Socially Networking the World
// March 2nd, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Internet, Vids
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Thanks Alex for the video.
Archive for Internet
Social networking and Network Neutrality
// February 5th, 2010 // No Comments » // Internet
Here is the first part in case you missed it.
Net neutrality is currently a hot topic, and unfortunately not enough people are aware of the importance of it. The idea of net neutrality revolves around theory that the Internet should be free and open. There has been an ongoing debate during recent years on defining net neutrality. There currently is no set definition and it simply means different things for different people and organizations. On Google’s blog they mention that it has been a major public policy priority for Google over the last two years. The problem is that most people do not have a wide array of choices when choosing an internet service provider.
“Most Americans (99.6%, to be exact) receive broadband service from their phone company or their cable company — in antitrust terms, a duopoly”. Since these big corporations, literally have full control over the distribution of the Internet, they can regulate prices, content or even limit certain web sites and/or applications.
This is similar to how the Bell Telephone Company operated over a hundred years ago. They were a monopoly, but the government allowed it from 1877 to 1984. Later, in 1984, the company was broken up into independent companies, by a Federal mandate because it got too powerful. This duopoly needs to be stopped soon, before it’s too late. The government stopped a monopoly in the past and I am almost certain they will support net neutrality to ensure huge corporations can’t control the Internet market and traffic. Obviously, internet service providers, like Comcast, are engaged in an all-out effort to challenge the Internet’s open nature. They feel the government shouldn’t have any say how to run their business. They want a system where giant corporations pay for speedy access while smaller organizations and start-ups and average people are left in the slow lane. It’s unfortunate to see what lengths already filthy rich companies will go to towards to make even more profits. These companies don’t need more money, but that’s true reason for this crazy debate. Money is something some people just can’t get enough of, even when they have more than enough.
Blippy, a peek in the future
// January 11th, 2010 // No Comments » // Internet
Why would anybody want or need to know what you buy online? Remember when your bank account information and what you spend was confidential? What happened? Blippy happened.
In this day and age people know a lot more than compared to previous generations. When people needed to know something, they needed to go to their library or ask a friend. Both scenarios take a lot of time and effort. At the library, you needed to go to the catalog (which was all handwritten sorted out through index cards) then see if the book is there and hope it is in the right spot! The next step would be to actually find the information and hope its not outdated.
Back in the old day if the library didn’t have what you were looking for, you had to rely on your not-so-large network of friends and friends of friends. Think about a world without Facebook or Google. Woah.
I think that within the last couple of years our desire to know more and more has exponentially increased. Not only do we want to know more, we want to get that information faster.
I think the information highway will only expand as the years roll on…and the older generations just need to accept it. We live our lives online more and more everyday and people need to accept it and not be so constrained to outdated practices and ways of communicating.
Social Networking 1
// January 10th, 2010 // 3 Comments » // Internet
I’ve recently had to do a big paper on social networking sites and society, focusing on net neutrality. Interesting stuff, I’ll post it up every now and then in sections. Here’s the intro:
More recently, our society has been struck by a social revolution that has taken almost every aspect of life to a new level. The way we communicate, find friends, find soul mates, find jobs, has all been transformed, thanks to the Internet and social networking sites. However, the Internet is not yet as accessible around the world. In North America, there are over 230 million Internet users, while in Africa there are less than 30 million Internet users. The Internet began to rise in activity during the early 1990’s and exponentially rose each year thereafter. It still is! It completely changed how the average person communicates and how they deals with commerce. Small blogs and companies rely heavily on the Internet. Furthermore, bandwidth (traffic) limits are being lowered because these social networking sites are attractive to almost any age group. They simplify our lives, but as with most technology; advantages come with disadvantages. Never before have internet service providers struggled to provide fast, reliable internet access to everyone.