Extra Credit Post

I covered the chapter on Iwar in my SLFS. The part that struck me the most was how the government called on the citizens to be active participants in the war. We were encouraged to "be American" by shopping, boarding up our windows and stocking up on supplies, just in case the next terrorist attack hit our house. There were online polls asking for our opinions, news reports urging safety, and American Flags waving everywhere. American flags and bumpers stickers that said: "Proud to be an American".. Those were in high demand, so they got supplied. For a few months everyone lived with a small fear that another attack might come. However, when we declared war, which everyone wanted, we slowly started to forget about the event and moved back to our daily routines. The only time were reminded of the event was on the anniversary. Now, 10 years later, you barely ever hear 9/11 mentioned in any regard. The media hyped it up for months after the event, then when it became unpopular, it was old news. We consumed to "be American", which brought us together for a brief time. We collectively mourned the losses, and felt American for watching the news and keeping up with the latest updates. However, when the media lost interest, so did we.

Extra Credit Post

In reading the chapter discussing ipolitics, I couldn't help but think back to the 2008 election race. Due to our media-based society, the coverage this thing got was unbelievable. In the months leading up to the election, you almost couldn't escape hearing the latest about Obama, Mccain or Palin. Saturday Night Live boosted the media coverage even more with the skits they aired, poking fun at everyone involved in the election. Obama appeared on adolescent TV shows, Mccain was seen at athletic events, and Sarah Palin was all over for "being a milf" and being stupid, which landed her some pretty sweet youtube clips. Now, in 2011, I couldn't tell you what's going on politically. 3 years ago it was inescapable, now you have to go out of your way to get information. To me this demonstrates that we don't necessarily pick the most qualified candidate, we pick the one we like the most. It becomes sort of a popularity contest, in that people lose interest once the winner is announced. I believe that is what happened in the 2008 election, and the same cycle will repeat next year.

Extra Credit Post

The economy is tough right now, we've heard that expression far too often in the past 5 or so years. To make matters worse, employers are utilizing the internet to find information on potential candidates before any job offers are made. Unfortunately, in a society obsessed with social networking sites, there is more information about us than we would want to present to employers. For some candidates, sites such as facebook can result in an employer not hiring them due to unfavorable images and other content. In the case of this article, a young woman who was qualified to work in a hospital was not offered a job because of he provocative pictures on facebook of her flashing people. I'm sure this happened very frequently, even though you can change your privacy setting sin 30 seconds so only your friends can access your information. The trouble with that though, is the question of whether or not the privacy settings actually work. In a country under heavy surveillance on all fronts, I'd almost bet that privacy settings aren't as private as we would like to think.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20202935/ns/business-your_retirement/

Extra Credit Post

Andrejevic discussed the topic of surveillance in several chapters, which Brian demonstrated in class by showing us how easy it is to find information on people. It is nearly impossible to hide, even if you're a skilled hacker running one of the oldest bittorrent sites on the internet, Filesoup. The police were able to track "TheGeeker" home address by an undisclosed method, which I can only assume was by IP address. When they took him into custody he asked to make several phone calls, but he was informed that the Inspector had all outgoing communication blocked. They were able to access all of his mediums of communication and lock them all up, which I find pretty terrifying. I feel like everyone has downloaded something illegal in their lives, whether it be music or a movie from a bittorrent site. The alarming thing is that under copyright these are serious crimes, and they could easily find out our home address by looking up our IP address.

http://torrentfreak.com/oldest-bittorrent-site-targeted-by-police-owner-arrested-090804/

Etra credit Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/26/iphone-android-tracking-i_n_853879.html

This article is about Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and how she asking Google, apple, and android to release the policies on the tracking of their devices. She is assuming that all of these devices track because the companies are failing to disclose how the programs work and what they are doing with the information they are storing. this directly correlates to what were talking about in Ispy. These companies are storing data without letting users know and taking without permission. The real problem is that privacy is being violated. Andrejivic talks about how they are using this information to advertise to people in the united states. The question is what if we dont want to be advertised to?

South Park vs. Apple

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkLJbfL16RU

This is just a preview of the upcoming season 15 premiere of South Park. As I've been researching the show heavily for my project, and since we've been talking quite a bit about our respective "issues" with Apple, I thought this was appropriate. If you've (unfortunately) seen the film Human Centipede, the juxtaposition of themes in this episode should make you smile (or squirm) a bit.

Extra Credit Blog

During President Obama's campaign towards running for office, he portrayed himself in the social media like no one had done before. In chapter 7, Andrejevic discusses ipolitics and its aspect of customization. By presenting each message as personalized and individualized, the voter then has a tendency to focus only on that one common view as opposed to other views they may not agree with. With Obama in particular, he did a miraculous job of sorting and excluding young adults to target during his campaign. By premiering on shows such as MTV and imprinting himself on trendy t-shirts, Obama was able to reach young adolescents in a way that had never been done before. He made teens feel like active participants and responded with focus towards their customized wants and needs.