When I first signed up for this course I was not sure what to expect. To be honest I needed an extra class and thought what could we possibly do learning about how information is processed and or displayed. I mean the Internet is the Internet right? I was quite wrong and realized afterwards that I knew very little about what the Internet really was. I was not expecting to learn about how technology has dramatically transformed in recent years. I have always had the newest devices and pieces of technology but never have I been the most technologically sound individual in my social circle. I can proudly say that as a result of this course I am no longer ignorant, I am still not the most knowledgeable but I learned a great deal that I would consider significant.

The book The Filter Bubble by Eli Pariser was a great basis in which to form a course around. It took about as unbiased of an opinion about the intricacies around the Internet today. It is as up to date as one could ask for and really opened my eyes to how little I took into account the significance of my daily actions. As I mentioned I have always been on the forefront, as a consumer, for all things technological. I have always just assumed that the Internet was this extremely secure medium that can only be accessed by some kind of elite hacker and that there was no reason they would waste their time with myself. The Filter Bubble really opened my eyes and changed my perspectives about the web. The websites I had once thought to be protecting me from Internet hackers are actually the ones that I should be afraid of. I had never even fathomed that my personal information could become the profitable property of a website/ company.

I enjoyed that the topics we covered were not just theories but practical information that applies to our everyday lives. The Filter Bubble as I mentioned was not biased, at least in my opinion. Eli Pariser discussed the benefits of our present day technological resources but also mentioned the disadvantages and the possible threats that can result from it. I have never been the most avid reader of current events but I would absolutely say that I keep up to date and am far from ignorant. What I found fascinating is that I when I thought I read a variety of different perspectives on any particular issue as not to have a biased interpretation. It was the issues themselves that were a product of my ‘Filter Bubble’. I have used Google regularly for years but only now know how to manipulate it. Also I know how it does and has been manipulating me.

I found our work on the search engines to be extremely valuable. I have never properly learned how to utilize the resources on the Internet. I use the Internet, primarily Google, to conduct almost all of my research in my other courses here at Baruch but have always found myself aggravated with the difficulty I had in finding valuable information relevant to my topic. I found the database walkthroughs that we did to be very insightful. I wish we had done a bit more with them. Maybe another lesson or homework assignment in which, we would be required to use and manipulate the databases would have been helpful for me to learn even more. I am currently in an argument and debate course and our final project was to write a research paper on a hypothetical legal case. When I read the syllabus for the class in the beginning of the semester I became worried about having to complete the assignment. I was able to utilize the search techniques such as where and how to use quotation marks in a search. Also I was not familiar with the databases themselves. In my head they were too sophisticated for me to begin to use and I learned in fact they are just as simple, if not simpler than a Google search.

One thing that Eli Pariser did not go into such great depth about was the solutions currently available to protect us on the Internet. There does not seem to be a great deal of them out there at this time. However, we did mention in class that some websites such as Google are beginning to become more and more transparent. I wish we had learned a bit more about how to make them more transparent. Also how, if possible, we can begin to detect or what signs we should look for when it comes to untrustworthy places on the Internet.

Overall I learned a great deal from this course. I enjoyed the relevance of The Filter Bubble. The videos we watched were very practical and correlated well with the topics from The Filter Bubble. I especially liked the recent video that discussed the cognitive abilities of mine and younger generations and that it confirmed my personal theory about intelligence. I know that I am a product of my generation, I just hope that it is not too late for me to un-personalize my world and see things for what they really are.