Looking back at the activities we did this semester, there are a couple things I will definitely take with me and use throughout my Baruch experience. I really didn’t know what to expect from this class when we first started, but it soon enough we started covering interesting topics that dealt with everyday life especially in regards to technology.

Starting with the reading material, “The Filter Bubble” by Eli Pariser was a big eye opener. Before reading this, I would say like many I was an avid technology user, from smartphones to social networking i just used it without really questioning how it really worked, it never even crossed my mind what these big corporations were doing with all the information we put out there. Now, after reading this book I was made aware of how easy is to obtain personal information on the net, I learned that we are being monitored without really knowing it. Not only has this changed my whole outlook on technology but it really has changed the way I use it. I’m more careful about the stuff I put out there and before I put my personal information I look at their privacy policies and what other third parties might be able to see or use my information, like Pariser suggested I’m trying to stay as far away from the filter bubble. Overall, I thought this book was very interesting and an easy read, it didn’t drag on and offered interesting points and revelations.

Another activity that I found very useful was the database lesson. I liked this lesson because it gave us an alternative other than Google to find sources for research projects and information we might need for a paper. Not only was it fairly easy to use, but the information was well organized and to the point. Google can only give you so much and sometimes it may lack certain information that can easily be obtained from a database. I recently used the database for a paper in my history class, and it was a huge help, many if not all my sources were from the database. This really saved my behind, because my go-to search engine, Google, wasn’t really helping me out and thankfully I got all the information I needed from the database. Other activities we did like using mindmeister, making wikis and even learning how to use Google Drive which was something I had no idea was available, and now use it for pretty much everything are helpful not only for this class but for others as well. I had not heard of these things before taking this class and Im sure Im going to utilize them in the future.

One thing that I wish was covered in class is how to fight the filter bubble. Pariser gave suggestions of how to do this at the end of the book, but it would’ve been cool to follow up and actually see how we can actually avoid it or see what companies are paying more to collect our information and what companies let their customers see what they are doing with their information.

We have done many activities in this LIB 3040 class which can be utilized in many other courses at Baruch. We have done everything from class room discussions to hands on activities with the computers. As I look back to all the many activities we have done in class, the first thing that comes to mind is utilizing the Baruch databases. Before using these databases, I would do every research paper with the help of our good friend Google. Google would then direct me to Wikipedia. Now that I have learned how to navigate through the Baruch databases, I will definitely be able to use them in future courses that require research to be done. For example, I will be taking BPL next semester and from what I heard, its a difficult course which is research intensive. The knowledge on databases I have obtained from this course will definitely help me get through this difficult class, since it requires the research of various companies.

Something else I learned after taking this course is the different ways published works can be used as sources and the differences between these published works. For example, trade journals, newspaper articles, magazines, interviews, etc. are different in many ways and can all be used when doing research. The sources Pariser uses in the Filter Bubble are all very unique. He took sources which were scholarly works and are reputable. Reputation of the work plays a big roll in choosing the right source. That is something this course has taught me. This course went in to great depth on the differences and similarities of each published work. I can definitely use the knowledge I’ve obtained from the sources Pariser uses in selecting the proper sources for other classes at Baruch. Which brings me to the discussion of something that I would’ve liked to learn in this course. I would’ve appreciated learning more about proper citation when citing sources. I know this isn’t an English class, but I sort of forgot how to properly cite works. I mean I have some intellect of citation, but I’m pretty sure it’s not ideal.

The final thing which I recall learning in this class is the “Filter Bubble” itself. Taking part in this course and reading the Filter Bubble really opened my eyes to many things. It made me more conscious of where and who I give my personal information to. It made me think twice before handing out any information to websites or surveys. Before this class, I never took the time to actually Google my own name. When I did I was astonished by the amount of personal information was on the web for the world to see. Reading this book also made me want to get away from this Filter Bubble. In Chapter 8 Pariser gives readers various ways to get out of the Filter Bubble, which are somewhat difficult to follow. His “plan” is explained by providing guidelines for individuals, government, and companies to follow which would get us out of the Filter Bubble. Technology is vastly growing. From this course and book I’ve learned that we need to be able to grasp the information provided through technology, thus giving us full control of the Internet. I feel this course is very different and unique from any other course offered at Baruch since it went in to depth of something which can be utilized in all courses; the Internet. This course not only helped me in other courses which I have taken at Baruch, but life in general.

In Eli Pariser’s book, The Filter Bubble, we learned about today’s internet uses along with technology and how they both work together to devour our personal information. He warns us about the Filter Bubble because it turns us as human beings into shallow people who do not go out of their informational zone. This means that people tend to collect the same data from the same exact sources each and every day of their lives. This approach basically ‘zombifies’ us because of the lack of outsourcing to different thoughts and ideas. It is not entirely our fault for being caught up in the Filter Bubble; it is the current innovations and technology outburst that draws us in because of the convenience that they provide.

After reading this interesting book, I have decided to at least try not to live inside of a Filter Bubble by maximizing my research base. This meaning that If I was looking into a specific headline or news story that I find interesting, I would take some time to find different perceptions of this story whether it be online news forums, blogs, articles, and/or word of mouth. I would use the same sources that I would usually go to along with other forms of information to get a greater overall idea about what was going on. Another resolution that I am trying to use pertains to one of the resolutions that Eli Pariser gave in his book. According to Pariser, we all need to stop getting pulled into the “Mouse Trap.” (Pariser, The Filter Bubble p.223) He says, “Most of us are pretty mouselike in our information habits” meaning that we tend to circle around the same information, mousetrap, because of our natural habit of redundancy.(p.223) I am trying to get out of the mouse trap by simply using my technology last when I need information. It is almost impossible to do anything without technology in today’s world but I decided to actually use newspapers and talk to people before picking up my phone and Googling the topic.

I tend to read the fine print more often now because of what we learned in class. There are companies that are out there that use are information as their products for sale in Business to Business (B2B) transactions, but they have to tell people that their information will be used for this purpose. Sometimes we do not even notice this because it would be shown in the agreement section of the subscription or in the page. These pages are usually long and filled with a lot of words and topics that an irrelevant to read thoroughly, so people tend to just check off the I agree button because of that. Now I am trying to find the parts in the agreement section about “Privacy” that state whether or not my information would be used for selling or distribution to other companies.

The three things I learned during this course were:

1. How to use the database:Before this class I was never introduced to the database and wasn’t good in searching, except if it was in Google. I learned a lot because of the basic step by step routine we took. I have one more year left in school and I can honestly say that I mastered my skills in using the database. Now I know for sure, whenever I will have a paper to write on some topic for my future classes, I will not be worried and be very appreciative of this class.
2. Filter Bubble:The book and everything we went over regarding to the Filter Bubble, opened my eyes to what reality is like, now that technology is part of our daily lives. It took a while for me to understand some of the concepts but reading the book and even every exercises we did in class, broadened my ideas on the good and the ugly of the social media. I think now I can honestly say that I will be very careful with the information I provide on the internet, and how social media affects my future. As for the future classes, this may be very useful for me because I am in Public Affairs and it is always great to be very knowledgeable of what is going on in our technological society.
3. Presentation:For some the presentation was just any other presentation they did in class. To me it was a battle with my own mind. I did presentations before but was never as comfortable to present as I was in this class. Professor, I appreciated the fact that you were very caring about my issue and that was all I could have asked for. For my future classes I can honestly and proudly say that this presentation helped me in some way many may not understand. It made me be more comfortable on my own skin, and I learned that I am capable of working in a group with amazing people.

One of the companies leading in the retrieval of our personal information, Google is soon releasing another way to gather personal information. This time it’s being done through music. Google plans on releasing a new application subscription which streams music. I feel Google is taking it to the extreme by implementing a way of streaming music. They first started off as only a search engine, then an email service and are now being known for streaming music, similar to Spotify. Google will only gain a greater understanding of who we are personally. They already signed deals with Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment and are catching the eyes of other record labels. Our personal information may be handed out to these record labels as well and used for reasons unknown. How do you guys feel about this?

Check out the article yourself: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57584490-93/google-close-to-launching-streaming-music-service/

Bing Google Play commercial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8yZ5O96TtM

This commercial is currently being aired on television today. I thought it was funny and it immediately reminded me of various discussions we had in class. In this commercial Bing is stating that Google is using their Google Play app store to obtain our personal information and send it out to who knows where. This not only relates to class discussions but to Pariser’s the Filter Bubble and the topic of “Do Not Track” as well. The Do Not Track feature is a idea which would attempt to stop companies from gathering personal information. Do Not Track is doing its job, but it doesn’t erase the fact that companies already have an obscene amount of our personal information in their databases. Bing is out to exploit Google. It’s interesting to see that Bing is exploiting Google’s gathering of personal information and using it as a way to get consumers to use the Bing search engine. After watching this commercial and related it to the many discussions we had in class, I ask you one question; Are you getting Scroogled?

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/02/26/more-convenience-less-privacy/

Online shopping is easy, fast and convenient. Affirm, a new business launched a few month ago, works as an intermediary between merchants and consumers. And customers can delay their payments when they buy something through Affirm. It works like “buy now, pay later”. However, a problem of Affirm is that they use all sort of customers’ data including phone ID, zip code, Facebook status to predict when the customers will likely pay bills.

Pariser once mentioned that “there’s always a bargain in personalization: In exchange for convenience, you had over some privacy and control to the machine”. Our new technologies provide us so many great things. They are easy, convenient, and less costly. However, we also have to sacrifice so many valuable things in return. One of those things is our privacy. It is almost impossible to stop using Google even though we know that our search history is collected and distributed to unknown third-parties.

The question I want to ask is, to what extent, would you give up your privacy for technology ?

I made changes and suggestions under Desired Amenities and SideBar. I edited the art piece suggestion and specified what kind of art pieces would be great for the space. I added a couple of pictures and removed the fountain suggestion since it was mentioned later on in the post. I also moved SideBar into What Should Be Planned and suggested that we have a no loitering rule around entranceways to avoid dealing with big crowds on the plaza.

Wiki changes:

• Desired Amenities: Added a few pictures and suggestions
• Planned Amenities: Added suggestions and changes
• Planned Uses: Added pictures and bullets about the Spring Fling.
• Edited, “What Plazas Are Page” and added picture.

The professor briefly spoke about Bitcoins in class one day, and it bothered me that I didn’t really know much about this incredibly innovative and brilliant idea. So I took it upon myself to do some research on the new virtual currency, and I found some really interesting information.

For those of you who don’t know what a Bitcoin is, it’s basically digital currency that can be used to make payments through the web without transaction fees, which makes using this type of currency much more appealing to consumers. Another interesting fact about this currency is that it isn’t backed by a central bank.  Apparently, Bitcoin companies have raised millions dollars since the Bitcoin system was first introduced in 2009. The popularity of Bitcoins have increased drastically since then, to the point that they are now trading in exchanges! With this being a form of intangible currency, it makes you think: was money ever real to begin with? And keep in mind…..this is VIRTUAL currency, which means that this is susceptible to internet hackers.

What do you all think if this new Bitcoin wave? How do you think it will effect other currencies, especially the dollar?

Although I will be graduating this spring, there were various activities that could’ve helped me in the past.

During the first couple of weeks of class we went over mind maps; how to create them, organize them, and discuss them using a logical flow. I only wished that my English professors for ENG 2100, 2150, and ENG 2850 had used this type of method for organizing our notes. But this is not only useful in English classes, but also in History, Psychology, and essentially any class where you could map out a diagram that helps explain the notes taken. Speaking of notes, while reading the Filter Bubble I began taking notes similar to how it was shown in class with three columns (People, Companies, and Ideas). This was a great deal of simplicity and extremely easy to take notes with, being that you can glance over certain ideas and say to yourself “Oh I remembered that” and to easily be able to connect the people to their ideas mentioned or companies that they own or work for. The mind maps are like databases to me, and the notes we take prior to creating the mind map are the raw data. By using the notes I was able to create a mind map and was able to understand the different ideas mentioned in each chapter much better than if I only had the three columns of notes.

The second thing I learned from this class was how to update and edit a wiki. Prior to this class I have never edited a wiki – I only knew how to access them via over the internet. Last semester I took a web design class and our end of semester project was to create a website about a made up jazz band. If I had the knowledge of using wiki pages I could have created one for my fictional jazz band. Perhaps I could’ve put in a link that would re-direct the users to the wiki page with all sorts of information about the band. I would’ve hoped that having this knowledge in that class, I could’ve created not only a website, but also a wiki in order to give my work greater credibility like as though it was a real band. I was a bit surprised too that in all of the CIS courses I have taken, not one ever involved the use of wiki’s; whether it being creating them, or using them, and I am glad that I had the exposure to this type of web 2.0 technology in our class.

Last but not least, I learned how to query databases in a more “proficient” manner. This I will never forget as I will most definitely be using this skill in the future when I work full time. But in prior classes such as those that I have taken for my Psych minor, I only used Google to search for information (for countless research papers, especially the capstone class PSY 4012) and I never used Baruch’s databases as every time I used it, it was as though all of the results that came back were irrelevant. Prior to the class I thought I knew how to search quite well, but after learning about wildcards, truncation symbols, and grouping terms with parentheses, it’s was as though I became 100x more knowledgeable in researching. Rather than having 4000 results returned from a search, I learned how to narrow it down to under 10. Let me also just also say that BPL 5100 would not have been the same if it wasn’t for Mergent Online. Thank goodness for this database! And for those who will be taking BPL 5100 I highly suggest you take advantage of this database. I only wish that I took this class as a freshman at Baruch, and compared to a lot of other required core classes that must be taken, I believe this class would be more useful than a handful of them. It only makes greater sense that students are exposed to learning how to use databases before they go off to write research papers, prepare for a debate, and etc…

The one thing I wished we had covered in this class was information security. I think being able to use information and organize and interpret it is vitally important, but the security of it is just as important. Privacy concerns were a major theme we discussed throughout the semester, and I believe that the security and safety of our information goes hand in hand with ensuring our privacy in the digital world. I am not very familiar with information security, I only know little about SSL (Secure Socket Layers) and learning about information security would help us reassure ourselves that our information won’t be passed on to information brokers. Information security sounds like common sense, but in reality, I think there is so much more to it than just for example: setting your privacy on Facebook to be “only for friends.”