The Facebook Effect pt 2

The second required reading of David Kirkpatrick’s “The Facebook Effect” was as interesting as the first. I was very excited to be reading about something I have direct knowledge of using, just as I did with “The World and Wikipedia”. Finally, reading something I knew about and enjoyed. The second part of the book picks up where the first left off, with the story of Mark Zuckerberg’s somewhat sketchy creation and first years of the Facebook. It speaks of Accel’s investments in Facebook as well as the work of Kevin Efrusy, who made the deal happen. They then recieved more money to add new and exciting features to the burgeouning platform, such as the new (in?)famous News Feed. They even began work on an API for 3rd-party developers. With all of this, Facebook grew tremendously and now commands an incredible mindshare over the developed world at large. Currently, every respectable business of a certain size owns and operates a Facebook profile, regardless of their trade. Social networking, once considered a gimmick by web analysts, is now at the forefront of everyones Internet and many consider Facebook to be the only real contender to Google as the world’s gateway to the internet. This is truly incredible for a company that began its roots just 6 years ago at the time of this writing. From 1 to 500 million+ users, the Facebook is one of the most important companies, both on the Web and in the entire world.

Wikipedia Midterm Analysis

I’ll start out bluntly - I do not think Wikipedia should be used as a scholarly source in academia, and I think that the presentations we were shown in class proved that without a doubt. Every presenter’s general closing statement, as well as our own, said that Wikipedia was generally full of good general or scientific information, but any “hard-to-cite”, controversial, or opinion-oriented information was subject to pretty significant bias in Wikipedia Articles. Our article had fantastic scientific information, but once it reached the “ethical issues” of cloning, it was full of statements that needed citation. It was also missing some important historical information.

I think that Wikipedia’s credibility can only grow. People will rely on it even more in the coming future for their main or only source of information on important topics - and they already do it a lot. This can be either very good or very bad. On one hand, this could mean a lack of credibility in many important sources and papers, or Wikipedia vandalism showing up in important documents. On the other hand, this might instead force Wikipedia to get better, and better cite and read its sources. As Metcalfe’s Law states, “the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system.” (Wikipedia: Metcalfe’s_law) Wikipedia’s future gains in users will only create a better Wikipedia for everyone else.

I learned not to trust Wikipedia as much as I thought I could. The constant enforcing of Wikipedia as a “bad” source by authority figures such as professors almost made me want to “root” for Wikipedia, and give it more credit than it deserves. After this midterm, I have come to appreciate that Wikipedia is an incredible project and resource, and even more than that, an incredible display of the world’s humanity. One day, I’ll be able to use it in my dissertation.

final third of "Made to Break" - comments

Giles Slade’s “Made to Break: Technology and obsolescence in America” remains one of my favorite books this year. It is well-written, and talks about the history and future of manufacturing products designed with a defined lifetime in mind, which is a break from the past. One hundred years ago, products were made to last as long as possible - it was a “lifetime guarantee” that was also a selling point for that manufacturer’s product. However, this all changed with the advent of the 21st century. Henry Ford’s Model T was the last car of a dying era of cars that could run for 50 years without a hitch. GM made cars with slightly changed interior materials, external body shapes, or external paint jobs every year - in an effort to make you want “the new hotness”. In a nutshell, it was a fantastic success. Every industry adapted to this moneymaking model - the fashion industry, the toy industry, et cetera. In the closing third of Slade’s book, he goes even further into detail on these topics.
In the final chapter of the book, he dedicates an argument towards the behemoth of planned obsolescence - consumer cell phones. Land line phones, manufactured since halfway through the 21st century, have always been thought of in the “buy one til you die” model for most consumers. Unless it broke, land line phones generally were used forever - with some exceptions (push button phones, the advent of voice mail and caller ID). Cell phones, however, are the exact opposite. Most consumers buy a new one every 18 months to two years - regardless of how well their current phone is working. Now, as cell phones become more complex their lifetime obviously decreases, but this is a two-part problem. Phones don’t last very long, and consumers are killing them off before their already short lifetime is up. “In the United States, cell phones built to last five years are now retired after only eighteen months of use.” (Slade 261) This is definitely a problem, but with technology for cell phones evolving at such a rapid pace (and there certainly isn’t a plateau in sight), there appears to be no way to “fix” it.



-kth