Open Source

Open Source:

The good and the bad

The open source makes the internet open to opinion and user contribution. The open source allows for users to be able to change the design and improve it depending on what they personally feel is appropriate.

Cathedrals and Bazaar

àCathedrals: structured for people

àBazaar: (open to all) anyone can comment and have an opinion

After reading both Lanier’s critique of open source and Raymond’s I was torn between the two ideas. I didn’t really pick a side because they both came up with great views on how they felt the open source affects us. Lanier focuses on the loss individual creativity and Raymond and how open source has room for improvement and benefits us every day.

Raymond points out important ways in which software is open to improvement. Open software breaks up commercial group power. There is not one program in control of all. Any one is able to contribute an idea that will better the program. We have the power and the freedom to alter and change anything. Open sources produce better results and are more productive. He states “every good work of software starts by scratching a developer’s personal itch.” Raymond defends this “bazaar ideology.” The open source puts together the ideas of a global community that can enhance the experience of the source.

“Digital Maoism”  =(communist idea/abolishes private property/equality)

Lanier talks about the loss of reliable information due to an open source. Yes, there is an overwhelming amount of information on the internet. However, the open source makes it unreliable and does not challenge individual creativity.  Open source reduces productivity. People no longer feel the need to go out of their way to think on their own about an idea. They easily rely on someone else’s idea that may or may not be completely credible. Open source opens a world of information sharing. It does help people become more informed.

Lanier gives an excellent example. Lanier talks about Wikipedia and his own experience with the source in order to defend his claim. Wikipedia is a very informative source and serves the needs of thousands globally. However, information on the source can easily be altered and changed to just about anything.  What gives us certainty that the person writing on a particular topic is not just some random dude who had nothing better to do?

 Lanier talks about his own Wikipedia link where he is defined to be a film director. His Wikipedia is corrected and within a day it goes back to saying film director.  This is a perfect example of how people are free to change information making it less reliable and are able to change information about someone else.

The Open Source brings about a mixture of interpretations. Lanier and Raymond had their own theories and so did many others. The Open source is open to be discussed for its positive elements and its negative elements. On one hand it makes getting information online more accessible and on the other hand can bring down creativity and individuality.

Class

Wheres Prof Dean?

Class on Thursday went pretty well (the short of time I was there.)  I must admit I left early because I didn’t have a laptop so I wasn’t able to blog about the class. I was confused and lost and felt empty without my laptop.   I didn’t stay for the whole class time although I listened to some of my classmates views and opinions on the readings. I already knew that you might not come to class because you didn’t come to my morning class. We were confused as well in our first class when we saw someone else come in and give us a lecture on the reading material. However, the time I was there I thought my classmates handled the class very well. The class was concerned about you watching us which kind of scared me into staying as well. I was there for most of the class but left early. I think it was great that while I was there a discussion went on about the material. People were frantic about blogging and what to put on their blog but pulled it together. 

A point about losing trust in you was brought up in class.  I don’t think I lost trust in you as a professor. I almost felt challenged to learn something new. What would I do if my professor doesn’t come to class? I wanted to hear how my classmates interpreted the readings and how they felt about it. I like to hear what my classmates have to say because it helps me better understand the material. Many times it helps me view the material in a different light depending on a classmate’s interpretation that can be completely different from mine.. I was able to listen to my classmates closely and my skills working with other people improved. After the class I asked my classmates how things went and they gave me a heads up on what they discussed. They informed on how hectic it was to try and blog at first and how they later pulled it together.

ISPY: Chapters 6 and 7

Chapter 6: I-WAR

"One result is that centralized forms of social control and risk management associated with the welfare state are replaced by the niche markets for security."

Andrejevic talks about the 9/11 events and our war on terrorism. In this chapter he links the terrorist events to ways used to trick the American people into giving up privacy in exchange for safety. After the war on terrorism people became fearful and were scared of another Terrorist attack. As we all know 9/11 was a devastating event in American history. People were constantly reminded of this tragedy, so that they could be able to provide as much information as they felt possible in order to clear their identity. The government used terrorism as the basis for why they should have access to people's personal information. The government saw interactivity and surveillance as a tactic to fight terrorism and fight war. Having our information was a way in which we secured our rights for protection. In order to do this we gave up personal info.

"The novel element of the so called war on terror was that the enemy's weaponry took familiar form of passenger jets, cars, computer code, and even the daily mail, technologies of communication and transportation."<--- Fear target in order to make people okay with giving out their information. Terrorism is an excuse to invade our private lives. There are things that we probably don’t want people to know that because someone is watching us they know.

Chapter 7: I-Politics
We give the government a lot of liberty when it comes to using our information. We all want to feel safe and secure. In this chapter Andrejevic touches on the politics of interactivity and the role it plays. He names one of the sections in this chapter "The Political Promise of New Media" where states “the mobilization of the promise of interactivity comes into its own in the realm of politics-the realm from which the popular reception of new media as tangentially democratic is drawn." Andrejevic touches on the idea of Americans having a blind eye towards the way that we are being watched. We allow the government to tap into our conversations and save records of our internet searches if they have too for a “better America.” However, we have no privacy because everything we do is closely being watched.  The internet allows us to be more democratic however this is only an illusion because there is still a limit the government puts on the things we research. They can intervene.

Andrejevic does touch on the fact that the media is democratic because it is becoming easier to gain information every day. However, politicians use the media as ways to gain voters. The information that we put online allow politicians to target us. They try to influence us in order to follow them because they have a better idea of our interests and ideas due to the information we provide. Andrejevic talks about the government being able to track down our phone calls. The government makes us so fearful we are willing to give up our information. We do this to stay in the clear and for our nation’s security.

Mark Andrevejic I-SPY part 1

"The promise of interactivity is that viewers can be cultural producers as well as consumers-that furthermore, their participatory consumption can be creative and fulfilling"

----> Digital Enclosure: " the creation of interactive realm wherein every action and transaction generates information about itself"

"meant to evoke the ;amid enclosure movement associated with the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the process whereby over time communal land was subjected to private control"

Thoughts :
First of, reading this book is very interesting. Apart from loving the eye on the cover of the book I find points the author makes interesting. His theory on Internet surveillance had an impact on me.

 A privacy concern that's almost scary to read. Reading a lot of the books we have read for class this so far has been the one that has provided me with the most concern. I have never really thought about the POWER and the INTERACTIVE era aspect of the Internet. He brings up many points on Internet control that as consumers we don't really focus on. I don't see it as people watching me but rather just a source of entertainment. This book served as an eye opener.

In the first few chapters he discusses geo-based technology and the use of the wireless network for all in San Francisco. Although, this is great because people are able to have access to the Internet everywhere he points out some of the negative aspects of this surveillance and power that rises with how accessible the Internet has become. People usually look unto google for information or to purchase items. Google gives us links to or ads to grasp the consumers attention based on what they already know the consumer has looked up or recently purchased. ( we never told them to advertise anything for us however they still do)

The book made me aware of the one thing that I am the most concerned about! Privacy!  Does Google even have a right to know my location! Nothing today is actually really private. We have cell phones in which we now openly admit our location (I couldn't stop thinking about this while reading the first chapters: Face book now has a feature that allows you to check in to the area that you are located.) Andrejevic makes the point that interactivity simply means the loss of initial freedoms. We are tracked no matter what we do online. "This book argues that the developyment of the promise of interactivity in commercial and political contexts underwrites, participation in top-down forms of management and control rather than in democratic self governance." We gave up our rights to privacy once we accept this technology.

However, I found it interesting that as I perceived through the next chapter as he talks about the Internet culture and its great impact on us. Andrevejic points out something that triggered me. He talks about Google becoming a verb and a proper noun over time. We generate information about ourselves through sites like Google making it easy for people to stalk each other and be informed about the others life. The Internet has become a world filled with our most personal information. I liked the example that Andrejevic used about the women who stalked her lover online thanks to sites such as Google. He goes as far as to talk about parents tracking their kids through phones GPS systems.  Reading the first 2 chapters kind of scared me into thinking hard about what the world is becoming. Out of all the books we have read this is the one that makes me a little uneasy. As I typed my blog I thought about being watched and privacy vanishing. The points he makes our things we really don't think of when we put up statuses or look up information online. 

Blog Theory Part 1: Communicative Capitalism / Symbol Efficiency

Let's just say that I am better understanding the text after re reading it a few times and thanks to our class discussion. This is what I understood. Correct me if I got the idea all mixed up. However, I am hoping to understand to the best of my ability. This blog represents what I understood from the first part of the text. As we proceed to reading other chapter's my understanding has become better. I am better able to get a full grasp of the text as we go.  It help's to have google open while reading the text. I was able to define terms/ words I didn't quite understand and put the texts into my own words. Once I broke down the texts I can say I had a better idea of the message. It took me a while. Im still trying to understand the first part. These are my thoughts.....


" E-books and articles as well as blog posts on theoretical topics are convenient ways to store and share ideas. But these benefits come at cost : We pay with attention. "

Deans Argument: "communicative capitalism is a formation that relies on this imbalance, on the repeated suspension of narratives, patterns, identities, norms, etc."

Blog Settings 
( Reading this chapter helped me understand that through blogs we are able to put our idea's for the world to see. Blogging is a new convenient way to do so. However, although we have freedom of speech some consequences do form.)

The media is constantly changing. It is designed to be fun, fast and a way to grasp the attention of a full range of users. Media is seen, thought, recorded and saved. People are always bringing new ideas to the table with media. Hence "blogging" a type of way in which people can discuss their ideas.  "Thought can be immediate, an element of its moment or more precisely. of the fantasy that attempts to delimit a moment out of the present's rush to the future and the absorption into the past"

In the media there is is an overwhelming amount of information for us. So much that one becomes overwhelmed by how much their is. Although their is a massive amount of information that as seen as equal amount (it can easily be changed or put into different concepts).Ideas are not really stable. There is so much information that is put out there that we no longer take the time to think and analyze information. We are distracted by the amount of information that is out there and the idea that the media is meant to be exciting and fun other than informative.  Once again correct me if I get the idea mixed up?

Communicative Capitalism: "captures critique and resistance, formatting them as contributors to the circuits in which it thrives."

"fragments thought into ever smaller bits, bits that can be distributed and sampled, even ingested and enjoyed, but that in the glut of multiple, circulating contributions tend to resist recombination into longer, more demanding theories."

What I got from the idea of Communicative Capitalism is the idea that information is produced however the focus of the quality of the information is lost because people become focused on the production and for entertainment focuses. Communicative Capitalism provides a sense of Democracy ( in terms of allowing us to express ourselves and express freedom of speech) However, the speed and the other qualities "produce massive distortions"

Dean explains that "Communicative Capitalism"
   assigns name to two things coming together democracy ( equality, freedom of speech) and capitalism ( decisions regarding distribution)  
However, from this idea there is a problem with the symbol efficiency.

Symbol Efficiency: A fundamental feature in Communicative Capitalism. " decline of symbol efficiency points to an immobility or failure of transmission." It is difficult to tell when a blog is serious or when it is funny. People interpret ideas differently. The more information formed, symbols fade because of the mixed signals people receive. As new ideas form, symbols start to decline. An example that I thought about was brought up in class. It helped me understand this point more.

Britney Spears is a symbol of pop culture. A political Theorist has its own kind of symbol. A Political Theorist is a symbol of the academic. As new media forms and people are able to give feedback new ideas form taking away meaning from the original symbols. Symbols fade.

 The page that helped me kind of wrap the chapter in my head was ( p.29) The first paragraph there states that " Blogging's settings then, include the decline of symbol efficiency, the recursive loops of universalized reflexivity, the extreme inequalities that reflective networks produce, and the operation of displaced mediators at point of critical transition."

Although, we are free to blog messages are misinterpreted many times simply because of the way blog settings work. We are able to give feedback and its a very great way to share your ideas and put ideas for the world to see. However, meaning is many times lost due to the absence of meaning. A blog can be written and have no meaning.