Week 12 - Essay

Damages to the technological world: Lack of privacy on the Internet

The Internet has evolved with rapid fashion over the last decade. This massive growth has generated new apprehension in regards to guarding the privacy of users. As Cudil and Murphy (2000) points out, further development in online security is required. The ways in which people make themselves known in cyberspace must be protected as well as respected. The media continuously publish cases concerning violations of privacy, and how this affects the people involved. Given the substantial flow of personal information throughout the Web, breaches to this privacy can be damaging in several ways. This essay will explore the social networking phenomena and the privacy issues that follows, as well as relating these problems back to networking sites such as Facebook. The question being; are we endangering ourselves by providing complete strangers with sensitive information? Finally, this paper will discuss the implications this lack of privacy has on our technological society.

Many attempts have been made in regards to defining privacy. Burgoon et al. (1989) once stated that privacy concerns an individual right to influence how, in what time and to what degree information about oneself will be unveiled to another person. Further, a social network refers to certain people being tied together on different levels of relationships or that are important to each other in some way. (Wellman, 1996; Lange, 2008)

According to Gross and Aquisti (2005) the social networking phenomena has become “mass adopted”. Although goals between various sites are different, social networking share the basic principles of online communication and interaction. Compared to offline networks, online versions can classify hundreds of thousands of individuals as friends, or friends of friends. This way they gain access to personal information, even though the minimum level of being in somebody’s network is very low. New technology facilitates uncomplicated communication techniques that help people form and maintain these so called “weak ties” online. (Gross & Aquisti, 2005)

Furthermore, dangers regarding this form of information revelation must be acknowledged. Liu and Mae (2005) used the term “re-identification” when describing how people often re-use the same material (e.g. pictures and demographics) over several networking sites, and this way creating a window for others to recognise them. Another problem is the fact that regardless of recommendations from the hosting sites, people are willing to disclose large amounts of information to large groups of people (Pratt & Conger, 2009). In some cases we reveal sensitive information to complete strangers instead of our closest friends. This type of disclosure is very common on Facebook, a site now involving over 500 million people. This massive network of online networks produces a vast amount of information crossing between its users.

Another major online security issue is the amount of information that becomes public without peoples knowledge. Over the past few years several cases of distress and even deaths have been reported due to sensitive information that became public knowledge. Early October this year, The Daily Mail published a story on a female Duke University student from the United States. She created a list involving intimate details of 13 male students with whom she had engaged in sexual relationships and emailed it to three of her friends. The list spread like wildfire and after a short period of time it was distributed all over the globe. The female student had no desire of promoting this information on a global level, and quickly went out and apologised for the incident. Even so, the offended males may suffer psychological consequences.

Furthermore, not too long ago a boy named Tyler Clementi tragically took his own life after fellow university students decided to stream a video displaying Clementi with another male engaging in sexual activities in his bedroom. After the incident, the young student jumped off the George Washington Bridge to his death. (The News of Today, 2010)

Privacy implications in regards to social networking sites depends on various factors such as how easy the information can be identified, possible recipients and usages of the information. Even though the information is anonymous, it can still provide the reader with enough material to identify its owner. The dark side of the Web, consisting of hackers and those who will use sensitive information to cause harm and distress, are playing a large role in why Internet privacy is such a contentious issue amongst users. However, even though computer crimes such as identity theft and collecting people’s credit card information are serious issues, the greater problem can quite possibly be ourselves. When talking about privacy and information protection on Facebook, there have been several changes over the past years. As Danah Boyd points out, severe implications can be caused by the fact that people do not adapt well to change, or that they do not comprehend the actual changes. When the Facebook team recently asked their consumers to re asses their privacy settings, the majority chose the default option, which was “everyone”. Facebook users went through the pop-up menu without considering the consequences of their choices, and the result was that even more of their information became open to the public (Boyd, 2007).

In conclusion, the shift towards a highly user generated web suggests that the social networking phenomenon is here to stay and the privacy will remain an issue. Even though several sites are constantly working on improving their security, the general public should also consider the material they choose to reveal. Some information is not only sensitive for some individuals, but might also cause a great deal of harm. Whether or not it is the consumers or the cooperation’s holding the responsibility remains to be unanswered, but what can be said is that some drastic changes in online networking should be made.

References

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1318575/Duke-University-alumni-Karen-Owens-sex-list-internet-sensation.html

http://thenewsoftoday.com/tyler-clementi-commits-suicide-after-filmed-having-sex-by-molly-wei-and-dharun-ravi-at-rutgers/2918/

Information Revelation and Privacy in online Social Networks; Gross R., & Acquisti (2005)

http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/~acquisti/papers/privacy-facebook-gross-acquisti.pdf

Consumer online privacy: Legal and ethical issues; Eve M Caudill; Patrick E Murphy, Journal of Public Policy & Marketing; Spring 2000; 19, 1;

http://web.rollins.edu/~jmorrison/docs/Com%20Ethics/Readings/web%20privacy%20policies2.pdf

Publicly Private and Privately Public: Social Networking on YouTube, Patricia G. Lange (2008)

http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~apidduck/CS432/Assignments/YouTube.pdf

H. Liu and P. Maes. Interestmap: Harvesting sosial network profiles for recommendations. In Beyond Personalization - IUI 2005, January 9, San Diego, California, USA, 2005.

http://74.125.155.132/scholar?q=cache:u9A73-kKGNoJ:scholar.google.com/+Interestmap:+Harvesting+social+network+profiles+for+recommendations&hl=en&as_sdt=2000

Social networking sites: Definition, History and Scholarship; Boyd, Ellison (2007)

http://www.guilford.edu/about_guilford/services_and_administration/library/libguide_images/boyd.pdf

Without permission: Privacy on the line, Pratt & Conger (2009)

http://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2007/119/

Course Evaluation

Overall I enjoyed New Communication Technologies. I found that there was a lot of interesting topics and I have learned a great deal.

Regarding the lectures, I thought they were informative and organised. Even though some of the material was a bit hard to consume during the 50 mins lecture, it always helped reviewing the lecture notes after when writing about it in the blog. In addition, the lectures had several visual aids and that makes it both easier to follow and more interesting.

In regard to the blogs, I found this part of the course somewhat time consuming. Most of the tutorial tasks were challenging, and at times there was a lack of communication regarding what the task was about. However, I am confident that the blog entries will help me considerably when it comes to exam revision, and the tutorial tasks were all very clever and enjoyable as soon as you received some clues on how to attack them.

To conclude, it is a good course on an interesting field. It takes time, but will not regret the effort when it comes to exam time.

Week 9 - Tutorial Task

Essay topic


I chose essay topic # 3; Why is privacy such a contentious issue for internet users? Discuss with reference to at least ONE social network service (or other web2.0 service).


Online privacy
How to punish violators?
Which laws?
What is it?
Different laws that enforce this.
What happens if policies are violated?
Why do we need privacy policies?

Attitudes towards privacy
How does it differ from ”real life” privacy?
Do people respect others’ privacy online?
Changing values

Facebook/Twitter/Dating-sites/Platforms
case studies, media; young girls meeting up with older men who they met on facebook and as a result they get raped or murdered.
Internet at home, work & uni
How does privacy differ in those 3 places?
Some schools block all the dating/facebook/twitter sites.
Children with computers and internet acess in their rooms are more vulnerable, thus privacy may be an issue for home internet users.
Ethical issues
Legal aspect

Additional thoughts
How technology has changed! We need more privacy these days, than we did back in the day.
How more younger people are using internet and sites like facebook! And they’re naive etc.
How values have changed, and people now may think it’s ok to put personal information on such sites, and maybe people in the older days thought this was unmoral.

After brainstorming all the ideas I could think of regarding privacy, I found that my essay will probably focus on the lack of it, and what impact this absence of privacy has on different situations. What is some major damages when privacy is violated and what can be done to minimise these issues. I will start my research at Google Scholar with something easy, such as definition of privacy, and go from there. Hopefully I'll find a lot of academic articles as well as news articles and books to help me with my essay.

Week 9 - Lecture Summary

Cyberpunk


What is Cyberpunk exactly? Well, our lecturer described it as a "popular entertainment-form of science". With help from American literature it took us out of the 80s and into modern world of technology. This science fiction-literature altered shiny chrome into gritty aesthetics. It is a Hybrid-genre which includes not only science fiction but also hard boiled detective-fiction, film noir and literary postmodernism. Cyberpunk is highly technological because of all that happens in the shadows in our new tech world, such as jail breaking Iphones and stealing credit card codes from ATMs without even being near it. Our lecturer also described it as a technological decay; boxes of old parts that gets thrown away when not needed. Then some brilliant minds find a way of using these parts in our new equipment, such as the technology used to crack Sony's PS3. Finally, he mentioned questionable morality, which basically means not to trust anyone. There are large international cooperation's that controls things, and they're sitting on invisible literature such as secret government documents and our personal information.


Cyberpunk is built on lust. No love, only self interest. It is all about what you want and need from technology and different information. They're telling us that life sucks, so you might as well have a good time. This takes us to the authors of Cyberpunk. Some names mentioned were Lewis Shiner, Bruce Sterling and Neal Stephenson. They break down the language, and write in a short, quick way with a punch and without any long descriptions of large scenarios (which was normal in other fantasy - literature).

Another author with a huge influence on the topic, is William Gibson. An American futurist with a long list of books behind him. Some of his most important and known work is "The Sprawl Trilogy" and The Bridge Trilogy". In "The Sprawl Trilogy's" he writes, among other things, about Cyberspace (Neuromancer) and what happens when military graded software falls into the hands of civilians that knows how to use it (Count Zero). In "Mona Lisa Overload", which is the last book in this series, he describes human kind as one which is connected directly to the Internet, through wires in our brains and our dreams are dreams in Cyberspace. Just after the millennium, he changes his way of writing and the result is another series of three; "Blue Ant". This time one of the books named "Zero History", even have it's own trailer on YouTube.

Cyberpunk can be described as a lingua franca of digital culture which means digital objects into speech. Cyberpunk allows this change in language because this is the way we can understand our new technological world.

Week 8 - Tutorial Task

Negative impact of technology on humanity.

Consider the article posted below and CyberPunk related topics such as a dystopian future for mankind; it can be frightening to think about these things, because we don't actually know what's going on. Biotechnology is one aspect of technology that may have a destructive impact on humanity. This is a form of tech that involves using living organisms and bio processes. It builds on areas such as genetics, microbiology and biochemistry, but may require the knowledge from fields such as information technology. If in the wrong hands, this can have a huge negative impact on humanity, such as those producing weapons of mass destruction. The future does not necessarily have to be nuclear weapons, but also biochemical viruses that eliminates human kind and the world as we know it. With our fast-growing technology it is not impossible that eventually biotechnology will create weapons that targets specific races or humans with specific genetics. One famous science fiction on this area is the Resident Evil series, which shows in a Cyberpunk way, how damaging this might be, and leaves little hope for survival.

Iran’s advances in nuclear technology spark new concerns
May 1, 2010 ⋅ 9:37 pm ⋅ Post a comment
Filed Under Iran, Nuclear

Iran is poised to make a significant leap in its ability to enrich uranium, with more sophisticated centrifuge technology that is being assembled in secret to advance the country’s nuclear efforts, according to U.S. and European intelligence officials and diplomats.
Iran’s apparent gains in centrifuge technology have heightened concerns that the government is working clandestinely on a uranium-enrichment plant capable of producing more nuclear fuel at a much faster pace, the officials said.

U.N. nuclear monitors have not been allowed to examine the new centrifuge, which Iranian officials briefly put on display at a news conference this month. But an expert group’s analysis of the new machine — based on photos — suggests that it could be up to five times more productive than the balky centrifuges Iran currently uses to enrich uranium.

Assuming the country has so far produced only prototypes of the centrifuge, it will probably take it another two years, or more, to assemble enough machines to make enough enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon. After that, though, Iran would be in a position to ramp up production dramatically, depending on how many machines it decides to install.

Using its existing centrifuges, Iran has made more than two tons of low-enriched uranium, an amount that officials say could be further enriched to produce enough weapons-grade material for about two nuclear bombs, even as the government insists that its nuclear program is exclusively for energy production.
Production of weapons of this caliber will create a massive threat to the world as we know it.

Iran’s progress on a new centrifuge coincides with a marked decline in activity at its two known uranium-enrichment plants, sources said, spurring speculation that it plans to use the new centrifuge at a still-unknown facility.

One of the known plants, a small, heavily fortified facility built in a mountain tunnel near the city of Qom, has been all but idle in recent months. Construction work has slowed to a near halt in the weeks since the facility was publicly revealed in September, according to two Europe-based diplomats privy to intelligence reports about the site.

“They seem to have lost interest in Qom since its discovery,” said the diplomat, who, like others, requested anonymity while discussing sensitive intelligence about Iran’s nuclear program. “It makes us wonder if they’re thinking about a new site.”

A second diplomat confirmed that inspectors had seen a sharp drop-off in activity at Qom, prompting questions about the whereabouts of scores of highly trained scientists and workers seen there during visits six months ago. “They do not have enough trained people to work in multiple places,” the official said.
They're creating a nuclear weapon-site where they can use the new-discovered Uranium in the production of weapons.

Iran’s largest enrichment facility, an underground complex near the city of Natanz, also appears to have stalled. Originally built to house 50,000 first-generation centrifuges known as IR1s, Natanz had only about 3,800 functioning machines when U.N. inspectors visited in late January, down from nearly 5,000 working IR1s the previous spring.

In uranium enrichment, centrifuges spin a gasified form of uranium at supersonic speeds to create the enriched fuel used in commercial nuclear power plants, as well as in nuclear weapons.

The IR1 centrifuge used at Natanz is based on a 1950s Dutch design that Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan stole and sold to the Iranians. The machine is prone to crashing, and was quickly abandoned by other countries that used it.

The new machine displayed by Iran leaps ahead by at least two generations, according to diplomatic sources and nuclear experts. One diplomat said the new machine on display was “probably an IR5,” adding that the U.N. officials do not yet know how Iran developed the centrifuge, or who might have provided assistance.

“We don’t know where these are supposed to be going,” the official said.

An analysis by the nonprofit Institute for Science and International Security concluded that new machine is made of rare, hard-to-make metals such as carbon fiber, and has been substantially redesigned to increase efficiency. While Iran has offered no test data, the machine appears “theoretically capable” of producing enriched uranium at a rate five times faster than the IR1, the Washington-based nuclear research group said.
This means that Iran can produce weapon of mass destruction and use them in warfare to eliminate several aspects of our planet.

David Albright, ISIS president and co-author of the analysis, said it is legitimate to suspect that a new centrifuge plant is under construction, though it is unclear where Iran would acquire the uranium feedstock to use in such a facility. After being forced to acknowledge the existence of the Qom site, Iran may well have decided to start another enrichment plant to keep its nuclear options open, he said.

“The logic is that, if a site is discovered, start building another one or two,” Albright said.

Iran has a limited amount of natural uranium, but it has already produced uranium hexafluoride, the feedstock for centrifuges, to keep them running for years.

Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran’s nuclear energy chief, was vague when asked during a CBS interview about new facilities. “We say start — we probably will start — another site this year,” Salehi said. He added that Iran does not intend to notify the U.N. nuclear agency about the new construction until the facility is nearly ready to begin operating.

After being embarrassed publicly by revelations about the secret Qom plant, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad boasted that Iran would soon build 10 new enrichment plants. Washington Post"

Week 8 - Lecture Summary

Virtual philosophy & Virtual Reality


The Matrix is an interesting concept; machines take over, and leaves the human race in the dark about what is real and what is illusion. How far is this from our current reality? Maybe we wouldn't even care if the machines took over. Major developments of technology have clearly changed the economy of our planet and a jump from literary age to screen age and virtual rationality have happened. It has been said that this is as a significant shift for human history as the change from oral to literal culture more than 2000 years ago.

Names like Guy Debord, Jean Baudrillard and William Gibson are all thinkers coming to terms with a new way of looking at the world where the line between reality and fiction is extremely blurry - almost non-existent. The heritage left behind by great minds such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were all different takes on reality and rationality which had their effects on how we live life as we know it. Pure rationality of this literary age has brought us to a place with too much political power and a science unaware of its own limitations. This has resulted in a world with population explosion, environmental crisis and nuclear Armageddon. However, the fact that it is the literary and mathematical culture creating this new technology and the culture that will supersede it, is far more ironic.



Cortesian Dualism (split between mind and body) is now becoming concrete in the world of technology. In this created space the cyberbody is immortal, while the animating soul outside the body is mortal, hence a complete reversal of current understanding that body is mortal and soul is immortal. Margaret Wertheim remarked that a return to the belief that humans do have an material body and this immortal soul, is present.

The telegraph, radios, cinemas and television are all examples of forerunners to this Virtual Reality. From electric impulses to dots and dashes; from electromagnetic radiation in radios to filtering light onto photoelectric surfaces (TV). These are all significant processes in our technological world, in addition we have the virtual language; The past years have produced a new audio-visual language, and we are developing ways of reading it. A few examples is shot sizes (e.g. BCU, LS & MLS), SFX (sound effects) and music.

A powerful force in developing technology is Virtual Reality also known as Artificial Reality or Virtuality). A system created by mathematical models and computer programs that allows people to move and interact in computer-simulated surroundings. VR works in the way that users experience "real-life" scenes through devices such as goggles, headphones and bodysuits which creates a feeling of being immersed in the simulated world. Convergence of technology used in computer games and simulation animation.

There are several types of virtual realities; Desktop VR involves 3D simulation on screen and is controlled by mouse or joystick and creates the sensation of moving through an environment. The next level is by using goggles with two screens and controllers such as datagloves or wands, you'll experience Immerson VR. Finally, by wearing polarised eyewear with high resolution stereo images, Projection VR sends you into extended space.

Further, there are four different elements of VR;

1. Vision; Key issues while working on the best ways of creating an impression of a substantial world involves:

• Convergence: Visual illusion that two parallell lines moving away from each other appear to move closer together.
• Depth of field: Illusion that generates distance in a still image with the help of gradiations in tone (light & colour).
  
• Parallax: Apparent displacement of an object when viewed from two different positions.
  
• Resolution/Acuity: Clarity or fineness of detail when producing an image.

2. Sound; Through stereosound, binaural headphones one can create 3D sound.

3. Touch; The four types of sensations include tactile (skin), force feedback (muscles, joints, tendons), motion (platforms) and manipulation (psychological).

4. Taste & Smell; not fully developed due to hygiene and technical problems.

Problems that must be acknowledged with VR are for instance lag time, addiction, simulation sickness, headaches, brainwashing and effects from exposure to intense violence and pornography. Taking these limitations into consideration, VR can be applied in several areas such as military training, entertainment, weather simulation, architecture and surgery.

Week 7 - Tutorial task

Q1

"Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation that provides free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof.

CreativeCommons.org

This can be useful for the uni experience because it gives us more freedom to use parts of other peoples ideas and build upon them to create something that shows our own creativity based on the idea of others.

Q2

One of Creative Commons creations is the Web SitCom " Where are the Joneses?" This is an online comedy based on a woman that is the result of a sperm donation and finds out she has 27 siblings. We follow her on her journey to find all 27. First episode from YouTube:



Another product under the CC licencing is the group blog Boing Boing. This is a video from their last post;



The third CC work I found is a series of films made as a parody of Star Trek, called Star Wreck. The first one is from 1992 and is a really simple, animated version compared to the latest one which have real actors in it.


Q3

http://search.informit.com.au.libraryproxy.griffith.edu.au/fullText;dn=174541;res=AEIPT

Summary

In this article, Fiona Migan writes about how schools can benefit from Creative Commons and describes CC as a "progressive approach to copyright". Under this types of licensing, the schools can use peoples creations such as textbooks, filmclips and music without breaking the law. Schools can use parts of creations despite "All Rights Reserved", but this involves a lot of rules and restrictions such as a set number of pages from a book, or only a certain percentage of somebody's work. Type of work and when it was created decides how long these copyrights apply.

The creator determines for how long the creation is bound by copyright, and after this set time it becomes public and receives the tag "No Rights Reserved". One example of this is the song Waltzing Matilda.



Creative Commons realised the wide range from something tagged with All Rights Reserved to No Rights Reserved, and today it's 6 main licenses in use;

• Attribution Non-commercial No derivatives ("Free advertising" - most restrictive)
• Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike (remix, tweak, build upon - derivative works licensed same way and credit to the creator)
• Attribution Non-commercial (Same as above, except derivative works does not need to be licensed in same way)
• Attribution No Derivatives (Unchanged and in-whole redistribution with credit to creator)
• Attribution (Most accommodating of licenses)

Reference: Migan, F. Copyright and Creative Commons in schools.

Q4

Portable apps is lite versions of their "mother software" on our computers. They give us the opportunity to bring all our favorite programs and even our own settings, wherever we go.


http://portableapps.com/

It is very useful in several ways. One example is that we can sync our laptops with our smart phones, and all we need is the phone in our pockets when we're out and about and we still have all the information we need. We can plan our lives at home, and still keep track by using our phones, or even our portable hard-drives, Ipods & USB flash drives.

As a BlackBerry user I can check my email and Facebook on the go, and browse the web anytime I need it. Even though it's moderated versions of the original software, it's always built in a way that we hardly ever notice the difference.