Tivo and Dominos

While going through some of the postings that Professor Regales posted on her blog I came across the Tivo and Dominos Pizza team up. I remember when we spent pretty much a whole class talking about this and I think that it is another thing that America is doing to make us more lazy and fat. People already complain about how inactive our society is today, so why would we let Tivo make it so we can order food from our television set? I mean I guess that it is kind of the same thing as ordering the food over the phone, but at least we might not have been sitting around being lazy and watching tv. Maybe we were actively doing things around the house or just got back from running and wanted to order food for the night. But, now we are allowing people to order food from their television which means that they are sitting around being a couch potato. I do not get it and I think that it is absurd. Some people would disagree with me and that is fine, but next thing that we are going to have is people being called over to deliver the food right to our couch and possibly even feed it to you.

Advertisements

Something that I was just newly informed about is that when I am doing my daily stalking on Facebook the ads that are on the side of the pages are coming from what the ad people read off of my Facebook page. I had always seen the ads on the side of the pages and never really thought anything of it except that they were just annoying ads and I obviously never click on them. But, it was not until just the other day that my friends and I were talking and one of them informed me that the ads that we see on our Facebook pages were targeted specifically to us based on our information. I think that is crazy how the Internet is so advanced that it can pick up something that little and have an underlying message. And now that I think about it all of the ads that I see when I am logged into Facebook are bases around things that I have written in my information portion of my webpage.

Sick People

When Professor Regales posted a blog about the boy who killed himself while others watched it made me sick to my stomach. I could not get over the fact that people would seriously sit at their computer and actually want to watch someone (whether it was real or not) talk about or in fact kill themselves. There are definitely some sick people out in the world, but honestly why would someone talking about killing themselves intrigue you and make you want to watch? It makes me sad to read about things like this because if I had seen this online I most definitely would have reported it to someone right away. When I heard about this it also reminded me of the movie that came out last year called Untraceable. It was about a serial killer who killed people over the internet while others watched. Maybe that movie is what sparked this kid to give it a try and whelp it worked. I really hope that this never happens again and that if people do see something like that they will report it.

Online Shopping

With the Holidays right around the corner I have to really start thinking about what I want to get my friends and family. I absolutely love going to the mall and shopping, especially around Christmas time. I think that being in the mall and seeing all the decorations and listening to the Christmas music is so much fun, but for some reason this year, I guess maybe because I am stressing out about finals and doing well in school, I do not want to step foot into a mall. Therefore, I love the fact that I can go online and do my holiday shopping. I think that being able to sit at your computer, browse through gifts, ask others what they think about an item whether it is good or not, and sometimes even save money is crazy. The only problem that I have with buying things over the internet is that there is shipping and handling, so I would end up spending a little more money that I would if I bought the gift at the store, but if it saves me from having to leave my house and deal with all of the crazy crowds then that extra 5.50 isn’t that big of a deal for me.

Text Messaging

Text messaging, why do we sit on our cell phones for hours on end text messaging rather than just picking up the phone and call the person? I used to hate text messages, actually I used to not be allowed to text message period because I did not have unlimited messages and therefore my mom would not let me. Obviously, I did not listen very well and I still did text every now and then so my mom finally put us on unlimited. If I could decide between picking up the phone and calling my friend rather than spending the time to type what I wanted to say I would definitely pick up the phone. But, most of my friends would rather get the message saying what are you doing than have a phone conversation. I do not get it unless I am in class or doing something where I can not talk, but other than that I would rather talk to the person on the phone. The only time that I really do like text messaging is when I might feel uncomfortable calling someone so then I can avoid talking to them by voice. Other than that I am pro phone calling.

LimeWire

How do you download your music? Do you copy it from your CDs, download it legally, or do you do it illegally? I personally download my music illegally. I get all of my music from the LimeWire data base of music. I know that this is completely illegal and that I could probably get into a lot of trouble for it, but it is free and I can download for the most part any piece of music or movie that I would want. I know this is wrong because musicians make their music for people to buy their CDs, but if I can get it for free then why not? And sometimes I do still buy the actual CD from a store ,but right now being a poor college student I am not going to spend hundreds of dollars for the music that I listen to when I don’t have to spend a dime. I have over a thousand songs downloaded on my computer right now and with LimeWire I can stay updated with all the new songs. When I get out of college I will probably delete it because it does mess with your computer and at this point I would not mind spending 99 cents for a song every now and then. But, for now I am going to be “bad” and get it for free.

The Blackberry

The blackberry has always been seen as the “business man” phone and only the people who needed it for work or to receive important emails at anytime during the day had them. Now-a-days it is one of the most, if not the most trendy phone out there. Everyone has one, wants one, or thinks that they need one and I do not under stand it. I think that it is very cool to be able to get or check your email at anytime during the day, but why can’t you just wait until you get home to check it on your computer. I do understand the people who really do need it because of their work, but what did those people do back a few years ago, before internet or email was accessible at anytime or anywhere during the day? I do not have a blackberry right now and I do not think that I want one anytime soon. I don’t know why I would need one and I sometimes like being able to get on my computer and go into my mail and have new things from friends, family, teachers, and so on. Call me a dork, but I like checking my email the normal way.

Touchscreen

I was watching television today and I came across the commercial with the new touch screen computer. I think that this whole new touch screen era is pretty insane. At first I thought that it was kind of cool, but once I bought into it and actually got a touch screen phone I completely changed my mind. I have the voyager and the whole outside of the phone is touch screen. It is very hard to use sometimes because it is so sensitive and very easily broken. Before this phone I had a normal flip once and it was indestructible. I could throw it across the room, pour water all over it and it would still work. Now with my new phone I drop it once and I and I have to take it to the Verizon store to get a new one. I think that the new touch screen phones, cameras, and now computers are absolutely ridiculous. I would not recommend them to anyone and it scares me to think about how fast our technology is growing and it is only going to get more extreme.

You-Tube Postings

Now-a-days there are so many websites that allow children under the age of 18 to log on and either surf through it or sometimes even post things. YouTube is one of the many websites that allows this, it is a website where anyone can post pretty much anything. There are some restrictions and there are ways of making your posting private, but for the most part anyone can post anything. I do not understand why it would be allowed for children or girls for that matter to post videos of themselves dancing in provocative ways or things that are unnecessary to be shown over the internet. First of all it is very inappropriate and second of all you have no idea who looks at these videos. Most importantly though, you have no idea what those people are doing behind their computer screens. I understand that it might be hard for a website to regulate something like this so therefore I think that parents need to get control of their children and restrict what they can and can not do on the internet.

The Change of Facebook

Facebook in the past four years has escalated from just a way to stay in touch with old and new friends to now almost what I think is the “new” MySpace. I remember when it was first invented; I was a senior in high school and all of my friends made an account for themselves. I refused to make one because I thought that it was like having a MySpace and I personally think that they are weird. (Also at this time Facebook was only for people in college.) I finally gave in and the only reason that I did was because my friends made an account for me. I found out that I really enjoyed having a page, I got to stay in touch with my old friends, people I had not talked to in years, and the friends that I was making in college. Facebook has changed over the past few years because instead of just staying in touch with people now we can post pictures, compare our friends with other friends, post videos, take quizzes, play games, and many other things that make it more like a MySpace page. I just think that it is so crazy how a website can change in so many ways due to the rapid growing pace of technology in just a few years. I am very curious to see where Facebook will be in the next three years.

Suggestion.

An assignment I think that would be cool and interesting for this course is to have us do something with the Facebook website. I think it would be fun for us to have maybe an ongoing survey or some type of crowd based assignment specifically relating to The Facebook. Even though the course is called Facebook Culture: New Media, Surveillance and Democracy and we really did not base a lot of the class around Facebook, I therefore think that this assignment would be totally relevant for this course. I really did not find many things that I would change or even suggest for this class, but the only thing that I might do with the readings is I would maybe try to find a book that contradicts or argues with the text iSpy. I think that it would be interesting to see an opposing side to iSpy to get the readers really thinking.

My Favorite Book in MCS 370

If I had to pick a book out of all of the books that we read this semester and decide which one I liked the most and thought was most relevant for this class I would have to say that it would be iSpy. I really enjoyed reading it and I thought that it was very interesting. I never really knew how much surveillance is in everyone’s ever day lives and that most people would not even know as to when they were being watched. On top of interesting I also found it to be kind of scary. A lot of the time surveillance is used for the good, but there are the times when surveillance could possibly do harm to another person. This book was good for this class because it taught us things about today’s society to prove how much technology has drastically changed throughout the years. I would definitely recommend this book for future MCS classes. This class is about the facebook culture and how our society and world is growing rapidly in terms of technology and I think that this book teaches us this concept. A book that I would not recommend again would be Cult of the Amateur. I personally did not like this book and I think that this class could do with out it.