Links for class today...

CBS news story about internet censhorship bill.
Basically the same story on Perez Hilton's blog, 'cause...

Basically the same story on The National Review's website.

Infographic about censorship in China.

Advertising, privacy, and your use of the Interwebs

We're just starting our look at advertising rhetoric (let's call it chocolate, for now), and we've got privacy/freedom of expression coming up in the not-so-distant future (let's call it peanut-butter; I'm going somewhere with this metaphor).

Ta-DA! Marketplace Tech Report did a story today that is basically the Reese's Cup of my little blog post. See? I told you I was going somewhere with it.

The story is about a study done by Carnegie-Mellon (considered a VERY good technology-focused university) suggesting that our online "opt-out" decisions, supposedly protected by Federal mandates, have probably NOT been honored. In other words, when we thought we were protecting our online privacy as we avoided/engaged online advertising, it turns out that the advertisers were probably still collecting data on us. Give the article a read. Go on; click on some links...

The Google Transparency Report (I know, RIGHT?!)

Once a year, google releases what they call their "Transparency Report," which is - well - a report detailing some statistics about data they release to governments of the world. It is at once fascinating, amusing, and potentially terrifying.

Some interesting tidbits:

• content removal requests by the U.S. alone were up 70% from last year
• number of data requests made by the U.S. were also up 29%
• The U.S. Government made 5,950 total data requests on 11,057 user accounts (not really sure how those add up...)
• Google complied with 93% of those data requests

Here's a link to the full report. Play around with some of the features (the map is particularly cool) and see what data looks like. How this relates to our class is that we're about to start examining how the public and private spheres of users' lives start to integrate as we participate in digital media. Should they? Shouldn't they?

Social media and upcoming class disucssions

Heard an interesting article today on NPR's Marketplace Tech Report about President Obama's election campaign and its use not merely of social media but of their use of social media aggregate sites, sort of the social media of social media. The article claims that previous campaigns have been characterized by increased social media presence (Twitter feeds and FaceBook pages abound...), but that the Obama campaign's use of media aggregate sites - specifically Tumblr - is a new development in political strategy.

So, what these aggregate sites do is allow users to post links to inforrmation they find interesting. You read something out on the interwebs somewhere; you grab the URL and head over to your favorite aggregate site and post the link up, in the hopes that other people out in the real world will also find it interesting. Look at you; you're a journalist?

Actually, the really interesting thing (to me, at least) is that these aggregate sites are a pretty big part of the idea of "going viral," a phrase we now throw around haphazardly like we say, "I 'googled' it" or "Eh, that's been 'photoshopped'." These aggregate engines give a MUCH wider range of users access to information they might not otherwise have found, and THAT'S the real trick in something going viral: superbroad, superfast exposure.

Here's the Marketplace article - including a button to listen, in case you don't want to read, slacker - and here are some links to some of the more popular aggregate sites like Digg, Tumblr, Reddit, Stumbleupon, and Delicious. These are really just a tiny handful of the aggregate sites out there, mind you.

Metal and insight into the record industry?

So, on Thursday, my ENG 2353 class will talk about music (and a little TV) and the implications of those media converging with (existing despite?) the interwebs. Serendipity (zing!) perhaps provided me an article today featuring Mark Hunter, the lead singer of Ohio-based metal band Chimaira and his views on some of the challenges created by (among other things) that convergence.

It's definitely a subjective view, but I think that he offers some potential insight into a set of industry-wide trends. His claims go beyond merely the convergence of these media, but he does talk specifically about the internet's impact on music - genre notwithstanding. Also, I'm interested in the fact that Hunter is a frequent tweeter.

Anyway, food for thought.

Integration and Web 3.0 or "It's about walls breaking down..."

Yesterday, we started talking about the kinda abstract - and, in many ways, arbitrary - names applied to different paradigms of the internet: specifically, Web 1.0, 2.0, and Web 3.0.

Per those discussions (which lead us into Thursday's discussions) I found some interesting articles that speak to some of the integration, the breaking down of walls, the one-vendor-gives-you-everything-you-want notion of what the interwebs is becoming.

Obviously, there's a lot to look at in terms of what Facebook is trying to integrate. Facebook wants to be your music provider, and possibly put other music providers out of business. Facebook might want to provide you streaming video by acquiring Hulu. Oh wait, Google might also want to acquire Hulu so the big G can be your source for streaming content. Wait, so does Amazon. WAIT! So does Dish Network!

Then here's another article about the possibility that these types of integration (especially in Facebook) might actually be bad for social interaction. Can you imagine?

The Internets ain't all satellites, you know.

Actually, it turns out that the bulk of direct, international communication takes place via fiber-optic cable strung across the ocean. Seriously. Seem like an epic underatking: running thousands and thousands of miles of light-carrying wires across the inky depths of the oceans? Well, it is epic.

Up until very, very recently, it's also been super-secret. The locations of those cable, I mean, has been secret. Now, however, there's an AMAZING, interactive, data-heavy map of the cables created by (sponsored by?) a company called Telegeography.

Now, I don't know much about the company, but I know a good map when I see one. Go check out the mapo and learn a little more about what's involved when you email your friend in France a picture of a cat wearing socks.

(hat-tip to Gizmodo).

Possible example that the pen IS mightier than the sword?

A while back, in my ENG 2353 (Professional Writing Technologies) class, I mentioned that no one country has oversight of the interwebs. In general, our participation - as individuals, as communitites, as part of a city/state/country/world - is without governance. I mean, it's not completely without government, but it's not exactly like the United States FCC can regulate globally-generated internet content. Well, not yet anyway.

So, I was reminded of our class' talk recently by two news-stories about the - hmm, how to describe it? - desire by some to globally regulate internet content. Maybe it's not merely about the desire; maybe desire is predicated (trumped?) here by necessity? I'm not 100% sure, but I do know that the ideas in these two stories speaks to the idea of content control/regulation. Read on!

Ever heard of Stuxnet? Probably not, and there's no reason you necessarily would have. However, some believe that it could very well kill everyone you know. Got your attention now? Wait, there's more!

Stuxnet is malware designed to deliver a pretty specific set of trojans into a computer system, theoretically then allowing some remote user(s) access into the infected system. Usually, trojans like that are designed to give those remote users access to our sensitive information: passwords, bank account/credit card info, etc. On that level, Stuxnet works a lot like malware you or I might get on our adorable little computers at home or school. However, (according to a great article on PC World) industrial cyber-security experts like Ralph Langer and Dale Peterson, CEO of Digital Bond, believe that because of the sheer complexity and artistry of the code itself, the malware likely was designed for a specific target: Iran's nearly-completed Bushehr nuclear reactor. In fact, Langer describes Stuxnet as "the hack of the century."

Stuxnet evidently targets some specific sectors of computer networks designed by Siemens, a big name in giant, industrial computer networks, among other things. The specificity and complexity of the attack, coupled with the small number of organizations that use the exact combination of Siemens' systems, limits the possible number of targets to just about one: Iran's nuclear reactor. Put another way, the Stuxnet trojans were designed to shut down "critical factory operations -- things that need a response within 100 milliseconds," according to IDG News' Robert McMillan (via PC World), not to infiltrate lots of different computers all over the world to steal lots of info like credit card numbers from regular Windows/Mac computers. McMillan argues that failure in those industrial systems could mean reactor meltdown, chemical catastrophe, etc, and that the target's specificity suggests that a new breed of cybercriminal - and/or "possibly a nation state" - created this malware to "destroy something big."

Up next time: "idea crime" and the internet!