I would say that I am a spiritual and religious person, but sometimes it is easy to forget to pray or make it to mass. I watch The Sunday Mass as needed instead of going to traditional mass at church. That is convenient, but sometimes I feel it takes away the tradition and practice that goes into one’s spiritual life. My husband has an app for the Holy Bible and a book of prayers. I think that is resourceful, but I can’t picture myself opening those apps up in church.

I think our society is definitely heading into a digital life in general (social media, smart phones, etc). So it would be wise for religious entities to get with the times. This is something that Elizabeth Drescher, PhD writes about in Five Social Media Trends that are Reshaping Religion. Drescher is a professor at Santa Clara University who specializes on religious and spiritual studies. Her most recent work include Tweet If You <3 Jesus: Practicing Church in the Digital Reformation (2011) and upcoming Click 2 Save: The Digital Ministry Bible (2012). From her commentaries on ReligionDispatches.org, published work, and professional experience, she comes with a credible history about how religion and technology intersect.

The article I read is quite simple even though it looks long. She writes it in conversational voice so it is easy to follow. I don’t think there were many critical things one could say about religion and technology, but she still brings up good points. Social Prayer, Ministers-On-The-Go, O Holy App, Curate as Curator, and A Few New Commandments make up the trends she describes. The most interesting I thought were Social Prayer and O Holy App.

When I read the ideas regarding Social Prayer and O Holy App, I could definitely see where Drescher’s commentary has manifested in people around me. As I mentioned in the beginning of this post, my husband has an app for the Holy Bible. It is useful when one is out and about, but I cannot fathom sitting in a church, mosque, or temple and using the app. I feel like it is a little disruptive. It looks odd, but I guess it will eventually become a norm since technology’s progression is going to lead us there.

Lastly, Social Prayer highlighted for me that people are greeting sharing their faith on Facebook and Twitter by making pages, trending topics, and posts. Several of my friends post about when they are at a church service and have heard an uplifting message. Some even quote Bible verses or testify that God is good because something positive happened. Being spiritual, it puts a tingle in my heart to know people are bold enough to put something somewhat controversial (in public I thought you aren’t supposed to speak about religion and politics).

So in general, the times are changing. Religious entities, beliefs, and people (like priests) are utilizing social media to evangelize. I feel it’s progressive, but doesn’t it depersonalize the religious experience? Or is it now okay to say that it updates the experience because it is a social norm to have a smart phone and be technologically advanced?

I’m preparing to create my first ever podcast this week. To be completely honest, I am super nervous and confused. My first podcast experience was so frustrating. I’ve been an iPhone user for a few years now and I tried to subscribe to an HG TV podcast, but that didn’t work out very well. I couldn’t understand how to receive weekly podcasts.

Apparently, podcasts have become really popular since they started several years back. I recently skimmed The New York Minute Show, a tour of New York City through audio. That was really neat! It helped me envision what I could do with audio.

I normally record lectures so I can study from them, so I’m kind of looking forward to creating a podcast for creative work. On a Wise-Women podcast tutorial, I read about the basics. To create a podcast, you need compelling content that attracts people to listen/subscribe to you. In order for that to happen, a fair amount of knowledge and preparation is required. I will need to determine content and gather the appropriate tools. Specifically, it would be helpful to pick a topic that is interesting and then get my hands on a professional recording device with a headset/mic.

A more interesting resource for podcast tips is located on the blog of Frog Body. There are 20 ideas for a great podcast. The most intriguing for me was #3 be whimsical, #5 don’t ramble, be organized, and #17 use music. Be whimsical is interesting because it reminds me that I should be entertaining aka HAVE FUN. I was originally just going to wing my first podcast and talk about what I saw, but then I thought it probably would not make any sense to someone who has never encountered what I’m taking about. I think I’m gonna write up a brief script/outline of the points I want to say. This is gonna be especially important because when you edit your audio, you don’t want to have to edit out a ridiculous amount of “umm”‘s. Then lastly, using music will probably help keep my podcast light and interesting. If your podcast isn’t interesting, you probably shouldn’t have created it. Haha, just kidding!

Well not really. Have you ever seen those Video-Blogs (vLog) channels on youtube? I suppose you can consider those “podcasts” since they’re frequent video/audio productions. My friend, Joaquin, has one. He’s interesting on most days, but I remember in the very beginning (when we were in high school), his vLogs seemed like more of a diary entry. In the past few years, he’s definitely made his pseudo-podcast interesting by using fun topics, music, and themes. Notably, his trip to Hawaii was documented in a video.  It definitely took me back to the time I got to spend there a couple years ago.

So to make a thoroughly interesting podcast, I’ll probably incorporate Joaquin’s work, the tips from Frog body, and The New York Minute. In a podcast, I want to be informative, entertaining, and be able to take my listener to a place they’ve never been before.

Have you seen those posts on Facebook, where people on your newsfeed are trying to bring attention to an issue? For example, I have a friend who keeps posting pictures of alleged chemtrails that are being sprayed on the Santa Clara County. She pleads for others to change their profile picture the chemtrails to bring awareness. Personally, I think she needs to post credible sources before rallying people to do that. Social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter have been great tools to disperse information as well as bring people together. These channels were instrumental as a source of information for those who collaborated in the Egyptian revolutions in early 2011.

I recently read Wael Ghonim: Creating A ‘Revolution 2.0’ In Egpyt, an article on NPR. It was featured on their website on February 9, 2012 to introduce people to Ghonim’s story and book (Revolution 2.0) about his efforts in helping the Egyptian revolutions a year ago. The article includes a podcast story that basically is the interview Terry Gross (host of NPR’s Fresh Air) has with Ghonim. It was nice to have an audio interview to listen to because I got a sense of what emotions and motives Ghonim had for his endeavors in the movement he began.

Ghonim utilized Facebook to set a time and place for people of Egypt to protest similarly to what the people in Tunisia did in December 2010. In the interview, article written, and excerpt from his book, it is made clear that it wasn’t social media that made the revolutions effective. It was solidarity of the people. Facebook and Twitter helped rally people for one common goal. It got them engaged in the vision.

The vision was to have a democracy in Egypt rather than a dictatorship. The original Facebook page Ghonim created was “We are All Khaled Said.” It was in response to the Egyptian government killing and treating citizens unjustly without accountability. As people got engaged in the idea of responsibility in the Egyptian government, the vision came to fruit.

I think Ghonim’s tale was inspirational. He wanted to maintain anonymity and keep the focus on the issue. From the interview and book excerpt, I felt his genuine passion for the people. Even though he was treated horribly by his own country and called a traitor, he still felt very proud to be Egyptian. There was sadness in his voice, but he also sounded hopeful of a new future because of the success in the revolutions. Being able to listen to the podcast allowed me to experience that personal feeling. The only negative part to this article/podcast was Gross’ tone and verbiage. I felt like she kept trying to get Ghonim to take full credit for the Egyptian revolution, but he was quick to speak of the people who helped him make it what it was.

Overall a good read to explore the breadth of social media in our evolving Internet culture. The issue and the way it was presented makes me want to be part of something bigger. Hopefully something I can be passionate about comes up.

The California Legacy Project (CLP) stems from the collaboration of Santa Clara University and Heyday (publishers). CLP draws on the sources of both parties to display the culture of California. They specifically use books, digital excerpts, and illustrations to convey the spirit of our state.

I think this project is pretty neat because I do believe that our state has so much to offer a person. Not only do we have the innovations of technology locally, we have access to nature (oceans, forests, etc) and all types of industries (tech, entertainment, agriculture, etc). These are the things we think of now as Californians, but CLP also highlights the journey our ancestors made to create it.

Harold Bell Wright was a painter from Ohio, but became famous for writing fiction about the various areas of California. I read and listened to excerpts from The Winning of Barbara Worth and The Eyes of the World. CLP provides background information about an author and their work. They also supplement with audio recordings of the excerpts. From the descriptions and radio script, it is easy to fall into Wright’s writing and envision what plains in California were like in the early 1910’s.

I also read “Rebirth of a City” from Golden Gate Country by Gertrude Atherton. That particular piece included the text, but also had a video of what people saw on Market Street in San Francisco after the 1906 fires. I thought this was very thoughtful and helpful because that was what the excerpt was about. Atherton wrote of a pioneer spirit San Franciscans had to rebuild their city into the future.

Pieces from Wright and Atherton both talk about the pioneer spirit, but they also contrast because one is about the city and the other about nature. This inspires me to want to read one of these books when I have time in the future.

Twitter has become a social media tool that not only connects individuals with other individuals (friends, celebrities, etc) around the world, but also with organizations (@TheWhiteHouse, @HuffingtonPost). With this network of communication, much news gets transferred so quickly. We in the United States can get some information about some place across the globe in an instant.

Gilad Lotan, Erhardt Graeff, Mike Ananny, Devin Gaffney, Ian Pearce, and danah body have written an article, The Revolutions Were Tweeted:Information Flows During the 2011
Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions, that addresses the effects of social media, specifically Twitter, on flow of international news information. These researchers of technology and society look at two events that occurred closely together in late 2010 and early 2011 – Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. They gathered and analyzed all the tweets that were related to the two events to discover who provides information to the world and how much of it is transmitted.

Their research shows that bloggers had more impact and reach than traditional news journalists when considering the revolution in Tunisia. In Egypt, it was reversed. Interestingly, the events in Egypt had more information than Tunisia probably because of the sources (traditional journalists) of the tweets.

I think the most interesting piece of this article is that they concluded “individuals are more successful than organizations in seeding prominent information flows, it may be that they are perceived as more trustworthy.” They point out individuals are more willing to speak out and be more liberal. There could possibly be more individual Twitter accounts than organizations. Lastly, individuals are more likely to share topics casually without getting all the details as traditional journalist (organization) would. I recall @aplusk (Ashton Kutcher) has tweeted disdain for the firing of Joe Paterno from Penn State. Kutcher did not know that it had something to do with child sex abuse and had to retract his original statement. He then went on to say that he was handing over his tweets to his PR company or something so that they can “proofread” what he tweets to the world.

So I wonder who exactly decides to tweet information from the organizations such as traditional news sources. In journalism, they have to write and share ideas objectively. With that kind of restraint, our communication systems and transference of information stays the same. It takes individuals that are activists and concerned citizens of the world to push the envelope to evolve the information we put out there and receive.

In regards to data mining, I searched for a news article. I found “Google steps up user data mining across all of its services in ‘Big Brother’ move” by Marc Pinter-Krainer. Pinter-Grainer is the CEO and Founder of One News Page, an online news website kind of like Huffington Post, but perhaps less biased. This article highlights the new privacy policy that Google and its subsidiaries will be implementing. It also exposes the method at which Google mines for users’ data.

I have been noticing in the past year, that more and more ads on the pages I visit are reflecting searches I made about contacts, glasses, shoes, and hair product. I figured that it was all because of the history that I have kept on my web browser. So when I get tired of seeing those ads, I erase all history.  Rarely do I ever click on those ads anyway because if I want to find something, I’ll Google it and click on the link when its on a list because I can see the link I’m going to. I don’t want to click on a banner that I don’t really know where I’ll be sent to.

Last quarter, a classmate of mine met with me to work on a group project. When she opened up her laptop, she exclaimed, “I don’t know how Nordstrom‘s knows what dress I was looking at two days ago! I keep getting all these things suggesting for me to buy it.” I figured she did not know about cookies and search history.

This topic about data mining is kind of interesting, but annoying at the same time. The fact that a company can figure out what I want to buy or look at is a little too Orwellian (1984). What kind of privacy do we have nowadays?

According to the article I read and the postings Google has made about their privacy policy, I’m kind of at a cross-roads. The article mentioned that Google is possibly adopting this new policy so that all their companies are on the same page. They could be doing that because they want to strategize their time and effort in making more money (to please Wall Street). I understand you need to make money, but at what cost? It costs users their privacy so it seems.  I find it very peculiar that Google will even use Android phone users’ locations to recommend things to do.

That’s cool, but still creepy. That’s the very reason I don’t use location services on all my iphone apps. I think the only app I use it on is Google maps (hmm…) and Flixster’s Movies. I love you, Google. I just don’t know how I feel about data mining. Is this necessary for Web 2.0 to continue growing and eventually morph to Web 3.0?

YouTube’s Town Hall Channel

Previous link on original blog post was incorrect.

Henry Jenkins is a professor at the University of Southern California. He focuses on journalism, pop culture, and technology. He maintains a blog that that allows him to express his thoughts on those things he specializes in.

Jenkins made some comments about the culture of YouTube back in 2007 when the company was just starting out. He expressed 9 ideas about how YouTube would come to operate and function. How that YouTube has significantly grown into its own culture, we can assess whether or not Jenkins ideas came to life.

Out of the 9 ideas that he conveyed, I think #6 has been very interesting and useful —

“6. YouTube may embody a particular opportunity for translating participatory culture into civic engagement. The ways that Apple’s “1984” advertisement was appropriated and deployed by supporters of Obama and Clinton as part of the political debate suggests how central YouTube may become in the next presidential campaign. In many ways, YouTube may best embody the vision of a more popular political culture that Stephen Duncombe discusses in his new book, Dream: Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in the Age of Fantasy:

Progressives should have learned to build a politics that embraces the dreams of people and fashions spectacles which gives these fantasies form – a politics that employs symbols and associations, a politics that tells good stories. In brief, we should have learned to manufacture dissent…. Given the progressive ideals of egalitarianism and a politics that values the input of everyone, our dreamscapes will not be created by media-savvy experts of the left and then handed down to the rest of us to watch, consume, and believe. Instead, our spectacles will be participatory: dreams that the public can mold and shape themselves. They will be active: spectacles that work only if the people help create them. They will be open-ended: setting stages to ask questions and leaving silences to formulate answers. And they will be transparent: dreams that one knows are dreams but which still have power to attract and inspire. And, finally, the spectacles we create will not cover over or replace reality and truth but perform and amplify it.

Yet as we do so, we should also recognize that participatory culture is not always progressive. However low they may set the bar, the existing political parties do set limits on what they will say in the heat of the political debate and we should anticipate waves of racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry as a general public, operating outside of those rules and norms, deploy participatory media to respond to a race which includes women, African-American, Hispanics, Mormans, Italian-Americans, Catholics, and the like as leading figures in a struggle for control over the White House.”

Basically, Jenkins says that YouTube would become a platform that will allow more individuals to become involved in politics and create better communication between our political representatives and our society. I think this proposition has come to light very well. Not only are we able to see the nationally broadcast debates on YouTube channels such as ABC and the GOP themselves, but YouTube has formulated their own Town Hall.

At YouTube’s Town Hall, individuals like us can send in a question about policies and issues. The questions that get answered are selected by votes. The more popular a question and/or topic is, the more likely the politicians will have to answer it.

This is very powerful at transforming Democracy (big D) to democracy (little d). This allows our thoughts to be considered rather than these politicians’. I think the days of “closed-door” policymaking are coming to an end. We, the people, want to be heard.

danah boyd wrote Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life in 2007 as a part of her continuous study in social media, social interactions between society and technology, and specifically how it affects young people.

I feel boyd wrote this paper from a sociological perspective. This study on teenagers and their involvement with social networking sites such as Myspace and Facebook, brings up that there are “four properties that are not typically present in face-to-face public life: persistence, searchability, exact copyability, and invisible audiences.” These four properties bring up the complications of social networking. I feel all four are important, but copybility seems to be a topic I have previously discussed in other blogs. I think persistence, searchability, and the invisible audience are the most important at this time. Personal details, activities, and interactions that are viewable online are there forever and anyone can look at it if they want to.

Here’s an interesting story that relates to all three properties. I have a Facebook and am friends with three people that were my best friends in grade school. We had not seen each other physically for nearly ten years, but we kept up on Facebook. Recently, we got together for dinner and a lot of the conversation just like this —

A: Yeah, we went to Chicago and Mexico.
L: Ooh yeah, I saw that on Facebook. I love looking at all your pictures. I’m not stalking you I swear!

Me: I had a really cute Christmas. My mom and brother came over to my place. We had a slumber party.
A: Yea, I saw that on Facebook! (pause) I swear I’m not stalking you.

There were a couple more dialogues just like that. At least we all thought it was funny!

With teenagers, I think they do need to be restricted a little more in what they put on onto the internet. I agree that they need to have a form of self-expression, but it shouldn’t be on social networking sites. Who is included on your friends list and the activities you do, show who you are and can lead to tensions that we have seen on the news in recent years.

Come to think of it, I did a research paper on bullying three years ago. From then to now, I realize that so much bullying that gets exposed in news circles stems from drama on these social media sites. It is so crazy to think that these social media sites can spark such terrible things, but also amplify them.

Overall, I think social networking is fun and usefully. We just have to remember that what we put out there is capable of being online forever and people that we might not necessarily want to see our lives probably will.

Andrew Keen is an author, Internet developer and current TechCrunch host. He created audiocafe.com when the Internet was still developing. On TechCrunch, he interviews individuals regarding “technology, media, and policy” on his series KeenOn.

I watched his interview with Carmine Gallo, an author and communications specialist. Gallo was featured on KeenOn to share his own book, The Power of foursquare. If you aren’t familiar, foursquare is a location service developed for mobile devices. Gallo has written about how foursquare has allowed small business to compete with big businesses when it comes to marketing. He focuses on the businesses rather than individuals who check in everywhere. In my opinion, I think checking into all the places you go is allowing too much personal information being put out to the world.

Keen seems to think that people are getting so engrossed in their lives by blogging about their day and maybe even checking in. He did not mention foursquare in his book, The Cult of the Amateur, probably because it was published in 2007 and foursquare was being founded that same year.

The most interesting thing Keen wrote was “rather than using [the internet] to seek news, information, or culture, we use it to actually BE the news, the information, the culture.” That led me to think about what the Internet was probably made for when it initially was created.

There is a disconnection from when the Internet began to where it is now. Keen reveals that the primary goal was to have people all around the world networked and always connected. He wanted to have it so that people could listen to tasteful music wherever they were. Today’s Internet is a community of people competing for attention by means of putting out superficial crap that doesn’t add anything to institutional culture.

This seems to disgust him because he keeps mentioning that people don’t care about what’s going on in the world. I wonder if the Internet is really making people misinformed and ignorant? I have a hard time accepting that people out there really think Wikipedia is a credible source and that everything on the Internet is true. If you Google “God,” you’re going to find a lot of things negative and just as many things positive. Would you take it for face value or at least look at both sides then make up your own mind?

Overall, I understand his argument that the Internet is flooded by empty content that doesn’t have any use other than for entertainment or expression. I just think an open mind has to be kept when criticizing all the stuff that’s on the Internet. That’s why we get an education, right? Not everything out there is going to lead our culture to a dead place.