final paper - reactions

Well, the final paper’s complete. I enjoyed it, especially the chance to re-read Giles Slade’s “Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America”. I enjoyed the book the first read-through, and skimmed it this second time. It was fun to write about this subject, particularly because it pertains to me and will pertain to future generations in America such as my children. I am worried about the future of America’s technological trash, as I have personally experienced the waste that people have after their technology becomes obsolete. Even though these computer parts we use are still very usable and above average as far as performance, they are thrown away as they are not “the latest and greatest”. This raised several questions as to how we can fix these future problems.

advantages of websites

In class, we were asked to talk about the advantages of specific websites. There were a few different options, one being finance. I immediately thought of one thing that had helped me on multiple occasions when this was discussed – Bank of America’s online banking functions. I do not know of other banks with the same functions as I only have one bank account, but they might. Bank of America’s online banking allows you to check your transaction history, current balance, and make transactions to other accounts. The most helpful part, however, of their functions are the Bank of America smartphone applications. These applications use the GPS features in most new applications to tell the bank where you are and notify you of the nearest ATM locations. It also tells you your transaction history and balance. Bank of America has applications for iOS, Android and WebOS. It has made my life easier.

writing the final

I am in the midst of the final paper, a few pages in so far. I'm not having much difficulty writing, as it is a pretty interesting topic to begin with. I especially enjoyed writing about the history of planned obsolescence, as Slade paints a pretty vivid picture of its history, with dozens of examples to choose from to put in the paper. I chose the Gillette example because it really shows the core of the idea of planned obsolescence – that people are willing to pay more for cheaper equipment if it gives them further convenience in their daily lives. There is also a lot of different research supporting both points in the paper, allowing me to easily pick and choose what I should write and quote. I don’t think I’ll have much problem finishing the final draft before the deadline, though it was stupid of me to wait as long as I did to finally put my thoughts to paper. So it goes.

Writing the final: before

I have been meaning to get around to the writing of my final paper blog posts...but I've fallen behind on them during the heat of finals. No worries, as I've been doing my research for the paper. I chose to write on the topic about Giles Slade's Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America. I enjoyed this book, but more importantly, I hated the other option for the final paper, Neil Postman's Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. For the most part, I simply did not agree with the author’s viewpoint, nor did I like the way he went about his arguments. He is, as he defined, a “Technophobe”. I’m excited to put my outline into words and see this paper take shape.

The Facebook Effect Pt. 3 - Analysis

The third and final section of David Kirkpatrick's "The Facebook Effect" begins just like the other two. Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook is now growing into a very important social network worldwide, and gathering the investments and interest of many large companies, including both Microsoft and Google. Microsoft already had a U.S-only banner advertising deal for Facebook's Photos application, and wanted to both renegotiate the terms of their current deal as well as take the advertising sponsorship worldwide, as over half of Facebook's quickly growing userbase was from outside the United States. They succeed with this deal, even though there were talks between Facebook and Google as well.

This was largely due to Facebook's incredibly quickly-growing API and application platform. As Kirkpatrick writes, "Facebook application companies are doing so well that their estimated aggregate revenue in 2009 was roughly the same amount as Facebook's itself — slightly over $500 million" (pg 232).

Today, Facebook is one of, if not the most important company on the Internet. A few other come to mind, such as Microsoft or Google — but it is likely Facebook with the most opportunity to usurp Google as the world’s Internet gatekeeper, the first place nearly every Web citizen goes when they first browse the Internet. It’s intelligent platform-growing deals also allow other websites to tap into Facebook’s revolutionary social graph – and while those sites may use Facebook to gain and keep users, but it is really Facebook’s future they are cementing.


-kth

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.