Click here to view our website!
By: Nischa Hanamornset, Nora McCarten, and Renee Heeralall
Author: r.heeralall
Can the future be imaginative?
So let’s think about how digital communication for a second. Think about how much it has evolved from lets say when your grandparents or great-grandparents were your age. Do you think they could have ever imagine such a world as today? Most likely not. I personally know my Grandma of age 76 certainly couldn’t. For me to now think about digital communication for the future, I can only base it on the limited knowledge that I’ve gained throughout my life and my perception of what digital communication is.
I already believe the advancements we’ve made in digital communication is beyond what anyone could have expected but there’s still areas for development. For example, in Mark Andrejevic’s article “Surveillance and Alienation in the Online Economy,” he believes actively participating in the digital world is opening yourself up for exploitation (Andrejevic 281). What does he mean by exploitation? Exploitation in the sense that website owners, marketing agencies, or whoever has authority of the digital space, are using your generated data for purposes that’s not what was intentional. For example, you searched for a restaurant on Yelp, you read the reviews and for the most part majority of the reviews were great. However, when you show up to the restaurant, your dinning experience was totally opposite. So at the end of your night, you return to the restaurant on Yelp and write your review. This act of writing your review on Yelp is considered exploitation by participation, according to Andrejevic. Although you may not feel like you’re being exploited, the information you entered in digital space exploit you to the owner of the restaurant to offer you a free dinner for two in hopes that you’ll write a more positive review.
“The invocation of some notion of exploitation is compelling for a number of reasons, including the fact that a critique of privacy invasion does not do justice to the economically productive character of consumer surveillance. The prospect that advertising might become more effective because it will be able to predict human behaviour with a greater degree of reliability, and thereby to help manage the populace more efficiently in accordance with commercial imperatives, is disturbing in a different way from privacy concerns” (Andrejevic 282).
And this is where I’m stuck in visioning the future for digital communication. Active participation in digital communcation means you’ll be working around the clock because everything you do digitally is subject to exploitation. This is one aspect that I believe needs to be changed. During class discussions, a few of us wants to see digital platforms where users are being paid for any content they share. This is an idea that should be experimented and expanded on more in the future.
Another area that needs improvement is the legality limitations such as copyright, trademark, and patents. More specifically with copyright, it’s hard to be “original” when everything has be done. According to Siva Vaidhyanathan “Copyright is more than one right. It is a “bundle” of rights that includes the exclusive right to make copies, authorize others to make copies, create derivative such as translations and displays in other media, sell the work, perform the work publicly, and petition a court for relief in case others infringe on any of these rights” (20-21). For example, Disney fairytale movies. If you think about it, the general concept of having someone who’s of royalty in the kingdom go against someone who has authoritative issues with the royal family is in almost every or most fairytale movies. Do you know of any fairytale movies that weren’t made by Disney? I couldn’t think of any so in a sense Disney has “copyrighted” the idea of a princess and villain which caused a lack of innovation. In the beginning these laws were created to motivate innovations but it can also prevent it as we just saw. If we continue to limit creativity and innovation with laws, the digital communication world will never be as influential as it could be.
- Can you come up with any other examples of how copyright can prevent of futurization of digital communication?
- What services do you imagine we will be able to have in the future that we don’t have now?
“Can you please not” – Mark Zuckerberg
Will we ever get to a phase in technology where users can feel “safe” using their cell phone, laptop, tablet, etc.?
For the later second-half of the semester, it seems as if privacy has taken over most of our discussions. In the last section of our class, Digital Authorities, we’ve discussed market surveillance and state surveillance; concepts taught to us by Mark Andrejevic. According to Mark, “we know in general terms that we’re being monitored, but we are far from having a sense of how extensive, detailed, and sophisticated the monitoring system has become” (Andrejevic 7); an idea most of us can best refer to as “scary.”
The documentary brings forth a similar concept. In an attempt to better explain this concept, I’m going to make up a concept called “corporate websites” to describe the big players in privacy invasion (FaceBook, Google, Amazon, YouTube, Twitter). From the perspective of the corporate websites, the best way for us to invade your privacy is through our agreement acknowledgement page, listing our terms and conditions. Everyone knows consumers rarely ever read what they’re actually agreeing to. I personally, have never read a companies policy before using their service. It’s surprising to learn that this is just the way the economic system works. Why? Because as educated we like to think we are about privacy policies and law, most of us are actually uneducated.
The relation between the economic systems and the system of government control is based on pure manipulation and deception. In the documentary, “Terms and Conditions May Apply,” Leigh Bryan shares his experience with the economic system and the relation of government control. To summarize, Leigh had posted a tweet on Twitter “@MelissaxWalton free this week for a quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America? x” and a few days after when he had traveled to the United States, was pulled aside, questioned, and put in jail at the airport for misunderstandings about the meaning in his tweet. This is a perfect example of govement control mechanisms manipulating the ways of the economic system. This was one of the stories I found shocking. Even though in this particular example, the government was trying to act on a threat against national security, it’s racial profiling.
Becauase at the time, with the presidency and Congressmen/women we had in our government, the above scenario was okay. Government control officials can potentially say to any company who keeps a record of it’s users data “hey, I need this and this person’s personal record” and that company would have to comply. Before, the documentary shared a warrant or some sort of formal legality was needed but at the time the video was filmed, formal legality was out the window. As a side fact that I think is important for knowledge acknowledgement, is these companies have access to EVEYRTHING according to the documentary. Things sugh as deleted posts, tweets, searches that you may have forgotten about, corporate businesses can pick up that information within a matter of seconds. This may just be my lack of knowledge on privacy, but this completely threw me for a loop in shock. Imagine you’re applying for a job at Google or FaceBook and the management department looked up your history before deciding your employment status. How would you feel about that?
I’ve done a little more research about what other changes were made to the law since the documentary and as it turns out President Trump had made some recent changes. According to the article, during the Obama presidency, a law was passed but no actions were taken to effect stating “telecommunications companies to obtain user consent before collecting personal information on consumers’ online activities” (Schmidt). During the current Trump presidency, a new law was passed which reversed the effect of the law passed during the Obama presidency. Trump’s new law sas “internet service providers will now be the de facto controller of data privacy standards for fintech businesses and consumers” (Schmidt). What this now means is that service providers will control internet privacy and there’s no going around those policies set.
With this new knowledge, I’m still on the verge if this will better help the issues between consumers and economic systems as well as the issues with the economic systems and government control mechanisms. We can only hope that whatever changes are being made, their being made to keep and make us feel “safe.”
Questions:
- Do you think MUD or any virtual reality stimulation experience privacy issues as prominent as social media platforms? Can you think of any possible examples?
- Kids in the 21th century are so dependent on technology. With this knowledge, why do you think parents still reach for a cell phone or tablet to keep their child quiet? If the parent’s private information is leaked to marketers by the telephone company, who is to blame? The telephone company or the parent?
Should we be scared or appreciative?
Digital surveillance. Whether you have thought about it or not, we all know we’re being watched by society and marketing agency. The part that tends to freak us out is the impact the information gathered society and marketers have on our day-to-day lives.
Mark Andrejevic states “companies are able to track our movements, transactions, and communications without our permission or, in many cases, knowledge” (4); a concept that blends together digital enclosure and interactivity. Michel Foucault similarly believes without us even being aware of what is happening we’re being disciplined .. disciplined to believe whatever society and marketers want us to believe. “The disciplinary society is a social formation in which we become both jailor and the jailed” (Athique 212).
During the past week online, my online activities consisted of Instagram searching of a new hairstylist, Facebook and Pinterest searching of a new hair style for the spring/summer season as well as a new color. For the purpose of this blogpost, it’s important to note that these searches were conducted on my iPhone. A few days into my iPhone searches, I found whenever I found myself googling something on my laptop there was an AD for different NYC hair colorists and hair salons. At first, I found this strangely useful because the marketing agencies that Apple shared their algorithms with are successfully reaching consumers. But as I thought about it more in the context of what is actually happening, I was being digitally surveilled.
I realized the only way my laptop was able to capture what I was searching on my phone was the fact I have my Apple ID and iMessage enabled on all my Apple devices so data is constantly being synced from one device to another which constitutes my permission. In this particular case, I found it acceptable that my “consumer profile” was collated and stored for future use by third parties. However, if the algorithms gave more of my personal information such as the mileage I was willing to travel, my mode of transportation, or access to my bank records to estimate the price I would be willing to pay for a hair appointment, it won’t be acceptable.
In the above situation, the technique of disciplinary power that applies is the observation of consumer behaviors for commercial advantage. This technique applies to me and most likely many of you on a day-to-day basis without you even thinking about it. When you’re online shopping for example and you add items into the shopping cart but don’t actually purchase the item, you might find on Facebook and throughout your internet browsing ADs pertaining to that particular store. Marketing agencies use this technique to get you, the consumer, to go back to their website and purchase the items in the shopping cart; the ultimate goal of making a profit.
But how do marketers get access to this information in the first place? The answer can best be explained as an “electronic panopticon.” It’s obvious that there’s either some algorithm or spyware-like layer in our devices that allow marketers to do this but are we always aware of this? It depends on what you’re doing on your device at the moment. I believe depending on the act, your mind triggers this knowledge on so you second guess yourself–second guess yourself as to whether what you’re doing is illegal or legal, right or wrong, and even acceptable or not. For example, I’ve had multiple experiences when I was younger where I would download music from a music website that promised free downloads and during the download, the website would ask for personal information such as my name and a credit card information. When this occurred, I had enough knowledge at the time to realize what I was doing was illegal and wrong.
- Do you believe we are entitled to privacy from all websites and/or devices?
- With the knowledge we have now, do you see yourself changing your online activities?
What makes you you?
In this interview, Karandeep Kainth is asked a series of questions describing his individuality in the digital world.
Question 1: What social media platforms and apps have you used now and in the past?
“Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Myspace, Whatsapp, LinkedIn”
Question 2: Do you use your real name(s)? Have you ever used aliases or created fake accounts? Why?
“I use my real name on social media apps like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Whatsapp for socializing and connecting purposes. I am able to find others and others are able to find me much quicker and efficiently by using my real name. I have never created a fake account because it is completely unnecessary since I have one existing already. I did not create a social media profile to deceive or annoy someone else.”
Question 3: What different personas do you construct in each of these platforms and how do you relate to aspects of their experiences in life?
“I use facebook for socializing purposes so in this I am mostly talking to friends and seeing what everyone else is up to. On Snapchat the more creative, everyday life is shown because you can take pictures and instantly send it to someone else for a short period of time. On Whatsapp, most of my family is there on various group chats so it is more bonding with them. Instagram it just scrolling through newsfeed.
Question 4: Do the digital personas you construct help you cope with the problems you face or do they create new problems? In what ways?
“My online personalities definitely shape who i am. Each social media platform shows a different side of me whether it is family oriented, friendship oriented or just a fun-loving person oriented. This really creates a diversity when I am meeting a new person and trying to understand their perspective for doing specific things. Also this helps in seeing different options when i am using problem solving techniques in real world applications”
Why is our persona on the internet so important? Who actually cares what a college student in NYC does? Georgia Daley explains this idea further in her vlog on December 13, 2014.
Georgia Daley brings up one important concept: “self-centered.” In terms of our reading, this concept is similar to “self-presentation” in Chapter 7 of Adrian Athique, “Digital Media and Society.” Athique states:
From a symbolic interactionist viewpoint, the public-private binary denotes a series of mutually understood social conventions which determine the most appropriate gestures for social interaction. The distinction between public and private also has practical implications for maintaining an appropriate relationship between the ‘I’ and the ‘Me’.” (99)
In the interview above, there is a distinction between “I” and “Me.” For example, Karandeep mentions he uses Facebook from an “I” perspective: “I am mostly talking to friends …” as oppose to WhatsApp where he projects the “Me” aspect: “…most of my family is there…”
Another concept Georgia briefly discusses is the use of social media as a platform where you can be “professional” and “serious.” In Turkle’s Chapter 7 “Aspects of the Self”, he talks about Multi-User Dungeons (or MUD) and the different ways users use MUD as their form of a serious platform. For many of the users Turkle interviewed, MUD became their platform to the serious world. For example, Gordon “experimented with many different characters, … all [of which has] something in common. Each has qualities that Gordon is trying to develop himself” (Turtle 190). Through social interactions on MUD, Gordon met and got engaged to a women he had met on MUD. For many users like Gordon, MUD was their “professional and serious” life no matter how digitalized it became.
Questions:
- Do you think that with the development of technology and digital individuals, it will eventually become a norm to have “fake” identities on the internet?
- Can you think of possible security issues from the perspective of media media owners that can arise from members creating multiple fake accounts?
Iphone Contacts Reinvented
You walk into the general interest meeting for Alpfa and you meet this great group of people. You exchange numbers and find out you have the same circle of friends. How? With Humin.
Sarah Buhr, author for TechCrunch tries to bring awareness of this iPhone new app which combines all of your contacts from other social networks, personal or professional, into one application which “tracks” your relationship. Now available for Android users, Humin was created as “an elegant solution to the age-old problem of remembering whom you have met” according to Steven Tweedie, Business Insider.
The creator of the App, Ankur Jain, introduces the idea of Automation and Variability to the standard iPhone app Contacts as he attempts to make our iPhone think the way we do. Computers? Think like humans? A.M. Turing proposes the question, ‘”Can machines think?”‘ (Turing 433) during the 1950 and today it’s still developing.
When I say Automation, I’m referring to how media is created, manipulated, and accessed. More specifically when a “… user modifies or creates from scratch a media object using templates …” this is known as low-level automation (Manovich 32). A simple example of low-level automation is when you open a Microsoft Word Template and modify the pre-idenified document content. Simple right? So with Humin, the same concept is generally the same.
Variability on the other hand describes “a new media object [which] is not something fixed once and for all, but something that can exist in different, potentially infinite versions” (Manovich 36). The variability aspect is brought into the app “when you add a new phone number in Humin, the app will bring up the person’s name, where and when you met him or her, whom you both know, and where he or she works. If your new contact is on social media, it will pull a picture so that you never forget his or her face,” according to Business Insider.
To push this idea of low-level automation and variability, Sarah Buhr, using comparative analysis of a similar app known as Connected and primary sources of information in the forms of quotations from the app creator himself. This information is then analyzed to show the advancement of Humin compared to it’s competition as well as the ideology behind the creator and intent of the app. For example, Jain shared with TechCrunch that he “…wanted to create a way to find your connections the way you actually think about them.”
At the end of the article, Sarah Buhr revealed her own experience viewing her boyfriend’s contact list. It seemed like she wasn’t too impressed at what she discovered. She had searched for someone who wasn’t in her circle of friends using a few keywords such as ‘”bar dude”‘ and ‘”OkCupid”‘ and didn’t get much feedback from the app and was left confused if she had actually met the person in the past. She does however reveal that app does keep a better “track” of social relationship. If you think about it, it makes sense why a computerized application will have accurate data with someone who you had frequent interactions with than with someone who you have only met once or twice; similar to the concept of emotional intelligence.
In my opinion, for an app to be solely based on reading location, time, and generally a humans mind, it’s not very effective. What’s the purpose of installing an application to store information about the who, what, where, when, why and how if it doesn’t do so effectively. Also, I would assume the concept of privacy is huge for an application like this the computer is programmed to access your location, photos, and social media accounts. However, there is little information for consumers.
Questions:
- Would you ever see yourself downloading Humin? Knowing the amount of privacy you’ll have to give up.
- How far along the success line do you see Humin going? Do you think the idea that Ankur Jain is trying to introduce will evolve into a more practical application?
Media = Success?
After long days in the office being on my feet with you in my belly, I often find myself sitting in your nursey thinking about the world your father and I are bringing you into. Yesterday, your Aunt Melissa had called me on her way home from work and during that time we spent most of it taking about work about how impossible it is for us to make it professional without the use of media. You’re probably going to be too young to understand the concept of media when you read these journals I have wrote for you, but soon enough you’ll be thrown into the influence of media and will understand.
Your Aunt Melissa and I started out talking about our work day. It’s been tough for your Aunt, especially during the winter months, to make it as a female in the automotive industry on her own. She has Grandpa Roop to help her get small jobs with BMW and Mercedes but she wants to make it on her own without any help. So as a surprise Uncle Jessie and I have been working on surprised with a logo that he used to create a website for Aunt Melissa to promote her qualifications and her skills because every opportunity your Aunt has can be the make or break in her career. I can’t barely imagine the thought of what you’ll have to go through to promote yourself in whatever job occupation you decide to do.
Posted by S.M.S Auto Care on Tuesday, December 6, 2016
While your Uncle is still programming the website, your Aunt, as usual, wasted no time in marketing herself. As I was scrolling though Facebook and Instagram (just because I am your mother doesn’t mean I can’t have social media Aaliyah) I noticed multiple posts made by your Aunt showcasing her work. It’s ironic how social media networks such as Facebook operate because when I was roaming through your Aunt’s profile, other Automotive companies and associated companies Aunt Melissa had worked at came up through advertisements.
Posted by S.M.S Auto Care on Sunday, January 29, 2017
It’s amazing how Facebook tracks and Instagram tracks their users interest and revert those interests back to the users. As I was listening to your Aunt complain about local traffic on her way home, I decide to click on a few of the advertisement so see what the competition was like for your Aunt. Now, there’s something that I would hope to see change. But as it turns out, based on those other companies posts and picture/video uploads, they’re not doing exceptionally better at promoting and marketing themselves. I remember my days in high school when Grandpa Roop had automotive fundraisers and he would assign his students homework and extra credit to physically go out to local automotive shops and promote the event. Though this way of promoting yourself takes a lot more time, compared to what we’re doing for Aunt Melissa, it’s as effective if the person who goes out promoting is educated and can respond to client’s questions. The main goal of promoting and marketing yourself and/or an event is to get as much expose as you can possibly; no matter which way in the future you decide to do to help market yourself, the fact that you have to promote yourself will probably never change in the digital age. The means of doing so will evolve for when it’s your time.
Computerization and digitalization will continue to improve human activity drastically. Why? Because the human race as a whole has a constant want of something to make their lives easier, especially those who live in New York City or any city for that matter. For example, me writing journals to you using my laptop as opposed to writing the journals by hand. Both computerization and digitalization has made this process more convenient for me for two reasons. One, based on Couldry’s thoughts on “The digital revolution and its uncertainties,” computerization infrastructure makes writing journals on a laptop easily transferable in the sense that I can give you my laptop when you’re at an age I find appropriate for you to understand these journals for you to read on your own time. This almost implies “… early printers were nomads who physically transported their technology about with them…” (Couldry 9). And two, digitalization has helped minimize the physical storage space notepads would use.
As for, negative consequences and effects of computerization and digitalization they devalue human interactions as well as continuously set standards of what society sees as acceptable and normal. According to Athique, “… the era of new media has brought … a language of its own … –some dense names of things, some summarize new concepts or proclaim new problems, and some facilitate new codes of communication and new ways of talking to each other” (15). For example, if I had taken the opportunity to sit with you and read you my journals, we would be able to have a special mother-daughter bond that’s incomparable to me handing you my laptop to read what I have written to you; it “despecializes” the whole purpose in writing these journals.
Questions
- Computer engineers and programmers today are feeling the pressure of coming up with the latest “digital revolution.” What do you think they have in store for us in about 10 years?
- What do you think is the next evolution of social media such as Facebook, and Snapchat?