Hardware Hackers & Open Data Movements

For this week I really appreciated Beth Noveck’s Ted talk on why the government should be more open sourced. I really like the whole open source movement. When I think of open source I think of Wikipedia and how anyone can add to a topic that they think they know about. Obviously there are Wikipedia editors that monitor this and make sure it’s relevant, correct information, otherwise it could be seen as a joke. I think that Wikipedia gets a bad rap for not being a reliable source of information because of their open source policy but I think that just ridiculous. We all have voices and brains that matter. And I think it would be a great thing if the government were more open source. We are the people that are affected by the laws that the government establishes so why shouldn’t we have a say in how they are created. I have also been learning a lot about open source in my 3d printing class. It’s a cool thing that people can create, share, alter, and remix these codes to make something unique. Why not add this idea to the government that controls what we do? 

Privacy and Integrity

The Ted talks on why privacy matters by Alessandro Aquisti and how our phones companies are spying on us by Malte Spitz were very interesting to watch. I watched Malte Spitz’s talk first and was incredibly creeped out to know that our companies keep our records of when emails and texts were sent and where we are the time. As well, it keeps the data that includes phone numbers and addresses stored for six months up to two years. I thought it was cool that Spitz filed a lawsuit against his German phone company to retain all his stored data. When he finally received a CD full of his information he said, “At first I thought, okay -- it's a huge file," he said during the TED talk. "But then I realized, this is my life. This is six months of my life […] You can see where I am, when I sleep at night, what I'm doing." This is pretty scary that strangers can keep these kinds of tabs on you. I’m glad to know that this isn’t the case in the U.S. The only way people can see your stored data is if the government or the police request it. With that said I will talk about Alessandro’s talk on why our privacy matters. I like when he says, “privacy is not about having something negative to hide. “ He made his point that it is so easy to gain access to people’s information now and match it to a picture. The situation where people took part in the survey and a photo of them was uploaded to the cloud was just downright jarring. But nowadays, it's just the norm. Almost everyone puts certain aspects of their life out there for the world to see. 

Citizen Media

“Twitter vs. Facebook as a news source: Ferguson shows the downsides of an algorithmic filter” was particularly interesting because I have read a lot about how the algorithmic filters effect our information flow on Facebook. Facebook filters our news feeds by tracking what we click on every day. This makes it so that we have a limited view. However, twitter does not have this filter. Twitter is better when you want to track something live, like the Boston Marathon or in the article’s case; we’re talking about Ferguson. Ferguson was huge on twitter, but not so much on Facebook. I remember this specifically – like the article mentioned the ALS bucket challenge was the only thing you were seeing on Facebook while all this important stuff was happening with Ferguson. Because if you click on one ALS bucket challenge that’s all your feed is going to be flooded with. Another way we can get more information from twitter is because you don’t have to be ‘friends’ with someone to see their profile and what they’re saying, unless their account is user protected. But we can follow everyone from John Stewart to Beyoncé to Michael Brown’s best friend on twitter even if they don’t ‘follow’ us back. All in all, this article is making the point that Facebook is better for looking at faces. It’s better for keeping track of your friend’s lives than keeping up with the news. I like this quote comparing Facebook to newspapers: “In a sense, Facebook has become like a digital version of a newspaper, an information gatekeeper that dispense the news it believes users or readers need to know, rather than allowing those readers to decide for themselves.” 

User Generated Content & Social Media

I found the Ted talks assigned for this week exceptionally interesting. First of all, the Ted talk with Jimmy Wales about the birth of Wikipedia was enlightening. It was cool to hear from the actual founder of a site that is an online encyclopedia that the entire world uses all the time without thinking about where it came from. It is a nonprofit I’m sure we all know. The only paid employee was the leader of the software development team. It was crazy to hear that they pay 5,000 dollars a month to keep the site running and that the organization is predominately made up of volunteers. I like how Wales says that the idea behind Wikipedia was to have a “crowd” working together to produce free, accessible information on the web. It was interesting to know that there are constantly teams of editors on the look out for inaccurate information that may have been edited in Wikipedia because I have wondered about how they control that. Another talk I found interesting was Kevin Allocca’s on how videos go viral.  As YouTube’s trends manager he is paid to analyze which videos gain the most views and why. He came to the conclusion that a few things contribute to why videos go viral: unexpectedness, communities of participation, and tastemakers. Essentially the unexpectedness of things get more views that something you might see all the time and are not surprised by. If you don’t see something coming you are more likely to be amused and more likely to share it. In addition the power of communication can make a big difference. And lastly, tastemakers help to spread videos. A tastemaker can just be one person with the power to make everyone else interested in something. I really liked seeing the other side of the things I use on the web daily.

Crowds - From Crowd sourcing to Anonymous

“Right now we are leaving about half of the good ideas on the table for lack of resources." I found this article for the NBC news health section about ALS research funding exceptionally interesting. Maggie Fox paints a picture of how the ALS bucket challenge and things similar to it really don’t cure anything in the long run. Even though the ALS Association raised 42 million dollars over the year from the ice bucket challenge, this money won’t last. It won’t fund the long-term research that really needs to be done to find a cure. “These flash-in-the pan things that will go away after a few months will not help ALS in the long run. Researchers need dependable money,” says Dr. Jonathan Serody of the University of North Carolina. He describes that in order for there to be a real change towards discovering a cure people need to consistently send money every year as opposed to just one time. Unfortunately, this money that was donated for ALS research, even though it may seem like a lot, won’t last to make significant strides. In addition to this, Fox talks about how the research budgets are being greatly decreased, specifically by a third over the last decade. This is sad because that means that the resources that are needed to carry on stem cell and gene research are just not available. However, it is stressed that doing things like the ALS challenge definitely don’t go to a complete waste. In some cases hopefully it brings attention to the disease and people will get invested, learn more, and continue to donate to the cause. Basically, the best thing you can do is donate as much as you can annually instead of just once. I’ve wondered about this a lot so it was interesting to read up on.

Open Access to knowledge/Archives

Something I found really interesting in this week's material on the topic of open access to knowledge is the trailer for "The Internet's Own Boy." I found the trailer really ominous and interesting so I ended up actually watching the film to see what it was really about and I was totally transfixed. It's a really messed up tale about Aaron Swartz, the creator of Reddit, who was a programming prodigy and information activist. He ends up taking his own life at the young age of twenty-six because he finds himself in some legal trouble as a result of trying to set information free. What he did specifically was hack into MIT's system and illegally download academic journal articles from JSTOR, which is a scholarly database I'm sure we all have used, to set free to the public. He was charged for a number of things, facing 35 years in prison and a million dollars worth of fines. But his mission was an innocent one in my opinion. He felt strongly that it is plainly bullshit that we have to pay money to gain access to knowledge. Which is totally true. When you think of kids that don't have the money to get the information they need for papers and projects, etc.; how is that really fair at all? PACER charges eight cents per page of information that should be free.The saying that knowledge is power is very true and unfortunately it is the rich people of the world that gain this power but shouldn't necessarily have it. It is honestly ridiculous and it's very sad that this man had to die because of all the anxiety that was put on him as result of this. In his short life he did a lot of great things and if he were still alive I'm sure we would've benefitted from his mind.