Wikipedia Comic Activity Review

1. Megan did the work on her computer but we both brought an equal amount of input into the project. Megan came up with the idea of the comic which was essentially that anyone can edit articles on wikipedia. She put together the comic while I searched for pictures and information to use as a part of the comic, such as the yankees players.

2. The process of working together went well because without Megan it would have taken me much longer to complete the project and even to come up with an idea of what to focus on. I like working with other people because two heads is better than one.

3. I learned how to make a comic on pikistrips.com, although I don't anticipate using the software again as I am not a very creative person.

The Wiki Story - Response #3

Question: I don't really know if this serves as the question you're looking for but I could not understand the statement "...but today those objections have taken on the flavor of the apocryphal farmer beholding his first giraffe and exclaiming,'Ain't no such animal!" (pg 117).

I found this reading very interesting in the fact that the success of the Wikipedia trumped the more legitimate Nupedia. Because the creation of Nupedia was so in depth and needed a full force of effort behind it, it had trouble surviving. As soon as Sanger and Wales tested the wiki project, it was immediately receiving more feedback than the Nupedia ever had. The fact that the public found it more accessible, and were actually interested in helping to build the amount of entries in Wikipedia reminds me of the previous reading involving "amateurization" versus professionalism. Does this situation with the wiki being more successful play into the fact that more and more amateurs seem to be participating in actions that used to be left to the professionals? I also question why the public wouldn't prefer to rely on a more reliable source such as Nupedia, as opposed to a website with user-generated content. I thought it was interesting to read about the reasons why people would even be interested in putting their own personal knowledge about something into a page online, for others to learn from. I liked to read that one of the reasons that people take the time to make entries is based on their desire to do a good thing. I think that the part in the book that describes the Ultimatum game. It is odd to think that it is human nature to "have a willingness to punish those who are treating us unfairly" (Shirky 134). It is interesting to think about choosing between getting nothing or getting a little and having to deal with the other person getting more than you. In the article about collective intelligence, I find it interesting that it notes on how higher education institutions push students to use more scholarly sources. The article focuses on the importance of collective intelligence and being open to "that there are diverse forms of expertise and that we learn more if we draw on as many different minds as possible rather than placing our trust in singular minds" (Jenkins, "Sharing Notes about Collective Intelligence"). I wonder if schools will ever make the shift from scholarly input to a more collective source of intelligence.

Everyone Is a Media Outlet & Publish, Then Filter

Discussion Questions: How long will it take for the newspapers to become totally depleted? Even though Lott was the majority leader for the Republican Party in Congress, is it fair for him to be penalized for something that he said around friends in a casual setting? How can you distinguish between broadcast media and communication media in a user generated situation such as Facebook?

Firstly, I think that the internet is a huge threat to printed newspapers. On the multiple news websites, a reader can find all of the articles that are found in the newspapers, plus hundreds more. On top of the news websites, a reader can get information of almost any kind on the internet. I believe that within the next 50 years the newspaper will no longer be an institution and the professionals will work to post stories on the online news. Next, I think that it is a shame that media takes people’s privacy away from them. Although I obviously do not agree with the seemingly racist statement made by Lott, I also don’t think that a person should always have to watch what they say for fear of it being presented to the public. Lastly, I think that all of the blogging and user generated content that you find on the web today is really too much. There is very useful information online, but there is also a lot of pointless information on different blogging sites and all of the other sites that have mostly user generated content. But at the same time, the internet now provides everyone with the ability to express their thoughts, ideas, feelings, etc. online with their friends, peers, and the world wide web, if they so choose. I am a Facebook user myself and I sometimes get annoyed with how much information is presented on it. Especially in high school people would get into fights through Facebook and it’s so silly and pointless. It takes the realness out of things and does not force people to have face to face confrontations but instead makes them wireless. People say what they are doing every hour, and how they are feeling about their boyfriends, and the “cool” stuff that they did last night. It almost seems too personal. But, hey, it’s a free country.

Here Comes Everybody Reading Response #1

After reading this part of the book, "Here Comes Everybody", I am left wondering what they would have done if our technology today was not so advanced as to allow a person to start a personal webpage with links and dicussion boards. Because Ivanna was able to find out what the girls e-mail address was, I wonder if it would have been smarter for her to go directly to the police and deal with the situation that way. Ivanna is lucky that she has a friend as great as Evan that he would invest so much time and money into a project such as this. After reading, I was intrigued by the story and decided to actually look into the "StolenSidekick" webpage. The page was so full of updates and he accepts donations to make up for the money he spent keeping the webpage running. Because Ivanna already purchased a new Sidekick, they decided to auction off the cell phone on eBay and it sold for something like $2000 dollars which they divided and sent a portion of to charity. They also had a segment on 20/20 following the whole incident. It is amazing how in our society word can spread so fast regarding a simple lost cell phone. Without the technology that is present, nothing ever would have happened about the lost cell phone and Ivanna probably would have just had to move on with her life and accept the fact that an undeserving girl was running around with her Sidekick. Because Evan worked so hard to get the word out there and to get people involved, his plan to get the cell phone back, simply for the sake of gaining justice, was extremely successful. Thanks to the internet and the many people using it, Evan and Ivanna were able to convince the police to change the claim from a "lost" to a "stolen" property. Sasha was arrested for stealing the phone but Ivanna did not press charges because she felt that she had gotten exactly what she was looking for and everyone had already been through enough stress from the situation. Maybe their story will make someone think twice about stealing a phone that they found in a taxi.

Information Society

To me, the term information society means living in a society where information is ever present, be it through technology or simply through a conversation with your peers. The term information is defined as knowledge communicated or recieved concerning a particular fact or circumstance. Society is defined as an organized group of persons associated together for religious, benevolent, cultural, scientific, political, patriotic, or other purposes. From these definitions I gain that an information society can be described as a group of people that is knowledgable about a certain or many different facts. Because we live in a society where the center of most of our day to day lives includes cell phones, computers, television, radio, and many other technologies, we are always being presented with new information. At any point in time we are able to access any kind of information that we may want to know. Simply by accessing Google, we can learn the answer to any questiont that we may have (besides maybe what secrets is the government holding). I would say that this is definitely an information society that we live in and with each day that passes it becomes more and more so.