Blogging: Self Presentation and Privacy

Karen McCullagh's article Blogging: Self Presentation and Privacy, had some interesting information regarding bloggers. Unfortunately, they can be properly generalized for all bloggers due to their non-random participants.

One main point of the article was regarding the cluster concept of privacy; there exists three aspects according to McCullagh. First is informational privacy, which states that an individual has the right to control their personal information and who else this info is disclosed to. Second is accessibility privacy, which should protect people from wiretapping, peeping Tom's, or other physical encroachments. The third aspect is expressive privacy, which states individuals should have the ability to freely act and interact as they desire without fear of scrutiny or being forced to conform to the existing social norms.

Another point the author makes is that one third of the participants were concerned with privacy of personal information. This relates to both their blog's audience and the things they chose to post. Audience members of a blog could be known to the blogger (real life friends) or they could be some random people in cyberspace. Bloggers explained that personal info, emotions, sex, relationships, arguments, financial info, work, health info, illegal activities, politics, and religion were all topics that can at times be too private to post.

Finally, I believe one of the study's main points is found in the discussion where the author talks about the archiving of blogs and how it could lead to issues later if tracked back to the blogger. By assuming privacy, bloggers are at greater risk and should consider the privacy mechanisms explained in the article. Without them, one day an old naive post could negatively affect the changed and grown blogger.

~T

The End of Books

This article by Robert Coover presents hypertexts, specifically fictional hypertexts. A hypertext is any text on a computer screen that is nonlinear, with lexias (or links to an infinite number of possible choices regarding where the reader could go next), and it is always in the middle (as opposed to having a beginning/middle/end like most print texts). Coover taught a couple hypertext fiction workshops at Brown University because he wanted to learn about these new texts himself. An interesting thing I learned was about the group fictional place the 'Hotel;' Brown and his students could use the hotel to write many interweaving stories that were determined by any and all authors as they so desired.

The most useful thing I learned from the reading is that these kinds of fictional texts exist! I understand that searching the internet gets overwhelming because there are so many things to read and directions to go, but I don't know how I would handle this free-range method of fictional storytelling.

~T

Navigating Technomedia

Navigating Technomedia by Sam Han covered a few main topics in a relatively short amount of writing. He spoke about a ‘digital divide’ between areas with different technological capabilities, discussed three historical eras of technomedia, and he spoke about the real time capabilities of broadcasting.

One main point Han makes is that there is a ‘digital divide’ between people who have access to the newest technologies and those without access to them because of their more rural location. This issue was even discussed by nations in Sweden during the United Nations’ World Summit on the Information Society in 2003.

The next main point Han presents in the chapter is regarding three eras of technomedia and their histories. The mechanical era refers to print media, printing presses, alphabet letters versus characters, and photography; he presents moralist photographers and scientist photographers as the two ‘brands’ that existed. Even film is included in the mechanical era. The next era of technomedia was the electric era. This era includes telegraphy, which first allowed text to defy distance and time by instantly being transmitted, the telephone, and even personal computers. The final era is the broadcast era; the era includes radio and television broadcasts.

An interesting subject Han discusses is in regards to static during broadcasts. The broadcast era brought with it live feed with real time capabilities, so even if the broadcast wasn’t live, seeing static made the audience believe what they were viewing was live.

~T

Google+ to Eventually Surpass Facebook?

For my new media article post, I found an interesting piece regarding Google+ in the New York Times.

The article explains that many of the earliest members of Google+ stopped using the site shortly after starting in July because their friends were not members. At a web 2.0 conference in San Francisco, Mr Gundotra, Google's vice president, explained that Google+ has a major advantage to gaining new members. People visit all kinds of Google sites and services everyday; Google will be encouraging people to join Google+ when they visit these sites.

I didn't think any social networking site would be able to compete with Facebook, until I read this article. I had not considered the networking power of Google and their ability to brainwash people into joining their SNS through advertisements on google maps or google's gmail. Good luck resisting fellow cyberspace users.

~T

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/google-will-get-new-features-and-new-users-executive-says/?ref=technology