Rheingold: Protecting the Hacker

There is a fine line between responsibly disclosing something that could be potentially dangerous in the wrong hands and potentially getting in trouble for crossing a line. Last semester, my ex boyfriend Kyle found a fatal flaw with the ePortfolio program that Clemson didn't want us to know about: he figured out a way that one could hack into the system and completely ELIMINATE everyone's portfolios like they never existed. He sat on this information for about a week before finally emailing someone he trusted over at CCIT (he used to work there) and saying, essentially, don't shoot the messenger but I found a major bug and you should fix it before we all get screwed. This was a couple of weeks before he was set to graduate and he had major misgivings about telling anyone in case they somehow used this as a reason to expel him.

The ePortfolio is a major headache for most Clemson students, especially those who are about to graduate and either have failed it or haven't gotten their grades back. Imagine if someone besides my ex had found that flaw and had the ability to erase such a thing so close to graduation - it would have been chaos. And what if they never found the guy? These are reasons why I like the idea of the EFF because if there's a team out there who can search and destroy these types of 'villians' we're all safer for it. And, actually, Kyle now works for GE's IT department in Richmond essentially defensively hacking for the company so that they can avoid major disaster, such as confidential information getting into the wrong hands. In a way he sort of bends the law to benefit the company. The EFF would protect his rights to do so, which I think is important not only for him and for GE but also for the greater good. The most important thing to gather from this reading I think is the idea that the average Internet user is not a criminal.

Inattention Span (Carr 7)

This chapter from The Shallows grabbed my attention when it talked about how our use of the Internet can literally shape our brain functions both positively and negatively. I know my attention span is very short when I'm online (or too long if I'm on Buzzfeed or The Oatmeal) and I can get fatigued when I'm reading through a long article or some other site because I'm constantly thinking about what's on the screen. I'd be interested to know what my reading comprehension score would be after years of Internet use versus when I was a kid and if it has decreased.

I was also interested in the thought that teenagers are afraid of being disconnected, maybe more than they were when I was one. I had the luxury of having an Apple iBook 8th grade through high school in all of my classes, which allowed me to take notes on my computer, type assignments up quickly, surf the web... and be signed on to iChat/AIM constantly, all day, every day, until they found a way to block it (which I quickly found a way around). What this meant was whenever my computer was open, I was sending messages over the Internet to my classmates, family, or friends. I remember feeling like I needed to be in constant contact, even when it meant getting a detention once or twice because I got caught. I didn't think anything negative of it. Now, when I look at my 15 year old cousin who is never more than two feet from her cell phone, I can't help but consider that it's the same thing as my AIM addiction, just grown up. I might criticize her for not being able to put her phone down during dinner, SnapChat can wait, but it's the same as me being logged on during class: I should have been more present than I was. I think the main point I'll take away from this reading is that there is value in being able to focus on one given task at a time and be present in the moment, rather than constantly checking to see the next update.

We're All Hopelessly Addicted to the Internet (Carr 5)

This is a commercial for the Windows phone that satirizes how people use their phones too much and I'm posting it here because it made me laugh and I think it serves as a decent introduction to my blog post for this week because the reading discussed not only how much people use the Internet in general but also on their phones.

While reading this article I originally thought of a commercial from a few years ago that showed someone holding a bunch of media (books, movies, music, a dictionary...) and then said something along the lines of: "You could carry all of this around with you... or you could buy this Smartphone." But the trick is remembering which Smartphone they were advertising and then finding the video. The one above however does demonstrate the central idea that we spend entirely too much time with each of our Internet-enabled devices shoved in our faces.

The part of this chapter that I was most surprised by was concerned with how different places use technology, in which ways, and for how long, on average. I don't think these numbers are too surprising considering how much these devices have evolved even just over the past 10 years and how quickly (think Motorola Razr phone, which I was psyched to get in 9th grade, versus an iPhone 3 just 3 years later, versus the Samsung Galaxy Tab this year...) and how much texting has replaced face-to-face or phone calls mostly out of convenience (T9 vs. a full touch-screen keyboard).

The Internet and all the devices that use it are endless and present endless possibilities for the limited time we're awake in a day, and these possibilities are always changing. A friend of mine showed me this tonight and I lost about an hour playing it. The link is to a game called 2048 that is essentially a math game that uses an algorithm that generates two 2's and you move like numbers around trying to get a final score of 2048 in the boxes. It's simple but incredibly addicting and just shows how our Internet time can disappear quickly as the chapter discusses.

Baron, Ch. 10: A Space of One's Own

The idea of the Internet becoming a space to use as one wishes is a lesson I had to learn young. I, like many other 12-15 year olds, had a Xanga in middle school, which was really my first experience with an online blog or ediary. I didn't tell my parents about it and of course they found it and read EVERY single post. Including ones in which I lamented being grounded or "my stupid parents" or something equally as juvenile. The conversation quickly turned into the implications of my use of these sites (MySpace was just starting, Facebook was for college students with .edu emails only at this point) and whether or not my computer should be loaded with parental guidance software, which of course I found very offensive and a complete invasion of privacy.

Now that I'm older, however, I notice that kids start logging on much younger than I did and they begin posting on these sites in ways that could potentially be dangerous. I have two female cousins, 15 and 10, who are online every day. My aunt knows their passwords and it's required that they remain friends with several adults in the family so that they can have someone keeping an eye on them, which is pretty important. It removes the temptation to think of these sites and the content we post on them as any kind of private, because they just aren't, and that's a hard lesson to learn, especially when you're young.

I think our social media encyclopedia collection has the potential to illuminate some of these issues for new internet users because if one looks carefully through the fine print on some of these sites it defines the rules for which we have to operate, which is important.