Final Thoughts

After writing this paper, I learned what it meant for modern-day colleges to be technopolies. I can understand that the colleges control the decision making for students for their field of study. But this is not as bad as it sounds. Colleges control which field a student can study, but they are deciding the best opportunity in the best interest of the student's future. These technological tools allow students to browse their options predetermined by the college and manage the required courses for graduation. These tools are intended to aid and assist the student in making the right decision. When students choose not to use the decision making tools properly it usually results in problems. Colleges can be considered technopolies but when the system is used the way it was intended for, then Colleges can be considered good technopolies.

Not only has this paper educated me on topics our society is experiencing as i type, but the class as a whole has as well. After the final paper, i felt as though everything was brought together well about the dilemmas of a generation where technology plays a humongous role in everyones lives. The debate of whether we are a spoiled generation that take advantage of the advance tools that surround us has brought up my awareness. I will be eager to see how the next generation will be portrayed and how they adapt to the technological resources that will most likely be more advanced then the technology today.

Final Assignment Progress Blog 1

Just started my final paper today, so far so good, but i find myself getting distracted easily due to something called facebook. I am assuming this is what was meant by tracking your progress while writing the final paper, if not this is part of my progress anyways. I'm sure other students have faced this dilemma as well, while writing their papers. Facebook has gotten to the point where it is a necessity to check, as much as an email account. Students are posting up statuses that are all similar in someway since every student is going through the same thing. "Oh i hate finals" or "I hate studying" or "I just want winter break to come!" And under all those statuses you can find hundreds of likes and comments because other students take mini breaks from their work to check up on their friends. Also another thing was, when i came to the library i knew the place would be packed with students who were working on papers and studying for finals, so i whipped out my laptop, went to facebook, wrote on my status, "is anyone at alexander library" and sure enough i got a few responses in a less than a minute. I am writing about technopolies and the use of technology in colleges. This is one incident that I used facebook in a way to help me get my work done. A nice place to sit and concentrate. Back to my paper.

The Social Network

From what i can take from the movie. The movie portrays Marc Zuckerburg as an asshole pretty much who is self indulged and focused solely on the success of his website. He does not pay attention to his close friends and makes friends with people who do not really care about him like his true friend. I keep hearing that The Social Network story is a bit misleading. Though it is true that the brothers who claim that Zuckerburg stole their idea at Harvard and are still in settlement agreements in court. The Social Network for the most part is based on the real story of the development of facebook and little is fictional. It is just a Hollywood spin on the story and is making a big impact in the theaters. The director is the same guy who did "21" which is a movie about the MIT students who counted cards in vegas to cheat the game of blackjack and make money. I do not have a problem with The social network movie. Nowadays, everything is over-exaggerated and taken out of context a little bit to make room for a better outlook and final product for better entertainment. The social network was the best movie ive seen in a long time, other than the length of the movie, everything else was very entertaining and interesting. In class we discussed how people perceive time when it comes to facebook, this was portrayed in the movie in the scene of the crew race. When the old man was like, "my daughter at another school already has heard about the close lost on something called facebook". It is true that we are more connected through facebook and we are updated by the click of a button. I would suggest that you incorporate this movie into the "Technology and Culture in America" course. Since we were the first class when this movie came out we could not really go deep into its possibilities of being an academic resource. Facebook is the future and the future of this class, i think, will be based on the capabilities of facebook. I give this film, 2 thumbs up and 9.5/10. Without this extra credit assignment, i dont think i wouldve went to see this movie, i was not interested and it seemed boring. But im glad i got to experience a great movie, based on a revolution that I am apart of today.

Facebook Effect 3rd Part pg. 214-333

At this point of the Facebook effect by David Kirkpatrick, it begins to introduce the platform that was integrated into Facebook. This allowed users to use applications on the interface of the website. At this time, myspace was still more known than facebook. But at the offices of Palo Alto were being filled with employees at a steady rate. Facebook seemed to be growing at a fast rate and it seemed to have trouble keeping up with its own growth. The new Platform allowed facebook users to play games such as the Texas Holdem and later on a bunch of other games would create crazes for the facebook community. These application companies were doing extremely well due to the success of facebook itself, "There are more than 500,000 applications operating on Facebook, created by over 1 million registered developers from 180 countries" (232). The Facebook company would form many partnerships with many application companies.

Due to the rapid growth of Facebook, Facebook needed to raise money to pay for more servers to keep the site running properly. They had begun thinking about advertisements on facebook and ended up getting a deal for 15 billion dollars. At this time Google pretty much was in control of over half of the advertisement online. And Google wanted to buy Facebook from Zuckerburg for less than 15 billion. But Zuckerburg was not at all interested.

Facebook spread around the whole world changing society not only in the states, but in different countries as well. Countries with dirt roads would have facebook. It has become an epidemic of the world's society and who knows where the end of facebook is. So far there seems to be none in sight. Zuckerburg's intentions were to create a social bound between people but being able to protect people's personal information at the same time. So far i think facebook has been a staple in American society and is considered part of the society as well. So if you do not have a facebook you may be considered not part of a social network and seem to be the outcast in terms of social situations.