Hacker Culture

This weeks infographic focuses on the culture of hackers. Anarchy is a key ideology for hackers. There is no authority and thus no hiding of information. Those who do well in their exploits are given bragging rights to talk about what they have done.

Another major part of hacker culture is the vocabulary. There is a whole other set of words used in the hacker world, most of them meaningless to the ordinary person, but some terms are beginning to be more mainstream. Hacker vocabulary includes words such as trojans, worms, viruses, keyloggers and botnets.

References

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaWxbF3uvik

Lets start a #revolution

This weeks meme refers to the rise of social media revolutions facilitated by platforms such as Facebook and Twitter and with the use of hashtags.

Hashtags have become a very quick and efficient way of getting your story out in to the public and heard. Many people use the hashtag to inspire people and encourage action within communities, resulting in the hashtag revolution. The mobilisation of people with a common cause can be done with the click of a button. This is particularly useful for groups who may wish to remain anonymous or not take part in actual physical protest due to fear of persecution.

Twitter and the Bridge made of Pebbles

This weeks meme refers to the aggregation of content that we see on Twitter which forms a ‘bridge of pebbles’.

One Twitter post on its own could get lost in hundreds of other posts, but the aggregation of other similar posts paints us a picture of what the full story really is.

Twitter acts in this way in a very convenient and timely matter, meaning that 30 seconds of looking at your Twitter news feed can give you multiple current world stories.

iOS vs. Android

This weeks infographic focuses on the two main operating systems used in the mobile and computer world: iOS and Android. Each of these systems has differences that make them unique from one another.

The iOS operating system is closed where Android is open. iOS operates within a walled garden – mentioned in the previous post. An example of a walled garden in terms of iOS is Apple’s App store. Apple’s app store is the only way to get apps on Apple devices. Apps that are deemed undesirable are filtered out. Android on the other hand, allows for multiple app markets where any app can be found and downloaded.

 

The Walled Garden

The inspiration for this weeks blog came from the discussion of a walled garden in the lecture. According to Teodor Mitew (2015), a platform with a walled garden has these characteristics:

• Has curated content
• Everyone is identifiable
• The undesirable is filtered out
• The owners of the ‘garden’ control how you use content
• Content stays within the ‘garden’
• Is closed, hierarchical and with a centralised database and
• Is controlled, censored and surveilled

The concept of the walled garden brings to light the ways in which internet users are monitored in their everyday use of different platforms. It is definitely something to think about the next time you are using one of these platforms such as Apple, Facebook and Google.

References

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1IEq3uHKh8

The Long Tail Effect

‘The future of entertainment is in the millions of niche markets at the shallow end of the bit stream’ – Chris Anderson.

This quote truly encapsulates rise of the long tail effect within modern culture. The vast masses of niche markets and products outnumber the mainstream market and those niches are increasingly being able to be found with the advent of online stores and websites such as Amazon, Netflix and Ebay.

Amazon has an extensive library with millions of books. Shopping here rather than at a book store that only has a handful of mostly mainstream titles, means more choice and more niche markets that previously would have been hard to find.

The same can be said for Netflix, an online service from which you can stream movies and TV shows. There are endless choices to choose from whereas a video store would only stock the most popular titles with limited choice.

References

• http://www.longtail.com/about.html
• Picture: http://amazonpickingchallenge.org/
• Picture: http://www.wonderbaby.org/news/netflix-announces-accessibility-feature

 

Liquid Labour: The Age of the Knowledge Worker

A quote from the lecture that really got my attention was one by Mark Deuze in ‘Liquid Life’. He said ‘The most successful businesses on the internet – like eBay, Yahoo, Google, and Amazon – share one fundamental characteristic: the product these companies deliver is connectivity, bringing people together to trade, communicate, interact and exchange knowledge, information, goods, and services’.

So much of the goods and services that we need and expect from companies today are in the form of information. Because of this, job descriptions tend to entail sitting at a computer, rather than standing at a production line. My meme focuses on the growing need to be online for work, dealing in knowledge instead of physical labour.

The need for us to be online ensures that we always are. This raises questions of presence for one who is constantly online. How can one be simultaneously active in the networked world but also active in the present and physical world. The term used for this phenomenon is ‘presence bleed’.

 

The Network Society: Obliteration of Borders

Manuel Castells states that our society has a ‘specific social structure: networks powered by microelectronics and software-based information and communication technologies’ (2004, p.222). Our social structure, with the ever growing innovations in technology, is increasingly connected. We can talk to those across the world as well as those who are right next to us. Borders are obliterated and all thoughts and ideas flowing through the network society connect to each other such as nerves in the brain sending and receiving information.

An early addition to the network society was that of the personal computer and with it came the ability to store data. It fascinated me that in the early days, the largest conceivable size of memory disk was 10MB. These days we can easily store and transfer data on hard drives that carry terabytes of data which is a unit of information equal to one million million. It is this huge gap that inspired my meme for this week.

References

Castells, M 2004, ‘Afterword: why networks matter’ In Network Logic: Who governs in an interconnected world?, pp. 221-224. 

 

Tinder before the Telegraph: A perilous affair

 

The invention of the Telegraph in the mid 1800’s revolutionised the way that humans communicated. Messages could now be sent across thousands of miles within seconds instead of days. Communication was instantaneous and this lead to many changes in the way humans interacted with one another.

One form of communication that has been completely revolutionised, particularly with the advent of the internet, is that of dating. The meme above refers to the way in which dating in the 21st Century is as easy as swiping left or right on a smart phone on dating apps such as Tinder. These outlets can connect people that may be hundreds of kilometres away from each other. Before the Telegraph, couples would have had to rely fully on letters and face-to-face communication when dating. Even the Telegraph provided a way for people to date over distances, with female and male telegraph operators reportedly forming relationships after communicating through the device.

Visual Essay for BCM232

BCM Visual Essay