The "Yes Men" video is a great example of how technology in this world is used in various different ways for various different purposes. This group of individuals sole goal was to poke fun of an organization that the world (in some fashion) respects, since their job is to help under-developed countries. Their method in doing so was using e-mails to contact individuals to represent themselves as the "WTO" at a seminar, presenting their information on a powerpoint, making a video to show their management contraption, and using the Internet for their research methods.

How this all relates is it shows that for a presentation of this caliber and magnitude, the use of technology was heavily weighed upon for their point to get across. Yes, they could have used large amounts of posterboard, or used the over-head projector available, but the truth of the matter is this showed how efficient technology is and how dependent we are on it. The best way to summarize all of this is that technology truly does shape the lives and societies of today. Looking back at the reading, this example goes alongside with the author's thoughts on how inventions such as the Internet, Television, the Radio, affect our lives entirely since we use them constantly to serve our needs efficiently and quickly. Why are we dependent on it? Simply because we invented it to make life easier, rather than revert back to previous technology, we don't need it, but we want it faster, bigger, and more complex to make life easier.

Also this is another example of how the "Yes Men" didn't respect the privacy of our President, George W. Bush. They obtained knowledge and information about his past in the in National Guard as well as his drug use and posted it on a website for the world to read. The question in favor was, "Should they have exploited him or just forgotten all about it." To them they felt that they had to make this satirical website to exploit Bush and let people know that he isn't a Boy Scout, which ever Presidential image is trying to portray. Should people be allowed to get pictures, obtain information, do the ressearch to exploit persons? There are laws about privacy and how it should be respected, but there's a double standard to this. People are angered when their privacy is invaded, but when it come sto the privacy of someone else they see it as an opportunity to stick it to them and make an attempt to lower their image.

That's all I have to say, peace.

I totally blogged her last night

Exploiting and outsourcing, these are the terms that come to mind when big businesses try and stay large. Companies such as Amazon are one of the very many companies that fall into the category of exploiting their employees through low pay with high amounts of responsibility. The author stated that he was required to take on hundreds of calls a month dealing with Amazon's website (one of the largest and stickiest sites on the internet), he mentioned that it was very "bootcamp-ish" with their regimental protocol and their absurd style of accomplishing tasks. For $10 an hour, the company believes that they can find any fresh out of college punk and hire them to do major gruntwork and be micromanaged to deal with the issues the upperclass worker bees don't want to. As the author stated, no one can live off of $10 an hour and expect to pull 40/hr weeks of constant ridicule and keep a happy face through it all. Another example of exploitation was in the article of the WoW gold farmers. These kids to adults range from 16 to players in their 30's who do nothing all day except play a video game for roughly $0.25 an hour. They have the option of working out in the fields with their parents or in the factories around dangerous machinery, but instead are put at health risk by playing from 12-18 hours a day to make a gold company richer through virtual (intellectual) property. They're expected to do this kind of "work" as worker bees do, they just grind grind grind away and help make the company wealthier as they are barely making it by. All of this comes back to the big topic at hand, when an economy is growing or in a recession, there is still a need for people and a need for people to fill in jobs that are available. As is known in this world, no business can function without "worker bees", the ones that do all the grunt work and keep things afloat so the company can continually make money daily. In the Mosco reading, he was stating how the economy was low at the time and that things seemed shakey. Well China's economy at one point was shakey, but there were factories, and businesses that outsourced worked because it was cheaper and gave low wages to those willing to take it so that companies could survive and continue propspering. In the end, companies will always be giving away jobs that take hours and in return give dollars (Hours for Dollars), and by some means work the jobs so they in turn work in a companies favor. (Cost must always be lower than profit in a business)

My Ecology

The ecology I've chosen to write my paper on is the networking of a Firehouse. In the firehouse there are ways that veterans and rookies communicate in and out of the firehouse, be it verbally, through radio frequency, e-mail, bullet board posts, what have you. Though, what is interesting is how these forms of communication and this network lasts after veterans leave and newcomers enter. I'm going to research and find out exactly how this ecology works and write a damn good paper on it.

Technology and it's Effect on Society

The advancement of technology over the past century has been an amazing progress, as an example; the U.S. has gone from the pony express to e-mail in such a short period of time. This is the kind of change that has affected the lives of all people around the world, the change that technology has continue to alter our lives and shape our societies. Mosco’s reading about how television (and technology in general) has shaped our lives brings up a few good points. He believed that television was invented as a, “…result of scientific and technical research.” (Mosco 11) for various reasons, both positive and negative. What he stated was that in the beginning, the use of the television was for scientific and societal advancements in the positive spectrum. As time went on though, people saw the power and potential in such an invention for uses of media, information transferral, reality perceptions, and many other aspects. It’s of no surprise that Mosco is right, television in this day in age is used in a variety of ways not thought of before by its’ inventors. For example, the media does report the news but in a way that was unintended. In this day and age, more than 50% of what is said in the news is negative information about a shooting, scandal, corrupt politician, war, aspects in the world that are dominating the media. Of course there are positive things that happen in this world, but when a shooting occurs someplace in the U.S. or in another part of the world, the good seems to be shoved aside for ratings. What Mosco is saying is that our views as people and a society have been skewed, we are desensitized to all the negative in the world because of how television has been used to portray worldly views. Here’s an example from the reading, “The real norm, in these actual societies, would seem rather to be: ‘unauthorised violence is impermissible.” (Mosco 123). When you watch a movie and see people die, individuals don’t cry and mourn, “…violent behavior is constantly represented and reported on television, its major communication system.” (Mosco 124); when someone is stealing millions of dollar in a movie, people cheer them on. As individuals, we’ve adapted to technology and allowed it to teach us how to ignore and even accept socially taboo things. Hearing on the radio that a freak accident happened and injured X amount of people doesn’t cause panic as it did a hundred years ago. Technology has shaped our lives not only in a negative aspect though, it has made life easier for some. You can sit down in your living room and order a movie, which is a nice luxury to have, and you can even purchase commercial free radio, and on a grand scale communicate with loved ones thousands of miles away. Technology such as a television is a curse and a blessing in it’s own way, there are negative aspects which Mosco was explaining, but on the flip side there are good things that have come from television. In the end we are all dependent on technology as a society since we see how easy it makes our lives. Without it, it wouldn’t take long for the world to find another way to replace it.

Wooo, am I winning?

I like me some video games

METAPHORE

With the year 2007 coming, this not so new concept of the Internet has become the center of attention in everyone’s life. E-mail is the #1 way of communication next to cellphones, and people use the internet for researching, passing time, and communicating with family abroad. Like Vicki said, the Internet is a system. A tool that makes everyone’s life easier in the long scheme of life. It technically is a system, since the internet is run by companies servers sending out the desired connection so that people can surf the web. My own metaphor for the Internet is simply a virtual mall, you can literally buy what you want in this store, use the stores services since they offer everything, and can go to the virtual library located in it. It’s cyberspace, it’s intangible and not physically visible, but it’s right in front of us when we log in immediately to an internet browser. This mall has grown in the past decade from a dainty, underground mall to a fancy one, that has brand new stores popping up with unlimited space to add more for goods and services.

Cyberspace and Myths

Myths and cyberspace, hmm. The big truth about myths is that they exist for a reason, if one has been created over time; that myth must've had some factual base to start with and been warped over time to what the story is now. Even if the myth is not true, what has to be taken into the account is that these stories are warnings, thell tell tales and have lessons behind the deeper meaning behind the myth. When people first talked about how the internet was going to revolutionize everything that we do with; work, school, research, shopping, investing and anything that wenormally do in our daily lives as kids and adults, they believed that nothing in such a short period of time could make a change on that magnitudal of a scale. The internet has been around for decades, but in the publicized viewed it has completely changed and revolutionized life. This fear of change that people have for the internet, or cyberspace, needs to be toppled since this technology is not going anywhere. Things normally don't regress as time goes on, life will only get more advanced and people are going to have to find the means of keeping up with these changes or being left behind in a "simple world" that isn't so simple anymore. Believing that the Internet was going to do what it has done in a little under a decade would have been a myth to people in the 80's, nothing like this has been heard of. Truthfully, we as people, a society, and race need to learn how to pic, choose, and interpret myths so we can begin to embrace them and adapt quickly. Cyberspace is, in my opinion a lame term, will not be going anywhere. People are going to be communicating thousands of miles apart from here on in, kids will be gaming online with people of new cultures and learning how to and how-not to be a person this way, research between two foreign companies will be traded over e-mail and this cyberspace, has made it possible for the world to do something this amazing at this magnitude.

Ideology

The term Ideology is coined that it was used to structure societies to keep maximum control with minimum conflict involved in the society. Reflecting back on this, Ideology is not a form of dominant control, not a dictatorship; nothing of that sort. What Ideology is are the set of beliefs that people follow for positive, right, and fair decisions that are made and true to the individual. They are a set of rules that guide. To me, Ideology can be swayed in perception and idea, but that totally changes ideology. The world knows the difference between right and wrong and when the idea of Ideology is skewed, people believe that they are right and staying true to themselves. Marx believes that once a set of rules are put into place (naturally) they will be less likely to regress since change can be bad in some cases. Also that that ideological decisions are logical in conclusion. These are the fundamentary beliefs of basic Ideolism, but the problem is human nature always changes and beliefs don't always stay the same.

Blog #1

It is known that technology has become a big part in the lives of many since the late 90’s and early years of the year 2000. People now put more information in cell phones and pda’s, than they do with concrete documents at home. People also place their communication lines on technology and even share the more important aspects of their life online. This ties into technophilia since we’ve become so adept to using technology and learned to love it. The first thing a college student probably does when they get into their own dorm is go on the net and check their myspace, g-mail or facebook. We’re so relient on it, imagine not having a cellphone and not being able to connect w/ someone immediately, imagine not having internet access to speak to your loved one overseas or friends from another continent, we’d have to revert back to the old fashion ways of pen, paper and mailing stamps. Technology makes life easier and makes the grasping of information easier since it’s all at our disposal today.