JepReport

For my group Analytical Hypertext we are focusing on tracking/surveillance… So, when I came across this article, I was interested because it definitely applies to what we are working on.

Rebecca Boyle, author of this article Google Funds Secret Techonology For Hunting Down Poachers is a freelance journalist from Saint Louis, Missouri.  Recently Rebeccas has been covering NASA research, biology and engineering for Popular Science (an online new source).

Poaching has been an issue for centuries, but recently it has become quite worse.  The poaching industry is worth around $7-10 billion annually.  BBC reported that the killing of Rhinos in South Africa have increased from 13 to 588 in the past five years.

Because of this, Google gave the World Wildlife Fund $5 million for a new grant program.  This program, the Global Impact Awards, plans to use technology as an “aerial surveillance and radio-frequency ID tags on wild animals”.

Using tracking devices in order to curb poaching has been used before, but the World Wildlife Fund wanted to increase the umbrella of monitoring technology.

 “This is an industry that is creating crisis.  It is emptying the world’s forests and oceans” the WWF said.

Stop Poaching. Source: African Wildlife Foundation

I feel that this is a type of tracking and surveillance that will benefit the world.  People might argue that the WWF is ruining the natural environment that the Rhinos and the Elephants are living in, but I would disagree.  The WWF focuses their time and energy to keeping these animals safe.  The last thing that anyone would ever want is to see these animals extinct, except the poachers themselves.

By adding these tracking and surveillance devices, it would be able to detect poachers and dispatch mobile ranger patrols to catch them.  They would also place sensors on animals and in their environments that could be detected by a network.

I enjoy reading articles like this.  I also enjoy seeing Google put their money in a good place.  This subject will be worth taking a look at in a year or so and see how the numbers compare to now.

Last week I posted on the first 10 chapters of Little Brother, written by Cory Doctorow.   To sum up whom Cory Doctorow is again… He is a science fiction author, activist, journalist, and blogger.

Homeland Cover. Source: Tor

Now, for this weeks post, I took a look at his sequel to Little Brother, Homeland.  Homeland is every bit of the same story as Little Brother.  It is a story of activism, and courage, to make the world a better place.

Marcus is now caught up in a new crisis just a few years after Little Brother took place.  He has recently landed a job as Webmaster for a politician running for election.  Masha, his ex-girlfriend, gives him a thumbdrive that is filled with “WikiLeaks” type information.  This thumbdrive provides Marcus with hard evidence that corporations and governments are knowingly acting with deceit.

However, now that Marcus has a job, he cannot act like he normally would a couple years ago.  If he were to leak the information he would become known and would put the election at risk.  Homeland is just as fast moving and interesting as Little Brother.

After reading Little Brother, you sit back and think, “man, that was a good read”.  Or at least that is how I felt.  Then you hear about Homeland, and it being the sequel to Little Brother.  Now, normally I stay far away from sequels because they never live up to the first movie, book, etc.  However, I am glad I didn’t really have an option but to read it.  It lived up to my hopes of the excerpt.  Doctorow did a good job bringing the story back to life, adding different twists in the story.

Doctorow promotes creating your own programs, more particularly hacking.  I never thought I would be able to accomplish anything of the sort, but reading this it gives you the confidence to attempt it.  Maybe I will some day.

According to his own biography, Cory Doctorow is a

            “science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger — the co-editor of Boing Boing and the author of young adult novels like PIRATE CINEMA and LITTLE BROTHER and novels for adults like RAPTURE OF THE NERDS and MAKERS. He is the former European director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in London.”

Doctorow feels it is important to make his books available for free…

1. makes it easy for people who love them to help other people love them
2. We are in the 21^st century & art is made with the intention of it being copied
3. Copying stuff is natural, & the way we learn.

Little Brother was Cory’s first young adult novel in 2008 that tells the story of a group of

Cory Doctorow Shadow Photo. Source: Neil Perkin

San Francisco hacker kids who use technology to take on the Department of Homeland Security after being accused of having involvement with a terrorist attack on the Bay Bridge and BART.  Throughout this story the group of four friends face issues such as invasion of privacy and constitutional rights, while learning to stay loyal and standing up for what they believe in.

 “This book is meant to be part of the conversation about what an information society means: does it mean total control, or unheard­ of liberty? It’s not just a noun, it’s a verb, it’s something you do. You can use the ideas to spark important discussions with your friends and family. You can use those ideas to defeat censorship and get onto the free Internet, even if your government, employer or school doesn’t want you to.”

This post will only address the first half of the novel.

It is apparent that Little Brother is a novel of examples of how people are photographed, logged, tracked on a daily basis.  Doctorow mentions that in his afterword there are resources for ways to increase your online freedom.

“Little Brother is a scarily realistic adventure about how homeland security technology could be abused to wrongfully imprison innocent Americans. A teenage hacker­turned­hero pits himself against the government to fight for his basic freedoms. This book is action­packed with tales of courage, technology, and demonstrations of digital disobedience as the technophile’s civil protest.”

­ Bunnie Huang, author of HACKING THE XBOX

Examples from Little Brother:

BART pass was telling government officials where he was going and when.  It allowed the government to unknowingly spy on Marcus.

Gait: a system their school has to distinguish who is who, where they are going and when.  The system determines students’ inch-by-inch walk, personalizing it to every student.

Library Book Tracker:  tells you who is carrying which book and where they go with that book.

FasTrak: an electronic system that allows people to pay tolls on bridges without stopping.  People started to notice after paying attention that electronics like these don’t have off-switches.

As a story, I am finding that Little Brother is quite intriguing.  Seeing as I have only read chapters 1-10, I look forward to reading more.  This novel touches on a variety of themes, some more serious than others.  I feel that Doctorow did a good job writing on the touchy subjects, seeing as this is a young adult novel.

The Revolutions Were Tweeted: Information Flows During the 2011 Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions was a study taken to see how Mainstream medias have turned to social networking (Twitter) in order to learn from sources and quickly spread updates.

Authors are as follows:

GILAD LOTAN: a data analyzer, leads data team at Social Flow

ERHARDT GRAEFF: a part of The Web Ecology Project, Internet Researcher & Civic Engagement Enthusiast

MIKE ANANNY: post doctoral scholar at Microsoft Research

DEVIN GAFFNEY: Co-Director of The Web Ecology Project, has background in programming

IAN PEARCE: a part of The Web Ecology Project

DANAH BOYD: Senior researcher at Microsoft Research

Twitter: is a social network microblogging service that was launched in 2006.  It is a site where users can “Tweet” updates.  A tweet is a 140 maximum character post that is updated to a news-feed with all other Twitter users.

Social Media Pride. Source: GR Lucas

The study recognizes that we are now in an era of networked digital media from one ofbroadcast media mass.  This new era has changed the way informations passes and the transmission of news.  The study also acknowledges that mainstream media has turned to networked digital media, like Twitter, to connect and spread to audiences while increasing reliability.

The Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions were two major events focused on in this study.

The Tunisian Revolution:

Tunisia Flag. Source: cia.gov

“Consisted of a series of street demonstrations in January 2011 following the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi onDecember 17, 2010 (“Timeline: Tunisia’s uprising,” 2011). The demonstrations were an expression of citizens’ frustration over economic issues like food inflation and high unemployment, as well as a lack of political freedoms like rights to free speech”

The Egyptian Revolution:

Egypt Flag. Source: cia.gov

“Opposition groups and activists in Egypt organized a demonstration in Cairo for January 25, 2011—National Police Day—to protest abuse by police (“Timeline: Egypt’s revolution,” 2011). These protests also emerged from similar frustrations with unemployment, corruption, and the lack of political freedoms, with #Jan25 becoming the common Twitter hashtag used to mark messages relevant to the Egyptian Revolution.”

For both of these Revolutions, social media (Twitter) was a focal way in which information was updated locally and globally.  Twitter operated as a familiar medium for journalistic professions and as a site for general news.

 “People from around the world tuned in to Twitter feeds to learn about the revolutions and share what they learned.”

Twitter, along with other social media networks, really do serve as a direct way for people to gather information.  I personally, have a Twitter account and are informed about major news events on a daily basis. Twitter is a way to connect the world by proving that they have the power over communication.

It was said that if a journalist is to make their own account versus have an account through their organization their news work will be seen as more effective. I agree.  I would be able to relate more if professional was represented under their own name, rather than their organization name.  Audiences see organizations as being bias, compared to an individual that might come off more justified.

People have control over who they follow and what type of information they are exposed to.  In cases like the Tunisian and Egyptian Revolution it is interesting to see the responses of people.  They were people directly connected to the incident,  people who want to learn about the developments/be provided with up-to-date coverage, and people  who were just general interest readers curious about the event.

According to his own Twitter account, Andy Greenberg is a happily married tech reporter for Forbes , focusing on technology, information security, and digital civil liberties and the author of This Machine Kills Secrets: How WikiLeakers, Cypherpunks, and Hacktivists Aim to Free the World’s Information.

The Machine Kills Secrets Book Cover. Source: Andy Greenberg

This book is a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice and is said to be one of the most important books of the decade.

Whistle-blowing :  One who reveals wrongdoing within an organization to the public or to those in positions of authority

WikiLeaks revealed a channel of whistle-blowing.  This channel included cryptographic codes to hide leakers’ identities while they disclose the private data of government agencies and corporations.  “Hacktivists” are aiming their energy to destroy the world’s institutional privacy.

Andy Greenberg. Source: Book Court

Andy Greenberg traveled all around the find the next best WikiLeaks.  He found himself in Berlin at a Communication Camp for the launch of OpenLeaks (a spinoff WikiLeaks).  He has VIP access to codes and characters that are changing what society can consider activism to entail. Domscheit-Berg is the creator of OpenLeaks and a past employee of WikiLeaks.

The difference in OpenLeaks is that it seeks to safely pass on leaked information to media organizations and non-profits, and by pass who publishes it.  Basically, to have untraceable anonymous uploads.  Tricky.

 “Domscheit-Berg believes he has all the ingredients to build a new WikiLeaks that’s more efficient, more democratically organized, and perhaps most important, more legal. He wants to incorporate as a non-profit, a steadfast, permanent institution that can strike blows for information freedom against the world’s governments and corporations without needing to hide from anyone.”

This idea that people can whistle-blow anonymously intrigues me.  This means that more people would be likely to come forth and provide illegal information that is known out there.  What would you do if you knew you would not get pursued legally for revealing withheld information from the public?  I bet a lot.

This cryptography is being used to take power away from officials.  To protect peoples’ identities while they dump all these hidden documents.  If the OpenLeaks finally did get online, then I feel this would be a great opportunity to truly see what is going on behind closed doors.

Back in 2007, Henry Jenkins wrote ‘Nine Propositions Towards a Cultural Theory of YouTube’.  Only 5 years ago YouTube was established and Jenkins made these 9 ideas of how YouTube will fit into contemporary culture.  These ideas included topics such as participatory cultures, spreadability, and social networking emergence.

Henry Jenkins has written 12 books and focuses his efforts on various aspects of media and popular culture. He has his PhD in Communication Arts and is a currently a Professor at USC.

 Proposition #4

            YouTube represents a shift away from an era of stickiness (where the goal was to attract and hold spectators on your site, like a roach motel) and towards an era where the highest value is in spreadability (a term which emphasizes the active agency of consumers in creating value and heightening awareness through their circulation of media content.)

YouTube has become a place where people can create a profile and upload videos for the world to see.  Some join the YouTube world to view videos, while others join in hopes to being discovered and jump-start their careers.  A handful of famous singers have been found and signed by becoming YouTube stars. For a video to go virtual and spread like a wild fire is that term ‘spreadability’ that Jenkins was predicting.

— Gangnam Style

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0[/youtube]

Gangnam Style, a song from a Korean rapper named Psy was released July 15, 2012.  In the 3 months that the song has been uploaded onto YouTube, it has been watched over 464 millions times.  Talk about spreadability.  In the first day alone it received 500,000 views.  This song has been able to touch YouTube, celebrities and millions of other people earning popularity to its catchy beat and signature “horse riding” dance.

— Call Me Maybe Paraody

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsBsBU3vn6M[/youtube]

Justin Bieber and Selina Gomez, both celebrities and singers, heard Carly Rae Jepsen’s song “Call Me Maybe” on a mainstream radio station while in Canada.  Both went directly to Twitter to spread the song and gain attention she instantly was recognized and signed to Schoolboy Records. Bieber and Gomez made a parody music video to Jepsen’s song, gaining popularity before she even knew it.  In the 7 months the parody has been viewed over 51 million times.

“My #1 goal in life is to see a game designer nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.” –Jane McGonigal

 Jane McGonigal is known as being a designer of alternate reality games that ultimately have the goal in improving real life problems and situations.  On top of her New York Times best seller Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, Jane is the Director of Games Research and Development at the Institute for the Future.  In addition, Jane is the founder of a game developing headquarters, Gameful.  Some of her other accomplishments include that more than 30 countries have been exposed to award-winning games that have been targeted at tackling real life problems through collaboration and strategy.  With a PhD from UC Berkeley, Jane McGonigal’s achievements have been recognized throughout the world, no matter what view someone holds on her topics of choice.

Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World focuses on…

“games for personal and social change,” “positive impact games,” “social reality games,” “serious games,” and “leveraging the play of the planet.”

Jane feels that games are crucial for the future…  That the games are rooted in pushing collaboration, dedication, strategy, organization, motivation – basically features that push for a better world.  She explains in the book that these games will continue to create an appetite for involvement, and ultimately will result in worldwide solutions.

“Game developers know better than anyone else how to inspire extreme effort and reward hard work. They know how to facilitate cooperation and collaboration at previously unimaginable scales. And they are continuously innovating new ways to motivate players to stick with harder challenges, for longer, and in much bigger groups. These crucial twenty-first-century skills can help all of us find new ways to make a deep and lasting impact on the world around us.”

With this book being written, Jane hoped to establish a framework to how all of these hopes can be accomplished.  Because in the Unite States there are “183 million active gamers”.  There is a sense that people who are devoted to these games (otherwise known as gaming cultures) are finding that reality is missing something that a game provides.  That is where Jane gets this “broken reality”.

“The real world just doesn’t offer up as easily the carefully designed pleasures, the thrilling challenges, and the powerful social bonding afforded by virtual environments. Reality doesn’t motivate us as effectively. Reality isn’t engineered to maximize our potential. Reality wasn’t designed from the bottom up to make us happy.”

In a sense I agree that games are providing us with a sense of satisfaction that reality does not.  These games bring together people, creating this culture that motivates and connects people to a common interest.  Within these game cultures, the gamers are dedicated to overcoming all of these puzzles/levels/problems.  Whether people want to admit to it or not, games are a way people can escape reality and just zone into another realm and play.  That does apply to everyone.  There are some people who are more introverted and do not do well in a social atmosphere.

I was reading some audience reviews on Jane’s views, and I feel that some people are so naive concerning this topic.  I read that driving video games could actually make someone a better driver, or when playing a baseball video game it improves your hand eye coordination.  I am not a believer in this approach.  I feel that if someone wants to improve their driving skills, or their hand eye coordination, to go out and actually drive a car or swing a bat.

I just feel like this is way too big of a stretch for me.  That Jane can honestly claim that her new revamped video games are a cure for depression, obesity, and other major issues like curing cancer.  To further this, I feel that this is why the majority of America is unhealthy and overweight.  We are promoting playing video games, rather than going out and getting exercise. The irony in solving our nation wide obesity problem by playing a video game is beyond me.  If my psychologist told me the cure to my depression was in playing a video game, I would not pay her for the session and never go back to her.  People want real answers, not a virtual outlet.

What if these video games were used in an academic setting or a business setting and had someone monitoring the purpose of the game and what users should be getting from it?  Would that be enough to change my mind on Jane’s views?

Yours Truly.

Andrew Keen is better known as an Internet entrepreneur, but is also recognized as a speaker who addresses the impact of 21^st century digital technologies.  He founded Audiocafe.com, and is now a columnist, a commentator and hosts a chat show called “Keen On”.  This British-American author and entrepreneur earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of London, and then later came over to America and worked towards a master’s degree at UC Berkeley.

In Keen’s ‘Digital Vertigo’ it says right below the title that the book is going to be about “how today’s online social revolution is dividing, diminishing and disorienting us”.  The book goes into privacy rights, autonomy, extreme sharing, personal transparency and distinguishes out world as one that will reach around 50 billion intelligent networked devices by 2020 (18).  Social media is seen as the culprit to why nothing is private anymore.  It goes back with being able to access the information anytime, and digging is not even needed, it is right in front of your face.

 “Social media is the confessional novel that we are not only all writing but also collectively publishing for everyone else to read” (34).

This is so true.  When signing up for a Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram account, intentions are to strictly keep up with friends and see what is going on in the world.  However, majority of users get caught up in societies perspective, creating this very narcissistic mentality.  Users openly post information about them knowing, thinking, even hoping people will respond to it.  Whether a positive or negative response, it is better than not having any reaction.

In an interview Keen responds… “I am concerned that whatever it means to be human is being undermined. This endless temptation to broadcast ourselves, intimately, globally, to the world is ruining us. The majority of us don’t want to be sold and right now, with all of this data, we are being followed around the Web”

Neil Strauss stated that the “social network culture medicates our need for self esteem by pandering to win followers.”  As users of all these networks, we need to stand up and fight back against these innovators and creators of these web gadgets.

Whoever denies the pleasure of receiving a “friend request” is in social media denial.  In the end, we all want followers. We all have that “fantasy of wanting to be liked” as Jonathan Franzen, a well renowned novelist stated.  He then continues to connect how technology is simply an extension of our narcissism.

 “Like the network itself, our mass public confessional is global.  People from all around the world are revealing their most private thoughts on transparent network that anyone and everyone can access.”

Why people feel they are transparent on the Internet is beyond me.  I myself am guilty of being a part of these networks, but I have taken the step in deleting my Facebook account.  And, like Keen, it was the best decision I have made in terms of social networking.  I am curious to know if people honestly think they will not be found online, or if they simply just don’t care.  Like anything, people need to find that balance in access.

I understand that social networking is that outlet for people, where they think they are in this secluded cave and no one can see them, but in reality they are seen crystal clear.  I feel I have taken a step in the right direction, but after reading this book, I will be more conscious in the personal data I publish on social networking sites.

Thoughts?

Yours Truly.

This second reading that I am going to be blogging on is Remix, written by Lawrence Lessig.  Lessig was a professor of Law at Stanford University, and is now a professor of Law at Harvard University.  So, this guys credentials cannot be overlooked by any means.  He is also apart of several associations/foundations – some include Center for Internet and Society, Creative Commons and Rootstrikers.  Besides academia, Lessig is a political advocate.  He advocates the limiting of legal restrictions on technological applications, which is where the term ‘remix’ comes in.  And, ironically all this information I am getting on Lessig is from Wikipedia.  Yea, yea, I know…. Wikipedia is not a reliable source. Blah blah. But, his personal website doesn’t say anything about him, and when it comes to general background information, Wikipedia can come into handy.  Anyways.

Remix: Part 1 addresses several issues of our digital age – Lessig introduced the terms RW (reading/writing) and RO (Reading Only), which are used throughout this first portion.  He makes a point that before the technological era everyone was a RW, more interactive with the culture.  Whereas now, with all of the technology advancements, we are mainly an RO culture.

“Here’s a part of culture that we simply consume. We listen to music. We watch a movie. We read a book. With each, we’re not expected to do much more than simply consume.* We might hum along with the music. We might reenact a dance from a movie. Or we might quote a passage from the book in a letter to a friend. But in the main, this kind of culture is experienced through the act of consumption. There’s a beginning, a middle, and an end to that consumption. Once we’ve finished it, we put the work away.” (37)

I once again catch myself nodding my head as I am reading this portion.  We are a society that is becoming so obsessed with consumption.  And this is on so many other levels.  People are so willing to perform illegal actions in order to get what they want.  Music, movies, books, photos, television shows – if any of these categories do not provide access, people will go out of their way to find a way to access it (YouTube, Wikipedia).  That is where these copyright laws and privacy infringement comes into play.   I agree with Lessig when he says that there needs to be a balance between access and control that would satisfy both consumers and creators.  Because, like we have seen with the innovation of iTunes, Steve Jobs did a great job in creating the program.  It is a place where you store all your music, and as the program grew, it started providing more sources to access.  Which, we have obviously seen that people will pay for it, as long as it stays available when they want it.

“The expectation of access on demand builds slowly, and it builds differently across generations. But at a certain point, perfect access (meaning the ability to get whatever you want whenever you want it) will seem obvious. And when it seems obvious, anything that resists that expectation will seem ridiculous. Ridiculous, in turn, makes many of us willing to break the rules that restrict access. Even the good become pirates in a world where the rules seem absurd.”

 

This idea of “remixing” needs to be addressed.  I particularly enjoyed the example of a father who wants to make a home video and include a video clip of a movie, and Disney feels they should be compensated for it.  First of all, it’s not like Disney isn’t extremely successful already… Secondly, it is a father who just wants to put a nice home video together.  He wants to take all of his memories and tie them together with a movie clip, music—things that helped make those memories – I do not see anything wrong with this. If he was going to turn it in to a television show to win a prize, then there is something wrong there.   Lessig mentions that “piracy” was unavoidable given the “nature” of digital techonologies.  I agree and disagree with this statement.  Yes, the content is out there – However, you definitely need to go out of your way to find something that is not suppose to be found (if that makes any sense).

 “the RIAA had sent around 2,500 prelitigation letters to twenty-three more universities across the nation, threatening action based upon students’ allegedly illegal downloading of copy- righted content.”

It is really unfortunate that universities took action on this.  That is my personal opinion.  I am someone who does not enjoy paying for music.  So, for universities to be able to monitor that type of activity while on their network is fishy to me.  I feel like my privacy is not respected and that universities should not have that sort of access to my online history.  Anywho.

I laughed at the reference to citing authors and quotes in academic papers.  I swear, if I had to contact the author every time I wanted to include them in a research paper, or just a simple reference, I think I would go crazy or drop out of college.  I give everyone credit where credit is due and that should be enough.  They should be humbled and honored that people use their knowledge and wisdom to make and backup arguments.  That is why I feel that if is just a simple, harmless use of words, and is properly credited – let it be.  However, if someone is caught for deliberately trying to work the system, be my guest, press charges and convict away.

Mmk. Byeee.

Yours Truly.