So I decided to write about a page that I find very interesting, for a person who is also very interesting. A friend of mine had her virtual identity page on a social networking software. At it, she uses the medium to tell so much about herself; it includes facts about her identity, like her name and birthplace, birthday, marital statues, and her religion. she had a lot of pictures for herself and her friends on it, which reflects her comfort with such a medium and also with her audience. Her audience are almost 100% people she knows in real life; however some of them are close and many others are people who are not so close to her, like classmates or people she maybe has met once or twice. The most interesting thing about that virtual identity page is the Articles section; that social networking software offers its user a medium to publish their own articles in invite people to critique it. She writes pieces about her very personal virtual/imaginary yet real identity. She expresses herself as being Cleopatra, in several of her articles and poems, and even her front page, and expresses her interest in living in that era through the creative poetry she writes and publishes to everybody! I find that amazing because of the level of comfort she has with such a medium! Especially when looking at the amount of “friends” on her list, who may not be able who can understand her or avoid judging her. Being/imagining being Cleopatra is certainly a freedom of choice but not something very usual, especially when going back and forth between the 1st and the 3rd personal pronoun in writing while referring to oneself. I find the originality of the page to be very high: not everybody has that dual/imaginary identity exposed on such websites. I think the agency allows to publish her thoughts since the software has an articles section that people use frequently by users and their publications are easily share through marking users off of a list to send invitations to, or simply by users checking the user’s website. Kerios and exigency do not seem to be present a pressing matter in that page, or that type of social networking pages in general, since usually people create a profile for themselves simply because all non virtual friends are on it. Perhaps the exigency or Kerios in that page can be most present in the article written: she uses the articles to express momentary feelings of anger, happiness, or moment of excitement or urges of activism through poetry and short articles. I think a reason for my friend’s comfort with expressing that layer of her personality/identity so much out there derives from her expected audience; she only had her sister on that list, but not like her mother or her father. I imagine if any adult family members or extended family relatives were members of that software, the nature of her text as well as the originality of it would have been greatly affected as she would have had to stay more conformant to the “social norms” within which she projects her identity, or a certain level of it, in the non virtual world. Perhaps also because the agency of that specific social networking group allows her to limit what information each of her “friends” can access, she feels free allowing access to her “articles” only to her close friend, and maybe she is giving others “lmited access”. However, I know that this fried of mine is worrying about privacy issues, since she has previously received harassments phone call regarding the content of her posts! She seemed upset, and she made an official complaint, however, she still carries out the same pattern of online self comportment! If anything, this VIP reminds me of an article I have looked at that deals with the dilemma of online privacy vs. narcissism, or the desire to portray oneself well/ in an interesting, inviting, and attractive manner!
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the authorship of computer scientists in the digital information, & software and surveillance videos
Geoff Bowker from Santa Clara University talks about “Software Values”. The author presents a project on defining Importance of Information infrastructure. They study how Cyber-infrastructure, how cyber can work together across different disciplines. A moment he likes that is one that highlights what he calls “the centrality of ontology is the interaction between disciplines.” It was when computer scientists and geologist discussing what their ontology is, and the geologists had no idea what is was and what they meant! The ontology they decided on is what that forms new scientific hierarchy, shifting the power structure around within the scientific community. He clarifies saying that the ontology they decide on does the same as what the missionaries did in afraid by choosing new outsiders and giving them positions within tribes in order to shift around the power structure within a tribe; similarly is what choosing a new ontology meant in the scientific community. He says that this is like how missionaries chose certain power structures in tribes to change the power structure in their tribes.
I don’t really like his approach about the first concept: ontology. Although he explains that the scientists didn’t know what it is and had hard time defining what ontology is, and what ontology is for each scientist and what is the common ontology for their common project, he himself did not define it! That’s a major drawback of his presentation!
I like how he defines the role of computer scientists as agents of authorship. They do not only do the coding of projects, but they also bring about the organization and the agreement of different scientist to form 1 idea. I think the interesting question here is , what is the background of these computer scientists, how does it affect the way they pursue this organizing process and their role as agents of authorship. To give him credit. I like how he tries to make the example of defining ontology easy by giving a non-scientific example of the history of missionaries in tribal communities.
Then, he highlights the value of diversity and transparency that are being actively masked by Google as a search engine. The infra-structure of Google which we won’t know about makes for example, th first 4 pages appearing when typing Africa in Google are info from American sources- and western ones, even thought there are great western sources out there.
I think this example again highlights the issue of authorship within agency, what are the audience getting, and, are they aware of the results they get.
Design space is the way in which info is stored. He spoke about the representation of indigenous knowledge; he says the classification system are based on our values, or the values that want to be delivered, and the design of info representation. I/E when u Google something, al that comes out to you is the specific “specie” related to what you search. Other issues or related topics/matter are actively masked.
Overall, I think he talk is overwhelming! It’s too much to present in 7 mns! It’s politically scientifically and densely charged! I don’t know the the audience of this presentation is meant to be, but for a me as an audience, I found it hard to understand at a first note, and the agency is also problematic, since he talks a lot about certain images, and the presenting this info on a video file was not so helpful.
Originality is certainly present! The talk is almost one of a kind, and not redundant: we don’t usually think of what’s going at the back seen of what seems like a very open search engine and we seem like the authorship is totally ours! In other words, we are the authors of the information that s delivered to us by choosing the terms of search and finding the results we wish!
The other video is about surveillance systems, user control and law enforcement and security. Investigators mainly look for cameras and these cameras are a mile away, the quality is usually bad. It takes so much to make it good usable ability. The author looks at database technology software and how digital software is is used to enhance visual media view of the reality. In particular she discusses the software Abid.
She ten moves on to explore the relationship between database and narrative, how are new abilities to classify and retrieve info include bring about a new cultural forum. She asks about what narratives are created by the inter-linkage of the surveillance of database of the storytelling of law enforcement. She says that mining video database, as well as editing options are offered by the software in order to make surveillance takes useful. The author then goes on to say the other benefits that the software does for law enforcement.
The video is much more simpler than the above one, but the time limit drives me crazy! 7 minutes is too little, I feel the author could have delivered much more if she had more time but she’s constrained by the exigency of the video. The exigency, or the reason behind the talk, is giving a small presentation about the authors’ papers or research, it is not to discuss or make the audience understand fully the content of the research presented.
Technical terms such as datamining was foreign to me; it tells about the audience expected to see these presentation; professionals in the field. I also never understood what seemed like the most original part of the video; the intersection between law enforcement and narrative created by storytelling of the law enforcement videos, or something like that! The originality of this topic is mediocre; I’m sure anyone could know what Abid software does by going on their website, but the original part was about the narrative that these software create in relation to the nature of the surveillance material! I wish I could understand that point more, but because the audience were limited and the time was limiting , she did not explain what she really meant by that. This was a shame.
So for this week I reviewed an article that discusses in deep details anonymity online. It says that even when bloggers are anonymous, the government, or other institutions can track the identity of who the blogger is.
The reason why one can be tracked is that there is an IP address that is like a serial code to every computer when logged online.
But, what is an IP address?
“An Internet Protocol (IP) address is a numerical label that is assigned to devices participating in a computer network, that uses the Internet Protocol for communication between its nodes.[1] An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing. Its role has been characterized as follows: “A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A route indicates how to get there.”[2]” ( Wikipedia,IP address)
So to remain anonymous, one must hide there ID in the following manner. Here are the primary ways through which you can hide your IP and remain more likely anonymous!
1: Don’t Use Explorer! Use Mozzila ( or any other, Mozzila works best with the next step of protecting yourself)
Why not Explorer? Explorer is the most revealing software to your identity online. Explorer “ has some egregious security holes that can compromise your online security. These holes tend to go unpatched for longer on IE than on other browsers.” If you are interested in the technical reasons or proves for that, go here- and Ask Bruce Schneier( a researcher on the topic) http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/12/internet_explor.html
2: Install Tor
What is Tor?
“Tor is free software and an open network that helps you defend against a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security known as traffic analysis.- Tor protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, and it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location. Tor works with many of your existing applications, including web browsers, instant messaging clients, remote login, and other applications based on the TCP protocol” ( The Tor Porject Website).
Here is where you can dowlaod it: https://www.torproject.org/
After that, the author goes on to guide the user as to how to remain anonymous on specific online blogging tools including WordPress. He explains it step by step starting with setting up an account on WordPress, up until publishing a post!
For how exactly to follow these steps please visit:
http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/projects/guide/
I hope that can be usefull!
The article in New York Times titled “Ads Follow Web Users, and Get More Personal” strikes me as rather scary! It speaks of how there are specific companies that gather information about you from your emails to get to know what your commercial interests may be, and , accordingly, customize what sort of advertising you get while you browse the web.
The thought is scary because it appears like a great infringement of privacy! What is the point of having passwords and picture sealing protection methods if commercial companies can very easily track the sort of interests I have and through which can pretty much figure out my whole profile as a person!
I wonder if this practice is even legal! The article is unclear regarding the legality of the issue: it basically says that “the Congress has been holding hearings on online privacy lately, the sessions have focused on online behavioral targeting. The industry has argued that no government intervention is needed, an argument that the Federal Trade Commission has so far accepted.”
A possible solution for that problem of cookie tracking would be for users to regularly delete their cookies everyday or, even more than once a day. There are free easy to use software that cleanup the cookies very easily and without causing ay disturbance to the system, like C. Cleaner for example.
The question is this tough: Should users really do so? The great online advancement that we are at today cannot come for free. If websites cannot make profit, how, or more precisely, why would they offer such wide variety of online services, and what will push them to keep them efficient and competitive?
Some might say that they can still sell advertisements; yet, they don’t have to be so customized as to infringe the privacy of users in such a way. I say, let’s face it! Who of us cares to look at online advertisements that popup at the right side corner of a Google research results page? Or while writing an email? Advertisers want to make profit, websites want to sell, and we want excellent service! It’s a cost and benefit analysis situation . . .
For me, privacy versus efficient service… it evens out!
Recently, it has been circulating around Facebook a short clip of the visit of the minister of education to a public school. The visit was sudden, and of course, scandalous as well. The short clip shows the ministers conversation with school officials about the state of chaos the school was at, the absence of teachers, and the students running around everywhere instead of learning in class.
In this situation, exigency element is interesting yet not original, nor innovative. What makes it interesting is that the author of the clip found a reason to document it since the minister is new, and has successfully managed to make a sudden visit to inspect education in public school, without the school having the chance to be informed of his visit.
The clip however still lacks innovation, since I find the topic of the corruption of the educational institution to be an overused one. The corruption of education has been present in Egypt for so long that it is almost a usual thing to read about, or see in the media.
What I find most interesting is the agency of the clip: the author chose to publish this video on a social networking website, instead of sending it to one of the famous presenters of the many political and social talk shows on T.V.
This tells something about the audience whom the author is aiming to publish too; the author does not care to reach the government, or the people at power which says he is not aiming for a change or an official act in answer to the corruption at the school, instead, all he wants is to reach out to the maximum amount of people, but having the video (almost) permanently accessible for audience at all time.
I also think that from this clip we can infer something about the nature of the civic life in Egypt; my personal view is that the average Egyptian citizens would rather laugh about a situation of this like, and have it as a joke clip to circulate around Facebook for amusement rather than sending it to a political talk show for analysis or the like. What do we make out of it? Is it passiveness? Sense of humor? I don’t know…
So I was browsing the web for term Digital Rhetoric, interested in finding out whether the term is used as such by other scholars or discussed as a topic in a social forum. Surprisingly, I found a website for a class with exactly the same title as ours, taught at the university of California, Irvine. The website is link is www.digitialrhetoric.org.
The website seems to be quite comprehensive, so I am aiming at just describing its main outlook at matters that I find interesting. First of all, what I found interesting is that the University of California, Irvine had taken a holistic approach upon “Digitial Rehtoric”. The website addressed five key questions in attempting to cover the subject; What, Why, How, Who, and When. The question of What aims at defining the concept of Digital Rhetoric, Why explains the reason for which studying the subject is worthwhile, How gives account as the different manners and venues by which the discipline “learnt” or studied, the question of Who is concerned by the authority or the scholarship that defines the discipline, and finally, When poses the interesting question as to whether Digital Rhetoric is a paradigm shift.
I really like the layout of the website, ad think that it’s very interesting that at the front-page, all these questions are laid out at the side prior to entering into the course itself. However, I find the question of WHO to be rather irrelevant; when reading the title of Who, I imagined the question to be concerned by the authority or the scholarship that defines the discipline, instead it asks: Where will rhetoric go as a discipline in the digital age? Will it continue to be associated primarily with departments of literature? And what forms of collaboration should we pursue? These questions are certainly interesting, but I don’t think they find under the question of “Who”.
Finally, I thinking that perhaps we should do something similar to that in our website; it comes useful for researchers who look up our website on search engines and who maybe interested in the discipline as a whole but not necessarily in our specific areas of study.
The article “Capitalizing on the Internet: Social Contact, Civic Engagement, and Sense of Community” overviews the effect of Internet on the Social, Political and civic life. What I find most interesting about this article is the way the author tries to relate the effect of the Internet to some other phenomenon in the past, like the TV. It also lays out some worries and concerns that he finds to have been common long lasting questions of the effect of new technological phenomena on people. These include the decline in private relations with family and friends, the retreat from public space community meaning letting go of public gathering and finally disengagement in civic life and the willingness to contribute to the society. I think that it is interesting to find out that the problem with internet is not one of a kind; it was the same with other technological phenomenon. However, I think there is a difference that the author does not bear in mind, the issue of privacy for example and copy rights.
I also like the structure of the essay and how the author lays out the positives and negatives of the each of the three topics discussed. However, I find his conclusion that using internet as everyday life is sort of weak, since the he weighs the poses the negative effects of the internet and poses the positive ones against them, and then decides on the positive ones. I don’t think he weighs them against one another, which I think he should do. For example, he states that online interactions fill in the gaps of the face to face ones; but how about online relations that fill the place of real life interactions? I think the author’s conclusion should have acknowledge both the positives and the negatives of internet as an integrated everyday life practice to be more objective; instead of leaning all the way towards saying that it has a positive effect, and altering the negatives to become complimentary effects to the positive ones.
Another study that also discusses the positive and the negative effects of internet as an integrate part of everyday life is an article titled “The Internet and Social Life” written by John Bargh and Katelyn McKenna, published in the Annual Review of Psychology, in February 2004. The author does the same as is done in the above article; he places internet in its historical place among other technological phenomena such as the telegraph, the radio, telephone, and TV. He then gives what is exceptional about it, such as anonymity and scope characteristics that we have discussed about early in the semester. What I find most interesting about this article that does not exist in the other article is that the author relates the sort of effect the internet will have on a user to the type of user he is; for example, if a person is online for work, the likelihood of internet to have isolationist side effects on him are less likely to happen for a person who is online to look for social life to start with. The author does that following a psychological path about the feelings, goals, and emotions of different users who use the internet in their daily life for different reasons. I think psychology of users is a novel approach to evaluating effects of the digital that is worthy of being studied and given attention to.
So I’m going to use this week’s blog to write a little about measure online activism. Dr. Gironda suggested the article “Egypt’s Reluctant Revolutionary” on Foreign Policy. I read the article, it poses the question of how much is “online” activism on facebook and twitter transforming into real activism. Well, the title suggests that the author, David Kenner-who btw also conducted an interview with Al Baradei for Foreign Policy, is convinced that the real action is not really much. He quotes an author from Al Ahram center for strategic and political studies who expresses that there is a gap between “virtual” and “real” political life in Egypt. At a certain point, I would like perhaps to contact that author, or find out about his reasearch in Al Ahram and what he basis these conclusions upon, hoping that this could be useful for our reasearch.
The author himself notes that the airport was too crowded with Al Baradei supporters upon his arrival, which contests his notion that Egypt’s on line activists are reluctant to go out to the street! -It is true that we do not know how much of these activists in the airport are also online activists,but it specifically undermines the author’s premiss that what he calls as Egyptian ”revolution” is “reluctant” or dormant.
I also visited the facebook group that the article cites,and questions how much real activisim or effectiveness could come out of it, and out of other online venues,such as twitter. I only looked through the fb group, since I only have an account there so far. The goals of the group seem to be very goal oriented : 1.Spreading awarnes among the people about the necessasity for change. 2:the campaign sees that its way for change is by nominating a candidate -Dr.El Badradei. 3:the use of all popular media to group all energy to support the candidate ONCE a legal frame is available. From the latter point,Ican see that there is an awareness that till now, there is no political or legal coverage for AlBaradei,and this is, in my opinion, a sign of “real”thinking. It is very widespread that alot of Egyptian enthousiastics are ignorant of the fact that Dr.Albaradei is till today ineligible for presidency.
However, what the group activities are to make that legal framework available is unkown to me, this is definately a point of research that I would like to pursue looking further into this group.So far, there is a separate link on this group that leads to what they call volunteering in the populist campagn for nominating Al Baradei for 2011
I beleive it would be usefull to contact the admins of this group, and send them a servey about how much online “activits” they get, and how much of these turn out into the real world.
AUCians appear to be many on the members list of this group, so I would also like to conduct a survey on this group to conclude how many of members are aucians, and perhaps also ask the admins how much real activism are they getting from the AUCians.
I think these can be measures by which we can look into online activism at AUC,from a very large Digital Rhetoric medium, a group of 186,989 member!
While I was looking at articles related to Activism in Egypt and online rhetoric, I found this article titled ” Egypt’s Facebook Showdown: The online gathering place for young people poses a challenge to authorities” in the Los Angeles Times article collections written by Sherif Mansoor, a human rights activist in Egypt.
In Summary, which was written on the 2nd of June, 2008, the article states the Egyptian government is considering blocking the facbook website as it contributed to the mobalization of the 6th of april strike since one group of facebook pertaining to the stike included 80,000 members. It also notes that the group was created by youth, one of whom was detained and tortured for trying to mobilize another “facebook mouvement” in May. The article however notes that the “facebook mouvements” among youth are still effective for several reasons. First, it is said to challenge the idea that because youth in egypt under30 have not experienced any for of ”real” political life,and thus there could be no prospects for change or development in that domain. Second, assuming that the opposition to the status quo has always found a medium in mosques and been endorced by the MB, the article suggests that the web offers a new horizon for non-religious and secular forces of change. And Last, the article suggests that facebook is a tool to get youth to be heard by the government, as they are the target audience of the next NDP leader, Gamal Mubarak.
Finaly, the article ends by Mansoor noting that the government recognizes the power of such online youth “meeting-point” as it continues to defame the website and the youth who use it,and puts great efforts to limit the media from discussing the facebook youth political phenomenon
I think this article can be directly related to our research question which aims at exploring the effect of the digital environment on the political and social activism in AUC. It has been mentioned in the AUC Dimensions students paper, issued in Spring 2008. that the “6th of April” group was started by an AUCian who was detained for a short period of time precisely for that reason. Thus,since , as the Los Angeles Times suggests, political activism is rising by means of Facebook, and Dimensions suggests that AUC student(s) had an initiative in mobilizing the move online, then, I think this article serves the purpose of the research as it gives basis to the validity of the phenomenon that is about to be explored throughout our project.
So this is a comment about the Wiki project as a whole. We have talked in class about how it has great benefits, such as collaboration, seeing the writing process, as well as exploring new ideas related to one topic. These were the benefits or the advantages of wikis, and Wikipedia specific as the article we read suggests. However, the author did not emphasize enough on the reliability concept. He seemed to me to have tried to answer to that issue by saying that Wikipedia has a specific role; to be a quick public information “center” or so, that we should make the right expectations when it comes to Wikipedia. In other words, we need not to undermine it as a week resource, nor to overestimate it as an “academic” search engine. I totally agree with the author, however, I still find the reliability question to be left unquestioned. Not all internet users understand that Wikipedia really “academic”, and that it’s not written necessary by people who have expertise or the information included “authenticated”. In fact, this is arguable one of the strength point of Wikipedia, that it skips the whole “authoritative process” within rhetoric. However, I believe that there is a need for Wikipedia or “wikis” to say that the information within are not “authenticated” and the authors may not be “experts”. Some students at different universities or maybe young students at school may not be able to tell apart what makes a reliable source or not. In that sense, Wikipedia may be misleading, especially with the encyclopedia layout it has. Perhaps a solution for this would be adding a label or so that says Wikipedia does not guarantee the correctness or objectivity of the information within, and/or the scholarship of its authors. Another more root based solution would be to educate the user him/herself about the qualities of a reliability resource. However, that burden is on the user him/herself, and cannot be guaranteed. So , I think the solution here is to “spell out” the right expectations about Wikipedia, which the authors talks about . We there is a need for that to be done in an “active” way, rather than a “reactive” way i.e. for users to get a “lack of objectivity” tag only after users have reviewed some articles and suggested that they may be limited in their scope, or un-objective in their aim.
