Facebook Issues

As far as social networks online, Facebook is the one that I, along with most other college students, use the most. I’ve spent hours on it at a time and actually procrastinated on this very assignment by deciding to check my Facebook first. It’s where I keep up with my high school friends, share pictures with my friends, and talk to people thousands of miles away. I always find it interesting to find out about the problems that this growing network causes. I found an article entitled “Facebook Can Cause Problems for Students” on http://www.pacertimes.com/home/index.cfm?event=displayArticle&uStory_id=89d244c6-e062-472a-be18-30740962c09c. This article starts out by discussing privacy issues on Facebook. I know that I personally used to feel much safer on Facebook rather than other networks such as MySpace because you had to be in high school or college to be a part of it. However, this is no longer the case because anyone can have a Facebook now. But at least you have to confirm them to be your friend before they can view your profile, right? Wrong! Anyone on the same network as you can view your profile regardless of rather or not you’re friends. I know many people who do not go to the University of Alabama, yet somehow they’ve managed to get onto the Alabama network. This article goes on to talk about pictures posted on Facebook. It talks about the trouble students at universities in northern Kentucky got in for having pictures of themselves drinking alcohol posted on Facebook. This is something that we all as college students should take seriously and be careful as to what we choose to share with people on Facebook about our personal lives. Not only can these pictures get us in trouble right now at our universities, but these pictures could prevent us from getting jobs in the future. Facebook has even gotten students in trouble with the Secret Service! This article tells the story of a guy who made a joke on Facebook about assassinating the president and the Secret Service came after him. So even when joking around with someone on their wall, we have to be aware that people are reading what we are saying and may choose to take it the wrong way. One girl in the article advises, “Don’t put anything you wouldn’t want your mama to see.” I thought this was very good advice and will most likely keep you out of trouble. Also, there’s a chance that your mom has made up a fake profile and has a Facebook herself. You never know! The end of this article talks a little about identity. It discusses how pictures you post on Facebook affect the way you are viewed by others. Not only do the pictures affect it, but also the things you write in your profile, the groups you’re part of, the people you’re friends with, and the thing s you write on people’s wall. These things give off a certain image of yourself. Rather that image is accurate or not, that is the impression people get of you and your character. When using Facebook, we should all be more aware of how we choose to interact and who we choose to interact with.

EA Games Take Another PO Hit

I apologize for waiting this late to post, but the only way to get this thing to cooperate with me was to wait till I could use my dorm room computer. I forgot the password and needed the cookie to bail me out again. We were supposed to talk about something relevant to the material we've discussed so far in class and I have the perfect example. In my evaluative essay, I talked briefly about EA Games which has a few lawsuits and controversies to its name already. One of the more recent issues with the company was when an ISP associated with them edited their article on wikipedia which was an interesting coincidence since we discussed this specific action in class. As I reminder, they now have this on their article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EA_Games#Editing_of_Wikipedia. I don't see how much more owned you can get than having that right in the users face. Personally, as you can probably guess from the essay, I don't like this company since they make horrible games and eat up and subsequently destroy other developers. This is completely off-topic but I truly miss Rareware back in its hay-day. Unfortunately, when Nintendo sold the company to Microsoft, most of the senior staff decided to retire in protest. I don't even understand why you would sell the top third-party in the business to begin with.

How Does it Work?

One of the best websites on the Internet today is http://www.howstuffworks.com/. This site is devoted to explaining how anything and everything works. Almost any question you could ever think of can be answered by this website.

A great feature of howstuffworks.com is the "Today on HowStuffWorks" link. This feature highlighs four topics that might interest any random visitor. The links for today include: how hybrid cars work, how lightning works, how house construction works, and how streaming media works.

Once you decide on a topic, the website takes you to the page devoted to that subject. At the top of the screen, a list of main points is listed for quick navigation. Further down on the page, the author explains how a certain person, place, thing, or idea works.

The website really is a great idea, and the inventor is probably a genius. So the next time you're surfing the web with nowhere to go, check out howstuffworks.com.

I was on the Nick Saban Show!

Our beloved Crimson Tide showed new life this weekend as we went down to Ole Miss to face the Rebels. Many considered this to be an easy win but Ole Miss somehow always plays teams close but never pulls out a win. Being in the band I always have a unique perspective at the games. You HAVE to cheer on the team. Even if something goes wrong. What I'm starting to notice though is sometimes our fans and students have no idea what they are talking about when it comes to college football. First of all you never expect a blowout in an SEC game. Secondly don't boo your own players. I know John Parker Wilson hasn't been the greatest quarterback this year, but he is starting to come together. The saddest thing I saw this weekend was when the ball got batted down at the line of scrimmage by the Ole Miss defense. People started booing Wilson. Hello! That's not his fault. It's up to the offensive line to bat the ball down. See what I mean about people not knowing football. On the day Wilson was 26 of 40 for 256 yards. Not bad. He was intercepted once but again the ball was tipped at the line of scrimmage. Defense was what I was disappointed in. We let them drive the field all day. Then when we have them 4th and 16 against the goal line. We let them have a big play. But we still came out with the win. The coolest thing though about this weekend though was definately being on the Nick Saban Show. I got to ask Nick Saban a question. He answered it on the show. I found out the H back is really the fourth reciever on the ball. Something I didn't know. He can be a back, tightend, or receiver. So anyways all and all it was a great weekend for Crimson Tide fans. As I was leaving the stadium a drunk Ole Miss student walked up to me. "How do you like that the reffs gave you the game?" You think they would be use to losing now. Also you have to love how these people always want to pick a fight with the band kids. Who knows. All I had to say was teach you're receiver how to stay in bounds.

Lonely Girl 15

About a year or so a go, thousands of fans were logging on to You Tube to watch the video blogs of what seemed to be a shy, overprotected, homeschooled girl, Lonely Girl 15. The video blogs are usually Lonely Girl sitting in her bedroom in front of her computer. She talks about her worries and problems and her family life, which seems to be very strange. Later, it was announced that Lonely girl was not in fact your average teenaged homeschooler, but was an actress. The whole life and the events that had taken place had been fake.
I believe this is relevant with some of the issues we have been discussing in class because it very closely deals with the issues of online identity. Online, a person's real world identity is of no concern, people can be whatever they want and can do so easily. Lonely Girl had thousands of viewers that really did think she was a homeschooler. They were concerned for her well being, hated her parents, and were fascinated by her sheltered life. The fact that she was not real was a shock to viewers, but they really should not have been surprised because in the internet blogging world, nothing is what it seems. Once I was talking to a friend who had had the shock of running across their own blog on myspace, a blog he didn't even know existed. This is a concern that people should remember when interacting with others online. The person that's your number one friend on Myspace might be an actress or a creepy old man. Even if a person is actually who they say they are, not a completely different person or an actor, we need to keep in mind that people are always slightly different online than in real life, its inevitable. I have met many people that I only knew online in real life and I am always surprised how different they seem. Lonely Girl is an interesting video blog, but its also reminds us to be careful of what we believe and who we trust when we are online.


http://youtube.com/watch?v=dZN-Wye4rDE

Are You in the Tube?

There are many internet sites that display footage of an assortment of things. Only one I know of shows the variety of things that are displayed on YouTube.com. People from all over can upload their personal home footage or download footage obtained in a not so legal way.
Friends of mine have posted their own tapes and movies on YouTube for others to find and enjoy. This, to me, is one of the greatest aspects of the web site. Being able to display individual work for anyone to access makes the site more appealing. Knowing that your own work can be posted for viewing next to footage of a famous band or comedian adds to the drawl and overall affect.
Some shows new episodes tend to show up on YouTube. All that is needed is to wait a few days after you miss a viewing of a new show that you love and it will more likely than not show up on YouTube within that time period.
This may or may not be perfectly legal, but it is definitely enjoyed.
Everyone may not be aware of who Dane Cook is. He is most definitely my favorite comedian ( who has made me even happier that he has chosen to act now to adding to his talents ). I get to listen to all if his materials through footage of his shows on YouTube.
When my roommate was last feeling down about her stupid ex-boyfriend (and Josh I'm not beingharsh before you make a smart comment to me--the guy really is stupid. I know this in part by how he treated her and i another part because I went to high school with him and observed many a joke raise crickets after leaving his mouth, among other things) I pulled up one of his pieces about guys. It was about what guys are thinking during a break-up and right after it.
After few minutes of vivid description confessing the jumble of thoughts that made perfect logic she was cracking up and I was searching for his next piece of male incrimination to keep the laughter filling up our tiny little dorm room.
Along side the handsome comedian there are music videos from some of my favorite bands. Even some bonus features of Britney Spears' come back performance ....which I was heard was excellent even though I haven't gotten the chance to view it myself yet.
Then there are the people who decide to make their own music videos to their favorite music and then upload it to YouTube.
Everything eventually comes together though. Every one of those video files are like a visual entry into an online journal that millions can contribute to. Each one becomes a parrt when they decide to place their work on the screen where it is open to critisism. Each one of those people who make a post are making a journal entry even though they did not choose to write out their experience it is still cateloged just as a written entry might have been.
They can be considered to be the "male and female" so to speak of the oline world of blogging.

Behind the Screens

Okay, so I’ve been thinking a lot about the question of whether technology makes our lives better, easier, happier, more fulfilled. The techie side of me wants to believe that technology helps us, takes us a step closer to a higher level of human endeavor. That’s the Star Trek side of me and it’s a very strong influence on my thinking, perhaps because I’ve been watching Gene Rodenberry’s beautiful vision of a better future for humanity since I was a very little girl (actually, since I was in utero, as my Mom devotedly watched first-run episodes of ST:TOS while pregnant with her eldest child). And Rodenberry’s vision was of a future in which technology enabled connection – warp drive spaceships and transporters propelled humans into new galaxies and onto new planets and, in the process, those humans met and, often befriended, the alien races that inhabited them. Technology literally brought humans (and humanoids) together.

However, anyone who knows science fiction knows that the Star Trek vision of the technologically advanced future is a utopian one, and there are plenty of dystopian visions that have long haunted those who imagine the future and its possibilities. I’m currently really caught up in Battlestar Galactica and that series’ central conflict – between humans and their rogue robot creations, the Cylons – embodies some longstanding fears regarding technological advances. The idea that our own technology might turn against us and consciously and methodically attempt to annihilate or enslave humanity is one that’s been at the heart of much fantasy and sci-fi and the question at the core of one of my favorite novels, Frankenstein. We have to be careful, lest we create monsters.

But robots and transporters and warp drives are all still but gleams in the eyes of dreamers. Our technology, while advanced, is still a long way away from being able to create an artificial intelligence capable of instigating genocide on the human race. Still, I think it’s worth asking what dangers lurk in our hard drives and how our ever-increasing dependence on technology is affecting our behavior and lives. That’s why I wanted to focus on technology for this writing class and it’s what is driving much of my own research. And, as someone who tends to have a positive and open-minded attitude toward technology, I find it necessary to make myself take the other side on occasion just to keep myself honest. Yes, technology is cool. It’s fun. If we keep at it, one day we’ll have those transporters and warp drives (okay, maybe I’ll draw the line at Cylons!) and our lives will be all shiny and wonderful just like in Star Trek. See, there I go again being optimistic. Time for a little healthy skepticism.

To that end, I’ve got a few articles that I came across over the last couple of weeks in the New York Times that raise some questions about some of our current uses of technology.

The first one, “E-Mail is Easy to Write (and to Misread),”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/jobs/07pre.html?em&ex=1192248000&en=15cb9ed482ae7136&ei=5087%0A showed up on October 7, 2007 in the Job Market section of the Times. I’ve long been concerned with the issue of e-mail as a communication tool and this article articulates some issues I’ve been talking to students about for some time.

The second, “Generation Q,”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/10/opinion/10friedman.html?n=Top/Opinion/Editorials%20and%20Op-Ed/Op-Ed/Columnists/Thomas%20L%20Friedman was Thomas Friedman’s op-ed column on October 10. It’s not so much technology-oriented, but he suggests that what he sees as the passivity of current 20-somethings is at least partially enabled by the Internet. He makes the point that real activism requires us to engage with the real world, not the virtual one. Not sure how I feel about this – I certainly think there’s a vast sound of silence all across the country these days – but not just among 20-somethings. And I’m not convinced that online activism is impotent. But I’m intrigued enough to want to think more about this.

Finally, “The Fakebook Generation,”
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9802E5DB1730F935A35753C1A9619C8B63&n=Top/Opinion/Editorials%20and%20Op-Ed/Op-Ed/Contributors was a piece that appeared on October 6, 2007. The author, a recent Ivy League graduate, asks a great question about halfway into the piece about whether Facebook “enrich[es] adult relationships.” She’s right that those of us who use Facebook have been using it to essentially create these “stories” of our lives, narrating every event, momentous or not as if our lives depended on it. And yet, as she notes, it seems that this tool designed to bring people together has only “made us more wary of real human confrontation.” I wonder if that’s true. It seems I prefer to “talk” to people via computer than either on the phone or in RL. What does that say about me? About all of us who feel the same way?

In thinking about each of these articles and really pondering the disturbing questions they raise, I’m beginning to think that we hide behind the computer screen and we are becoming, not the brave and daring pioneers who man the USS Enterprise, rather we’re becoming cowardly, too afraid to face our own human fellows, much less new life and new civilizations. Are we burying our heads in electronic sand?