1. What might you have done differently if you were in the position of artist Ken Zeran, mentioned in this chapter?

If I were in Ken Zeran's shoes and received so many false accusations and had my life turned upside down, I believe that I would have tried a little harder to find the culprit. I might have tried doing what the Chinese do and start a human flesh search for the individual. I do not think that it is right that AOL got off the hook so easily and they were uncooperative with Ken in providing the information about his assailant. I think I might have started a public outcry via the internet about how terrible and dishonest AOL is. While it may not have ended being very successful, it might have made AOL be a little more cooperative.


2. What might you do with access to UWB radio transmissions if you had a receiver in a car?

The first thing I would do would be to move my entire library of music into my car. I would turn my car into an entertainment system on wheels. Videos could stream with ease, I could video chat with people while driving (potentially quite dangerous), and have downloaded books read to me while driving. I think that there is so much that we could do, it is hard to think about where to start. I'm pretty sure that if I were to have UWB radio transmissions in my car, I would never have a moment of being "disconnected," which might not be the best thing.

Prisoners of eBay and FOAF

1. Considering the Prisoner’s Dilemma in this chapter, provide your own insight on how sites such as eBay “work” for most participants of this popular online auction site. Do they really work? Or is there too much risk?


I personally do not use eBay for a number of reasons and I suppose that many of them overlap with the idea of the prisoner's dilemma. When applied to a social setting, the prisoner's dilemma according to Shirky is, "whenever we interact with people we could take advantage of, or people who could take advantage of us, yet actually manage to trust one another often enough to accomplish things in groups. The shadow of the future makes it possible for me to act on your behalf today, even at some risk or cost to me, on the expectation that you will remember and reciprocate tomorrow." While eBay does not necessarily have a resounding effect on groups, it can have an effect on individuals. I do not use eBay because I am worried that someone would try to screw me over and not give me the product that they had advertised. While this most likely does not happen most of the time, it is not worth the risk for me to get a faulty product. Just after hearing about a few cases of eBay not working out for some, I was dissuaded from wanting to use it. A friend of mine bought a movie a few months ago from eBay and when it came in the mail the case was of the dvd she was hoping for, but inside was season 6 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So she ended up losing about twenty bucks and getting a dvd that she did not want at all. Someone else got the reward for doing something wrong and she got the punishment.

Many people seem to trust the site and it works out quite well for them, but there are others, like myself, who do not like to take the small risk of not getting what they expected.



2. What professional benefits do you see by investing some time in a FOAF-style network?

The opportunities for networking are enormous and the great thing about FOAF networks are that you already have something in common with the people that you are networking with. Professionally, this could be very helpful because it allows you to have access to a whole different "category of people" that you otherwise might not be able to access. Say you are looking for trustworthy IT people to work on your businesses computers. Well your friend, Matt, who happens to be an IT guy probably knows a lot more IT people. If you trust Matt and you have access to all of his friends, well then, you just got yourself potentially a huge market of IT people to work on your company's computers.

1. Based on the quote from this chapter, ““revolution doesn’t happen when society adopts new technologies--it happens when society adopts new behaviors,” do you agree or disagree? Cite examples to support your position.

The birth of new technologies does not, itself, bring a revolution. When the movable type was created there was no revolution. When the telephone was created there was no revolution. When the computer, fax machine, internet and cell phones were created and adopted there were no revolutions. Revolutions are not a cause of adopting a new technology, rather they are a result of coordinated behavior changes. In chapter six of Shirky's book, Here Comes Everybody, the idea of forwarding is discussed. Before the internet it was difficult to pass a message in a newspaper on to others because one literally had to cut out a message, copy it, then pass it along. Now information can be passed along with the simple click of a button. When this information gets passed along it can have a resounding impact on what people are talking about, the emotions of people, and even steps of action that people take. All of this, just because of the ability share information quickly, cheaply, and effectively.



2. Look deeper into the concept of a “information cascade.” Can you cite an example of where following the actions of others was a sound idea? Where doing so ended up being a poor choice?

The cascade effect is described in wikipedia as being is a series of secondary extinctions that is triggered by the primary extinction of a key species in an ecosystem. While this definition describes what happens in an ecosystem, there are many similarities between it and an information cascade. When information starts off in one place and gets passed along it can spread and have an effect on many people and possibly organizations. In the case of the priest scandals, passing on information and following the actions of others exposed a very tragic and terrible event that took place in the Catholic Church. Without information cascade, the publicity and the positive action that the church took would never have happened. An example of information cascade being a poor choice was the example of the flash mob that ended up with many people being arrested in the Leipzig protests. While all they were doing was simply smiling at one another, the coordinated effort of all of the people coming together and passing on information to one another scared the government and caused them to act what seems to be very irrationally.

From the audio book chapter on Free:
1. Why is “zero” such a hot-button word?
Zero is such an interesting word because it has so many different implications. Although it does not always mean poor quality, there are many times when that is what people assume. Usually poor quality is linked with free when something used to cost something, but now costs the consumer nothing. For some reason people associate that with the product losing quality, even if that is not the case at all.
There are some things that are free and we do not expect them to have less quality. Google was an example of this. It is a free online service that no one expects to have to pay for and just because it is free does not mean that it has poor quality.



2. Explain and give an example of a mental transaction cost.

A mental transaction cost is a "cost" that consumers have to take into account when deciding whether or not to purchase something. Choosing the type of thing you want to buy, deciding where to buy it, and waiting in line to buy the item are all transaction costs.
An example of a mental transaction cost from the lecture is when someone offers a truffle at the price of $0.15 or a hershey kiss at a price of $.01. Most people will choose the truffle because the mental transaction cost is not more than what the truffle is worth. However, when you lower the price of each of the chocolates by one cent, the mental transaction cost becomes a lot greater for buying a truffle, and therefore more people will take one of the kisses because it is free. The mental transaction cost was more than the benefits of buying the truffle.

Scratch the Wikipedia

1. The “power law distribution” or “long tail” phenomenon, as seen in behavior online on the Wikipedia, suggests that the concept of an average user of wikipedia is meaningless. Support your answer: how do you think a local, “JMU only” version of the Wikipedia would compare to the worldwide version? Would it be very similar? Higher quality? Less quality? Why?

I think that a JMU only version of Wikipedia would be somewhat similar to wikipedia, but with far fewer results. While we do have many scholars that know a lot about diverse topics, I believe that there would still be far fewer posts onto JMU's wikipedia site for a number of reasons. First of all, the number of potential JMU wikipedia "posters" would be far fewer than if it were open to all people to post. For example, there may only be one or two professors at JMU who have a lot to comment about, say, Irish literature. If neither of these two professors have any desire or knowledge about a JMU wikipedia, the quantity and quality of the potential information on Irish Literature becomes limited to students who are not necessarily experts within that field. When wikipedia is open to all internet users, the liklihood of an expert user within the field of Irish Literature is much more likely to post something with much better quality than a student at JMU.
Basically, the quality of a worldwide wikipedia will be much better than one isolated to JMU just because of the number of potential experts and people willing to give input is much higher and the information would be much broader than if it was contained to a small sample of individuals.


2. After reading the article about Scratch and exploring the Scratch website, what are some observable benefits in creating a space to share student work?

In one word, remixing. Having the ability to take the work of someone else and expand upon it to make it even better is probably one of the biggest benefits that I see from creating a space for students to share work. It's like the epitome of creative learning. Younger students are no longer just learning things being taught to them, but with programs like Scratch, they now have the ability to create and expand on programs that they are interested in. Not only that, but it creates a sense of pride because after you create something on that site, other people have the ability to use it and the creator can feel a sense of accomplishment at being the one that provided it for other people to use and "remix." I believe that the ability to share and expand on others' work easily is revolutionizing the way that we learn and teach.

Wifi and Patriots

1. If your mother uses wifi at home to send you e-mail, and your home network is not protected by WEP or WPA, what reasons would you suggest to her for enabling one of these two protocols at home if the liability of reading those e-mails still exists once her message leaves your home, on it’s way to school?

Without protection it can be quite simple for someone jump onto your network and access your personal information, like your e-mails. The main reason that I would give to my mother is that records from TJX stated that even by using WEP protection, more than 45 million credit card and debit card records were stolen from them. That being said, I would tell my mother to at the very least get WPA protection. The last thing that I would want is for someone to access all of my mother's or my own personal data just because she doesn't have proper protection.

2. Some news reports have suggested that the Bush administration used the USA Patriot Act to look at the e-mails of American citizens without a warrant. What’s your position if this was indeed the case? Should citizens be willing to give up their privacy? Does it bother you to know that your online communications are very potentially semi-private instead of private?

I personally think that the Patriot Act was not a wise choice on behalf of our government. While I do believe that our safety is extremely important, I also believe that our freedom is. When you no longer can send an e-mail without the threat of the government reading it and deciding if it is OK, a question needs to be raised as to how free are we really? I see this going in a bad direction in the future. While it may seem like it is a good idea now to give our government the ability to invade our privacy because it is for our safety, I could see them being able to justify themselves and use these policies when it is not desperately needed in the future. I believe that privacy should be maintained to the fullest degree possible.

WIki Wiki

The concept of a Wiki is one that seems so simple and yet there are complexities that come along with using it.

A Wiki is essentially an editable website. The purpose of these websites is to show and share information with others that can be edited by yourself and others.

There are links within pages that allow you to travel from page to page with ease. A Wiki will create a page for you which allows you to put links into other pages that transfer you to a page that you can place information into. I like to think of it as an all-inclusive conversation.

According to Day 2 of the 21 days of Wikis, Wikis allow for collaboration by letting users or members within an organization view and edit material which stays in one place, rather than having it float around cyberspace. Google, took this idea with their "google docs" which allows essentially anyone access to your document to make changes.

Wikis are also capable of making your business or organization's meetings much more efficient and effective. Agendas can be put on a Wiki and shared with all collaborators so that action items can be labeled and changes can be made simulatenously and with instant changes occurring for all those participating.

There are sites that you can use to create wikis, some cost a little bit of money, but it depends on what you would like your wiki to do. wikispaces and pbworks are a couple of those websites that allow you to use wikis.

The official website for the drug Olanzapine probably didn’t mention the fact it might cause diabetic symptoms in patients. Another website obviously did. Commercials on TV now are required to mention possible side effects. Should drug companies be required to come clean about situations like the one with Eli Lilly’s Olanzapine in their commercial websites? Why or why not?

I am a little torn over whether or not they need to be required to come clean. I think that a business should always follow good work ethics whether it is a pharmaceutical and drug company or any other company, they should be straightforward, honest, and try not to mislead anyone. That being said, the internet is basically an open-forum where anything can be said by pretty much anyone. So it almost seems like it would be against freedom of speech to limit them from being able to post whatever they want. But to withhold life-altering information to try and make money is not ethical or moral.
I would absolutely not be opposed to official drug websites having to be held to standards regulated by the FDA so as to not mislead people. This would also require organizations to have more integrity in their work and they would be able to more confidently stand beside their product. Why should they have to be held to standards through one medium but not another? So I think that it is not unconstitutional to require commercial companies to be required to provide all of the information. They absolutely should be required to post all of the information so that it is accessible and clear on their commercial website.

Open Source Software v Proprietary Software

Some states and some companies are turning to open source software for a variety of reasons, some mentioned in this chapter. Some companies (say Microsoft) have gone on the record against open source software. Explain some of the advantages of using proprietary software and cite your advantages with websites that take or mention these positions.

It would seem that with the capabilities of open source software there would be no more need for proprietary software because open source is extremely similar and the best part is, it's free. So why are we paying for these other forms of software rather than going with the free option? Well there are many benefits to having the proprietary software over open source.
A contributing factor that sets proprietary software above open source is that it offers technical support. If something were to go wrong with your Microsoft office suite, for example, you could call them or e-mail them and within a short amount of time have your problem remedied. Techsoup.org discusses some of the benefits of using proprietary software, specifically Microsoft Office, and one of the main benefits was the fact that there is a "company behind the code." They have developers whose full-time jobs are to improve the software and make it user-friendly and convenient for anyone. Open source does not have quite these capabilities due to the fact that their software is created and maintained by its users and other technologically minded individuals. On top of having the technological support that makes proprietary software one step ahead of open source software, programs like Microsoft Office have a definite advantage because of their familiarity. Other open source programs just do not have the popularity or reputation that the proprietary ones have that makes customers feel secure and capable.

becoming invisible

1. If Shirky is right, and we’re headed to a period where social media tools like YouTube, Flickr, and social networks like Facebook become “invisible,” what’s the impact on things you spend money on as consumers? Books? Movies? Music?

I think already we are starting to see a trend towards not actually buying music, movies, or books because they are so easily accessible on the internet. Whenever I want to hear a song, I just type the name of it into youtube and a few seconds later it is playing for me and many times I can choose about twenty different versions of the same song if I wanted to hear a remix or the unedited version or even a remake of it. It is similar with books and movies, although I do not think that these markets are quite at the same point as music. There is a plethora of books online through google books that one can read for free and hulu.com offers a wide range of movies and t.v. shows that you can watch for free at your convenience.
While these forms of entertainment can, for the most part, be accessed at zero cost, I think that the way customers will be spending more of their money is by buying different "media players." Whether it is an ipad, a tablet, ipod, kindle, laptops, or even phones, I think that consumers now expect to have free media, and what they are willing to spend their money on are the devices that most effectively puts that media at their disposal.



2. Consider the concept of a “community of practice.” How can such a community offer opportunities for learning?

A community of practice offers so many different opportunities for learning that it is almost too difficult to even measure how much knowledge one can gain from it. With the ability of anyone to post something that is accessible to virtually the entire world, we (as the rest of the world) have the opportunity to see and understand different aspects of life through the eyes and words of someone else. Whether these people who post information online are experts in the field about which they are posting or not, does not take away the potential for us to learn something new. We can learn things like 100 different ways to make a basket, to the history of the American flag from the eyes of a 25 year old liberal female. The opportunities to experience life and learn from the perspectives of so many different people is almost too overwhelming, but allows us to form our own perspectives and ideas and contribute to the public conversations.

Answers to questions

1. You have an important personal question you’d like answered. Explain the procedure for getting your question answered and why this method appeals to you (you don’t need to get specific, but let’s assume the answer does not require specific expert knowledge, as from a doctor).

If I needed a personal question answered the first thing that I would do would most likely be to talk to someone who might understand the situation and who I could trust. If I felt that the question was still too personal I might try to find the answers online through a google search. It is hard to say exactly how I would respond because it would most likely depend on what exactly my personal question is. Most likely, however, I would probably talk to my parents or talk to someone who has been in a similar situation and then decide how to address the issue.


2.Have you used a website like Craigslist or EBay to buy or sell something? What was the experience like? Would you use such a service again? If you haven’t, detail how you have sold or bought something outside the environment of a retailer.

I have spent many hours looking through cars and motorcycles on craigslist but have yet to buy anything from the website. The main reason for that is because I haven't had the funding to buy what I wanted, not because I did not trust the site or was unwilling to use it. I have, however, used e-bay to buy textbooks. My experiences with it have for the most part been very positive because I have received my textbooks in a timely manner except for one time. I ordered a textbook and then was told that it would take about three weeks to come in. That was pretty frustrating because it just seems that there should not be any reason for it to take that long to get a textbook.
I have also used a local trading newspaper called the Valley Trader to purchase a car. Basically people put a short description of what it is they are trying to sell and how much it costs and then a phone number to contact them in the newspaper and then wait for someone to show interest. It worked pretty well for me, although I had to do some shopping. I looked at one car that was advertised as being in good condition and when I lifted the hood there were hoses with holes in them and it looked like mice had been living in the engine. The second car I looked at was the one that I bought and was quite happy with it.
I would use both e-bay and the Valley Trader again because I know that there are risks to using them, but the benefits have always been greater.

Villages and Sharing blog post

1. If managers aren’t important anymore towards the formation or control of groups using online tools, what do you consider the main role websites such as Meetup.com, Facebook, or MySpace have provided newly emerging groups?

The social networking websites are a very new and intriguing way of letting groups organize that I don't think has ever been tried before. These websites are very multi-faceted in what they allow groups to do and accomplish. For example, many formalities that once had to take place when forming a group can happen at the click of a button by viewing profile's of those with whom you are collaborating. This can potentially increase productivity because without even talking to other people within your group one can get a basic idea of their opinions, beliefs, and values. Not only that, but since much personal information is usually publicly displayed on these sites, a group can get an idea as to what the response of different individuals might be when posed with an idea.
Another aspect that makes these websites so different for groups is the fact that conversations are on-going. They don't just take place when the entire group meets up, rather they can continue for as long and as quickly or slowly as the members in the group decide for it to take. Conversations are no longer held within a time constraint because discussions no longer require immediate response when using that particular medium. This is yet another reason why management is not needed because the medium manages your messages and you, the individual group member, reply at your leisure.

2. Describe a group you are a member of (online community, church, job, etc.) and how it is organized. Is there management? How is information distributed within the group?

I am part of the Catholic Campus Ministry at JMU and the way that our organization is managed is, like the Catholic Church at large, hierarchical. Starting at the top of our chain of command is our Bishop who is located in Richmond. He placed our campus minister/priest as the head of our particular organization. The priest basically has the final say on all of the day-to-day activities that take place within the organization and any significant changes that should take place. He is basically like the manager of our organization. I fall next in the "chain of command" as the student campus minister. My main role, along with the assistant student campus minister, is to give direction and facilitate our organization's council. So my position could be seen similarly to the role of a supervisor. The council is made up of ten students who oversee six different committees and the committees are comprised of any given number of volunteers from within our organization.

Information is basically distributed through the chain of command, typically starting with our priest (unless the Bishop has something to tell us) and then moving to me which then gets told to the council who then tell their committees. Now we also have services every Sunday where we distribute information to our organization at large through announcements and a weekly bulletin. We also have a lot of our information accessible to anyone through our website.

A digital World

1. Part of me wants to say that Google and Yahoo should be able to produce different search results for different countries because they should have the right to provide their services as they feel is necessary because it is their free service that they are giving away. The other part of me would say that it does not seem right that they have so much power over what information different people get. They seem to have a lot of power over what people believe by providing different search results to different cultures.

2. I think that the grocery loyalty cards are a fantastic marketing idea for businesses. I think that by collecting all of the data as to what their consumers are buying and then tailoring marketing right to the individual is brilliant. The cards save the consumer a few bucks every time they make a purchase, and it provides a business to analyze the buying trends of their customers. If you want to keep what you buy more of a secret, then just choose to not save a few bucks and don't use your loyalty card. I think that it is pretty obvious that you will be sacrificing something by using a loyalty card. A business wouldn't just give those away because they are "nice." They give them away so that they can have more access to your spending trends and try to persuade you and give you incentives to buy more from them. I do not think that there is any problem with grocery loyalty cards. I think that there might be a problem with people signing up for them without know what exactly they are signing for.

A little bit about me

Hello!

My name is Austin Farinholt and I'm a Communication studies major concentrating in public relations and I have a minor in Educational Media which is mainly why I am in this class. I will be graduating this spring and I am hoping that I can get a job with either a PR firm or working for a business or corporation doing public relations. I currently have an internship with the office of public affairs at JMU and I enjoy learning about social media and using new technology to appeal to different publics.

I am hoping to learn more about the different types of social media within our information society and to learn just what they are capable of. I am also interested in learning about the legal and ethical implications that come along with having so much information available to pretty much the entire world.