The World in "www."

*opinion based response

The society in which we live in today shows us that technology has impacted and created our sense of individuality. A large percent of americans have the capabilities to access the internet. We use technology so much that it seems to serve us as means of gaining our information quick and fast. We live in this world of capitalism. We engage in exchanging information fast. We don’t really seem fascinated with how it came about. 

Office Tigers by Liz Merman presents to us what it means to globalize our products and corporate well-being by outsourcing our work to “people who aren’t utilized.” I had a very hard time digesting this movie. It wasn’t as interesting as it was infuriating. Socioeconomic status and corporate imperialism threading across what we call “third world” countries. We are disseminating information and work we don’t want.

Not only do we give work to other places, we destroy their culture by infringing and invading our own. Call centers in India replace their own histories for fake ones. They recreate themselves for our benefit. We disvalue them with trainings for them to appear as american. They work with the discomfort of becoming someone who doesn’t exist. Their accents are covered, their identity is changed, and at the end of the day they are expected to return to their own lives.

We displace humans as a means of not having to do the work ourselves. 
Our readings tell us that racism permeates the digital world and shows us racism. We then cybertype people. We create a whole new world where we are able to see what was. It shows us the natives of places “conquered.” In addition, we create the labels in which cybertyping helps support the stereotyping of peoples worldwide. The labels which anyone now has the access to. A space which gives us new ways to transfer racism. 
this all for me is distasteful. however, there is no way i can change this at the moment. sure awareness is key, but so is action radical and not. we outsource so much work it would be detrimental to the economy to not. this is because we as a society are in such disarray we can’t even figure out what we want for ourselves. we let people think for us. we don’t go against a flow of information that is threatening an already established way of thinking. “why reinvent the wheel?”


What I disapprove most is the greed that disseminates as a result. By creating a world of materialism based on currency. People work so hard and want to earn so much when we have a world that can sustain itself and instead we worry about the person who is and should be number one. We as a society care more about selfish “needs” and “necessities” that we forget about the other people we trample on knowingly and unknowingly. We are creating the world of modernization and post-modernization where everything is becoming the same.



Not only that but how this fuels western society thought over the East encapsulating them in a world where they are unable to escape economic dependence. We keep societies other than our own where they are and continue by creating for them an inconvenient dual society where they start to become acculturated and sometimes assimilated destroying their ways of life.

Defining Digital Culture

The Filter Bubble

News feeds, news, Google searches, even advertisements have become tailored to you. Based on cookies, tracking cookies, even search histories and queries. Your internet experience is tailored to you. The information you see is individualized. This prevents information from reaching you based on things you click. 

“We get trapped in a ‘filter bubble' and don’t get exposed to information that can challenge or broaden our worldview.”

Pariser says that the internet is showing us what it thinks we want to see, but not what we need to see. I agree with that. In personal experience, it’s a nuisance. Even on social networks it brings up statuses and things I don’t  really care for. What interests me the most is the time things are posted.  I don’t normally care for what top news is, just what’s recent. What’s trending to me doesn’t really matter? 

This is different from selected filter bubbles due to the fact that one is intentional while the other is algorithmically calculated. We don’t intentionally make the decisions for what is presented to us, but rather make choices that affect what we see.  The information we search for creates our “web of one.” We become disconnected from one another just as headphones, but then are we “trained” to do so? We certainly are enabled to do so. Over selected filters we intentional make the choice to do so. 

Pariser tells us to “beware” because the information we digest shapes how we as a society move forward or not. Do we as consumers become the cattle we drove or animals we domesticate? Or do we push forward use our  intellect and ability to think and challenge?

from brain pickings.org

There is a problem with what we are shown, so how may we ameliorate the problem if there is one? By becoming aware of the situation is the first step. Taking actions into your own hands is the other. There are preventative ways such as knowing your privacy rights given. Becoming literate with the tools we use. 

But who does this affect? It obviously affects the people who have access. For example, people who spend a lot of time on the web with personal access. Their information is skewed as opposed to people who have public access whose history and searches are documented with multiple people uses. It affects consumers in a general sense and provides a simple way for “capitalists” to invade the personal spaces created by individuals. It doesn’t matter what race, class, or gender, etc., you are. Your experience on the web is recorded.

There are spaces provided on web for people to act on similar interests. The internet provides spaces that we deem as virtual campfires. According  to Jenny Ryan, virtual  place regardless of race, class, or gender for people to interact and engage with like minded people across barriers of time and space. So filtered webs don’t need to impose on our lives if we seek out our information. But then again who’s to say what see isn’t already a product of who and what we are?

Brain Pickings: The Filter Bubble vs. Curator and the Value of Serendipity

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/05/12/the-filter-bubble/

Jenny Ryan The Virtual Campfire

http://www.thevirtualcampfire.org/conclusion.htm

TED: Eli Pariser

http://www.ted.com/speakers/eli_pariser.html

TEDtalk: Beware Online "Filter Bubbles"

http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html