Will Internet and democracy bring positive impact to society?

The accessibility of internet enables everybody to participate directly in daily social political issues. One of important aspect of democracy is freedom to express our opinion.  In 1994, US former Vice President, Al Gore planned to establish Global Information Infrastructure or GII. Al Gore (1995) mentioned that the digital revolution will not only create a participatory democracy but it will create new Athenian democracy. So today, internet brings new form of democracy.

The fact shows that there are some impacts on democracy caused by internet. Internet works as a democratizing agent. “Using macro-level panel data from 1994 to 2003, this study examined 152 countries and found that increased Internet diffusion was a meaningful predictor of more democratic regimes.. In addition, Internet diffusion and democracy demonstrated a positive, statistically significant relationship (but with a marginal observed association size) in developing countries where the average level of sociopolitical instability was much higher” (Groshek, 2009, P. 116)

Internet pessimists also have their argument about the fear of internet that might decrease democracy. Internet pessimists claimed that the increasing of information and media customization will lead to closed-mindedness, corporate brainwashing, an online echo-chamber, or even the death of deliberative democracy. Internet tends to make people enclosed to their own bubble, instead of enriching our alternative point of view.

My opinion is as long as internet and media are still controlled by some power example government or business from that point we still face the problem that there is a hidden agenda and interest. Internet even can be more dangerous when it is used to manipulate rather than enlighten people.

Reference

Groshek, J (2009) THE DEMOCRATIC EFFECTS OF THE INTERNET, 1994–2003 A Cross-National Inquiry of 152 Countries. Los Angeles: Sage Publication.

Yang, T (2010) video. The Internet and Democracy: Potential or None? Accessed at 11/12/2013 at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=788SAa3daQw

Thierer, A (2011) The Internet Isn't Killing Our Culture Or Democracy. Accessed 11/12/2013 at http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamthierer/2011/06/05/the-internet-isnt-killing-our-culture-of-democracy/

Play: Digital Gaming

One most basic question is why do people play? There are some theories to explain this question. Cathartic theory explains that human play in order to express disorganized or painful emotion in harmful way. Relaxation theory explains differently that we play because we want to become relax from stressful daily life. From the explanation we can conclude that we play video games to get relax or express our emotion. Early video game appeared in 1940s but it started reaching its popularity in the 1970s. Today, video gaming cannot be separated with our modern culture. Video gaming is not as expensive as when it was firstly booming.

There is increasing number of people who play video games. For example, women who are playing video games percentage are 40 percent. This shows that not only gender base but also age of people playing game is varied. It might be the reason why playing video games are more popular than traditional games. Video gaming does not require a lot motoric activity that may limit gender or age.

Video gaming leads debates. Some argue that video games often expose violent content or bad behavior in their story. Narratology is an approach which views video gaming as a cyberdrama. While playing video game the player will involve inside the story and play as a character. The story may cause addiction and native behavior.

However, another side argues that video gaming include learning aspect that contributes to our analytical and adaptation skills. We are required to control human-machine interface that affect our cognitive. Johnson in his book Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter (2005) argues that video games as popular culture has grown more complex and demanding over time and is improving the society within terms of intelligence and idea by stimulating reward centers of the brain.

Reference

Aristotle. (2001). The basic works of Aristotle. McKeon, R. (Ed.). New York: Modern Library.

Huizinga, J (1994) HOMO LUDENS:  A Study Of The Play-Element In Culture. London: ROUTLEDGE & KEGAN PAUL

Guy, H (2007) Women video gamers: Not just solitaire. Accessed 10/12/2013 at: http://www.asiancanadian.net/2007/03/women-video-gamers-not-just-solitaire.html

Does technology make us more creative?

One of area of culture that has been in the vanguard of exploring the relationships between humans and digital technology has been the arts and literature. Modern technology provides more opportunity for everybody to participate directly in the making of art. Duchamp (1957) said that All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. What Michael Duchamp said is become more relevant in today art context.

Another fact shows differently about the use of technology and creativity in working environment. Research conducted by Economist Intelligence Unit (2013) describes that Contrary to popular fears that the advance of technologies such as data analytics, machine-to-machine communications and robotics are circumscribing the influence of humans on business activities, new research from the Economist Intelligence Unit suggests that future human-technology relationships are much more likely to be marked by harmony rather than acrimony. Nearly three in four respondents (74%) to a global EIU survey, for example, dispute the notion that technology is making it more difficult for employees to be more creative or imaginative. Almost six in ten (58%) say increasing technology-intensity has made employees more rather than less creative in developing ideas both for new product ideas and for new or improved business processes. And little more than one-third believe that technology is stifling open discussion with their organization (36%).  

Furthermore, how we use technology and our purposes behind it have influence to our creativity, for example in learning and teaching activies. In their discussion on technology and creativity, Banaji and Burn (2010) point out that the use of technology does not necessarily mean that teaching and learning becomes more creative, but suggest there are affordances of technology which can facilitate creativity, such as provisionality,  interactivity and the particular functions of software programs.  They point to research that has identified that whilst technology can promote creativity, what is important is not using technological tools for their own sake, but to pursue meaning-making in projects that enable pupils to develop their ideas over time, with opportunities to both complete carefully structured tasks and engage in open-ended experimentation.

Reference

Banaji, S. and Burn, A. (2008) Rhetorics of Creativity. (2nd ed.) London: Arts Council. Accessed 5/11/12 at: http://www.creativitycultureeducation.org/wp-content/uploads/rhetorics-of-creativity-2nd-edition-87.pdf

Digital Future in Teacher Education. The relationship between technology and creativity. Accesed 09/12/2013 at: http://www.digitalfutures.org/topic/3-2-3-referenceslinks-to-further-resources/?table_of_content_post_id=87

Duchamp, M. (1957) THE CREATIVE ACT. Accessed 09/12/2013 at: http://www.wisdomportal.com/Cinema-Machine/Duchamp-CreativeAct.html

Is copyright an obstacle to social and technological progress?

“As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid?” (Bill Gates, 1976) Bill Gates showed his felling about free software. There are two extreme of internet trend. One aspect is when the creators of product or software need to be rewarded for their work. While other extreme try to use the product for free (free culture)

The emerging of internet is also followed by the idea of consumption. Internet trend make an adjustment to market demand. Today we are familiar with corporate website, E-commerce, E-tailing, pay-to-view, pay-per-read, Web 2.0 buy outs, etc.

These interactions shape the culture of internet. When we talk about culture of internet there are two different types of cultures that are functioning. Lessig (2006) said that there are read only and read write culture. Read only culture is the massively efficient technology for enabling people anytime and anywhere to buy and consume culture or we call it commercial economy. Music store and video provided by company, is engaging to these practice of increasingly their market for the buying of culture. The increasing of market also leads to the increasing of control over how people use and consume culture. Radically different, read write culture is interested in consuming the culture aspect but also creating and sharing the creativity. YouTube and Wikipedia are two of the examples. People do read write culture for community. They do what they love and it is not because of money or we call it sharing economy.

Lawrence Lessig comes to balance the extreme between free culture and controlled culture. A free culture is not a culture without property; it is not a culture in which artists don't get paid. A culture without property, or in which creators can't get paid, is anarchy, not freedom” and “A free culture, like a free market, is filled with property. It is filled with rules of property and contract that get enforced by the state” (Lawrence Lessig, 2004).

Reference

Lessig, L (2004) Free Culture - How Big Free Culture - How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. www.lessig.org.

Lawrence Lessig - October 3 2006. video. Author@google. Viewed 4 December 2013, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xbRE_H5hoU>

Internet and Privacy

The use of internet has been increasing over a decade. Almost 40% of world population are using internet. Not only developing countries but also developed countries are significantly showed the growing of internet users. It means that our world is becoming smaller when in the future everybody worldwide, virtually is connected through internet. World is only a global village now.

Internet users share a lot of information on internet. There is data explosion which is being produced and accessed. In 2012, totally 2.5 quintillion bytes of data was produced daily. More than 2 million search queries are being done every minute by Google, more than 100 million emails are sent every minute and 350 GB of data is processed on Facebook every minute. 

Privacy becomes the new concern. Privacy itself can be simply explained as the right to be autonomous or have some space. A lot of people use internet service without being aware about the issue of privacy. We don’t really know what happen to the data we leave, where the data is gone and who will access the data. The fact is we create digital footprint when we use internet.  

Do we have control of our privacy? David Brin argues that privacy is impossible. According to Brin (1998) in his book that “powerful (government and corporation) will have privacy-invasive technology”. He argues that ideally both the powerful and the common people have the same capacity to monitor and check each other. It is a basic human nature that people enjoy dominating and gain some advantages from other. So, there is a skeptical view in the future about internet privacy issue. The equal transparent access of internet is still a utopia dream.   

Reference:
Brin, D (1998) The Transparent Society. Harvard Journal of Law & Technology 12(2), pp. 514.

Artificial Intelligence

In the history of humanity, brain has been given special place in which all of our life is rely on. Our brain is the most powerful tool compared with smarter computer. In spite of all of its amazing functions, we still find the limitation of our brain. Today, some efforts are being made to improve the function of our biological brain. The collaboration between science and modern technology are working together to develop digital mind.

Now day, human capacity plays vital role. Humans are still the main important resource. We still depend on human to operate robot or machine. Humans are still the master behind the machine. Consequently, there is some chances to have some mistakes. Human error still occurs as the problem. As an example, we dream about smart car that can reduce the possibility of accident.

In the future robot might think like human. Intellectualism is not only possessed by human. Machine would be able to perform more complex task. Robots are becoming more alive when they can have the capacity to “think” analytically and solve problem. Even today, we can find the growing of daily devices that work autonomously, example robot vacuum. The replication of human artificial life in laboratory improves better chance of machine to become more independent.  

The development of Artificial Intelligence also brings fundamental impact to our life. Human life will be radically changed. Our desire to create smarter machine make our future unpredictable. There is dilemmatic problem. Will we still be able to control the machine? It is fundamental question because we cannot tell what a smarter machine will do, because if we could, we would already be that smart. The smarter machine will be a new era and become common. At the, this is can be seen as the end of human era. Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended (Vinge, 2003).

Reference:

Mahoney, M(2003). The Social Impact of Artificial Intelligence [Online]. Available at: http://mattmahoney.net/singularity.html [accesed: 12 November 2013].

Ubiquitous Computing and Surveillance society

Have you ever wondered if our physical world totally interconnected with data or virtual world? It will happen when there is a fusion between physical and digitally world. Andreas Schleicher said ““The next step is to Internetable physical objects — connecting people with things and even things with things. The Internet of Things will enable connectivity not just between people and their computing devices, but between actual, everyday things. By enabling connectivity for virtually any physical object that can potentially offer a message, the Internet of Things will affect every aspect of life and business in ways that used to be the realm of fantasy — or even beyond fantasy.” South Korea is an example. In Seoul, the ubiquitous city or Digital Media City is being implemented.

Future life style in human history is about to start. Ubiquitous computing covers a lot of aspects in our daily live from surveillance system to microchips for food. Some people say it is smart living system. The reason why it is called smart living system is rely on its capability to recognize our needs. Everything is contained in small sticker that will recognize our preferences for example, what food we like or book we would like to read.

Ubiquitous computing leads the emerging of surveillance society. Entire environment is merged together with internet. People as well as physical object would become readable. With the use of wireless electronic devices, people information and their location will be stored and easily monitored. The chance is getting bigger now that everything could be exposed. 

Ubiquitous computing brings an impact to the construction of social life. Society is become synchronous. Our surrounding will support whatever we like. Then, it will cause interdependence relation between human and the object. At the end, it fundamentally changes social practice. The fact is human is still human who enjoy the domination over another. The phenomena of ubiquitous computing and surveillance society provide more chance to be misused by wrong power to monopolize the game and gain some advantage of it.

Reference:
Taylor, D. (2007) Ubiquitous Computing May Build Ultimate Surveillance Society. [Online]. Available at: http://www.infowars.com/orwellian-ubiquitous-computing-may-build-ultimate-surveillance-society/ [Accesed: 10 November 2013]