The World of Wikipedia- auditing experience

Auditing a wikipedia article has really opened my eyes to the unreliability of online information. In my honest opinion, Wikipedia should not be used as a scholarly source. Though i'm sure that most information on that website is probably true, scholarly sources must be 100% factual base on the most up to date research. Wikipedia is a like a secondary market of scholarly information. It derives its entries from scholarly articles, and also more dangerously, non scholarly ones.

However, there are a few benefits to using wikipedia as a source on its own. From the experience of this project I have found that Wikipedia had the most comprehensive information from any one article on the subject matter (cloning.)Other websites may have gone more into detail about certain aspects of cloning, like ethics, but wikipedia has a better, global presentation of the topic. For this reason, its biggest advantage, is to use it as a jumping off point to research that should extend beyond online encyclopedias. It will give you an idea of what exactly you want to research, especially on popular and controversial topics. Despite this advantage, Wikipedia is still user generated and information that is displayed is never entirely reliable. Even statements that may be presented as quotes, are sometimes a rewording of the orginal sentence.

Because most people acknowledge these strengths and weaknesses, people may be less gullible and willing to believe news and media. There is so much information out there that is blasted at us, and Wikipedia is a big part of this, that we have no choice but to disregard some of it. This is especially true when you have contradicting information. As a society, we may also be more willing to procrastinate our work, because we know that we have so much potential information on our fingertips. Many people will used Wikipedia as a scholarly source, because it is on the surface of any research in terms of search results.

Before this project, I used to think that Wikipedia entries were populated by the elite college professors. I never actually took a look at the source section. In reality, an extremely large portion of the entry is pulled from other websites and books. Wikipedia just brings all of these sources together, edited by the common person. For me, it has taught to dig deeper when it comes to research, and perhaps use wikipedia only as a jumping off point that will lead to more substantial information.

The Social Network

The Social Network is a film about Mark Zuckerberg and his journey through Harvard to eventually creating Facebook. The movie tells its story through a retrospective lens: a legal case where Zuckerberg's best friend and colleagues are suing him, for stealing their idea. It's a bit of a sticky situation becuase the movie does show Zuckerberg meeting with those colleagues (the Winklevoss twins) and discussing a website that can connect all Harvard students and be able to share their information with one another. It's hard to tell who the movie sympathizes with; the makers of facebook or not. Zuckerberg is conveyed as a bit of jerk, condescendingly talking to his girlfriend and only interested in his won accomplishments. But really, what makes him this way is also the driving force of the greatest project of his life, thus far.


One of the things i did not like about the movie is the exaggeration of people's morals and the way that they are portrayed in the movie. For instance, Sean Parker, the creator of Napster from the start was shown as a sleazy guy sleeping with a girl, on a one night stand. his relationship with facebook and Zuckerberg also starts on a rocky foundation. Mark's best friend Eduardo, appointed CFO of the company, didn't like Parker from the start. Eventually Parker pushes Eduardo out of the company by diluting his shares in the company from one third down to less than one tenth of one percent. Towards the end of the movie he gets caught literally with cocaine on his hands. The film accomplishes showing its characters in this negative light. The only good that came from Parker was his advice to drop "The" from "Thefacebook."

Another interesting point I noted was how there seemed to be certain subplots that did not really seem to lead the viewer anywhere. For instance in one scene, Zuckerberg was attending a lecture Bill Gates was speaking at, and afterward outside he had an awkward encounter with several students asking him if he was the creator of facebook. At the moment of the scene, I thought new characters were about to enter the script, but then slowly that tangent faded out. I realized after the movie ended that it actually made sense to have seemingly useless subplots in the movie, because it is based off a true story. A story that's still changing everyday, so it's hard to tell what became of certain events, and the movie did a good job of incorporating that.

Facebook has had a tremendous effect on college life and beyond. What started off as a platform for a few Harvard students to connect with one another became a regular part of life of every college student out there.

Made to Break, Part III

The last third of Slade's made to break extends the idea of obsolescence beyond the physical. By the 1960's, the terms was describing "people's knowledge, training, and skill sets." Cyberspace was the wave of the future. The advent of video games made such a huge impact on our society and culture, that one professor believed that in the future we will be living in a virtual reality. However, even video games themselves were not able to dodge being thrown out like most other things in our society.For instance, the game of pinball is "now a species close to extinction." (pg. 224) Game consoles have gotten superbly advanced over the years and the older arcade games, like pinball, have been left in the dust, only to be picked up by those with a nostalgic longing for the past.
More seriously, Slade described the the obsolescence of weaponization as an American strategy against the Soviets, during the Cold War Era. American Products were sabotaged before they were acquired by the Russians Ie. they were modified to work initirially as expected, but after "a few trust-winning months, it would salt its output with defective chips.." (p.254.)
Slade closed his book by describing the effect of cellphones' short life span and how they are the biggest contributor to e -waste.
I think that what's has happened is that with miniaturization, people are becoming more comfortable tossing their electronic goods out. This, in combination with people's non committal attitudes, provides the perfect storm for ridding themselves of undesirable electronics. Our next big step must be "planned disassembly" as Slade describes it in his last few words of the text; reuse as part of the product cycle. Since we use limited resources in creation and development of electronics, we have no choice but to recylce our e-waste.

Made to Break Part II

In Slade's middle chapters of Made to Break, he discusses certain products that had planned obsolescence installed into them, focusing on the radio. David Sarnoff, a higher up in the RCA, had an AM empire in the early 1900's, when along came Edwin Armstrong who invented FM radio. This invention actually came out of Sarnoff's request to clear static from AM radio. However, the FM radio was not compatible with AM settings, so Sarnoff saw this as a threat to his AM empire. What followed, was a series of lawsuits and bitter feelings, that eventually led to Armstrong's suicide. "Advance capitalism had regularly stifled or swallowed up the individual entrepreneur during those years when the political will to enforce legislation against monopolistic practices was the exception rather than the rule" (pg.97) Even though Saranoff was clearly at an advantage, being part of the RCA, a corporate behemoth, FM radio began getting more and more popular making AM radio somewhat obsolete.
           During this time, TV sets were also making a splash, but the nature of the invention was that they were constantly improving, making older sets obsolete. By the 1950's, "product life spans were no longer left to chance but were created by plan." (pg 113) Electronics were made so that they were generally irreparable if broken, increasing profits for corporations because it forced consumers to go out and buy new ones.
   World War II and the postwar period brought synthetic replacement of silk with the chemical invention nylon, and an intense demand for them was established by 1940.
    Slade continues, with discussing obsolescence in other part of life such as the housing industry. The invention of cheap, affordable housing with self-amortizing mortgages, were built with all nonessentials completely eliminated. Things such as basements become obsolete. Planned obsoloscence continued well into the 50's and 60's and psychological obsolescence had become the norm.
         It is somewhat difficult to deduct what Slade's argument is in this part of the book. It seems like he presents the reader with a sort of time line, that represents America's history and progession of planned obsolescence. This cut across many industries and all types of products. As was seen in Swedin's/Ferro's Computers, the computer is probably a prime example of a type of technology that just constantly kept getting improved because of new demands by the government and businesses. Slade states that the differential analyzer becoming obsolote is really the story of the rise of modern computing. No longer were computations being done mechanically, they were now being performed with energy pulses.
    I think that even if planned obsolescence was never planned, constant upgrades in technological products force the consumer to go out and by the new and improved version, because nobody wants to be left behind. On the other hand, it is important to distinguish between products that are made to break, such as the disposable razor that require the buyer to get another batch of razors, and general re-innovation of a product that deems its precedents as obsolete.  The latter being much harder to forecast. In my opinion, what Slade is attempting to do is lump those two things together, to give an exaggerated picture of the concerns that obsolescence may bring.
  

Solo Current Event Presentation - Google and its not so terrible privacy issues

For my presentation last Monday, I selected an article from the WSJ titled "Google's Privacy Woes extend to Canada." Here is the link for it: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304510704575562560486919780.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_LEFTTopNews

The article covers recent allegations by Canada's Privacy commission that says Google has violated the privacy of thousands of Canadians when it "inadvertently" collected infortmation from unsecured wireless networks while it was taking pictures of city streets for its Google Maps services.I briefly explained how the process of street view mapping works; Google hires drivers that prop a camera on top of the car that take 360 degree view pictures. In this process though, it somehow picked up personal info such as email addresses, email usernames, passwords, and even certain individuals' medical conditions. This isn't even the first time that Google has run into trouble, not only with privacy, but more specifically the street mapping service. In Germany, there were reports of residential homeowners wanting to opt out of being in Google's street view.  
          What's interesting though, is that Canada's privacy commission did not have an explosive response. The nation's privacy commissioner has simply asked Google to boost privacy training for all its employeees, and to delete any data that has been collected. No compensation fees had to be paid inside or outside a court of law. This relatively minor response, minimal news coverage, and Google's relatively unaffected share price all point to the fact that people are becoming more tolerant of the manner in which Google collects its information for advertisement purposes. After asking the class for thoughts, people mentioned times when their information was unwillingly collected as well. We then continued to discuss how this era of advertisement is becoming more and more personal. It's very feasible that sometime in the future you can walk past a restaurant and receive a text message that can say "Come in and try our special of the day, John!"
        Advertising is Google's #1 source of revenue, so when they grant companies access to personal individual information regarding tastes,  likes etc.  they can achieve a much more efficient effect in terms of reaching out to their target audience. They can avoid people who don't like their product and bombard those that do with coupons, developments and more. Google is a company's direct path in doing so. And Google has been collecting information for so long, with even its CEO admitting that Google is creepy, that people are basically being more confortable with it.

MADE TO BREAK, PART 1

       Slade's  Made To Break discusses the purposeful manufacturing of obsolete products in the US. we have fostered a culture  where  disposable consumer goods are the norm. The thought process of many business owners starting in the early 20 th century, was " How can I manage my business...so that i can be sure of a permanent and growing body of consumers?" The biggest reason for this need of a higher demand was overproduction and manufacturing, and  this problem was  solved simply by selling more. Slade goes on to discuss the different approaches of disposable products for  men and women, such as paper  collars for men. Style and temporary usefulness superseded  long term reliability: " With mechanical quality now more or less a given, people became interested in sophisticated design and presentation..." What began as a mentality of disposability toward physical goods and  products had now began spilling over to ideas, and had become a staple principle of the American people. This new state of mind allowed for tossing away things before their usefulness was completed. In a way, this largely contributed to the market crash in 1929. People were buying more and more goods on credit, even if it was pinching their savings.
      Slade speaks through a relatively neutral tone, and gives a general overview and history of technological obsolescence, but he does bring up a some good points. While our worship of novelty can be viewed as a good thing, the flip side is the tremendous amount of wasted that is created as a result. Most of this waste is is not recycled but just fills landfills.
     While there is a large environmental effect of electronic waste being neglectfully disposed of, Slade notes that is is both manufacturer's marketing  ploys, and American consumers' love of the new that leads to obsolescence. However i don't think it prevents us from having attachments to our possessions. People still love their ipod, even if it breaks after  a few years. The culture of our country is to rave about new features on gadgets being released  next month; whereas  the fact that these gadgets are not so reliable sort of takes the back seat, unless it's blatant. Furthermore, it is more important for us to have a "cool" image with the new iphone as opposed to a paperweight samsung from 1999. Just like the manufacturers package and brand  their products, we too, brand ourselves to everyone around us using these  products.

World and wikipedia Part II

The second half Dalby's book focuses on why we as internet users, love wikipedia. It seems to me that the reason we love it is the same reason that it is unreliable: The fact that anyone can edit any entry. Once an article is saved, it is impossible to do a background check on the credibility of the user. We are hidden behind our monitors and keyboards, so as long as the reuputation of wikipedia remains credible, that will cement the credibility of all their articles online, unless they are obviously flawed. While Wikipedia may have some inconsistincies within it about scholarly topics, such as the structure of an atom, I think Wikipedia has a lot going for it in terms of its culture referincing. For instance, no real encyclopedia will comment about Lonelygirl's fake video blogs and the whole controversy that ensued there. But wikipedia will, and for the most part it will be accurate. It goes beyond the culture that exists in our everyday life and physical history. We have created a virtual culture and the timeline of that will be recorded online, so to rid of wikipedia is to tear out a giant chunk of our online culture. Dalby also speaks about why we don't trust wikipedia. Sometimes what occurs is Wikipedia will reference itself in the footnotes, a kind of circular reference. However it is still a giant in terms of internet traffic. I believe this is largely due to the fact that google posts Wikipedia's articles in the top 5, if not the first or second, of its search results. Internet users trust Google's algorithm enough to insist that the top search results are the best, rendering Wikipedia a great source of information.