-4am

I went back and reorganized my paper in order to provide a better flow of thoughts. After staring at my paper for a little longer I realized how I wanted to proceed. I thought about my life as a student and how technology has affected the way I thought about school. Things such as power point presentations and automated grading has destroyed the student-teacher relationship which I last had in elementary school, and has forced me into a world which revolved around grades. This justified some of my study habits, such as cramming for tests or skimming through readings to save time to study for tests. Much of the students stress is caused by time management, trying to do the maximum amount of work in a minimum amount of time. After I went through the effects of technology on students and teachers, I defined a technopoly and wrote my conclusion,  which was supported by my paper so far. Then came the moment of truth, I clicked select all and changed my font from size 11 calabria single spaced, to size 12 times new roman double spaced. 7 pages. Ok now I can study for my first final, I will look at this again tomorrow.

The next part of the night, 12-2am

After emptying my brain of any useful thoughts onto a jumbled page of notes, I then proceeded to observe people in the study lounge around me by looking at their reflections through the glass infront of me. I zoned out for a couple minutes and then realized how tired I was, even though it was only midnight which is about 7 hours before my bedtime. I headed upstairs to take my mid-afternoon nap. I set my alarm for 25 minutes, and proceeded to pass out on top of my freshly cleaned laundry which was all over my bed. After snoozing a couple times, I took a shower to wake up and downed a small sized energy drink that some sketchy guy was giving out in the lounge. I then turned off my phone, and logged off of facebook and sat down to write my paper.

I sat looking at my notes trying to decide an appropriate way to organize my paper, having no idea where I should start. Looking at the information I had, I mapped out a thought process which would lead me to at least the beginning of talking about education. I knew I wanted to write about the ecological properties of technology, so I thought I would start as abstract as possible. My first paragraph describes the removal of feral felines cat from the island of Macquaire, Australia. I then proceeded to set the scene by showing the correlation of the cat and the TV being introduced to American public. I also talked about the computer being introduced to the American public, which was my segway into education considering the piece of technology with the biggest effect on education was the computer. Now I am not so sure where to proceed from here, and kind of re reading what I wrote and blankly staring at the screen waiting for some magic to happen. I will continue to do that, and stop writing this blog post which is not exactly very useful to my paper, but more of a way to distract myself and maybe begin some brainstorming.

Starting the process

I have began to look into writing my final paper for Technology and American Culture, now that I am done writing my other 15 page paper and am done procrastinating for the most part. I could wait another few days and do it the night before, but I have another final due on the same day and I am trying to avoid a heart attack from caffeine overload. I started by looking at the prompt, then staring at it for about 30 minutes interrupted by the occasional facebook message and text every once in a while. I looked at the two options, and decided almost immediately that I wanted to do the first option on Technopoly considering how much I hated the book “Made to Break” which was almost as interesting as reading a 200 page time line. Just in case, I spent another 10 minutes reading the second prompt. I then proceeded to read the notes I had written on Technopoly, trying to piece together what the book was about. I spent some time googleing around reading about higher education and the latest prices on HDTVs. After taking some notes, I decided to look back at the prompt once again and realized that I had to write some posts on my process so here it is so far.

COICA act

A couple weeks ago, a certain bill being passed through the senate was brought to my attention which I could not believe until I researched it myself. The "Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act" (COICA) is making its way through the senate. This bill gives the government the option of blocking certain domain names to the general public by making it required by ISPs (Internet Service Provider) to block the websites put on the government's list. There will also be a second list, which would be websites which ISPs would have the option of blocking. Many ISPs will follow the second list as well because they will then be favored by the government. This policy has the same effect as the one in place in china, and it is scary to think about what this could lead to. Media is already controlled by powerful corporations but the people have a free source of information on the internet. If this is monitored by the government it could greatly handicap the American citizens in knowing the truth about global events, having a similar effect shown in the book  Fahrenheit 451. 




http://www.eff.org/coica

third part of the facebook saga

As facebook moved on to its later years, many new problems and expansions occurred. Now that the user base was substantial and the company had more money for research and development Zuckerberg’s farfetched dreams seemed to come closer to reality. He wanted to create a “platform” for facebook which would allow developers to create their own software for the website. Mark was keen on making sure the platform was free to developers, letting them earn their own profits and use facebook to redirect to their own websites. Facebook would only earn the revenue on banner ads placed on the side of applications.

“Creating a platform enables a software company to become the nexus of an ecosystem of partners that are dependent on its product” (218).

 This is similar to what Microsoft created with the Windows operating system, creating an ecosystem for other companies to thrive in, making Microsoft’s product very stable and of high demand. They created a global monopoly using Windows. Facebook was trying to create a similar environment for their website. Now instead of facebook devoting all its resources to improving the available applications and features, external companies will create them and in a natural balance of supply and demand will show the useful applications to be successful. Users will be able to decide what they want to use and what they don’t want on their page, making it very customizable.

                “We want an ecosystem which doesn’t favor our own applications” (220)

                Mark wanted this “Ecosystem” to be so natural that he did not want his own facebook applications to be favored by the website. He wanted an even playing ground to create fair competition for developers. Features were even removed from the photo application because they were not available to the rest of the applications on the platform.

“Games are now the most successful type of application on facebook, drawing in phenomenal numbers of players” (231).

After the platform was activated and put online they proved to be extremely successful. Millions of users began to join the apps and many companies were successful just working off of facebook. Games became a social activity allowing competition and gameplay between users.

Eventually facebook became so big that there were a substantial number of users not from the United States.  Facebook was loosing a lot of revenue from these users because they had to update their servers to handle the data load but could not make revenue from them because the advertising was mainly based for consumers in the United States. Now facebook began to take offers for global advertising, and eventually after a lot of negotiating between Microsoft and Google, Microsoft got the offer.

Facebook also created something called Facebookconnect which allowed websites to use a facebook login on their websites and access facebook’s services. Now that facebook was being accessible by many companies other than Mark Zuckerberg’s facebook, there are a lot less limits on who can see our information. Facebook has created an online identity for many of its users, and many people are at risk for loosing private information. What made facebook great was that we could share whatever we wanted with the people we wanted to see it but slowly we have to be more and more concerned with what is posted on our profiles, fearing corporations trying to collect personal information. Time will only tell if facebook will protect their users privacy or make it more accessible to the world.

Facebook Effect 2

One of the things that separate Facebook from many other websites is the rate of growth. Before, when Facebook used to be exclusive to colleges, every time a new college was introduced to Facebook it spread like a virus. Something about it intrigued students and when their friends had it they had to have it. It was a networking effect that was also seen when things such as the internet and cell phones were created. Mark had created tool for communication that was not replicated by any other means, and as more users joined it became more useful.

“His central thought was that kids have a deep-seated desire to have certain kinds of social interactions in college and that what drives them is their extreme interest in their friends-what they are doing, what they are thinking, and where they are going“ (150).

It is a form of mass communication with a limited audience set by the user. It gives the user the opportunity to express themselves any way they want at a large scale with no repercussions. They are not judged by teachers or parents and only their friends see what they have to say. This is what drives facebooks enormous growth rate and the addiction of the users.  

Mark Zuckerberg still has control over Facebook to this day. Usually when that large of an investment (80 million) is made by a venture capitalist a large portion of the shares are taken by the company and eventually the founder of the company is reduced and his roles are given to other people. Mark needed a lot of money to sustain the amount of growth his site was getting. He constantly needed new servers and technicians to troubleshoot and expand the site. In order to get this funding he looked for outside investors who were looking to make an investment and earn some money. After facebook began to grow into the millions companies were eager to invest, and Mark took advantage of this to find the best deal possible. He ended up being funded by a company called “Accel” which valued his company at 98 million dollars. For a company founded by a 20 year old college student and 6 of his friends this was remarkable.

Other managerial issues he ran into was finding employees. Now that he had over 12 million dollars to put into the company he began to create growth. He was competing for some of the most talented programmers and engineers in the world with companies such as google. Facebook preferred young workers, and even persuaded students to drop out of college to work for them. “Why learn about it when you can just do it?” (165). After all this spending on computers, servers and employees he now had to begin to start creating a revenue for the site. He did not want the ads to interfere with any of the sites normal use and only cared about making enough to sustain the company. He began to make deals with advertising companies and individual companies who wanted to promote their products. This proved to be extremely effective, especially because the website consisted of mostly college students. The other tool they used for advertising is the information provided on the user’s profile. They could determine gender, age, interests and many other things through the Facebook profile. They can market products that the people viewing them might actually want. This is very useful for advertisers but seems like too much power for a single company to have over such a large amount of people. We can be never be sure what is actually being done with this information and who has access to it.