#miassessment

looming in the background of all conversation about New media, there is always the question about the absence of privacy. I have never paid much heed to this growing concerns, as I have always addressed it in the context of my own personal information. Considering my lack of criminal intent, I never placed that much worry on people using my personal information as a weapon against me. I did not fear the internet suggested purchases, more so I relished in a technological experience catered for enjoyment. However, it was not until I attended and read this week's content about big data and telemetric that I truly started to fear to technology. By mainly confining in Eric Siegel's article, this perspective emerged by separating humanity away from prediction software. The readings made me marvel at technological prowess, although my fear is not directly aimed at what prediction analysis can achieve rather our inability to stop it.

All creatures on earth that have an innate sense of survival were bequeath by natural selection to have a key ability maintaining their proliferation (Biology 18,2010). Humanity though, is an obscurity as we were not gifted with a physical trait like heightened vision or a second stomach. Rather we were solely given the gift of spectacular intelligence. Our assets for survival is our ability to understand our environment and make decisions out of logic and unlike animals not out of necessity.  In a sense, my fear for what Eric Siegel describes as the clairvoyant computer, is that we are creating machines with the ability that made us the dominant species on the globe. I am not being so childish to fear some kind of robot apocalypse. Prediction is power. Big business secures a killer competitive stronghold predicting the future destiny and value of individual assets. The fear is that we will eventually create digital tools that are superior to humanity, as it accurately maps all human patterns based on  how we act in our environment. The fear is that "machine learning -computers automatically developing new knowledge and capabilities by furiously feeding on modern society's greatest and most potent unnatural resource: data" (Siegel, 2013). The shocking statistic that every day we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data is even more alarming considering that 90% of all data was created in the past three years (SINTEF, 2013). As each generation become more familiar and trusting of technology, organisations will generally have a much better understanding of profiling people. As this week's guest lecture Darrly Woodford identified, television companies already monitor what's trending through social media. Business intelligence & ‘data markets’ (including social media & online behavioral data) feed Predictive Analytics so that technology learns from experience (data) to predict the future

behaviour of individuals in order to drive better decisions(Siegel, 2013). This type of monitoring is not passive but active. As we become a culture more confident in digitally tracking our life the clairvoyant computer is will always be humanities new shadow. I question have we really been empowered by social media or the complete opposite.

  Woodford, Darryl. 2014. KCB206 Internet, Self and Beyond: Week 9 Lecture Notes.http://blackboard.qut.edu.au (accessed May 9, 2014)

Siegel, Eric. 2013. Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die.Hoboken: Wiley Publishing. accessed May 9, 2014)

SINTEF, 2013. ' Big Data, for better or worse: 90% of world's data generated over last two years accessed May 10, 2014

Over the past semester these weekly blogs have  consistently show me a new perspective on subjects I thought I was quiet familiar with. When I briefly reviewed internet, self and beyond's content as I entered the unit, I falsely assumed that it weekly topics from one of the various other units in the media and communication course. However, it became apparent that it was more than just that. Each weeks readings where on subjects already covered in previous units although it seems to take an opposing view, shaking my belief system for new media. This was especially prevalent in this week's readings as it turned digital activism into a convoluted platform. My previous notion of web 2.0 technologies was that it was solely the future of democracy. That Social media disempowered existing hierarchies  by disrupting power through two-way communication opposed to liner one directional manipulation from traditional media. However Clay Shirky and Malcolm Gladwell articles identified where the power of social movement truly rests.

The first article, 'Small Change drew on events in the early sixties supporting the civil-rights war that engulfed the South for the rest of the decade. His emphasis on the plight of the civil rights movement and the difficulty/danger there was in with public sit-ins. This is then contrasted with the kind of activism associated with social media. The platforms of social media are built around weak ties. This argument claims that weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism, the only form of activism marked as credited for superior social change.

I can't help but agree as I question how the type of motives that drives online activism doesn’t require that you confront socially entrenched norms and practices. In fact, it’s the kind of commitment that will bring only social acknowledgment and praise (Gladwell, 2010). Considering that a 'like', or 'share'  cannot create major social change unlike the restaurant sit-ins, as they do not cause disruption to the stasis quo. This form of activism, called 'Slacktivism' pejorative term that describes "feel-good" measures, in support of an issue or social cause, that have little or no practical effect other than to make the person doing it take satisfaction from the feeling they have contributed.

What Activism really looks like:

An example of this is Changing a profile picture to advocate  marriage equality (Sauter, 2014).  Research from UBC’s Sauder School of Business says that clicking a ‘Like’ button on Facebook can make people less likely to donate to a cause in the future. Kirk Kristofferson spear head a study that found that the more public the token show of endorsement, the less likely participants are to provide meaningful support later. If participants were provided with the chance to express token support more privately, such as confidentially signing a petition, they were more likely to give later (Kristofferson, 2013). Although I think web 2.0 technologies can still be used for activism as access to information is far less important, politically, than access to conversation. Social media truly empowers local communities as a tool to organist uprisings as we see in the middle-east spring .  

Gladwell, Malcolm (2010). "Small Change" Accessed April 28, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all

Sauter, Dr. Theresa. (2014. “KCB206): Internet, Self and Beyond – Week 8 Lecture Notes.” Accessed April 28, 2014.https://lecturecapture.qut.edu.au/ess/lti/v1/launch/BLACKBOARD/90e0f566-3969-40ff-8600-e7cac2c2e219

Shirky, C. (2011). “The Political Power of Social Media: Technology, the Public Sphere, and Political Change.” from http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/67038/clay-shirky/the-political-power-of-social-media.