Is the "black box" REALLY a fallacy?

Some of you may remember reading about the "black box" fallacy in Convergence Culture a few weeks back (and if you don't, you'd better read up on it now - it's on the study guide for today's test!). Anyway, something that occurred today made me think it may not be as much a fallacy as Jenkins thought.


My roommate recently got a new iPod touch; me, being a fan of the classic nano, wasn't aware of all the iPod touch's capabilities until I saw her using it - surfing the web, playing apps, and even sending text messages from it. These were all things I had seen my brother do before - using his iPhone.


"So, does that thing do basically everything the iPhone does, aside from making phone calls?" I asked.


Her response was yes.


Think about it: on one hand, I have a separate cell phone (for making calls and texting), laptop computer (for Internet usage), iPod nano (for music), and Nintendo DS (for gaming). While some of these devices do overlap a bit in their capabilities, they aren't as versatile as this new iPod. 


So if the "black box" fallacy really is a fallacy, then why does this tiny iPod have the capabilities of so many different devices all built into one?


Oh, great. I just found out it takes photos and shoots videos too. Say your goodbyes to the digital camera.

A new era of privacy risks and laziness

I recently saw the following commercial while watching TV, and while I admit that something like this was inevitable with today's technological world and the capabilities of smartphones, that doesn't make it any less troubling. With all the concern about online privacy these days, it seems like we shouldn't be continuing to find new ways to manage our money through the internet.

But alas, we now have Chase Direct Mobile Deposit (we also have Chase Mobile to Mobile Bill Paying, but that's for another commercial). As you'll see below, gone could be the days of going to the bank to deposit your paycheck; now you can just snap a picture of it on your smartphone and boom! It's been sent to the bank. 

I won't lie, I do pay my credit card bill online, so I have to enter my card number each time I do so. I guess there really isn't that much of a difference. The other option to paying a credit card bill, however, is to send it through the regular mail, which has its own set of cons. The other option of depositing a check is doing it in-person, so you can be sure the check is actually going where it's supposed to.

Maybe another reason this bothers me - aside from the risk that photographing a check carries - is how it could further enable laziness in our society. Really, people - you can't go to a bank to deposit your own paycheck?!? Isn't it just a little bit important that you ensure your hard-earned cash goes where it's supposed to? We all know how important money is deemed in today's society, and yet now we won't even get up off our couches to secure it?

Feel free to comment below.

The mind-boggling feature of MySpace Top 8

I'm not a user of social networking sites, but I still know the general vernacular of Facebook. MySpace, however, is a different story.


The article about Friendster and MySpace by Danah Boyd educated me a lot about some of the features of these SNSs. One of the things I found most 'fascinating' - or in other words, difficult to believe it actually existed - is the MySpace Top 8.


I understand little kids' notions of 'best friends' and 'bestest friends' and the ranking of friends that seems to be synonymous with female cliques. I get all that. But I truly don't understand the creation of an online system that would encourage what is very often self-esteem damaging behavior.


What adult in their right mind would implement a system like this?? If they wanted to make the Friends that are contacted most often easier to access, they could mark those Friends in a way that only the user could see, not everyone else as well. 


What's honestly the point of this?? Boyd's article states that users will often use their Top Friends "as a way to both demarcate their identity and signal meaningful relationships with others." Which to me, more or less says, 'here, this is who's the most important to me and these are the people I'm proud to be associated with.'


What do you think about this MySpace feature? Do you think it's one of the factors that led to the downfall of this SNS?

A little spoiler goodie...

While we're on the subject of spoilers (if we still are, that is), here's a little something relevant that people might find interesting...


*WARNING: Spoilers ahead - if you don't want to have a bunch of movies spoiled, then perhaps this graphic is not for you!*


Threadless "Spolit" shirt

Giving a new meaning to the word "spoiler"

What do you do when you see one of these?

When I think of the word "spoiler," my first thought is "Look away!" Then I give myself a second or two to evaluate what has the potential to be spoiled here, and choose to either continue reading or navigate to another site accordingly.


My notion of a "spoiler" is giving away the plot or major secrets from a work of popular culture: a book, movie, TV show, video game, etc. It's something that web users often incorporate into their discussions of such works to warn those who haven't read the book, seen the movie, etc. that major plot points will be revealed in the subsequent text if they continue reading. This preserves the 'first-time experience' for anyone who may be interested in reading the book, seeing the movie, etc. for themselves in the future, without prior knowledge of the outcome.


Jenkins brings up a new notion of a "spoiler" in chapter one of "Convergence Culture" when he discusses the TV show Survivor. He says members of the online spoiling community don't mind having predicted answers circulated, as long as there's a backstory to how those answers were gathered; this allows different users to check these supposed 'answers' and continue the game. 


However, "ChillOne and his allies argued that such [spoiler] warnings were not needed here, since the whole purpose of the group was spoiling, and yet, telling the answers cut off the game that many other group members wanted to play" (55). 


This is a very thin and vaguely defined line - how to spoil without spoiling too much. I don't have the investigative skills to participate in a spoiler community, but even if I did, I would be too wary to join for risk of having too much revealed at once.

Fanfiction, feminism & a more open-minded culture

I like the idea Jenkins mentioned in chapter five of "Convergence Culture," regarding the ability of fanfiction to allow young readers/writers to create their own "empowerment fantasies" using characters from popular culture. Even in today's world, which is considerably less gender-stereotyped than in the past,  female characters often get the short end of the stick in popular culture - unless, of course, it's a piece of pop culture aimed specifically at young girls (think Disney Princesses). Jenkins explains that young girls can use fanfiction to give a stronger voice to the female characters who may have been somewhat neglected in their favorite book/TV/movie series:


"Through children's fantasy play, Hermione takes on a much more active and central role than Rowling provided her" (184).


Having read all the Harry Potter books, I actually feel that Rowling gave Hermione a larger role than many other female characters in pop culture, but it's reassuring to know that some consumers are unsatisfied with even that and are willing to reconstruct pop culture characters - like Hermione - to infuse them with the power traditionally reserved for male characters. 


In this way, I think that fanfiction can be a great stepping stone to further reshaping our culture to be more open and accepting to all sorts of people. Other less-mentioned groups, such as minority races or members of the gay/lesbian/transgender community, can also use this medium to tell the stories that mainstream writers and publishers are often reluctant to tell. They can do this through the safety and familiarity of established characters, who - in the world of fanfiction - just may so happen to have friends or relatives that belong to those often-neglected groups.

eReaders nothing more than "content blobs"?

In the article "Online Literacy Is a Lesser Kind" by The Chronicle of Higher Education, Mark Bauerlein wrote of a 2003 Nielsen warning: 


"...a PDF file strikes users as a 'content blob,' and they won't read it unless they print it out. A 'booklike' page on screen, it seems, turns them off and sends them away."


The article itself was written in 2008. Now in 2012, eReaders like the Kindle, Nook and Apple iPad offer exactly what that Nielsen claimed turns people away: "booklike" pages on a computer screen.


Although "screen scanning" is still alive and well in Internet reading, it appears that some people have adapted to what the article refers to as slow, traditional reading on an electronic screen. When words are presented in exactly the same format as they would in print - they simply appear on a screen - I would tend to believe that readers opt for traditional reading over this new generation of scanning. 


I think this has to do more with the purpose of a particular text, rather than the medium. I'm more likely to scan an article (whether online or in print) for quick information, but I'm far more likely to thoroughly read a story (whether on an eReader or in a book).


What do you think about Nielsen's 2003 warning? Do you think it was well-founded? And do you think it holds any truth today?

Blog Prompt #2: Google - a 21st century addiction

I suppose I would have to say "yes, I am addicted to Google," but perhaps not as addicted as I could be.


Admittedly, Google is my go-to whenever I need to look something up on the Internet (aside from those assignments in which we're required to use academic search bases...although sometimes I try Google after using those too - shhh!!! Don't tell anyone!)


The majority of the webpages I visit, I found/find on Google. Once I find a site that I know I'm going to frequently visit, I add it to my bookmarks (which I find far more efficient than heading to Google first every time). But I usually discover webpages through Google. Or if I know of a website but can't think of its exact URL, then I type the site name into Google and access it from there.


I'm also a big YouTube watcher; there's just such a variety of content, some of which is made by very creative individuals and can allow viewers to enjoy other people's takes on their favorite movies, TV shows, and songs. I generally don't watch entire movies or listen to full songs on YouTube however, partially because I still believe in supporting the artists of these works and partially because the quality on YouTube is almost always inferior to the originals.


Despite these ways I use Google on a daily basis, I do agree with many of Siva Vaidhyanathan's concerns about this monolith of a search engine. I was already aware that what we do online isn't exactly private, but I wasn't aware of the myriad of ways Google tracks our activity. This is because I didn't realize how many services Google is connected with: YouTube, Blogger, Chrome, etc. I was naively thinking of Google solely in terms of its search engine empire. But I suppose that Google's been gathering data on me from my activity on YouTube all this time, and now from Blogger as well.


And it's not so much what Google itself could possibly do with our information, but how Google could potentially distribute that information to companies - perhaps even to governments - across the world.

Wikipedia blacks out on our behalf

Ironically enough, upon checking out one of the Wikipedia articles assigned for recent class reading, I discovered that on Jan. 18, Wikipedia will be doing its part to stop SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act):


It will be conducting a global blackout for 24 
hours in protest of this potential legistlation.


As much as I dislike any protest that limits my access to anything, I agree with the fundamentals behind Wikipedia's decision. And as difficult as it might be to go through a day without sites like YouTube, I hope that they follow suit and join Wikipedia in the protest - give the government an idea of how the Internet would operate without these kinds of sites.


I'm all for the protection of copyrighted material - in fact, I hope to have material of my own copyrighted someday. But the thing is, I don't feel that sites like Wikipedia or YouTube are really harming the owners of this copyrighted material. If anything, it's sort of promoting it. 


When users upload videos of YouTube that contain clips of copyrighted material, it's often to pay tribute to favorite movies, TV shows, video games, etc. - almost like a free advertisement (and we know how much companies love those!). Yes, uploading entire movies to YouTube is a blatant copyright violation, but it's not like users won't just access movies illegally from some other source (in fact, I'd think that more people use things like BitTorrents to get movies instead of having to navigate through a dozen or so YouTube videos to watch an entire film).


What's your opinion on this issue? Do you support having some of your most-used sites blacked out in protest of this potential legislation? And do you think it will do any good?


Check out Wikipedia's explanation of the blackout here: 
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_anti-SOPA_blackout

An Internet without Google???

I was thinking about the first chapter of "The Googlization of Everything" I read earlier today and took a moment to imagine what my own Internet usage would be like without Google, and without any type of similar search engine (like Yahoo!, Bing, etc.)


And I couldn't.


Probably 98% of the websites I visit are found on Google. Aside from the specific sites provided to me in my classes and the few mainstream sites I frequently visit (Comcast and Amazon, for instance), Google is my map to the information super highway. I don't know how else I'd be able to find the information I was looking for on the web - I feel like "web surfing" wouldn't really exist.


As was mentioned in class, perhaps I might find myself relying on bloggers' recommendations for websites, like how it was back in the early days before Google and similar search engines existed. Still, there's nothing quite like typing out the exact words you're looking for, and having Google spit back a bunch of applicable sites at you. It's fast, convenient, and relatively brain-less. Finding information through other bloggers would be far more tedious. First, you'd have to find bloggers covering the topic you're searching for; then you'd have to see if any of those bloggers have any links to the specific information you're seeking.


The Google as we know it today certainly has its pros and cons, but I for one, would find the Internet virtually unnavigable without it.

Do we really own anything?!?

A few months back, I was reading a discussion board online about the ownership of movies, which today's class discussion reminded me of. (If I find it again, I'll add a link to it here!)


To the best of my memory, some people on the board were saying that in the future, big name companies would own all movies and consumers would simply pay to stream them each time they wanted to view a particular film. People on the site were discussing a trend about consumers being less interested in actually buying their own DVD/Blu-ray copies of a film for repeat viewings, and more interested in paying for a single streaming of a film. So in essence, people wouldn't "own" hard copies of movies anymore. 


But then, some people were also raising the question: Do we even really own the DVDs/Blu-ray discs that we've paid for? There are governmental regulations regarding viewing, coping, and distibuting them, after all (not that they're strictly followed of course).


What do you think? Do we really own the movies that we pay to view in the comfort of our own homes? And would you rather buy hard copies of films or stream them? Might it depend on what film it was, and whether or not you already knew how much/how little you liked it?

The perils of being a "non-user"

According to the 2011 Digital Future Project, 18% of Americans are currently not using the Internet. They are "non-users."


The U.S. has approximately 300,000,000 people in it (rough estimate from the U.S. Census Bureau). So that equates to 54,000,000 people who aren't online.


And oddly enough - in my opinion - cost isn't as huge a factor as one might think in relation to the percent of non-users. 25% of non-users (13,500,000 people) cited "no interest" or the Internet being "not useful" as their reasons for staying offline. 7% (3,780,000) cited expense.


So what's going to happen to these non-users as we begin to rely more and more on the Internet to stay in touch with the people in our lives? How will we communicate with these people without email, instant messaging, social networking, etc.? It seems a bit absurd to think that communication with them could cease, but think about it - how often do you visit or call a friend or relative who lives far away? How often do you Skype them, check their status on Facebook, follow them on Twitter, or email them? If for some reason, some of the important people in your life suddenly became "non-users," how do you think that would affect your communication with them?

Blog Prompt #1: Crazy Competition

When having 680 links from 208 different sites places your blog at a ranking of #8,992, you know you're got some competition.


What amazes me is that an individual - without any "big name" connections - can start up a blog out of nowhere and build up even that kind of traffic.
Tiffany B. Brown (whose blog blackfeminism.org had the above stats in 2006) spoke about traffic to her site in her interview with Rebecca Blood. Brown said it's crucial to enable comments to gain a following. Makes sense - if I can see my own words on the screen, expressing my own opinions, I'm probably more likely to return.


More importantly, Brown said she had to develop a more distinctive voice. "There are 5,011-plus web designeers and developers who blog, so you really have to bring it content-wise," she said.


The web was flooded with info on web development when Brown started her web design-based blog, but not on black women blogging about race, gender, and culture. That's where she got her audience.


I think finding a unique way to blog on a topic that's not completely taken over by other writers is a big challenge, but a worthy one.


Check out the full interview here:http://www.rebeccablood.net/bloggerson/tiffanybbrown.html

First posting!

Taking my first steps in the blogging world.