or not true nationalism can come from a nation’s government.

If a society is to have true pride in their country, it needs to be fostered from within.  An outside or higher force cannot conjure a real sense of unity and conviction within the general public, which they are not truly a part of.  A true belief in one’s country must come from the people, it cannot be imposed upon them by the government; if this is the case, it is not a true and natural sense of nationalism.  In fact, this false (and sometimes blind) type of nationalism can become an illogical and dangerous force.

An example of dangerous nationalism can be found in our very own American government.  After the events of 9/11, there was an uproar of nationalism and pride in America.  Although this began in the general public, by citizens whose lives were extremely affected by the terrifying events, it didn’t take long for corporations and the federal government to take advantage of the patriotic upraise.  Not surprisingly, this national notion took a nasty turn.  Flag sales went through the roof, patriotic pop songs were the new sensation, and any statement remotely unpatriotic was deemed socially unacceptable.  Soon, nationalism was used to justify government actions completely unrelated to the terrorist attacks of 9/11.  In my personal opinion, the war in Iraq is an unjust war; our government used the national sweep of patriotism as a ploy to invade a country with our most coveted resource.

Of course, nationalism is not an entirely negative entity.  It can be very necessary to keep a country unified and strong in times of crisis that affect the entire population, such as the Great Depression, and even the recession we are experiencing today.  After our discussion last week, it was interesting to see how the Russian students felt about and deal with the lack of nationalism in their newly formed government.  It clearly is a noticeable void that needs to be filled.  It will take time, but I do believe that it needs to be forged from the inside out, starting in the grassroots and working its way up.

A Confusion of Genres.

So, in concurrence with our study of postmodern art, film, music, etc., I decided to upload my own postmodern take on some popular songs.  Hope you enjoy.

Just follow the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFMWMzTtUls

Last conference feedback

After our last conference, myself and many of my classmates were surprised to hear that Russia’s social networking site, Контакте (Kontakte), is widely suspected by its users to be a tool created by the government to collect information about Russian citizens. We wondered what such acceptance of this information meant for the idea of privacy in Russia. For many of us, such a use of a social networking site seemed unacceptable.

What we didn’t talk about was the fact that some Americans do believe that the U.S. government is using Facebook to mine information. Some of the evidence for this argument are summarized in a video (http://albumoftheday.com/facebook/) created by Vishal Agarwala. Although some of the information in this video is outdated (Facebook has changed its privacy policy), the general idea – that Facebook is an easily penetrable network of information – remains true. Any Facebook user already knows from the advertisements that appear that their information has been mined and sold to advertising companies. But is it being cataloged?

One piece of information I found particularly interesting in this (admittedly alarmist) video is the existence of the Information Awareness Office (http://infowar.net/tia/www.darpa.mil/iao/index.htm). The goal of this government organization is to “nebulous data to knowledge and actionable options” — in other words, to collect and organize information. As a source of ready information, Facebook is probably a valuable database for groups like the IAO. Although the site claims to be focusing on terrorists, any group will have to go through the information of all kinds of people to “weed” out the terrorists. And knowing how the No Fly List works (anyone even sharing a name similar to that of a terrorist gets on the U.S.’s No Fly List), who knows what vague standards are set for tying an individual’s Facebook profile to terrorism.

I never would have looked into this information if we hadn’t talked about it during our video conference. Americans, I think, easily trust big-name Web sites. They all share a certain aesthetic which we associate with reliability. Aside from the fact that the Internet is a source of so much information and interaction, I think it also helps us return to the postmodern idea of the simulacrum. “Sites” provide a simulacrum of physical location. When we are on Facebook or other social networking sites, we picture a private space in which we can interact with our friends. But the Internet is not, actually, a private space – it is one large network, where every page is connected to every other page, and any information placed on a site enters this network. The world we picture when we use the Internet, and the reality of its servers and wires, are two very different things. Understanding the reality of the situation may be critical for those who wish to protect their privacy.

– Lily

Hive Mind Unite

One thing we didn’t really discuss during our discussion last week is the increasing ubiquitousness of information technology and its effect on our relationship to data and even people. We discussed how the advent of the internet has changed the amount of data we work with, but it’s not just the existence of the network that matters. The increasing popularity of technologies like wireless internet and cell phones means that for those who have access to such things, our lives and our habits are becoming ever intertwined with connectivity.

One of the primary effects of this increased connectivity is that knowing things is becoming less and less important because you can always look it up on the internet. Instead of knowing things, it is important to know how to find them. I used to keep a list of clever quotations in a file on my hard drive, so that I could go back and use them when I wanted them. Now, when I see something I like, I just make sure that I can remember something about it. I don’t need to remember the exact wording or who said it, because when I want it later, I can just put what I want from it into Google, and most of the time I’ll find what I’m looking for pretty easily. Search technologies are getting pretty sophisticated, and if you know how to use them well (or even if you don’t) it’s mind-blowing what they can do.

Speaking of Google, here in the States you can send an SMS message to Google, and it will respond with the weather, a dictionary definition, a web snippet, a list of local Thai restaurants, or any number of other things. There’s another service (also over SMS) called ChaCha where people will answer your questions for free (with advertising). The upshot of all this is that we no longer need to be by a computer terminal to access the vast web of information out there, even if we don’t want to shell out for an internet-enabled mobile device (which are getting cheaper). It is more reliable than ever that the information will be there when we want it.

What is the effect of all this? When we can count on the information being there when we feel like it, how are we changed? If it could be said before that pen and paper were an extension of our minds, now it has become the network (or the “cloud,” as IT people like to say). Humanity is ever closer to having worldwide hive mind.

The obvious advantage to all this is efficiency. Once someone else has done the work to gather and store the information, why should we have to repeat their work?If we can afford to be a little more lazy, maybe there’s more work we can accomplish. Or maybe we just get lazy.

Of course, one could argue very convincingly that the cloud is not efficient at all. There is so much information that we don’t always know what to do with it. But if we know what piece of data it is we’re looking for, this inefficiency is greatly reduced – and search engines are quickly filing in the gap.

If the advantage of a hive mind is efficiency, then the clearest casualty is diversity. If we’re all going to the same places for information, do we lose diverse perspectives? If we rely on the cloud for our storage, are we losing out on all the classic texts that haven’t yet been put up into the cloud? And yet the ease and efficiency of relying on the Internet is so attractive, could we, the generation being raised on it, say no, even if we wanted to?

We’ll see what happens as new technology is developed. But it looks like the hive mind is here to stay.

Language and Access

How is this name pronounced: “Le-a”
Leah?
Lee-ah?
Lee-A?
Lay-ah?

None of the above.  The answer is “Ledasha”; the “dash isn’t silent.”

This story came to me in an email forward a few days ago, and while it’s status is undetermined on snopes, it does illustrate my point to follow about language and access – an issue I’ve been considering more than usual following our last video conference.

Language has been socially constructed from the beginning.  It is ever-changing, ever-evolving, and especially in English, ever-welcoming of new words and phrases to keep up with the times – “to text”, “to google”, etc.  Because language is a social construct and not an absolute, we all have the power to participate in its evolution.  We’ve been dropping prepositions from common phrases and shortening words to make our lives easier for centuries.  For example, the term “breakfast” comes from the more tedious description “break the fast”, which is what we do in the morning when we eat our cereal.  Over time and mutual dispersal of the term “breakfast” our English-speaking ancestors agreed – without even knowing it – to make this change.

Because we communicate so much faster today, these changes happen faster and faster.  10 years ago, “lol” would have been meaningless to most of the population.  Even 7 or 8 years ago, it still meant either “lots of love” or “laugh out loud” to many of us.  But now, through the power of common usage and diffusion, “lol” is always and only “laugh out loud”.  And on the rare occasions I see a note or card signed “lol, Mom” I simply have to lol.

Basically, I’m trying to say that I’m not an “English elitist” thinking Shakespearean English is the paragon of language we never should have left behind.  I appreciate that my language is malleable and can change to describe and name new things.  However, these changes arise through everyday use in society, not through repeated uses by an individual.  It scares me how poor the spelling and grammar of native English speakers has become.  And it’s not only in the forum of the internet, where abbreviations and creative spelling are the norm.  It’s in public schools, where children are encouraged and allowed to continue “inventive spelling” for far too long without corrections.  I see it in the office where I work, adults mixing up “accept” and “except”, two vastly different words.

Because English is my first language, I see these mistakes (and admittedly, cringe) but I can understand the mix-up, and usually still understand that “kreeaytiv speling” means “creative spelling”.  But with the new ethical issues of information access and language access that came with the availability of so much data, I believe we have to start being more careful.

We, as native speakers of the language in which international business and politics is done, the language in which science is done, are incredibly fortunate and privileged.  However we owe it to those whose first language is not English, but have taken the time to learn it in order to access all that is available, to stick to what we agreed on, at least in terms of spelling, verb conjugation, sentence structure – or how is anyone to learn to communicate with us?  We think our language is tough to learn now?  What about when “receive, recieve, reseeve, resieve, and resive” are all acceptable spellings of the same word?  I shudder (or soon I’ll be able to “shuder, shutter, or shudr” as well) to imagine.

The more you know, the more you ???

After reflecting on our last conversation, the issue of access to information struck me as the most interesting. I am uncomfortable with the fact that a person must learn English to have unlimited access to sophisticated information. I am uncomfortable with this criterion because it creates a hierarchical system where those who know English have accesses to privileged, or sophisticated information.
In response to this, many foreign schools and businesses make it easy for particular people to learn English. The particular people are those whose income depends on their ability to speak English. The only issue with these initiatives is that those who have no place in academia or business may not be able to learn English easily. This is problematic because there is information available to English-speakers that every person should have access to, such as information on government policies. Because there are people who have access to English and people who don’t, there are people who have access to exhaustive and sophisticated information, and those who don’t. Any scenario is unethical because it systematically creates censorship.
I have seen this happen in New York City where immigrant groups and low income people have access to different sources of information depending on where they are, how well they can speak their native language, and how well they’ve mastered English. It is interesting to see how different members of these communities (parents, students, business owners, politicians, etc) make life-altering decisions based on the type of information they have access to. In these cases, knowledge is power, and those who can access more information have more control over their decisions.
This phenomena within language and information seems to be a logical result of post modernity, globalization, and the need for a standard system of communication. So my issues with language and information do not lead me to question the appropriateness of the situation, but rather to suggest that people who can access information have a great responsibility. Because of how ethically delicate this scenario is, people who can access information (such as myself or any ‘educated’ person) are ethically responsible for sharing that information with those who have not yet mastered English. This way, having access to sophisticated information does not mean that one is automatically oppressing the uninformed.

Minus the whole ‘Big Brother’ thing…

One of the things I’ve been thinking about after our discussion on Tuesday is how  the public nature of the web and social networking sites affects us. One the one hand, the knee-jerk reaction is simply that it’s sort-of invasive (though only with our consent). But on the other hand— maybe there’s something good to be said for how they change our social environments? Aside from keeping in touch with old friends, networking, etc., maybe integrating the multiple personae we all live out is good for us as people, and makes us all more real to one another.

I’m generally a pretty open person, so maybe this is just my bent, and not as easy to see if you like to keep things close to the vest—but maybe it’s not such a bad thing to integrate our personal and professional lives? Of course, keeping information private from stalkers, etc., is a different kind of story, but for the people that we agree to friend (which for me includes peers as well as family, both older and younger, plus coworkers and professors) why shouldn’t we be willing to share what our lives are really like? And, I hate to say it this way, but, maybe it makes us better people if we’re aware that our actions are visible?

It’s idealistic, sure— but if we had to ‘fess up to everything we did and thought, to everyone, maybe we’d be more honest with ourselves and one another, and maybe we’d do less things we weren’t proud of later on? And maybe that would mean we could do away with all of the strange artificial constraints we put on our social interactions, and emotional expression. Like I said, I’m a really open person, so this would be out of the question for a lot of people— I think sometimes confidence is a luxury that comes with being brought up surrounded by a sense of security and acceptance, an upbringing I was lucky enough to have, but not everyone else has.

Postmodern Architecture?

So all I’m saying is, if architecture is a telltale sign of a culture’s ideolgoy . . .

Pruitt-Igoe Housing development in St. Louis, 1960s

And our friend Charles Jencks hails the coming of Postmodernity with the rejection of housing developments like Pruitt – Igoe

P.I. Falling - 1972

,

And replaced it with buildings like this one,

Rem Koolas, Central Library, Seattle

What does it say about Moscow and Russian Postmodernity, if almost everywhere outside the city looks more like this?

Marino, just off Bratislavskaya Metro

Architecture for thought.

- Taylor