Just Because

Dawn Nafus discusses the involvement of women in free/libre/open source software development in this article. Open source software can be worked on by a very diverse, large amount of people. Some are paid for new ideas and development, working for firms, and some are volunteers. There are no formal boundaries and diversity is actually encouraged under the statement that increased number and diversity of people focusing on a problem creates better software. Which is why it is surprising to learn that only 1.5% of participants in open source software are women. However, there are many reasons behind this. One of which is the tension created as women are concerned about being perceived as unfeminine, or too closely associated with the technology, or too feminine and attracting unwanted attention. For example, women have a hard time being mentored because male mentors tend to think of this kind of relationship as more of a dating opportunity. Women also suffer sexist verbal abuse is some cases. For participants of open source software, gender is meaningless or not real. They believe that the software is not gender oriented, so why should gender matter? But it is also very real and the gender division is painfully obvious. For example, the majority of women tend to do the less creative jobs while men do the designing or more creative work. Admitting that women need special help or programs would be gender discrimination, but not doing so is doing that on its own.

Neha Kumar's article goes over the way facebook effects the lives of male youth in India. In her study, the youth used mobile phones as a kind of freedom. The internet and mobile phones allows youth to access facebook and other social sites without parental monitoring or needing to share. The youth took pride in learning how to navigate the web and showing others how to do so. They also became more fluent in English because as one of the boys said, it is the language of the internet. The youth got a sense of importance with friending as many people as they could on facebook and really enjoying communicating with people all over the world. In short, the use of facebook gives these youths a sense of empowerment as they navigate the web and life in general as well.

United States of Secrets Part 2: This part of the documentary delves more into the network of surveillance that NSA's program used. The NSA got information from everything it could get its hands on. Phone companies willingly gave NSA private phone records in exchange for more funds and in turn, more customers and more popularity. It was discovered that NSA was copying information from AT&T with the phone company's knowledge and compliance. NSA got information from emails as well. It hacked into companies' computers and break into private browser data (like Google's) for information. Phone companies seemed perfectly comfortable with sharing, while internet browsers were less so. During this time, Google created gmail which read the contents of private emails in order to determine the types of ads would pop up for different people. If Google could invade privacy for marketing, why was it wrong for the government to do so to put a stop to terrorism? Facebook was also making a rise in this time and it and Google raced to build the best databases. The NSA began "piggybacking" on the cookies that many programs (including Google and facebook and commercial sites such as amazon and ebay) use for marketing. Basically, NSA's network of surveillance was large; it included information from communication, social media, and commercial uses of US citizens.

United States of Secrets Part 1: This part of the documentary describes a surveillance program used by the US government and the controversy that surrounded it. This program was developed by a group of people to identify terrorists and stop terrorist activity before it happened. It would gather phone and internet information such as calls, emails, browser searches, etc from, if not all, most of american citizens. The program would compile the information it gathered, and sort through it for potential terrorist information. The early type of program, nicknamed "thin thread," had a data "privacy" section where it basically incrpted the information from anyone who did not display any terrorist activity. This made it so the information from everyday US citizens could not be intruded on by any other person. However, after 9/11, NSA got rid of the privacy setting because they had the authorization to do so in order to prevent another event like 9/11. With this dismissal of privacy, came doubts that the program was legal anymore. Through much back and forth, the press was eventually tipped and news got out that the government was spying on people's lives. The president denied the idea that the program was illegal and lied about how it operated in an attempt to "tone down" thoughts and reactions to it. But in reality, NSA's surveillance network extended farther and was much worse than officials made it out to be.

The 'prime time' for media in the household used to be easily pinpointed; In the morning and in the evening. The place for media consumption was in the household, with the exception of newspapers that one could take on the go and music players. However, with the creation of the smart phone especially, media has become more entangled with everyday life and has moved farther away from those set times and places. The constant access to media that we have today has made us able to have a constant flow of news and entertainment without the constriction of an appropriate time or place. This space that is created, such as when one takes time out of a daily routine to use the media is referred to as an interstice or gap, in time.

Technology has been advancing at a rapid rate and, in turn, has been intertwined more and more in everyday life. Mike Crang and Stephen Graham discuss the way that technology is incorporated in society in their article. They identify the space where media and social functions collide and mix as a "hybrid space." These hybrid spaces allow the identification and location of the people in them through the kind of media they are using. For example, algorithms in computers/phones will take notice of where it is located using a geography system. They will mark the sites you visit most often and the subjects you seem to be most interested in. The authors point out that these algorithms make good marketing tools and that you may even see this same kind of interaction outside media, such as a coffee shop employee asking if you want your usual. Another way that technology is used for marketing is through bar codes on products that you can scan with a phone app that will tell you more about the product, such as price comparisons and reviews. The authors also explain how military plans for profiling against terrorists will have to include biosensors such as finger printing, and iris, facial, voice, and even gait recognition for anyone coming in or out of the US. In short, the authors seem like pretty paranoid people, but they do seem to make sense.

In this article, Jones examines the connection between the way political candidates use emotional appeal and the way the audience and potential voters respond. The three emotions studied are anxiety, anger, and hopefulness. Studies were conducted for online and offline campaigns. They also incorporated the political knowledge the participants may have based on the sources of information they may have encountered on a regular basis. Results showed that there wasn't a large difference between online and offline audiences when it came to political candidates using anger to appeal to the audiences. But there was a slight gap between the levels of support when it came to anxiety and hope. It seems the more long term type emotional appeals where more intriguing to both online and offline audiences, though online users showed more interest in getting involved in the campaign. The studies also showed that people who are better informed about the politics are more likely to use emotions as a guide, while less informed individuals tend to be less trusting of the emotional appeals and stop to think logically and do their research. Though emotional appeal doesn't influence all audiences in the same way, it does appeal to a wider audience.

The cult of the amateur describes the conditions that rising musicians go through in today's market. Musicians now have the technology and digital tools to be more independent, but that independency comes with a price. Independent musicians have to take over the management and business angles of their work as well as the artistic angle, which means they get paid less for doing more. Since the market is getting more accessible to independent artists, there are naturally more of them. This means more competition and, in turn, more risk of failure for artists who are standing alone.

No matter who you are chances are, if you have thought of some brilliant idea, someone else has thought of it too. In order to be creative, one has to be inspired. Normally this inspiration comes from something that someone else has done or said. In this way, inspiration and creativity affect each other. Creativity is a remix of things that came before; it is putting together ideas and information that someone else created, but it a "new" way.

While Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty may have found love with their charm, good looks, and damsel is distress situation, not all of us are lucky enough to find that perfect match on the first try. Sometimes it’s hard to find a good partner, especially when those pesky emotions get involved and you “fall in love” too fast. Like Anna with Hans in Frozen (if you haven’t seen it, you should). Today, the web offers many different sites to help people find their "partner in crime." These sites are designed to help people find "love" by comparing their attributes and interests and finding other people on the same site who might be a good match. Using sites like these broaden potential dating horizons and allow the time to search for a partner without emotional involvement. 

Family time in modern society is hard to come by. Family members have things to do and places to be. Parents have work, children have school or daycare. Then there are after school sports and recreational activities, homework, chores. Parents have errands to do, meals to prepare, etc. As a result of a busy lifestyle, families have a harder time getting together and spending time with each other. Even at home, the family dissociation continues as children use their phones to contact friends, surf the web and the family members occupy themselves with something else. Luckily, we have cell phones! Phones enable family members to keep in contact with each other throughout the day. The ability for parents and children to constantly be able to call or text each other provides a sense of comfort and ‘presence at a distance.’ Through technology, families have found a way of being together and sharing bonds without face to face contact. Christensen talks about these and a few other aspects about distributed family life in her article.

Picture yourself in a nice, comfortable bubble that filters things out and away that make you uncomfortable in any way. Everyone else is in their own separate bubbles. This is the kind of bubble that personalization algorithms produce for you when you are on the web. The algorithms figure out what you are interested in (what kids of ideas, news, objects, etc are attractive) and make them easily accessible to you. On the flip side of this, the algorithms also decide when something is not important or uninteresting to you based on past interests. In this way, life on the web is made easier, but is also controlled by the algorithms. This "filter bubble" determines social divisions and controls the information that is easily given to a person.

The authors seem to have done extensive research and their article was interesting to read. My favorite aspect about it was that it draws attention to something that one does not think about in depth in everyday life.

A very common misconception today is that Bully type breeds of dogs are dangerous. Photos of their seemingly rabid, aggressive expressions and stories of unprovoked “pit bull” attacks are everywhere. As a prominent example of the Melodramatic Imagination, this picture could be seen as two dogs fighting. Editing the image and/or providing a false or uneducated story would add to the gossip. An image is only a fragment of information who's meaning can be changed to suit different circumstances and appeal to different emotions of its audience.

Networks are a large part of everyday life. Cell phone coverage is a large network that helps users to “stay connected” to the people around them.