The Penguin Press Presents: Together Alone: “The Penguin Press Presents celebrated public intellectual Eric Klinenberg, author of the forthcoming GOING SOLO: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone, and Clay Shirky, author of the seminal HERE COMES EVERYBODY: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, coming together to discuss what it all means and where we’re all heading.”

Program or be Programmed
Donald Rushkoff

I found this book very interesting and had a lot of good points. His main idea is that we need to understand the computer when using it. If we do not understand the program we are using then it is using us, instead of us using the computer. We need to learn how they work then there is no problem in using all of this new technology.
This book was a lot more optimistic than the others. For example Wu believed that the internet will become monopolized and take control. Rushkoff is much more for using the internet and the new technologies; we just have to learn how they work so the technology isn’t controlling us. He goes over ten commandments in his book that all contribute to his idea either to program or be programmed.
The book is not about getting everybody to learn programming. It’s about getting people to understand that there is such a thing as programming and that the computer is operating a certain way because it is programmed to. Just because it’s not programmed to do something else doesn’t mean it couldn’t. There’s nothing magical going on, but there’s also more potential to the computer or the internet than simply the available software.

Prof. Munroy

The Dark side of New New Media

            On November 14, 2011group two discussed the book The Dark Side of New New Media. Yu Jiao Zhang presented her portion of the book discussion alongside Prof. Monroy.   The Dark Side of New New Media is written by Paul Levinson and is about some of the negative aspects of technology; in particular the internet.

            Yu Jiao Zhang provided a wealth of information when she lectured the class on The Dark side of New New Media.  She started by informing listeners about popular issues regarding the internet such as gossip and cyber-bullying.  She related how something that is good can be used for bad and vice versa by giving examples such as a pillow being bad (because they can suffocate babies and be used in a crime) and guns and knives being good( because they can help to provide food and used for protection).  This is true with the internet because not only can you find information from various resources, lies and hurtful comments can also be found on the internet.  Because of this, there are PSA’s aimed towards teenagers about the repercussions of bullying.  This sort of reversal of roles is also evident with Google Earth.  Google Earth allows users to see a certain area or find a location based on technological advancements with navigation.  This feature can also help a stalker to see a victim.  Goggle map is also used by terrorists and there may be little difference between Google gathering user information for unknown purposes.   Zhang also discussed how the internet benefited crime with sites such as Craigslist and twitter aiding terrorists.  She informed the class about how spam is everywhere on the internet.  Even though we may be annoyed by it, in order to maintain the “freedom” of the internet, it would have to be a part of life.  The reason for this is because to get rid of spam, the internet would have to be heavily controlled and would no longer be a new media form. What I gathered from Zhang is that like anything else, technology can be used positively or negatively depended on whoever’s hand the technology is in.  

            Yu Jiao Zhang also talked about The Master Switch by Tim Wu.  The master switch is about the progression of technology.  As users, we were used to using the telegraph, which moved to the radio, the television, the internet, email, and etc.  Professor Monroy stepped in to discuss the technological advancements and their positive and negative effects on society.  For instance the radio was first used in the military (like the internet) before becoming a household past-time.  As improvements were made people could use the radio within their homes to get news coverage, receive messages, and to be entertained by music and stories. In 1921, five radios were sold compared to 1923 when five hundred twenty-five radios were sold.  In two years, the demand for this technology skyrocketed! The radio also improved satellite technology. Because of this improved, the telegraph was able to become the telephone.  The negative side to radio was that the newspaper industry declined.  In the past, people could have had at least five newspapers to learn information from in one day.  With the radio, the news reached people faster and so the newspaper sales dropped. He discussed the technological advancements made by the telegraph, radio, television, movies, cable and the internet.  He also informed the class about the pattern of some technologies becoming monopolies and used for monetary gain.    

            Zhang did a great job explaining her portion of the book in detail.  She had a PowerPoint to visually help the class to take notes and learn.  She also used flashcards to keep her flow of thought and stick with the topic at hand.  Zhang came prepared and despite a few setbacks, she did her best.  Professor Monroy elaborated on the cycle of technology starting out as “magic” and becoming a money making machine for large organizations. He helped the class to understand that the internet and cell phones are more than just new gadgets and gave us examples about how they influences our lives. Overall, the presentation was good.  The class learned information about new forms of media and their influences on the world as a whole.

I never wondered how the searches to my keywords were performed or why the advertisements on my page’s side bar menu appeared to match what I had searched. I had just done what I had to do and moved on with a new search or navigated another site for either research or entertainment. But as Pariser and the group explained, the fact that each of our searches are constantly logged and arranged to our own personalities is fascinating.

Even though the argument of the book indicates that we become stuck in this bubble that filters out all “unneeded” information based on predictions Google has made about us, which makes it easier for Google to “hide” information from you, I still feel that as students of media or as citizens of the world it is up to us to actively take part in the information we consume. We don’t necessarily have to use the same computer to search for something, we can look on with a friend and make comparisons of his or her search page with our, we can even delete our search and cookies that the site embeds in our computers to log our information even after we are logged out of the site.

Even though this is the case, I don’t necessarily think the idea of us existing in sole a filtered bubble is a big deal although it is our job to be media literate and to be able to use our literacy to spread our knowledge, after all we are now the producers of the content and can directly influence change if we developed a personal value for it first.

The movement has produced numerous advances but also many problems that are inherent to a relatively decentralized mode of production. To borrow Eric Raymond’s metaphors, the cathedral maybe be beautiful and ordered, but it is a closed system. However, the bazaar offers variety yet it might lack the elegance of the cathedral. Is exchanging quality for dynamism a fair trade?

Medst 255

The filter bubble is written by internet activist Eli Pariser. In his book, it described a phenomenon in which websites use algorithms to selectively guess what information a user would like to see based on information about the user like location, past click behavior and search history. As a result websites tend to show only information which agrees with the user’s past viewpoint. Prime examples are Google‘s personalized search results and Facebook‘s personalized news stream. According to Pariser, users get less exposure to conflicting viewpoints and are isolated intellectually in their own informational bubble.

From Myranda of group three, she mentioned that bombs were aimed at Yugoslavian Chinese Embassy. Three Chinese diplomats killed. The reason was because the Embassy was thought to have been an arms warehouse. Pres. Bill Clinton videotaped an apology that was withheld from the Chinese public for four days. China’s newspaper created an online chat forum which allowed users to be mostly anonymous and discuss their feelings in regards to the attack. The forum is popular because anonymity allows Chinese citizens’ to have a voice with China’s strict censorship laws certain words and websites can be censored on a day to day basis. Firewalls and proxies are able to allow citizens to access anti- government websites. However, most people avoid problems with the government by censoring themselves. Website availability changes daily. Porn is now available to internet users. International companies such as Google choose to stay out of government issues by allow certain items to be unavailable to China’s citizens. She also mentioned about the clouds are useful because they can store large amounts of a person’s personal information. They can also allow Government agencies to view your information. If you use Yahoo, Gmail, or Hotmail for instance, you “lose your constitutional protections immediately”. Most large companies use clouds to store user information. What is Friendly World Syndrome? A twist on George Gerbner’s mean world syndrome. Friendly world syndrome is when important and serious world issues such as global warming, the economy, and the human slave trade do not reach people. For example, Facebook Like Button: The more likeable a story is more likes it gets. A facebook profile will show the likes that facebook thinks a user will like or that is the most popular. Most people are not seeking out information that is shaping the world. Or, they may receive news from a blog or news feed instead of from the evening news or editors who spotlight problems. In the advertising, Oceana ran an advertising campaign to stop Royal Caribean Cruise Lines from dumping waste into the sea. The envornmental group took out a Google ad which said “Help us protect the world’s oceans. Join the fight!” It was taken down by Google after two days because the ad was violating its general guidelines about taste. Politicians are filtering messages to appeal to different groups. The political messages are targeting different groups in different ways. The filtering of political campaigns is also evident with sites like Yahoo and facebook. The companies are able to gather information about a user and display what it feels is most useful to that particular user. Postmaterialism, when humans have their immediate needs met, they care more about what is representing them. Post materialist’s value self expression and are tolerant of other’s differences. There is also more self involvement. The filter bubble pushes us to believe that our self interest are all that matter and exist.

Complete the exam on Blackboard. Navigate to the Assignments section of our course, then to Final Exam.

You must submit the exam by Monday, December 19, 6:00 PM. Late exams will not be accepted.

Good luck, and enjoy your break.

Response to Group 5

We left off our discussion in class last week thinking about the distinction between ammeter versus professional and whether greater participation in amateur work makes the quality of work go up or down? This is a good question considering the numerous online communities all over the internet. I think I’m stuck in the middle along with some others from class last week. When it comes to thinking of LOLcats I think you have to take it for what it is, people coming to the site for a laugh. Those who collaborate in the community understand each other, they have their own online culture. From one post to the next I think those of “quality” can be justified by the most creative phrase and picture collaboration. The photos of the cats are never professional looking, nor do I think the members in the LOLcat community are expecting to see the best photos or the best graphics. Its defiantly interesting to consider a site like this contributing to a greater good but the fact that the community gets talked about at all you have to think these creators must be doing something right.
Another example I immediately thought of when thinking of amateur versus professional was You Tube. Millions of people come together on You tube to upload videos, and its up to the user to distinguish the good quality videos from the bad. You can find plenty of professional and plenty of amateur work, yet the amateur work isn’t always the bad in my opinion. Graphic design is my minor and sometimes I’ll look to online tutorials for guidance if I’m trying learn a technique I‘m not familiar with. Of course there are plenty of sites devoted strictly for designers but you can also find plenty of tutorials on You Tube from professional graphic designers/design companies and amateurs like who use adobe design software in their spare time. When it comes to the arts its interesting because professional and amateur can at times be hard to discriminate because good artists aren’t necessarily professionals in the field with any technical training. Amateur artists can have great work because of their passion and love for the art. At times I can find tutorials from other college students that have quality, these are the ones that are easy to follow with impressive end results, and on the other hand I can also find amateur posts that have no relevance to the topic they’re claiming to instruct. I think determining the quality of something (that is not scholarly) is a value judgment and can easily change from one person to the next. Again going back to LOLcats, one person may find the site to be stupid and a waste of time, whereas the next person may see quality in the pictures because they get enjoyment from them.

Another thread that I wanted to discuss was the idea that as new media make production easier, it creates a lot of new work. With the advent of the movable type printing press, there were a lot more printed works, not just the important or sacred ones. Overall, the average “quality” of the work decreased, but there were new marginal works that would revolutionize culture. Those marginal works were those that led to the Protestant Reformation and the scientific revolution, arguably the two most disruptive moments of the last 2,000 years. (Wow!) The true value lies not in the quality of the work, but in the capacity of the marginal work to effect culture.

To ensure we value between the great revolutionary works, like those that begat science and logic, and those that are of little value, like lolcats, it is up to use to judge the difference between the two.

One last thing. Consider the differences between amateurs and professionals. Those terms have connotative meanings: the former meaning “cheap” and aesthetically impoverished, and the latter suggesting well-made and polished. But consider the other meanings. Amateur, as Shriky reminds us, derives from the Latin word “love” and there is a love to contributing. Professional literally means someone who gets paid to perform work. A professional creates because of an extrinsic reward, one rewarded by a market exchange. And as Shriky suggests with the example of the Israeli childcare facility, once the relationship moves to a market-based activity it is almost impossible to regain the communal value.

Response to in class presentation

Filter Bubble

One thing that struck me as very interesting throughout my semester in this class about new media was this book, The Filter Bubble. I am glad to be responding on such a topic, and one thing that caught my attention was the alternatives that that the presenter brought up in class as well as the video that the presenter showed of the book’s author further explaining in more detail, the whereabouts of the idea. It all stared because he noticed certain types of people in his news feed. This is a touchy subject that you would only find in media studies. I like how he almost investigated and classified his friends into the two different groups that I happened to, for some reason, forgot what he had called them. Facebook was filtering his news feed and deciding for him what he could and could not see. What Facebook’s algorithm didn’t realize was that he did not want this to happen, ultimately a segregation of ideas. Maybe one person would be alright with this filter, but he and many others including myself, do not agree with these filters. What the presenter in class had mentioned was the three alternatives, but I only agreed with two, the important button, which I think I was the only one in class who voted for that, and something in your settings where you would set which friends you want to get news from and which you do not care to get news from. The important button would be a good fit for facebook and other social networking sites because sometimes you like things just to be nice, or because you thought it was funny, but if someone important button’d someone’s photo or status, then I would be quick to read it, also I wish people couldn’t like their own statuses and pictures and people should have to enter a long code to maybe stop people from like button whoring. Anyways to the other alternative, everyone has their own people they have to accept on Facebook just because if they don’t it would be weird to see them around or people they know. Everyone notices when you don’t accept their friend request, or when you add someone and they don’t accept you. There is a certain idea people get when something like this happens, they think “what did I do?”, “does he/she hate me?”, or “wow this guy is a douchebag”. I’ve heard them all, and the ever so unforgiving unfriending someone. I actually did some filtering of my own, one day I looked ta my facebook and realized I had 2,000 friends. I REALLY LOOKED HARD and deleted about 1200 friends, it took me hours, but it was well worth it. I was getting news feeds and photos from people that lived in Washington, Texas, and California. I didn’t rest until my news feed was full of people I actually knew in real life, not friends of friends, not just hot girls I thought looked cute in their profile picture when I was in high school, or the suspect girl who only have one profile picture and advertises sheos, bags, and make-up, obviously a fake! I am sick of what I was getting and I filtered it, only to realize that it wasn’t my news feed that was making me not enjoy facebook, it was facebook itself. I loved the presentation and I really felt it had a long lasting affect on my mind about social networking sites, btu more importantly, on the idea of filtering throughout all the web has to offer, I will soon be using Disconnect Me for firefox and hopefully I will be living a prejudice free internet life.

i dont know if i did this post right not that I’m reading it again. but enjoy!

However, this is not to say that I am entirely against the filter bubble. I just think that there is a time and a place. And even Pariser seems to be implying that if the algorithms were altered to be more “morally balanced” like the editorial gatekeepers of old that he references, it might not be such a horrible thing. Frankly, there is too much in this world to see EVERYTHING, and that is WHY search engines became what they are today in the first place. And while I agree with him that I should be able to control my own filters, and that on a site like facebook I wouldn’t want a computer to choose what friends I can and cannot easily see, When I search for “apples” on Google, I want to see things about apples, maybe even about how they are used in pop culture (11th doctor: apples are rubbish, Doctro Who: how 11 uses an apple to prove…) However, if I am looking up apples, I really have no need to see an article about why meat butchering plants are the way of the future, just because googling an apple might mark me as a vegan, and that would be a challenging concept to my world view. Frankly, if Google or another engine was marking that some one was a vegetarian or vegan, I think it would be morally reprehensible for their searches about salads to show animal butchery. There are some places that it is inappropriate for a search engine to CHOOSE to challenge some one’s views.

And there are some places where it isn’t morals at all, but connivance.  I *like* that netflix filters what it recommends to me. I watch Doctor Who and the Cathrine Tate show on streaming Netflix, prior, I watched IT Crowd and Dilbert. If it wants to show me more tech or BBC shows as things I might like, cool. I watched some of Death Note and would be happy for it to recommend other anime. Because frankly, I have the CHOICE to watch or not watch those things, and if I want to see something out of my comfort zone, I know where the search bar is.

Pariser talks about the obligations these companies have to filter more responsibly, and  in cases where a site like Facebook chooses to disregard the choices and settings he picked for his account, I agree with him. However, there are some places where the responsibility falls on the user, and I think something like Netflix is one of those. Youtube could arguably be another. These are not news go-tos. These are not the places that are overly likely to shape my ideals and actions. If I am really uncomfortable with movies about WWII and the concentration camps, then when I log on to watch a video to relax, it should not be shoved in my face. Google wants to send me links to challenge me? In some cases, fine, in other cases, not fine. But if we can’t think of a person we’d all accept as able to choose for each and every one of us… how can we accept an algorithm either?

The internet world has changed so much and is a constantly evolving mechanism. The way that we surf, e-mail, chat, query, google and purchase determines what “suggestions” will pop-up as we cruise along on the information superhighway.

I for one, see this as a both a helpful tool and also as a hindrance on my personal preferences. Why should the internet or any of the bots determine what ads I see? Maybe today I am looking online for text books or my next reading endeavor so I am “pigeon-holed” into only those categories that I searched. Maybe I want to look up something about else, say for example sports or how an engine works? Should that not be my choice? Which is the why the “track me not” application for Mozilla Firefox has now been downloaded.

Pariser’s book and his live presentation that was shown to us in class is dead-on. We should not be personalized without our knowledge if we do not choose to be. Being a media studies major I have learned a lot about media and the history of film, but yet I am an avid music fan who is also a vegetarian and concerned with animal rights. I should not just have little “hey-you might like this “go vegan” website or the latest download for i-tunes. I choose NOT to live in a bubble, in fact-my filter bubble has been popped.

If any of you are interested in presenting at a conference at the New School in the spring, please talk to me. I can help you draft a paper proposal to submit. The deadline for the proposal is January 15.

Take a moment to review the current Call for Papers.

(Via Critical Themes.)

I think today, we exposed that our access to the Internet is not a completely open experience, and we have some sense for fighting back against the filters.

Also, thanks to Donald for sharing Disconnect, a tool for helping protect our online experience.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/disconnect/

Enjoy. Be free.

The book was broken down and separated into the ten commandments of  resisting being programmed. That’s what I feel was the main goal of the presentation.  To use the summation of the ideas presented in the book to produce one all encompassing idea: program or be programmed.

I don’t feel like we talked about it too much, but the idea that we are drifting away really understanding what we are doing is all too evident.  The digital age produces a digital quarry of information with the easiest access to it.  I feel like it is also making us lazy not only physically, but mentally as well (which I believe can cause the most harm.)

Most of us don’t understand the roots of our technology, we just do what it’s there for because it’s been there from the beginning of our existence.  Almost nurturing us, in a way, into it’s embrace.

I really like the idea Rushkoff puts in his book about symbols.  If I look at a word or say a word too much, it begins to lose its meaning.  You can tell a dog in many different languages to “sit” and it does.  Why? Because when we say a word it means something.  Our printed words are symbols for noises that come out of our mouths, but when we print, those symbols have meaning.  Without us know what the meaning is it’s just hieroglyphics.   That’s what we are to computers, meaningless symbols on a screen.

I sometimes feel that there is not much use for autonomy when what I need is two clicks of a mouse away. Then I always think “I sure hope my batteries in the mouse don’t run out” because then what would I do?  I found it oddly contradictory, kind of like an oxymoron, that I was reading this book about being programmed on my e-reader.  I go to a site that has my info, knows what I buy, suggests things, and sends me e-mails.

I think the idea that we are moving further away from not knowing why we know things is going to be a constant.  I like the internet for what it’s suppose to be used for, for me, and it’s good to be able to distinguish when I am using it and it is using me, but all together without it sounds like a movement we cannot make. I mean were people writing about how the radio or the television were going to change things? Yes, they were. The same goes for the internet.  If we didn’t have it, what would Rushkoff write so profoundly about?

It’s good to be reminded that the digital era is something we created and we control. To be reminded that our brains, our biological being, was the first step in this whole process.

The implications of this choice span beyond the personal to the global.  Chinese and Indian children are learning to code as part of there curriculum while the educational institutions in the United States continue to struggle with what to teach and how to teach it.  The First World digital divide looms, where we interface with a program that our Indian and Chinese counterparts either wrote or can easily manipulate through a basic understand of its grammar.  Then, we get to remain the docile consumers in the globalization food chain.

The very idea of choice can be abstracted from the concrete decision to obtain knowledge to the binary symbols that structure all digital media: 1′s and 0′s, on or off.  This basic choice is processed an infinite number of times per second as our machines attempt to approximate things like colors and sound with great fidelity.  Rushkoff asserts that some qualities will be lost as our “indiscrete and subtle world” is translated into a distinct binary system.  It is a choice bias that we as users become ever more programmed to accommodate.

There was an old science fiction show called The Prisoner.  During the opening credits our hero, played by Patrick McGoohan, would scream at his oppressors “I am not a number.  I’m a human being.”  But he was.  His name was Number 6.  The cold, impersonal future where humanity has had all its beautiful vagaries and messiness digitized away is an old trope of the genre.  But, we are all numbers now, lots of numbers.  Every one represents an aspect of our digital footprints.  These numbers make us searchable and customizable references in a database.  We are age, sex, income, region, etc., but none of the things that define individuality or uniqueness.

What I enjoy about Rushkoff is that he is both a futurist and an optimist.  Program Or Be Programmed is less a dire prophecy about the future than a meditation about our present.  He is saying that we have been moving so quickly for a time that we haven’t stopped to think about what we are heading toward.  Now is the time to consider how we engage with our technologies and the costs and benefits of that engagement.  The quality of our future is laid out in the choice in the title.  One can extrapolate the dystopias of Neo, Number 6, and Winston Smith in the programmed future.  But, the other kind of story, the program future, hasn’t really been written yet.

This chapter or commandment I should say focuses more on the business aspect. He touches upon the internet being biased towards abstraction but it is not a reality. Rushkoff explains that there’s a belief business online can scale up and if it’s not scaling then it is not real. He says how scaling up is unable to happen because the tools necessary to do so aren’t provided. Rushkoff presents the example of Tom’s music shop and how unsuccessful it became once there wasn’t any interaction online like there was when a customer was inside the store. He also points out that computer users lose touch with reality because we become captivated with the simulated reality before us.

VI. Identity: Be Yourself

Rushkoff believes anonymity leads to an environment where identity is a liability and it’s hard to be yourself because you’re not present. He discusses how he wrote a piece on anonymous users and their weapon is the identity and strength is the fact that they’re anonymous. By having the name or an image of someone online makes it easy for the user to be identified and easier to target. A majority of the communication is nonverbal and people often times rely on cues. Since you can’t read the cues online you don’t know what others are feeling and feel insecure. Rushkoff believes anonymity dehumanizes people because of the behavior they portray when they post things online.

For instance, a computer is based on inputs and outputs, or I/O to use the jargon of computing. Gone are the days of a single programmer typing into a terminal as the computer’s sole input. Computer networks have made the number of possible inputs much greater than it used to be, just consider the number of people on the Internet. We as humans can accept a much smaller number of inputs than a computer. How many inputs can we handle? Just one!

The books filled with ontological arguments that, if you understand the nature of computing and digital communication, allows us to understand the rather limited capability of computers. As I said in class, computers are exceptionally dumb…but they’re incredibly fast.

Commandment 3- You may always choose none of the above
The analog recording is a physical impression, while the digital recording is a series of choices. The former is as smooth and continuous as real time; the latter is a series of numerical snapshots.
The digital realm is biased toward choice, because everything must be expressed in the terms of a discrete, yes or no, symbolic language. This, in turn, often forces choices on humans operating within the digital sphere.
For something to be digital, it has to be expressed in digits.
Is choice good or bad?
Choice stops us, requiring that we make a decision in order to move on.
The more we learn to conform to the available choices, the more predictable and machinelike we become ourselves.
Our choices narrow our world, as the infinity of possibility is lost in the translation to binary code.
One emerging alternative to forced, top down choice in the digital realm is- tagging.

Commandment 4- You are never completely right
We lose sight of the fact that our digital tools are modeling reality, not substituting for it
This makes digital technology-and those of use using it-biased toward a reduction of complexity.
We forget that these are the people we’re paying to learn about these issues on our behalf. Instead, we overvalue our own opinions on issues about which we are ill informed, and undervalue those who are telling us things that are actually more complex than they look on the surface.
Reading has become a process of elimination rather than deep engagement. Life becomes about knowing how not to know what one doesn’t have to know.
Virtue reality and real world
Young people raised on mp3s can no longer distinguish between the several hundred thousand musical sounds their parents can hear.

CHAPTER 8 SOCIAL: DO NOT SELL YOUR FRIENDS.
Goes into when the first computer networks were developed for the defense department use of the government. The government decided to give the internet network away. AT&T turned down the offer to take over the internet because they did not know how to use it and were uncertain of the future of the internet since it looked fatalistic. The government let the people use the internet for free for research purposes.
The gov’t had no idea the internet would be going anywhere because people conversing with one another over the networks seemed to be a financial dead end. Rushkoff’s first internet book was cancelled by the publisher in 1992 because they thought the internet would be over in 1993 when the book was supposed to be released.
The net was opened for commercial use, making it possible for businesses to start their dot.com pages and trying to get more business. Unfortunately most businesses failed miserably taking the stock market with them.
Small businesses did not posses the right tools to intrigue customers to be alert of their business pages. Internet users were more intrigued with spending more time in chat rooms and conferences.
Internet users were opposed to pay for anything on a medium that had always been free. After this ideology started shrinking then came the popularity of blogs, links and comments. This gave people the opportunity to conversate with one another.
My favorite quote:
“It turned out, content is not king-contact is.” Douglas Rushkoff
Businesses like Aol, Friendster, Myspace and Facebook have each risen to channel all this social energy into a single centralized location where it can be monetized. When a social network goes down their users tend to migrate to something that is more exciting.

CHAPTER 9 (OPENNESS: SHARE DON’T STEAL)
This chapeter goes into the fact that we do not steal because we have a social contract, not because we can not be biased towards sharing. Although Google provides the necessary tools for us to see books online, stores, etc they still make money of from us. Google is connected with the advertisers that put their information on their website.
In conclusion to this,
Learn how to use the programs don’t get programmed.