Internet The World Wide Community

Also this week we read about politics on the web. How new ideas are being distributed electronically throughout the world. The internet has penetrated every continent, and hundreds of countries are using its resources. Here is a map of the internet generated by the Opte Project (www.opte.org).



















Map Key
Asia Pacific - Red
Europe/Middle East/Central Asia/Africa - Green
North America - Blue
Latin American and Caribbean - Yellow
RFC1918 IP Addresses - Cyan
Unknown - White

In the United States access to the Internet is provided by private companies. In other countries, like China and Cuba, government provides and regulates Internet access. There has been talk by the FCC to provide free national wireless internet. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122809560499668087.html) If that does come into reality, how much control would the government have on regulating where we can go on the Internet?

Cuba is a great example of government controlling the Internet. According to the New York Times, Cuba has only one Internet café, in the capitol building, and it removes any unauthorized access to the Internet through satellite. (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/06/world/americas/06cuba.html) It amazes me at how much people put up with outside of the United States.

Usually when we talk about our community before the Internet, it was extremely localized. At the largest it may cover an entire city geographically. But now thanks to the Internet it has become a world wide community. Just recently I had an encounter with a person living in Taiwan, through the Internet. We have never talked before and we have very little in common, but we both were trying to expand our knowledge and understanding of the world through the Internet.

I relish in being apart of a growing community. It makes me sad that some people throughout the world are being denied this privilege by their own government. But these people have found a way to share what they have learned with their fellow citizens. In Cuba they have an underground information exchange via memory sticks. That amazes me how much the people of the United States take for granted.

Facebook my own experience +

This week we discussed about Facebook and its many implications. It is a social networking site that was created for college students. In recent years it opened up to everyone with Internet access. It is the largest social networking site in the world.

At first I agreed with Michael Bugeja, in that it Facebook destroyed interpersonal skills and didn’t supply any benefits other than staying in contact with other people. Then I started using Facebook. I began to treat it with skepticism, and with an open mind started an evaluation trial. At first I tried to keep my usage down to a minimum, because I know of many people who are Facebook addicts. As I started to use it I found that it became very useful.

I don’t have a cell phone so many texts regarding events and other bits of news hardly ever came to me. I began to get that info that was generally set out by text. I became more up-to-date about what was going on with my friends. I DJ and a lot of the dances I DJ are free and we try to get as many people as we possibly can. It is interesting that I have been able to gauge how many people are coming by Facebook response to the event invites. Our largest event had about 4,000 people and with in the first day of it being posted, we had thousands of invites spread across Facebook.

I read two interesting articles on line. This article http://www.newfangled.com/a_professional_opinion_of_social_networks made me think about the growth rate of Facebook. Two years ago it was growing at 260%. That is explosive. It is now larger than MySpace. That means Facebook could be in the top ten largest countries (if it was a country). It also gave reference to how much people feel connected to their friends even when they don’t see them very often.

Another article is http://vwgli.wordpress.com/2008/08/11/are-social-networking-websites-such-as-facebook-beneficial-for-society/. This article made me think about my own experience with Facebook. I got on Facebook to keep in touch with friends who are attending different colleges and universities. Now I have met more people I wouldn’t have met otherwise. I am becoming friends with my friend’s friends. My own personal social capital is growing to be very beneficial. I see society becoming closer due to social networking sites, because they are making distances a small factor in who we meet and interact with.

Online Enforcement

This week in class we read “A Rape in Cyberspace” by Julian Dibbell. It discussed the reaction of a chat room community to the offensive scenes keyed by the user “Mr. Bungle”. The victims of Mr. Bungle’s assault called for his total removal from the chat room. Which grew into a large almost entirely community wide debate on whether “capital punishment” was fitting for this crime, or whether Mr. Bungle’s right of free speech and expression should be honored. It was determined by one of the “Wizards” (admin) of the site to execute his character and delete his account. To no ones great surprise, Mr. Bungle was back in three days as Dr. Jest.

The deletion of Mr. Bungle’s account was in no way a hindrance to the live person behind the account. He spent a little time to create his new profile but soon enough he had entered that chat room again as a new person, who resembled in text the old character. In this world of many online communities, do we live in anarchy where anyone is free to as they see fit without fear of punishment or reprisal? The chat room’s community responded to the pleas of the victims and made it clear to the administrators that this was, in fact, a cyber crime and should be dealt with. However, simply deleting an account does not permanently hinder the perpetrator.

In earlier societies, when everyone had to have a static IP address it made it possible to limit access for a time by blocking that IP address. Due to the shortage of IP addresses, however, dynamic IP addresses and public IP addresses make blocking nearly impossible. The attempt to black list certain names and other identifying information is not logical or reasonable. For security purposes I input bogus information into unimportant and unreliable sites. For what little it does deleting accounts seems to be the only acceptable answer to social cyber crimes.

The article also brought up that control of the community would shift from the admins to the users. They weren’t giving control of the database and other executive commands but the governing of the community to the users. It turned into a huge democracy where the majority ruled. Yet, there were only a minority of users who actively appeared to participate in deciding how the community would be run. In a community that could hold thousands if not hundreds of thousands, and only a few hundred respond to a call to govern. How does a democracy thrive in that environment? Granted everyone has a voice but only a few are making theirs heard, the minority is making decisions for a majority turning it into an authoritarian government where the Few rule the Many.

People have used online communities to escape reality, and the pressures brought on by their current status. I feel that to escape is to leave everything behind, but to some I guess it is to only change shoes from the oppressed to the oppressor.

I wonder what laws are being used to regulate Internet use? I found a website The Best and Worst Internet Laws . In it it lists 6 laws, the two best, the two that accomplish their goals but aren't necessarily good, and the top ten worst Internet laws, Utah made number 5, 4, and 2. Reading about these laws only four were posted that were considered good by this author, however the author, Eric Goldman, is biased towards the free flow of information, and only regulation to make things easier, and cheaper for consumers. He does a good job on the bad laws by pointing out how hard they are to enforce, or how little good they actually could do.

Digital Education

This week in class we discussed different ways communities have tried to close the digital divide. In “Reconceptualizing the Digital Divide” by Mark Warschauer, he gives three examples of towns and countries trying to upgrade their societies. The examples he gives are India Kiosks, Ennis in Ireland spending $22 million on computers and internet, and the college of education at a major Egyptian university. All three of these attempts failed to close the “Digital Divide”.
In class we discussed why these projects failed. There were many factors brought up in class: socio-economic status, socialization, general view of technology. In each of the three cases, however education came up in the list. Why is education so important in the continued use of technology? I don’t just mean knowing how to use it, but using it inside classrooms and on school projects.

Microsoft gets a bad rep for being used by over 90% of the computer populous. However, we fail to realize that most people learned to use Microsoft products in High School. Microsoft sells, at extremely reduced prices, or just gives its software away to places of education. I have received a copy of $3,000 software and am taking a training course that costs $10,000 on average for free from Microsoft, because I am a student. Why is Microsoft giving away $13,000? In general, once a person has learned how to use the software and sees its potential, that person is a loyal customer for life.

I feel that businesses are keeping on top of the “Digital Divide” in regards to education, but the schools themselves are the ones falling far behind. The Jordan School District released a slide show on YouTube about this lack of technology in the classroom.



I wonder what would happen if teachers did incorporate podcasts and cell phones in class. Granted they would have to deal with students who didn’t have cell phones, but a phone company could get loyal customers if they gave, away service and phones to students for educational purposes.