Did you know Forbes actually publishes computer generated stories? (Forbes article written by robot journalists) When I first found this out, I was astonished by how much technology can do for us today. Narrative Science is one of the lead companies that develops automated journalism software—the robot journalists. “Robot Journalists”, as the name implies, it is a software that automatically generate news articles. According to the Evgeny Morozov (“A Robot Stole My Pulitzer” by Evgeny Morozov), this software are mostly applied in sports, finance, and real estate field. The reason is because these articles usually follow the same pattern and require lots of statistical analysis. Especially, these are the fields that require fast real time information, and robot journalists can easily achieve that. These robot journalists can save much more time and money for the publisher. Although it is artificial intelligence, the quality of the articles written by robot journalists even exceeds the ones written by professional journalists because machines make less errors than human. According to Mr. Morozov, they even can incorporate mostpopular and recent quotes from Twitter.

Despite of all the benefits robot journalists may bring, this technology scares me. When I first read the article generated by robot journalists, except the author’s name was Narrative Science, I did not realize any difference from an article written by a real journalist. Somehow, I felt I was fooled. I found myself real uncomfortable reading a robot written article. Part of the truth might be it was hard for me to admit artificial intelligence could take over human intelligence. At the same time, there are other ethical issues arose, such as the unemployment of professional journalists. Will robot journalists be able to take over real journalists one day? How do you feel about reading an article generated by a machine? 

Recently during the Superbowl, Coca Cola had a new commercial for their popular product Coke. This new commercial for this long loved american brand had an iconic american song; America the Beautiful- but with a twist. The commercial had the song sung in multiple languages which sparked quite the outrage in “true” Americans. Many tweeters, tweeted comments towards Coca Cola claiming that America the Beautiful is an American song, and that it should be sung in “american”. Not only were there many racial slurs thrown in the mix about the cultures and ethnicity’s that took part in the said commercial, but many tweeters stated that they were disgusted with what brand had done. They also stated that they would never drink Coke again due to this commercial. My question is, are social media outlets a domain in which people can freely speak their minds or in reality just virtual places that breeds hatred? It seems like social media outlets like Twitter, who utilizes hash tags are making it easier for narrow minded individuals to gather those alike with negative outlooks on various topics and ideas and spreading them like wildfire. Should we have a filter on these social media outlets to determine what is and isn’t appropriate? But on what level can we do this? You can read some of these comments here.

If only every store took social media posts for payment, a girl can dream. I came across this article on Mashable about a Marc Jacobs pop-up shop taking Instagram/Facebook posts and tweets in exchange for products. How cool is that?! The store is using customer’s social media posts as a sort of “social currency.” They receive gifts just for putting the hashtag #MJDaisyChain in their posts. Do you guys think this is an effective promotional tool, using social media as a “currency”? Even though they’re not profiting in revenue, they are generating a massive presence on the internet, enhancing their brand’s reputation. Do you think other brands and companies would emulate their strategy? If social media posts were a form of currency, how would you even measure the cost of each post? 

I know there are a lot of people who watched The Walking Dead and are excited for the series to return. But there has been a video surfing around on Youtube by amc which shows walkers underneath the city in Union Square scaring pedestrians as they walk over them. If you were walking there last friday morning, maybe you were one of the people getting scared! Well, it was very amusing to watch because everyone finds humor in watching people get scared. Though, if I was there, I’d probably get a heart attack or curse nonstop. This prank was all done to promote the return of the Walking Dead on Sunday, February 9th (tomorrow). Do you think it was a great way to promote a return of a series? How effective do you think it was?

It was definitely memorable for the people who witnessed and experienced it.

I don’t know how many people have actually played this game but everyone that has I think we can agree that it is one of the most frustrating games out there. The game is very simple you just tap the screen and the bird flies and your goal is to go past obstacles without hitting anything. Many people are trying to get high scores or beat their friends and family high score and with the technology that we have we look at tutorials. Every Flappy Bird Tutorial I have seen so far do not end well. The person doing the tutorial usually tells you to delete the game or they just smash their phone. It’s interesting how the people that upload these videos, call it a tutorial to attract people who want to do well in the game to watch. But when they watch the video they don’t learn how to get a higher score. The video is more for entertainment than actual teaching purposes. I find that a lot of sources on the internet has the title of what you are looking for but when you click on it, it is not what you wanted. It is interesting that although it is not what we are looking for we sometimes still watch to the end. Why do we do that? Why don’t we get upset? Also I find it very interesting that the game has such a simple objective but many of us do poorly on it. We use our smart phones and tablets daily but it is hard for us to do well on such a simple game.

When I was catching up on my readings for LIB 3040 during my commute today, I realized that I am two of about 15 people on the train reading a physical book. The rest of the commuters were either reading on their phone or on a Kindle-like device. I also own a Kindle and a phone filled with ebooks. However, I still prefer reading a physical book because of the physical pages that I may flip and the fact that I may store the book in my bookcase after I finish it. With ebooks, may I “file” it away? In fact, do I really “own” the ebook?

Applying this concept to a broader perspective, it seems to me like the trend is gravitating toward rentals, and less of ownership. Think of how we stream music/movies through Spotify or YouTube and rent textbooks through Chegg. Outside of academics, think of car rentals through companies like Hertz and digital magazine subscriptions through Bloomberg. Do you think this is a growning trend among the generation today? If so, why do you think people prefer this new way of accessing the goods/services they need?

Ok… another fantastic pet peeve of mine is the selfie.  Surely almost everybody in class knows what the selfie consists of – a person taking a picture of him/herself.  Now, it’s not as big a deal to me if it’s one selfie every blue moon or something like that.  But if a person has an incessant need to constantly take pictures of themselves, I really have to start questioning their maturity and extent of attention-deprivation they’re probably going through.  Do we really need to see another picture of u AGAIN?  You look the same as yesterday or 5 hours ago, we get it.  Your grimace expressing your displeasure with the cold is acknowledged, but we really don’t need an update of how you feel about the weather.  Must every feeling or mood be publicly documented?  I like to capture moments with my camera – memories, experiences, cool places, fun things…  But a picture of myself in the mirror with a big doofy smile on my face is the last of my priorities.  And I hope the same for most guys that read this, because I do feel like there is some kind of a double standard for selfies.  Girls are more of the aesthetically pleasing gender, and it seems to be more an action appropriate for females.  But a guy sitting there with his little tank top on showing me his teeth and biceps on a daily or weekly basis?  Ummm that’s ok, maybe next time (or never again, thank you very much =] ).

So…  I don’t know how many people use Instagram in the class, but a major pet peeve of mine, in Instagram and in all of social media that utilizes hashtags, is the need some people feel to litter their post with irrelevant hashtags to either gain followers or empty ‘likes’ from strangers.  These are the paragraphs after someone posts a picture loaded with the attention-desperate tags like #tags4likes and #pleasefollowme, as well as ones that are some of the most searched tags of real words, like #nails and #fashion (when nails or fashion have nothing to do with the picture).  I am torn between unfollowing these people, and continuing to follow them to watch their desperation out of amazement and/or amusement.  And look, I understand that everybody has a basic need to be accepted, included, and/or realized by the public or by a certain amount of people they feel satisfied to be recognized by.  But when is enough enough?  At what age or maturity do we say, ‘Ok, it’s enough with hashtagging #sky and #nails and #photooftheday to your selfie to gain followers, who are strangers, to feel a sense of happiness…’?  If this is our gauge of fulfillment, getting approval from strangers, then where are we heading as a society?  Is attention overall more important to people than privacy nowadays, or are we heading into (or already in) an era where the basic need for recognition has reached an all-time, extreme level where young adults need to be seen and heard as much as babies?