This article, “How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did”,  again touches on the subject on how far data mining can invade into our private lives. Kashmir Hill, a social media privacy analyst and writer for Forbes magazine, explains how Target has gone as far as data mining your womb! Just by looking at what you are buying, they can 90% accurately predict whether you are pregnant and can even accurately estimate the due date. From data they collect, they start sending out coupons for baby products. The father of the pregnant teen noticed these coupons and contacted Target telling them that he didn’t like them trying to encourage his daughter to become pregnant through this marketing. Little did he know, his daughter was already pregnant.

This article tells us just how far data mining can go. They can probably predict pregnancy even before the individual is pregnant. We are already a consumer based nation and data mining probably had a huge role in this. Shopping is considered a hobby and people are buying and spending like crazy, even if they can’t afford it. One of my friends recently told me about an article that she read where moms constantly compete with other mothers, making sure that their child has the best stuff. Data mining is creating this competition by marketing and advertising things that you like, things that you have a weak spot for. Just like in the previous article, the best thing you can do is discipline yourself, being strong enough to just say no. Shopping is an addiction and data mining is making it worse. Just like drug addiction, you have to undergo a detox and let go of it. It’s just sad to hear that so many people are incurring debts upon debts and can’t control where their money goes. Everyone, kids included, really needs to learn how to manage their finances.

Recently, I am becoming more and more interested in how all of this new technology is affecting children. Now, we see 6 year olds with their own (not their parents’) iphones and 3 year olds with their own ipads. I just find this completely ridiculous. So I came across this article, Data Mining and Kids, that goes over this same issue of kids being exposed to exploiting technologies on the internet. This article was written for Wired by Erik Wecks, a father and writer based in Washington and is primarily written for parents that may want to protect their kids from online data mining. Wecks thinks that parents should worry about how data mining can affect their children by influencing their critical thinking abilities. He says that kids are very easily influenced by what they hear from other people, especially from corporations that try to persuade kids into buying their products because they “need” them. He then states three ways on how parents can go about this issue. The first tip is managing your finances and knowing how you want to use your money before you spend it. The second is that you have to help your children from being tagged in corporate data mining systems by creating fake, fun identities when they need to use them. The third is as simple as paying cash in order to avoid all of this trouble in the first place.

I do agree with Weck that we need to protect children from all of this data mining. I know kids who have to buy at least one thing every time their parents take them out. The parents have to be careful about exposing their kids to this type of marketing and should help their kids be more disciplined in what they need to buy and what they don’t really need. I don’t agree on his whole cash argument though. In this day and age, it’s just too much to be carrying cash everywhere. I love having a credit card. I feel its safer, you don’t need to carry a whole wad of cash, and it’s just easier. So I think the big issue is just really learning how to discipline yourself and your child on how to manage your finances. Every time you see that ad for that new shiny gadget, you need to be strong enough to say “no, I don’t need it.”

I recently came across an article, Kony 2012 Debate, in the Huffington Post.This article is a debate with two writers, Jenna Arnold and Mikaela Luttrell-Rowland, about whether the Kony 2012 campaign creates effective social change or not. Jenna Arnold, who owns a social media company agrees that this campaign is creating an effective social change. She explains that there have been numerous documentaries on the subject of violence and criminal activity in Africa,but no one really watches them. This video, created by Jason Russell does exactly the opposite. This short, simple documentary has become viral in a matter of months and is helping create awareness of what is going on in Uganda. The other writer,Luttrel-Rowlandfrom Clark University’s Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, disagrees and thinks that this campaign is not effective. She thinks the Kony film is too simplistic and not analytical enough. She considers this video to be like a “poster”, only to raise money for their nonprofit, Invisible Children.

Personally, I think the video is pretty effective even though it may not be perfect and contain some misinformation. But, overall they get their point across to their audience, the general public. People don’t want to watch long research, analytical documentaries. I think it’s best to keep it simple and to the point so that people of every age and background can understand the atrocities that are being committed in Uganda and other parts of Africa. Also, I feel that as Americans, we are living in a bubble and we are not exposed to what is going on in the larger world. It’s good for everyone to know about these things, to know that we don’t live in a perfect world and that most people can’t even come close to the “American dream.” We often take what we have for granted and don’t realize that the majority of people in the world have a lot less than we do.

I find the analytical hypertext similar to the personal hypertext with just the content being different. Because this is the third project, designing it and working with Kompozer is much easier than before. However, I still don’t understand the concept of style sheets. I think that there should probably be a practicum on it, so we understand how to make them or incorporate them into our pages.  I also think that either the topic should have been narrowed down, like be an essay prompt that everyone has to address or separate essay prompts for each group. Or it either should have been broadened, like letting the group decide the topic and the issue they would like to discuss. Maybe less people would have chosen game addiction this way. For the essay part, it is also a bit unclear as to how much we have to incorporate the novel into it. It was hard trying to decide what three topics we would discuss in the essay. For this hypertext, the biggest challenge is definitely writing the essay. It is hard to make the essay flow if different people are writing it unless you sit down and write it together. But, not everyone has the time to sit down in a group and write 2,000 words. I also think its unfair to give it to one person to edit, because that person has to do more work. It’s not easy combining everyone’s work. For me, it makes more sense that hypertext projects are individual rather than group projects. A group project to me would be something like a presentation or a hypertext with not as many words involved.

Overall, the hypertext projects were interesting. They were more engaging then your average paper and I never had to write this informally before, so that made things a little easier. At first, it was really hard just understanding Kompozer, so I really couldn’t focus as much on content as I wanted to. Designing does take up a good amount of time and can sometimes lead your content to be weaker than you want it to be. I didn’t have any experience on web designing before this class. However, I just took a computer imaging class last quarter and that helped me organize a little better. I would like to try Dream weaver, but it’s probably expensive to work with unless you work in the computer labs, which isn’t always convenient. I don’t mind writing publicly unless I have to write about personal information. I would probably like to change and revise my first project, the personal hypertext, the most because I couldn’t spend a lot of time on the content. I spent way to much time just trying to understand Kompozer. I wish we had practiced using Kompozer in class more so that I could have spent my time efficiently. Take a look at my projects if you are interested!

I just finished reading part III of For the Win, and it was quite an interesting read. As compared to the other parts, Part III was pretty action-packed and involved a lot of violence. I actually wasn’t expecting this much violence in the book, and  was quite disturbed reading through many of the parts. The last part just felt like everything was collapsing and everyone was dying or being injured very badly. I found it very hard to follow. A lot of the main characters such as Lu and Big Sister Nor died, which I found to be very sad. I don’t think Doctorow needed to make the ending so violent in order to get his point across. I didn’t enjoy reading Part III at all. Also, I didn’t quite understand the ending. I’m actually very confused by the end and it feels like a loose end. I was expecting a happy ending, but I guess Doctorow wanted the book to  feel realistic, which is a bit ironic. It’s hard for me to understand how all of this virtual world stuff can translate into reality. It reminds me of another piece we read not to long ago, Reality is Broken. From the novel, it really does seem like gamers are taking over the world. And it also seems like the gamers are making the rest of the world a better place to live, which resonates with the whole idea that games alleviate some suffering. Even with all of this, I still don’t agree. I still think that gaming has more harm than benefit.

The book certainly brought the gaming world to life. I never had an idea how involved gamers are in certain economies and that virtual economy is an actual industry out there.

The novel really starts to pick up the pace in part II. There is a lot of action and this part seems to be the climax of the book, portraying a lot of conflict. In this part of the book, I was impressed by how accurately Doctorow portrays culture in some of the scenes, especially in the Indian scenes. I am from the subcontinent and I know the culture pretty well. What surprised me is that a lot of the cultural terminology and language used is very subtle and only people that have been immersed in culture can see that. Many of the conversations sound like they were taking place in hindi and were translated. The conversations between the Indians is written in a different style than the conversations between two English-speaking people. He uses a lot of slang language and a lot of the scenes, like the bike ride, seem to be real. So, either Doctorow talked to a desi (subcontinental) friend or maybe he even went to India or one of it’s neighboring countries and observed the culture. I wasn’t expecting this level of detail in the book because I thought it would be about the technical gaming culture. Actually most books that I have read which refer to a subcontinental culture are rarely this detailed about depicting the culture accurately.

I thought the bike ride with Yasmin and Ashok was very realistic. I just went to Pakistan over the winter break and over there a lot of people ride scooters.Like Doctorow mentioned in his novel, there are actually entire families sitting on these tiny scooters. During my visit, I remember one of my relatives and I were looking at one of these scooters while driving home. There was a husband, wife, child, and baby all riding on one scooter and I remarked how scary it was for all of these people to be sitting on basically one seat. He also refers to a lot of Bollywood “fillum”  (yes, that’s how desi people pronouce it)culture. It’s all very true. Young people often romanticize their day to day activities by imagining themselves being the “filmy hero.” I’ve seen it everywhere. Young house maids are singing along to Bollywood songs, they dress up, and they go about their mundane tasks while being stuck in their fantasy, Bollywood inspired world. It’s funny because they know Bollywood inside, out, a lot better than I do. Doctorow also mentions the  “badmash” culture a lot, and this concept is huge in the youth. Badmash means “shameless” and it refers to shameless young men that go prying after girls and are troublemakers. If someone calls you “badmash” it’s a huge insult to your honor and respect.

It’s just hard for me to believe that Doctorow reflects the Indian culture from an “insider’s” point of view. This is the last novel where I would expect this from. 🙂

I did my podcast at the Campbell Farmer’s market and my agenda behind doing it at the farmer’s market was to help people understand how much diet can impact and help improve diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular disease. Before I started, I thought recording the actual podcast would be the hardest part. That part actually turned out to be the easiest. What I did have trouble with initially was figuring out how to record the podcast. I think we should have been given recommendations and simple, step by step instructions on how to record. This would have saved me a lot of time and money. But, I ended up using the built in recording app in the iphone, emailing myself the recordings, and then using a converter to convert it to an editable format.

Next, I went to the farmer’s market. I took notes on what I was going to talk about in my intro because I didn’t want to have too many awkward moments or “ums” in my podcast. I actually found it very hard to talk to myself in public because I’m a very shy person and I don’t like people paying attention to me. So, I tried a few times but I kept messing up. Then, a relative who came with me encouraged me to not care what other people think and that I should do what I needed to do. So, I took his words of encouragement and ignored the people around me. Once I passed this hurdle, it was pretty much smooth sailing. I also had a hard time going up to ask people if I could interview them. My relative again helped me get out of my comfort zone and go talk to these people. Although it was hard getting out of my “bubble”, I enjoyed recording the whole podcast in retrospect. I am actually happy that I got the chance to go out of my comfort zone and record something that was of interest to myself and to others around me. Doing the podcast is a lot more funner than writing an essay. You have to go out, move around and be immersed in the environment. Whereas with writing, you are home on your computer without an immersive experience.

Editing wasn’t bad. I used the music I recorded at the farmer’s market to make it sound more natural and less commercial like. That’s the whole point of the podcast anyway, to steer out of the commercialism and live a natural lifestyle that our bodies were meant for. The transcript took a lot of time and was quite annoying. Other than that, I spent a lot of time designing the hypertext and making sure it looked like finished piece. Overall, this project was much more enjoyable than the average project. Although I was not looking forward to doing it at all, I’m glad I did it in the end.

Recently, I came across an article in the New York Times called “That Seat is so Taken”, written by Juli Weiner, a blogger for vanity fair. This article talks about how a Dutch airline plans to let all passengers choose their own seat mate by uploading all of their passengers’ information from Facebook and making it available to the passengers. Weiner then goes on to say that the best seat mate is your own carry on and that you avoid having people sit next to you by having a bad profile. She displays her own mock profile, which I thought was really funny.

The style of this piece is what caught me. It’s short, it’s funny, and it even gives a mock example of someone you would avoid sitting next to. Past the humor aspect, it shows how far social media networks can go! Who would think you could choose who you could sit next to by Facebook? Although this seems completely ridiculous, this where technology and social media is taking us. Social media is invading every aspect of our lives from a personal level to a religious level and even to a global level. When I walk into an airplane, I have no idea who the passengers are and where they are going. But, now with this new initiative, you know who is traveling with you. This also brings up the issue of privacy. Do you really want these people who you have never seen in your life to be able to view your profile? Personally, I don’t even like every one who I know to view my profile. Social media is making the world smaller. Now, even those that don’t know you can find out a lot more about you.

For the Win is a novel about a few teenage characters in China, India, and the U.S. that are engrossed in the world of gaming. Mala, Wei Dong, Mathew, and their friends all work endless hours in order to hoard all the gold they can in the virtual world. This gold is then sold to people who would like to go on to advance levels without doing all the work. Of course, all of this labor creates huge conflicts between everyone that is involved. Cory Doctorow, the author, is a blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who favors liberalising copyright laws. His novel, For the Win, is written for young adults and others who are interested in the gaming world.

I was really hesitant about reading this book because all of this gaming hype seems so foreign to me. Although I still don’t really like this whole concept of the gaming economy, I found some things that were really interesting in the first part of the novel. A lot of these characters are completely immersed in the gaming world, however they seem to be more connected to the real world than other people are. An example includes how Wei Dong realizes that his father’s company is not far from its end when his father is completely ignoring this thought. He realizes that all of the materialism around him will not last forever and that people are stuck in their “bubbles.” I found this notion to be opposing to my own thoughts on gamers. I think that gamers are stuck in their own world and eventually can’t see reality as it really is. But, Doctorow shows the opposite happening here. Also, I never knew that such a gaming market ever existed. So, this concept is completely new to me. I feel sad for all of those people that work hours and hours on games and barely get paid. The world is becoming more and more digitized by the day. Who knows what new industries will pop up in the coming years.

Virtual worlds have broken boundaries of the real world. Daryl Paranada,an associate web producer for Marketplace, writes an article including an excerpt from the book Reality is Broken, written by Jane McGonigal. McGonigal is a designer of alternate reality games that in her eyes can help improve your real life.She discusses how games can make us better and improve the world by helping people to alleviate suffering and allowing a more “engaged” lifestyle.

I really do not agree with McGonigal’s argument. First of all, sitting in front of a screen for so long is not good for anyone’s health.It has been scientifically proven that the light emitted from television screens causes over-stimulation in the brain which can lead to many behavioral illnesses including ADD and autism in children. Also, people are becoming “couch potatoes” and would rather sit in front of the television than go outside for a walk. Obesity rates are increasing alarmingly, especially in children who are playing video games any chance they can get. As the television is becoming more and more dominant in people’s lives, relationships are becoming less and less dominant. We are losing quality relationships with actual people to form relationships with people (or other objects/creatures/avatars) that don’t exist. This is what McGonigal calls an “engaged” life. As people get more and more absorbed into this virtual world, they lose a sense of reality. For them, reality is broken. In the excerpt, even the author says that as people find their spot in the gaming world, they feel something is missing in the real world. Well, if you live in a fantasy any chance you can get, your expectations evolve and become relevant to that world. So, when you come back to the real world, you have fantasy like expectations. Also, gaming cannot alleviate suffering, it can only mask it. The suffering will always be there, even if it is in your innermost depths. All you are doing is ignoring it.

Life isn’t shaped towards your visions. You can’t control it or predict it and it’s definitely not perfect.That’s the beauty of real life; you have to accept it just the way it is.