Facebook Effect 2nd part pg 107-214

In the 2nd part of the Facebook effect by David Kirkpatrick, how Thefacebook got off the ground is being discussed. As all starting companies, Thefacebook needed investors to jump start the project. An investor named Warren Buffet came to Zuckerberg and Graham's office in Palo Alto, "He said the arrical of Buffet was a transformative moment in the life of the company" (108-109). What the investors like the most about Thefacebook was the audience it targeted and how much the audience interacted with the website on a daily basis. Like the poll on the Class Website now, the question is how often do you sign onto facebook. For the most part people sign on ATLEAST 3-5 times according to the poll but im sure that students check facebook more than that. American society is obsessed with social interaction and facebook, "...what drives them is their extreme interest in their friends - what they are doing, what they are thinking, and where they are going" (107). In Fall 2005, Thefacebook changed its name to Facebook and broadened its targeted audiences, "Facebook was no longer just a college phenomenon" (150). At this point, Facebook continues to grow at a rapid rate and sees no end of success. In 2006, the News Feed Application was added to Facebook. This allowed friends to see top news of what their friends were doing without having to go to their individual page "The News Feed would be a radical change. "It's not a new feature, it's a major a product evolution...It would remake Facebook" (182). At the end of the section we needed to read, Kirkpatrick talks about privacy on Facebook. He said, "The reality is that nothing on Facebook is really confidential. The company's own privacy policy is blunt on this score" (204). I have not read Facebook's privacy policy because i do not really care, but i agree with Kirkpatrick. We have discussed this in class one day, about how users are able to set their privacy options to who is able to see their information and what information they are allowed to access. But there are little ways here and there that your 'Face', info, and you personal matters you post on facebook to leak out to the world wide public. Facebook is not perfect and in terms of privacy i do not think it will ever be perfect. Americans need to learn that when you enter these types of societies where there is a mass number of people invloved, someway, somehow things you do not want strangers to know will get to them eventually. That is unless you do not put anything up in the first place.

Call of Duty influences Violence?

So after the last class where one group presented the Wikipedia article "GTA", the class discussed about how kids were influenced by games such as Grand Theft Auto (the kid who killed 3 cops) and Counter Strike (the kid from Vtech). Many believe that kids are easily influenced by social media and socialism. Kids who are exposed to other kids who do bad things like drugs, drink and sex are more likely to get involved. Now these games are rated M for mature for a reason. Meaning that you should not be playing the game unless you are 18 years of age. Otherwise, the parents are in control of the content their kids are exposed to and should not allow their kids to play these games if they think it is going to have this effect on them.

That being said throughout the week i was watching TV and a Call of Duty: Black Ops commercial came on. Black Ops is a First person shooter, taken place in Vietnam with Vietcong Guerrilla soldiers fighting against US special forces. But the commercial used known celebrities and professional sports players. The idea behind it was that these celebrities were holding guns acting as if they were the soldier in the game. And the slogan of the commercial was "there's a soldier in all of us". I thought this was exactly what we were talking about in class and thought it'd be nice to post this up. These war video game producers are trying to reach out to young kids and make them believe that they can be just like these soldiers and be a killing machine. If i were a parent i would not let my kids play this game until i thought they were mature enough to not take it seriously.

http://www.youtube.com/user/CALLOFDUTY?v=Pblj3JHF-Jo&feature=pyv&ad=7241155292&kw=black%20ops%20commercial

Midterm Wikipedia Audit Process

I think the Wikipedia Audit process was a good project for this class. It gives us insight on the Wikipedia Articles and Entries by showing us that some articles are almost useless for scholarly work. Most of the professors ive had at Rutgers, if not all, do not allow students to use Wikipedia as a source for research papers. I agree with this, Wikipedia should not be used as a scholarly source to research topics. As we have discussed in class, it can be used to look up a subject for a broad overview, but for detailed facts and points, the subject should be backed up by other sources such as news sources or medical journals for example. The Wikipedia's strength is to have a common place for people to search topics they are not familiar with to get familiarized with it, but it's weakness comes into play when it needs to be used in a scholarly manner.

As we all know, the American society is somewhat lazy to say the least. Technology, i believe, has had a big impact on American laziness. Since encyclopedias were all made of paper before Wikipedias addition to online search engines, people have become dependent on technology to get tasks done faster than they could before. Bottom line, technology has given individuals all this information readily available at their finger tips in mere seconds. And it has effected American culture tremendously in terms of a lazy and spoiled society.

Overall this project was a well designed assignment. The only thing i would say about the process is announcing the assignment earlier in the term to allow for students to organize better and create even better presentations. Other than that, i enjoyed auditing a Wikipedia article and have become aware of the liability of the sources in Wikipedia articles and the pages content.

FaceBook FX Part 1

In the book "The Facebook Effect" by David Kirkpatrick, Kirkpatrick explains to his readers that the Facebook has revolutionized social networks. There has been many other social networks that have been before Facebook's time,like Myspace, but why haven't they flourished and made as big as an impact as Facebook has on the world? Facebook has taken the flaws of these other websites and incorporated all the ideas of all social devices into one super website, the one we all know well, www.facebook.com. I am not familiar with the other networks mentioned in the book such as "Well", "an electronic bulletin board called The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link" (pg. 66) or theGlobe.com, but i am familiar with Myspace and AIM (American Online Instant Messenger). Facebook has taken the idea of an "away message" that was a big asset in AIM and incorporated it into the interface of Facebook.com, "the status".

The main reason for Facebook and for other social network's success is their social target. Like the first network that was aimed towards college students. "The first social network explicitly intended for college students had begun at Standford University in November 2001. It was probably also the first real social network ever launched in the United States" (pg. 77). It says that only students that attended Stanford and had a .edu email were able to join and use this social network. This is the same concept that Facebook has required for their members. I have had a facebook for about 4 years now and i was not able to get one until i got my Rutgers .edu email. This idea confirms that the people that are signing up are real people and are signing up as themselves and cannot pose as another person.

All these ideas have made facebook a household name and in my personal opinion an imperative device to have if you have want to have any sort of social life. As important as an email, it is automatically concluded that someone has a facebook to be able to contact other people with.

"Social networking has now extended across the entire planet. Facebook is the world's largest such network. It is the rare high school and college student who does not routinely use Facebook..." (pg. 85).

Facebook has revolutionized the web and social life, and will continue to grow in the years to come.

Made to Break Last 3rd pg 186-281

In the last part of "Made to Break", the author Giles Slade begins to talk about knowledge and skills involving applications on computers. He brings up the idea that the information that people have right now about technology is going to be close to irrelevant in 10-15 years. For example, people have the knowledge of using Word processor and are able to type words fast on a document. But Slade is trying to say that that particular skill or knowledge may not be useful in the future because technology is made to keep advancing. That is how companies make so much money on their products. The older technology is outdated and therefore the new technology is sold for the same amount of money that the older technology was sold for when it was "new". Technology obsolesce, as mentioned in my previous posts, plays a huge part in technology and its advances. Slade says, "The speed at which this technological obsolesce occurred became obvious during Apollo's last flight in 1975, when American astronauts aboard this joint Apollo-Soyuz docking mission carried with them programmable HP-65 pocket calculators that were several time's more powerful than the capsule's inboard computer designed less than a decade before" (pg. 197).

In the last chapters, Slade brings the up the problem of technology in terms of hazardous waste. There are many technological products that still work, that are thrown away because consumers buy new products that are more updated than the old ones. These waste can cause health problems for people in the US and affects the whole wide world for that matter. That is why Slade thinks that obsolesce plays a part in harming the world because these products are being outdated so quickly that the waste piles gain more and more electronic waste that can be a health threat to people who live near these landfills. Slade states, "E-waste is not the only problem associated with cell phones. The introduction of every new technology brings with it a complex set of challenges, some of what cannot be recognized initially. In the 1980s, these were referred to as "technological "hazards." Today, they are usually described with the more neutral term "technological risk," a phrase which encompasses many more issues than the creation and disposal of hazardous e-waste" (pg. 277).
As you can see obsolesce has an indirect link to harming American society and also puts the American society's mindset in having to purchase companies' products that will be outdated by their newer products that will bring in revenue for the corporates and bring in more "technological risks" into American society for American society to feel health problems from the very same products they use themselves.
Smart

-ChristoPHO

Made to Break 2nd Third Pg 83-185

In pages 83-185 of "Made to Break" by Giles Slade, Slade talks about the AM and FM radio. The FM radio helped with communication during World War II. But the AM radio have shorter wavelengths than FM and therefore cannot reach a certain area for coverage. The whole ideal behind the AM and FM is that people think that the FM was available when the AM was out but they only release the AM to make as much money from it as they could until they released FM. Since FM is better there would be more of a demand for FM after people got used to AM. American society is sort of oblivious to the fact that corporations manufacture their products to purposely stop working after a certain amount of time. Usually around the time the factory warranty expires, therefore forcing the consumers to buy more products and give the companies more money. I feel as though it is a smart tactic in the industry world because just like the encyclopedias mention in the Wikipedia novel, products get outdated and the companies need a way to make more money. Once a product is outdated its time to produce newer products for consumers to buy and American society tends to purchase products that are popular at the time.