As a frequent traveler I have always been asked to completely shut off my phone and hand held electronics during the duration of a flight. This was regulation that airlines were always very adamant about making passengers do despite the “airplane mode” feature that was integrated into many of our devices. However after flying to Houston this past weekend I noticed that this policy is no longer in place. As aircraft passengers, we are now able to keep all light wight electronic devices powered on as long as it is in airplane mode. I always wondered why we were directed to power off our devices in the previous years. After research the FAA determined that having the cell phone device powered on is actually not harmful. You can read about it more here.

After having watched the video showed in class on cookies and its potential harmful effects I had blocked sites on google chrome from collecting my data. Since I do purchase a lot of things online I wouldn’t like it if a company was gathering information on me. Now I know how ads pop up products I had been viewing the other day. I have also went ahead and deleted any personal information off of my Facebook. I have even taken the extreme as to using an alias name like “John Smith”, so that it would be very hard for employers or colleges to look me up. I’m also going to start using search engines where they do no track my searches. I understand it is helping the company gather information on what users are searching most but i believe its my right to keep that information between me and my laptop.

This article on Mashable spotlighted two videos about social media: “You are what you share” and “Everything You Wish You Could Say to Your Facebook Friends“. I couldn’t agree more with the article title “No One Cares About Your Social Media Posts”, with the exception that it only matters if it’s actually important. “You are what you share” basically summarizes a majority of people’s habits of posting on social media and people’s reactions to those posts. I noticed in the video it only highlights the social media posts that tend to seem generic and nothing really extraordinary or significant. Majority of people who are active on social media might see these kinds of posts daily so they can relate to the comments and reactions in the video. However, the video excludes social media posts that are significant, controversial, extraordinary, and outrageous. If the video included those kinds of social media posts, then I think people would actually care because we don’t always see things that shock, surprise, or amaze us. Often times, some people don’t realize who’s on the other end looking at their posts.

People always tell each other to be careful of what they post on social media because it can find a way to haunt us or get us into trouble, but when should people start caring or paying attention to what’s posted on social media platforms? How do we determine if we’ve crossed the line of posting something inappropriate for social media? Do we determine this based on how it will affect us or someone else personally/professionally? How seriously should we even take social media? How mindful/careful should we be about what we post?

Looking back on this class throughout the semester, there is undoubtedly a myriad of things I’ve learned, tools I’ve gained, and knowledge reinforced from when I walked in the door in January. Fortunately, these things are not only extremely relevant for the rest of my academic career, but in all life areas as well. The topics covered were ones that I was passionate about and loved to continue to learn more about. In terms of classroom activities, I would say three things that I gained knowledge on that I can apply in grad school (and beyond) are how truly useful, fun, and dynamic working on wikis and Google Docs is, how clear cut and advantageous making a mind map could be, and last but not least, how to properly look up sources and cite them from virtually any medium.

Now, I always knew about Google Docs, but I rarely used it. I was always wrapped up in (the now seemingly obsolete way of) writing documents on Word and then sending them as attachments via e-mail. To really get into a habit of sharing Google Docs, as well as being able to create a wiki first hand and watching it grow was nothing short of great for me. The wiki was just a wonder to watch becoming what it is now. And these are things that I can no doubt utilize in school and in pretty much any career in the future. The same with a mind map.

I’ve always brainstormed before and made outlines, but I never truly realized how beautifully organized making a mind map could be for your ideas. And again, this is something that can virtually be used in any job trying to brainstorm in a structured fashion. Such an awesome thing that I’m glad we got into. And in any field where you have to write things with references, I’m truly happy that we focused on proper citations so much.

While it wasn’t as fun as making mind maps and creating wikis, continuing to learn how to properly cite sources is yet another integral component that one needs in their repertoire of skills going into their respective careers. And I believe the constant reinforcing of activities that prompted us to use citations were great exercises that prepared us in that way. The only thing I would probably say that we could have learned more about that would help in my academic career and beyond is how everything that we did ties into the business world.

Now, surely one can take everything like the wikis and mind maps and be able to translate those ideas into the business field. But I do feel like if we focused a little more on how they would be able to, and which tools are best for which specific areas (ie. mind maps possibly for marketing, and Twitter for reporting), it definitely would have been that much more beneficial career-wise. Nevertheless, this is not a major issue in my opinion because I can definitely still take what we’ve learned, in its totality, and apply it in my future. And that, in my opinion, is the mark of a great class.

I can sit here in my last semester in Baruch and talk about how I read Homer’s Iliad, and learned limits in Calculus and brain elasticity in psychology, but the things I can truly utilize once I leave here are things I learned and focused on in this course. You need to know what’s going on in the world in terms of technology; you need to be aware of how crazily significant the change in society is and still will be as we further ourselves in this digital age. And to be able to study these infinitely important aspects in a structured academic environment is something that all people should do, and will springboard you into the future in that much more of a beneficial way.

I saw this post on Facebook and it caught my eye, it is a video that talks about how we have these social tools but we are not really that social anymore. Yes we are able to connect to more than one person at once but we are looking at a screen. We spend so much time on these social networks that we do not interact with each other. I agree with this to some extent because when I see people sitting around the table for about an hour and all they do is look at their phone. They are all sitting at the same table but they are not speaking, everyone is just looking at their phone. When I see that I think to myself what is the point of being together in the same room if you are going to stare at your phone. You can do that at home by yourself. I also agree that children today do not know how to be children because I see little kids with tablets and cellphones. I know that there are apps that help them learn but they are so young they do not need to be exposed to the technology. Because they are going to become reliant on the technology.

On the other hand I do not agree with the video because I have a group chat and we still spend time together every week. There are times where we are playing on our phones but majority of the time we are talking and just spending time with each other. The group chat can be hectic but it makes planning and communication a lot easier. We also use these social tools to talk to family and friends that are far away from us and it is our only way to interact with them. Technology also keeps us updated which can be very important, for example school emails are very important. information on finals week, school work, blackboard updates, registration and much more. Yes we are reliant on technology but we can do so much more with it. When we are with other people we should put our phones away and just enjoy each other’s company.

This article talks about how there are projects that are looking into the creation of technology that is specified for pet’s to use or interact. Reading this article brings up a question, will technology change the way we interact with animals positively or negatively? I ask this because at the moment such projects seem cool, fun and funny but what such technology lessens actual interaction with animals/pets or weakens the ties/bonds? Take the PetPal for example. it allows a pet owner to watch, communicate and feed their pet from far away. This seems novel idea because you won’t have to worry about forgetting to put food our for your pet or if you are faraway and miss your pet, you can see them easily but could there come a time when such interactions become the norm instead of actually going up to your pet and interacting with them through physical means? I think about this because in class, we talked about how social media (Facebook, Twitter) is one of the main ways of interaction that people have with each other now and before social media, physical interactions was the main way. So, I think my main question is, does technology strengthen or weaken bonds that we have with other people and will technology strengthen or weaken bonds with our pets?

In this article, it is stated that in Italy, instead of having a court handle copyright infringement, regulators are given the power to handle such situations. In the case the article talks about, a website containing 11 movies was blocked by the regulator AGCOM. This is seen as a drastic move because upon further inspection, the site removed all of the movies so instead of blocking the site, AGCOM could have properly contacted the site owner to tell him to remove the content, however, they decided to in a sense “squash an ant with a hammer”. Another problem with what they did is that AGCOM said that the website was guilty of massive infringement even though that is an overstatement. The problem with this is that AGCOM is setting themselves up for future issues by giving such a small issue a drastic action and by being so loose with their definition of massive infringement. This reminds me of how in HCE, Shirky essentially says that we have to focus more on how to remedy issues instead of stopping them from popping up. In this case, sites that have illegal content are impossible to stop from being created but when found, they can be shutdown, however if the definition of what is allowed and what isn’t is too loose, then it could be troublesome to handle either. My question is, should user generated materials be regulated?

This article begins by citing the experience of a young woman named Sarah Maguire in losing her cellphone after a night of drinking. What happens is that she uses an iphone application called “find my iphone” to discover the location of her phone. She then goes alone to a house where the application indicated and confronted a man about the cellphone, eventually getting it back. What Sarah Maguire did may have seemed very brave but in my opinion was very foolish. In many cases of lost or stolen cellphones, civilian efforts to retrieve their phones do not always end up as easy and clean as Sarah Maguire’s case. In the article, it talks about how an off duty officer called upon three other off duty officers to go and retrieve his son’s stolen phone after using a smartphone gps locator to find it. He did this because he didn’t know what he might be walking into. The article also talks about cops warning people to call the police and to not act by themselves in such situations. After reading this article, I feel as though technology is causing people to not think clearly. What I mean by this is that especially in this case, people can locate their stolen phones but instead of thinking clearly and calling the cops, they decide to go in themselves. If a person gets their phone back by confronting the thief themselves. So my question is, does technology lower our common sense?

Not many people use Internet Explorer today because many people have switched to Chrome and Firefox. But here is another reason not to use Internet Explorer! I read this article recently where Homeland Security is recommending that everyone use a different browser than Internet Explorer. Apparently version 6-11 of Internet Explorer has a security bug, where hackers can gain access to your computer and your information if you click on a bad link. Microsoft was alerted about the bug but they have not found a solution the flaw. So everyone do not use Internet Explorer!

Hackers are everywhere and using Chrome or Firefox does not prevent hackers from hacking your computer but the bug is so serious that Homeland Security is advising that we use another browser. We are always on the internet and we have a lot of personal information saved on the browsers. And if not the bug can also gain access of your hard drive so protect yourselves from the hackers as much as possible and switch to a different browser if you have not already.

This made me think about how much we rely on the internet. It saves our passwords, usernames, credit card information, home address and much more. We put so much information on the internet but we sometimes forget to protect ourselves. We mindlessly put information on the internet for convenience or to use social tools but we do not think of what would happen if someone gains access to this information. A lot of people have their Facebook or Dropbox linked to their computer, tablet and smartphone. This is why losing one of these items are so important to us because our information is on it. But with this bug you don’t need to lose your phone or computer, they can just access it from one bad click. Protect yourself from getting information stolen from you!