Who will I be today?

How is identity formed? 

Our families, communities, genders, class, political views, beliefs, sub-cultures and interests have somewhat everything to do with who we are. Although we may be these people, does that mean we can't be anyone else? 

We present ourselves in the way we want to be identified as, rather than who we actually are when it comes social media. Our own identity is often shadowed over by society’s stereotypical ideas of how we should be, but also by past experiences of our relatives and peers. Social networking is a main example of (RE)-self-presentation as we update who we are. Facebook is today’s most popular source of social networking, and this allows us to hide, expand and change our identity.

If we were to take a step into the past and re-read our old status updates, see the photos and the random groups that we liked, we would see how much we have changed from one person to another. This is may be considered as growing up as our interests and choice of lifestyle adjust continuously but changing our interests in one thing but changing our whole personality is another.

Goffman said :"Sex, age, race are extremely difficult to conceal or manipulate in face to face interaction. Although the rest - clothing, posture, speech pattern, facial expression, body gesture and relatively more manipulable."

Social media gives a chance to become someone different. Chat rooms allow members to talk differently to how they would it real life. We can have so many split personalities online. Are you a flirty, girly, up for a good time girl or really are you shy, but mask yourself over with this new image. Are you really as aggressive as you think, public online social fights but in reality would it actually happen?

If a profile photo is of you and friends, was that just because you liked it, or subconsciously to show you have friends, attempting to show and possibly gain popularity?

We have to opportunity to tag and un-tag images and videos now, therefore if we do not like the photo we can easily remove it which suggests vanity and wanting to appear as good as possible to others. 

You have a bad hair day, a friend caught you on camera.. NO NO NO that does not stay on your profile.

It is not just networking. Gaming have options for character choice, therefore we are able to reform our self image to something more 'warrior' like. Xbox gaming communities allow tags and names to express how you think you are, or could be. Self (RE)-presentation is said to be 'A romantic spy-story into infosphere'. Characters are the behind the computer who set the stages of the action. The audience complying with these stories are able to interact with characters and create more fiction.

"The postmodern conception of identity is indeed very seductive and theatrical; it suggests that we can never know ourselves and are in a perceptual state of becoming." - Tanya Kryzuinska

'On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog' - The New Yorker

It is a strange feeling knowing we can change our identities, not completely but they are adjustable. We can hide who we actually are, or we can express it.  In reality we may be completely opposite, or exactly the same but through social media, you can be whoever you want. Just get yourself a personal homepage, add some colour and photos, talk away and see who you become. 

The facebook update.

Will Facebook ever die?

Do you remember these social networking sites we so dearly loved?

• Bebo
• Myspace
• Diaspora
• Hi5
• Friendster

Where did they go? 

They faded out and a new improved one shone out. Facebook has become a huge phenomenon in our lives today, however there is no saying whether it will just fade away just how the others did. They are still around, and still available but if you were to ask "Oh, do you have Bebo?" The reaction would not quite be the same as if it was a friend request on Facebook. 

Reality is, most people would have deleted or forgotten their log in details for other networking sites due to Facebook being so popular. 
It could also have something to do with embarrassment. Do we really want to see what we spoke like, remember how badly we dressed or even see friends we don't even speak to anymore? NO, we do not. 

John Pavley believes Facebook will get to 2 billion users by 2014. Except it has its consequences  it will kill the site. "Facebook isn't too big to fail."

If we could make a social networking site better than Facebook, what would it have on it to make it THAT much better? 

Facebook has... 

• Status updates                                              
• Photo and Video sharing
• Chat (Instant messages)
• Direct messages
• Events
• Pages and Groups
• Birthday announcements
• Profile pages
• Games

Facebook doesn't have...

• Skins
• Tweets - Able to chat to Celebrities
• More cloud storage

If I were to create social networking site of my own, I would not want it to be much more different to Facebook. I know that Twitter and Facebook should not join together as it would get too much. So what could I include? 

I suppose having a change of colour on your profile would show originality and creativity. Cloud storage would be useful for resources and it could be seen as cheaper for the company. Facebook mentioned the idea of having a 'dislike' button as well as 'like' button.. this could make for a more interesting status. 

There are bad issues with Facebook - Adverts. Who actually pays attention to them? We don't use them, look at them, we do not actually need them. 

Terms & Conditions. 

We NEED privacy. 

Trying to decide on what it needs, should have and what should just be deleted is difficult. Maybe there should be just one for status's (twitter) one for just photos (Flickr) one for just games (any gaming site). It would be hard to separate each app individually now we are so used to all in one. I would not want to change Facebook, I use it daily. It keeps me up-to date, people from school are still in contact and without it there is a certainty that there would not be much contact at all through lack of time. It is just easy to log on, check it, comment, chat and log out. Facebook may be considered an anti-social idea to some as many spend hours on Facebook, some just even refreshing the home page to see the next story, others chatting and gaming. Spending hours on it talking online rather than face-to-face may be different from the older days before social networking but if Facebook were to die out...

Where would we go? 

http://allfacebook.com/facebook-2-billion_b101639
http://www.facebook.com/
http://twitter.com/

No time to hide, they've already seen us.

Ever felt like you were being watched? 

Maybe not in person but we are all under surveillance. Parents watch over their children playing to keep them from harm and stop them doing wrong. It works the same with police and crime control, consumer activities, work environments and traffic monitoring. In some cases surveillance is a great idea, CCTV can catch the criminals, speed camera can spy on riot drivers but that doesn't mean we want to be observed all the time. It is most likely that our actions are always seen you could almost place it as the same category as Big Brother. People are being watched by the public, every move, every sound, everything is shown, however they know they are being viewed causing the Hawthorne effect. 

But.. what about not knowing? 

Using the web causes cookies on the browser therefore actions are tracked to what sites you go on or what you research. Google keeps your data history. All them questions you were to embarrassed to ask that you thought Google could help you with have been seen. Concerning isn't it?

The worst could be knowing that social networking can be monitored. What you write as your status, all the photos and videos you post onto Facebook are more than likely being seen. Not necessarily read and registered, as the Facebook servers will not want to know 'What's on your mind?' however, knowing they can see your public thoughts who you can only hope only spread to your friends. 

"When gossip spreads to the internet, it can spiral out of control" Daniel J Solave. 

The answer could be setting your profile to private, but does that really make much of a difference? Our private lives aren't really that private. 

 

Did you read the Terms and Conditions when you joined? Did anyone?

We don't, we merely presume that what we say is only for friends or followers but it does not seem to be that way.  

Brief versions of the T&Cs for Facebook and Twitter... 

1) You own all of the content you post, but you specifically give us the permission to use any IP content (photos&videos).

2) When you delete content, it may be removed from your profile but may persist in back up copies. 

3) When you publish content using the public setting, it means that you are allowing everyone including people off of facebook to access your information. 

4) NO SPAM

5) NO VIRUSES 

6) NO CYBER-BULLYING, HARASSMENT, OR INTIMIDATION

7) NO VIOLENT, PORNOGRAPHIC, THREATENING CONTENTS

8) NO FALSE INFORMATION

9) NO ONE UNDER THE AGE OF 13

10) KEEP YOUR INFORMATION UP TO-DATE

1) You are responsible for your use of the services for content posted - able to be viewed by others.

2) Changes occur from time to time without notice to you. Twitter may even temporarily or permanently stop providing a service.

3) Doesn't support or guarantee the accuracy or truth of the content posted by services.

4) Doesn't monitor or control content, it's your own risk.

5) Have the right to post anything.

6) Grant Twitter a world-wide exclusive, royalty free license to ..use/copy/reproduce/process/adapt/modify/publish/transmit and display your content in media.

7) May modify or adapt your content in order to distribute it over computer networks.

8) Protected by copyright.

It is not just social networking but we have terms and conditionals for everything. Shopping online, phone updates, contracts, gaming, travelling, etc. 

Own photo print shot. 

They may have right to do this. However it does not always mean that they would do it. Although it's a scary thought that what we post could be posted somewhere else and we have no control over it. All because we were too lazy to read the rules. 

http://www.facebook.com

https://twitter.com/

Yesterday we were human, today we're robots.

Today we are seeing an ever closer connection between humans and digital technology. Previous blogs consider the ideas of human and technology intimacy in our bodies, but what about our minds?
We think all day, every day about life, people, relationships, music, what we'll have for dinner, everything goes around our minds constantly but what about machines? Would you believe that they think too?
The possibility of a machine actually thinking sounds bizarre for they are programmed, so everything they do is controlled but is it? 


Alex Turing invented the 'Turing test' to discover whether machines could think. The test involves a judge who must determine who is the human and who is the machine. All the participants are separated and if the judge cannot tell the computer from human then, the computer has passed the test.

Hal 9000 '2001, A Space Odyssey' was the artificial intelligence in a series that could control systems, and interact with humans. This may have been a fictional character but many people had theories believing this would be the future of computing. 

"Machines will be capable, within twenty years, of doing any work a man can do" - Herbert. A. Simon, Carnegie Mellon University.

The films idea of this technology was too optimistic, having lip reading and commonsense was still fiction, although we do have the advances of voice recognition on smartphones.
Similarly to Hal, there is the known computer program called 'Chatterbot' to provide intelligent    conversation with human uses by audio or text. 

"The development of an artificially conscious entity may happen without our lifetimes" Robert Pepperall, 2003 

So, what is a robot?
When the word robot comes to mind, what do we picture?
A machine moving around in a laboratory or factory? 
A computer?
A mechanical man? Woman? or dog? 
Data from Star Trek? 
All of them. 
We have industrial robots who use a mechanical limb to move about. They perform repetitive tasks that humans can do and some that are too dangerous for humans. Robots are being blamed for unemployment in industries as they are replacing workers. 
They can be used for war, fighting purposes for bomb disposal and marines fighting platforms.
Although being used for these series tasks, they are also used for entertainment. Robot Wars was the television series where individuals would create their own robots to fight others. 
There are also 'expressive robots'. Rodney Brookes created 'Baxter' a robot who can interact with human workers in industrial tasks. 

There are many films that involve the development of robots; 

• The American film 'Short Circuit', 1986. 'Johnny Five' was a realistic approach of a robot who was 'alive'. 
• Data (Star Trek) the fictional android with amazing computing intelligence with aspects of human behaviour. 
• The Terminator, 1984, a cyborg assassin programmed to exterminate the human race, Although being an assassin robot Arnold Schwarzenegger is idealized by men.
• WALL.E, 2008, Disney Pixar prediction of our future.

We do not know what will occur in the future, we can only predict. Robots are an important part of our lives, without the machines certain tasks would not get done. Whether or not machines can actually think for themselves is always going to be questioned. We could ask ourselves if it is really us who are thinking and not someone else controlling our thoughts, so are we machines? 


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/blog/startups/2012/10/rodney-brooks-rethink-robotics-elderly.html?page=all
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwBmPiOmEGQ
http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/reingold/courses/ai/turing.html

We are all walking computers

Would you want to live life without a mobile?

I didn't think so. Neither would I, or any other after having such a fascinating device. So does that mean our desire for these machines should make us into them? Or are we already there? 
Humans and digital technology is forever becoming one.

Digital technology today has created easier user interfaces allowing us to be quick, straight and immediate with our devices, it could almost be seen as a lazy life.
So where did it all begin?
Well...Ivon Sutherland created the 'Sketchpad' and pretty soon we'd got Apple Mac in 1984, THEN everyone became number one fans of the smartphone which now even includes voice recognition (siri ).
But... Of course we just wanted to go that step further.
We want more. Augmented reality grew and look what we've got, glasses as computers. Could it get crazier?
There are other forms are interface, such as our I.D cards, bank cards, Oyster travel cards are all new inventions which provide easy lives for us all.

The relationship between machine and man is becoming more intimate within the body. There are found medical devices called 'pacemakers' that are in placed inside bodies to regulate heart rate, pacemakers in the brain and digital cameras for sight. This shows that technology and humanity are combined into one. Having us this close with machine could contribute to the future of cyborgs. We'd have our phones not just in our pockets or under the pillow but in our bodies. A walking computer, it could be interesting but having all that knowledge similar to the internet, surely could get irritating eventually. 

Maybe we will just have to wait and see.

The nature of life is placed into three main categories;- 

Life. Materialism. Informationalism.

Life is not controlled by anything other than yourself.

Materialism argues life to be having the same scientific elements as inanimate objects.

Informationalism is similar to materialism however, it suggests that the body exchanges molecules with the outside world, but the body has the ability to grow and repair itself.

So basically, we are computers or one day will be. The ever closeness or our relationships with technology is forming a reborn human with technology powers - Cyborgs?

I for one, know my life would not be the same without my phone or internet which is concerning as technology has become one of the most important parts of our lives. But would I want to have it inside me? Or even a piece of body exchanged for machinery, it depends if we have a choice - this could be our future. 

What about forever? Would you want to live forever?

Living for the next 100 years could be fascinating we could see the changes, see if the predictions for the future were right. However, mind uploading could be considered as a lonely place. Imagine all your loved ones dying around you when you stay young, forever. You would never get to experience old age, some would say this is a good thing but if you have half the life experience why not go for the whole? Having a computer in your mind cannot be that great. Every thought you'd have would be spread over servers, there would be no privacy. Although the idea of staying young forever is appealing when you are young and life is at your feet with opportunity, but personally I would  prefer to grow old naturally and see how life plans out.

'The brain is a Turing machine' "We therefore implicitly presuppose that brain behavior is computable"
- Randal A. Koene.

Technology takeover.

Is your machine controlling you?
Have they taken charge of our lives? 

Does your computer tell you what to do? Or do you tell it? 
Our advanced technology could control us in certain ways for we get so involved with them that they know what we want. Google for example, we can type in a limited amount of letters and it will know exactly what we are looking for. They know everything! The knowledge they have aside, without them we would be lost. Imagine not having internet. Especially for the younger generation with Facebook  twitter, blogging and you-tube. We would not know how to cope. Social networking keeps us up-to-date with friends, friends birthdays, news, photos, and also keeps our memories. Sometimes our past gets covered over with the new, but social networking has our first status updates, and photo albums uploaded, they help re-jog memory. There is a possibility that humans could live without using social networking THEY DID and some still do but the luxury of having it now, why would anyone give it away? 

Not just the internet, our mobile phones. Most people who own a mobile will use it constantly or have it near by. Never more than a few ft away. We could probably stop using technology if necessary, as before the web was created there was no choice. Only now we have adjusted to this lifestyle it would be incredibly difficult to go back when technology is always moving forward. Technology has become one of the most important, essential, and beneficial aspects of our lives. As technology increases; we adapt. Machines could be controlling us, for without life would for sure we difficult . 

We now have augmented reality, (AR) in which we see the real world inside technology. It could be the use of a computer screen, mobile phone, head-ware and now the idea of wearable glasses. Ronald Azuma compared AR to the film 'Who framed Roger Rabbit', for the virtual and real objects were together. 

"I honestly believe that at some point in the future we're going to have AR eye-wear , "It has to be socially acceptable and desirable". Steve Feiner, 2011.

A writer named, Kevin Kelly posted a blog in 'wired magazine' called 'We are the web'. We are the web He predicted years ago, machines would be controlling humans. He predicted this through the amount of information eventually machine get from us as consumers. The computers having all this information could therefore control what we do. In the article he referred to Amazon. Amazon is used all over the world for buying and shipping items. This is related for, Amazon can register who we are when logging on, and bring up our user history. With this  knowledge, they can promote certain goods knowing our previous views therefore we are more likely to choose to buy them. The machine is manipulating us. 

A long time ago, computing pioneer Vannevar Bush inspired the idea of hyper linked pages, 1945. Ted Nelson build up this idea in 1965. He was so certain that every document in the world should be a footnote to another document and computers would be able to make the links between them permanent.

Before the Netscape browser highlighted the Web, the Internet did not exist for most people. It seemed to be 'high tech nerds' who knew, others would ask the question; Who wanted to waste time on something

so boring? 

Stephen Weiswasser said :"You aren't going to turn passive consumers into active trollers on the Internet."

Kelly found, 2005 there to be a total of exceeding 600 billion web pages. In less than 4,000 days we produced excessive amount of the story which were in front of 1 billion people. He claimed this wasn't in anyone's 10 year plan. 

Human computer?

The brain and web have billions of neurons/webpages, each neuron for a human has synaptic links to others, with each webpage having hyperlinks.The human brain has an 100 times more than synapses however, the web is forever expanding.

So are we even human?

"Not only did we fail to imagine what the web would become, we still don't see it today. We are blind to this miracle"

Is the machine using me? 

'The machine is using us' - Micheal Welch

http://www.cs.unc.edu/~azuma/ARpresence.pdf
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.08/tech.html?pg=1&topic=tech&topic_set=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxOSk0VYy28

Myth V History

How does history help us understand our own relationship with internet, computing and technology?

Many have become thoroughly involved with the internet, and believe what they read. Not only believe but share and converse about it. According to certain sociologists people are passive. We are naive and media injects us with information - hypothetically of course. The hypodermic syringe theory displays behaviour of certain people. Interactionists would not agree believing that people choose what they read and believe, however conclusions have been drawn that we believe what the internet say because we have such a strong bond with it. 

Richard Wise wrote a few of the myths within the internet;

• Cyberspace is a place apart and so not subject to rules that apply to the 'real' world.

• The technology of the internet makes it possible to be anonymous and so free to adopt any identity that you chose on-line.

• The technology of the internet is making a more social and helping to foster a new kind of community.

• We are the verge of a new political era of computer - mediated democracy.

• The development of the internet is unique and exceptional in human history and not subject to social forces that characterised the adoption of other important technologies. 

The development of computing has a number of influential cultural factors that impacted the cultural perception of the early internet.

• The US military planners
• University based hacker culture
• The counter culture
• US corporate culture

The earliest computers were created to calculate artillery range tables for US Army. Other logical uses such as; Code Breaking and US Census. 

In the seminar we researched into a company known as 'Xerox Parc'. Xerox has assembled the worlds greatest computer engineers and programmers in the 1970s. They have influenced how computers are so popular and easy to use. They created some of our most successful inventions; 

 - Laser printing

 - Ethernet  / Distributing computer

 - WYSIWYG - file formatting

 - Graphic user interface

 - Unicode multilingual computing.

They are also conducting a hands free mobility of computers, similar to google glasses.

 

Xerox parc began selling a successor to the Alto in 1981. It was slow and underpowered and xerox ultimately withdrew from personal computers. Larry Tesler conducted the demonstration of the 'the mouse'. Steve Jobs immediately demanded the Apple team to work of the next generation of computers. Including, menus on screen, windows, and the mouse. 

So, how does history help us understand our own relationship with internet, computing and technology?

Evidently the history of computing has a huge impact on my own relationship with the internet. Knowing and understanding how different life was without the technology we have nowadays makes me appreciate that we have it. I understand so much more how different life would be and how much technology has adjusted through the years. Technology will continuously change, though without the history of this technology of computers and internet we would not have any at all.
& we all know we wouldn't want that.

http://www.parc.com/

http://blogs.parc.com/blog/2012/10/heads-up-hands-on/

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/16/110516fa_fact_gladwell