Together we can!

In one of my previous blogs, "Stop ignoring the important stuff" I spoke about our ability to sign up to things without actually reading the terms and conditions. I was trying to prove how stupid a thing to do that is, we wouldnt buy a car or a house without reading the terms and conditions would we? So why do we sign up to all these online websites like Facebook and Twitter without actually knowing what we are signing up to? When writing that blog I actually ended up frightening myself, how could I be so stupid to sign away rights to my photos status' and everything about my life without even realising it? I dont know, but we all seem happy enough to do it.
Well what if I suggested starting a campaign, a campaign in which we created new polocies, polocies that suited us and not them. Together we can make a start to changing the way in which these internet sites work! Sure we all want to use Facebook and Twitter by should we use them at the expense of our safety and at the expense of things that we should own?
http://www.nyccounsel.com/business-blogs-websites/who-owns-photos-and-videos-posted-on-facebook-or-twitter/
If reading that doesn't worry you, Im not sure what will! It is clear to me that changes need to be made, but where and when will they start?
Polocies for social websites should amost certainly be changed. When signing up we shouldnt have to sign our rights away, and in my opinion the way to make this change is to campaign. If the awareness for what we have actually agreed to becomes greater then the ability to want to change these polocies should increase. Although we are partially to blame for accepting these polocies, they are also very good at tricking us, and its time we put a stop to it and campaign against giving away our rights.

Stop Ignoring The Important Stuff

In an earlier blog I brought up the question of us not really knowing our privacy rights with sites such as Twitter and Facebook. So when we agree to their terms and conditions without actually reading them, what are we actually signing up to?
I'll happily admit that I signed up to Facebook because all my friends had started using it and it was the cool thing to do... but i'll also admit there is no way I actually read all the terms and conditions that I agreed to before I created my account, and i'd almost bet my life that half the people using Facebook, like me, didn't read the terms and conditions. So when were posting all our photos and status' about what were doing, how do we know we are in control? We dont.
http://www.facebook.com/legal/terms
Above is the link to the terms and conditions that everyone has to agree to before their account is created. Some of them, to me, are quite disturbing and has certainly made me think twice about what I post and upload because in effect anything we do upload Facebook then owns.
"When you publish content or information using the Public setting, it means that you are allowing everyone, including people off of Facebook, to access and use that information, and to associate it with you (i.e., your name and profile picture)." This is just one of the terms and conditions that we agree to, so not only do we allow Facebook to use our information and pictures we also allow people off of Facebook to do the same.
I found a video which puts into perspective the full terms and conditions to facebook, and it shows that maybe we should be a tad more apprehensive about Facebook and similar sites. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfY_HTzd_4U
I think maybe its time to do something about what we have all agreed to. What would happen if we all deleted our accounts until the terms and conditions were changed so that we could really trust Facebook? They would surley have no choice but to make some changes to get users back. It certainly seems that it is something people should be thinking about, to protect themselves and all their information that we naively publish.

The Machine is using us...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE This video brings up important and thought provoking points about the internet and Web 2.0. I'll be honest, before i begun looking in depth into the world wide web and the internet, it was just a piece of technology and software that was there for me to use, i used it every single day, possibly every hour, but i never really thought about how it worked or what i was actually doing on it. Kevin kelly believes that we are the ones teaching the Web, he believes we live inside Web 2.0. By saying this he means we are writing the software for the internet, everytime we tag a photo or search for something we are teaching the web what to do. Our questions programme the machine to answer the questions. Therefore Kevin Kellys theory that the machine is using us seems to be a sensible one, we are giving the answers to the machine.
The Web is an unusual yet wonderful thing, a thing that people dismissed when it first came about, nobody visualised that it would become as big as it is or that we would use it religiously, as we do. Since then the Web has changed and progressed massivley to socities needs, which is why today we now have Web 2.0. Web 2.0 is all about connecting people, whereas Web 1.0 was about connecting computers and technology. Todays society uses Web 2.0 for social needs, for social sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Gradually we have transformed the web to fullfill our needs and change what the web is there for. Although there seems to be dangers that surround web 2.0 we are using it more frequently than ever. Issues of ubiquity, privacy, property and politics all seem to an issue Web 2.l0 faces. In terms of privacy we seem to post our lives on sites such as Twitter and Facebook, but how do we actually know that what we are posting on there is private? Maybe this is a debate for a future post...

Our Digital Voice

It's easy enough to think about the digital body and the digital mind, but what about the voice...computer-mediated communication. By looking at the digital voice it can then help us look into how the web works today, looking into topics such as cyberstalking, identity and our own internet representation.
The digital voice and communication is not a new idea, and when researching it you realise that communication and the ability to transmit messages occured long before digital culture begun. I looked at the book "When Old technology was new," by Carolyn Marvin to help me understand these ideas. Communication was previously transmitted by runners, riders, beacons and eventually by telegraph.
Before long the printing press was invented, which gave society the ability to print books and newspapers, this helped move messages forward it was a progression for the digital voice. Shortly after in the mid 19th Century society underwent the Industrail Revolution. Revealing the birth of the steam train, this along with the printing press meant the birth of journalism.
So when digital culture began to take form, the ideas were not new ones, it was not unique because the ability to transmit messages exsisted long before this. The progression is unbelievable, from telegraphs to emails digital culture has progressed the ability to transmit messages uncontrolably.

Humans vs Robots

The idea that robots could take over our jobs, our world and us is a scary one. How can we expect a piece of machinery to fullfil the roles that we play? In my eyes this seems ridiculous and something that we would never buy into...except we are. To me it seems we are putting so much money, effort and time into creating robots purley out of curiosity, how far can we really take it and how human like can we really make these machines? https://inlportal.inl.gov/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=536&parentname=CommunityPage&parentid=7&mode=2&in_hi_userid=3338&cached=true
This link shows what we seem to be expecting of these robots and it begins to give an explanation of what they might do and why we might want them... seems to me that humans lazyness is to blame for this fascination.
To me a robot is simply a servant or a slave, a way to get something else to complete the jobs that we do not want to do, a "Reprogrammable multifunctional manipulator." Behind every great idea there is always the potential of a threat, by creating these robots surley we are preparing ourselves for the possibility of creating a creature far more intelligent than us, and in my opinion this poses a huge threat to our world and us.
David Hanson is a prime example of a man who seems somewhat obssessed with the idea of Robots being as intelligent and capable as humans. He said, "I see an amazing future relationship between Humans and Robots. We’re going to make our robots more like animals and people. We’re going to give them advanced cognitive capabilities. We see so many technology trends moving in this direction – from machine perception, which allows us to understand speech and see faces and see gestures. We’ve seen great strides forward. We’re really in the infancy of these kinds of machine intelligence technologies." This comes from and interview by EarthSky, to see the full interview look at http://earthsky.org/human-world/david-hanson-creates-robots-with-human-faces. This shows just how amitious some people are in wanting to create humanoid robots, but what is really the point? The world is massivley over populated as it is, so what real benefits will robots bring to us? Robots should remain doing the jobs that humans are unable to do and we shouldnt be attamepting to make them more intelligent than ourselves.
Robots in effect are simply computers that we are attempting to make more human like, but they surley will never really be like us. They will never have the capability to feel or show true emotion like we can, so how will they ever be one of us? We can make them look and sound as human like as possible, but they will never truly be human, and therefore it seems our curiosity to create these things is spiralling out of control and we should save the money and time we are wasting. But thats just my opinion, on the other hand Rodney Brookes, chairman and chief technical officer for Rethink Robotics, would say that "within 10 years we're going to see humanoid Robots," it seems we had better watch out.

History and our internet dependancy.

The Internet is an invention which astounds me more than anything else. A concept which can link the world together with a click of the mouse. A concept which holds and shows millions of different websites, images, blogs and videos for people all over the world to use. The Internet seems to be a forever evolving concept, getting bigger and bigger everytime it is used. But how did it really come about? We use it now for social media, to keep in contact with friends, to advertise and to buy, but what was the orignal purpose?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZSPWDMn730

This video shows how the internet has been transformed over the last 40 years (and progressed even further since then) and how it first began. The war, in my opinion, seems to be the starting point behind the internet being born, the US military wanted to learn how to control weapons and by beginning to create a computer, this allowed that to happen, which in turn allowed progress for the internet to be made. This youtube clip clearly highlights key points in the History of the internet. It clearly shows that as the internet has developed we have developed our needs to it, we are now dependant on the internet. If the internet was taken away from us would we be able to survive? It seems in todays culture and society the internet is like our food and water, we are depenadant upon it. It is obviously important to recognise the history of the internet, how it started and what it was orignially used for because then we can truly realise how it has affected our relationship with technology today. By looking at the history we are all able to see how the internet has changed from a military weapon and government use to a worldwide social media platform. It is now used on a daily basis by billions of people making it a necessity within our lives. http://createbusinessgrowth.com/marketing/have-we-become-too-internet-dependent I came across this blog which sums up our dependancy on the internet, it shows a useful example of how many time we actually come into contact with the itnernet, sometimes without even realising! Will the wonders of the internet cease to grow bigger and bigger and ever became less of a necessity within our lives? Who knows.

Google Glasses- One step too far.

Google Glasses are the latest crazed invention which are attempting to take computing to the next level, whether they are ridiculous or genius is yet to be decided. Splitting the tech world into frenzy as to whether or not these strange glasses are a good idea, or whether they are simply taking technology one step too far. The concept of the glasses is Googles attempt to create a computer which you wear all the time, by tilting your head in deifferent directions you will have full control of the glasses and what you see.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9c6W4CCU9M4#!

This link is to a video which better explains the general idea of the glasses, and how they will work whilst your wearing them. The glasses seem to be like a wearable smart phone, they allow you to take pictures, send messages along side many other fucntions. However, it seems to me that these glasses with 'augmented reality' are showing us just how addicted to technology our society has become. It isn't enough that we can get out our smart phone and take a photo or make a phone call, society is becoming so lazy because of the increased need to create a better technology than the one gone before. Google Glasses represent societys need for something better, but for me this isn't a good thing, it is simply taking us further away from reality and making us more dependant on technology. Will it ever stop?

Media Morphing

Technology was once thought of as the 'impossible.' But through gradual change the 'impossible' has become very much real and a part of societies daily lives. Media has changed dramatically and there are certain concepts that are used to conceptualize media change. For example the idea that media can morph together to create a stronger and more capable type of media is an idea that would have previously been laughed at, however the change has taken place and the new sophisticated media has taken over. Media changes has many different concepts but I'd like to particularly focus on the concept of Media Convergence, which is the combining of various different types of media together in order to make a better single media technology. The choice to focus on this comes from my choice in university course, Multimedia Journalism and is consequently very relevant to myself.

The diagram here shows the change in media over the past 90 years, and how media has been able to progress and therefore combine to create a more sophisitcated type of media. For example, the idea that todays mobile phone acts as a computer, a camera, a video camera a music player and much more is a prime example of how media convergence takes place. This idea also links in well with the course I am currently studying, Multimedia Journalism, making it an extremley relevant concept. This is a course which links all ideas and areas of journalism together, radio, television, reporting and writing, showing a similarity to the concept of Media Convergence. Multimedia was defined as "the seamless integration of data, text, images and sound within a single digital information environment" in 'Multimedia: A critial introduction by Richard Wise. And in my eyes this is exactly what media change is, it is the integration of different medias to create a new and better technology. I also believe that media change will continue to take place rapidly because of a human desire to be better and do things quicker, meaning media change and development will only stop when we choose to stop it.

Blog Worthy?

A blog is whatever you want it to be, a way of exposing your thoughts, feelings and ideas to the world in the form of a website. A blog is able to give you a voice and show it to the rest of the web, people can choose to read what you have to say, and in some cases ignore what you have to say. But the question, what makes a good blog, is one to be heavily debated. Its hard to determine what really needs to be done when attempting to achieve a successful blog, because how can we ever be sure that people will want to read what we have to say? A good way to start is to ensure that what you write is compelling, engaging and worth reading, whilst creating consistency in order to make you readers continue to read your blog entries.Not only that but in order to make your blog better than the others it is essential that it be updated on a regular basis.By updating your blog regularly you will stand a better chance of keeping your readers engaged, by not updating regularly you run the risk of boring your audience, allowing them to stop reading your blog posts. Although it seems important to make sure blogs are updated frequently it is also important not to make them too long, research shows that the best blogs are between 400 and 1000 words, proving that the shorter and more precise your posts are the more likely they are to be read. Blogs that are unorganised, messy and have no focus or topic are the ones that fail. Making your blog have a topic and a focus and sticking to it will make it a better blog, it is essential to create a topic and a focus and then show your audience that you can deliver. The popularity of blogging has increased since it first appeared on internet platforms and it is clearly a popular and important way to connect with people, showing the influence media and the web can have on the rest of the world. Blogging is a method of showing the world what you have to say, for some it is essential and is used as their job, for others it is fun and a way of writing down whatever you want and seeing responds. Either way the point of a blog is for people to read it, therefore it is crucial that your blog be a good one, and by following some of these simple blogging techniques you could achieve it.