The Power of Google

                Google started out as a small, underground company that became noticed because it was innovative and different. It allowed people to search the internet for any information in a way that previously hadn’t been so easy. Google did all the work for the person searching. Instead of having to research from books in a library, or try to find specific sites that related to your exact quarry, Google did most of the work for you. Google is able to look at what you’ve been searching, and sites you’ve been to, and guess what sites you really want to see. This would be purely beneficial, if the way that they were able to cater to your needs with such ease did not come at the expense of privacy. Google is only able to know what sites you’re looking for by having tracked all of the sites that you had been to. It basically knows what you’re going to search before you even finish typing. Before Google organized sites and listed them so cleanly, the internet was a mess of sites that could never be found quickly. Navigating the internet was like wading through tall grass, you could never find what you needed because everything was so jumbled and obscured. Google’s rise to power occurred because they made searching the internet and finding web sites easy, while simultaneously rising as a grassroots-like company that was seen as underground. Now since Google can essentially guess what you’re looking for before you even search for it, they have to have an awful lot of information about you. This is the main problem with Google; it has been collecting information about its users since its creation, and while its mission statement is “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” they don’t mention the fact that they organize information about their users as well. Google essentially uses surveillance to make itself useful. It’s impossible to not leave a footprint when using Google, and their privacy policy states that they will pass on information to their “subsidiaries, affiliated companies, or other trusted businesses or persons for the purpose of processing personal information on our behalf.” (Siva, Googlization of us, 85) Basically there’s no real way to know if your privacy is secure while using Google, since they change their policies so often and without warning that what you through was true one day can totally change the next day.

                A personal anecdote relating to the whole subject of privacy occurred my senior year of high school. Facebook has become universally used my parents, teens, teachers, students, and pretty much everybody who wants to network with others. Since privacy is such a tricky thing to control when you have tons of friends online, sometimes the wrong posts get seen by the wrong people. This happened to a fellow student at my school who posted a status that contained a little secret message that was offering drugs for sale. This status was seen by a teacher on facebook, who wasn’t necessarily the student’s friend, but was still able to see past his privacy settings. The student got in huge trouble for the status, and was kicked out of the school. This created a huge amount of debate at school because people thought it was wrong that his privacy was breached in such a way. This is just one example of how privacy can be breached, and how easily information can fall into the wrong hands on the internet. Perhaps if the student had better privacy settings, or just realized that anything he posted could be seen so easily, the expulsion wouldn’t have occurred; due to a lapse in privacy and the authority figure using this lapse to check on students, internet surveillance led to the possibly unnecessary removal of a student from school.

                Google is responsible for a lot of privacy mishaps today, but their new social networking asset, Google +, makes it easy for privacy of users to be maintained. Instead of just having a large list of friends, Google + allows you to organize your different “circles” so that only certain people can see the things you post. With Google +, the anecdote I described could never have occurred and the student’s privacy would have been maintained. Google clearly means well in the things they do, since they try to maintain privacy standards, and are constantly adding to their empire by releasing new things like Google +. The main problem with Google is that it is such a huge company that it controls a huge portion of the internet. Almost everyone starts off a browsing session with Google so that they can find what they’re looking for, people post Blogs that are read my thousands on Google’s Blogger website, and millions of users post and watch content on Google’s Youtube. Since they own so many sites where people go and leave information, they are in control of millions of people’s personal information. While they are determined to protect people’s privacy, this doesn’t mean that they won’t give it up if prompted by the right authority. In addition, if a hacker were to get into Google’s information, millions of people’s information could be stolen, and their privacy could be seriously breached. The realization of Google’s power is why authors like Siva are so opposed to the Googlization of our society since it will lead to less privacy and a completely different idea of knowledge.

Piracy, good or bad?

          Lawrence Lessig’s writings about Piracy are very interesting because after weighing the benefits and downsides of peer to peer sharing, he eventually arrives at the conclusion that it is not wrong. The definition of piracy is this; “Commercial piracy is the unauthorized taking of other people's content with a commercial context.” This definition is being warped and taken advantage of by even the radio itself. Technically, whenever the radio plays a song, the radio station gets listeners and thus makes a profit off of playing that artist’s song, but they only have to play the composer of the song in order to avoid a lawsuit. This hardly seems fair, because if a popular song is covered by a different popular band, even if the radio gets thousands of new listeners due to their playing of the song, the band actually performing it doesn’t make any money except through selling the rights to their songs. This fits in with the definition of piracy since the bands work is being  used in a commercial context and they are making nothing from it. This radio piracy phenomenon also  fits right in with Lawrence Lessig’s argument in Free Culture because he argues the point that piracy is beneficial to the artists since it spreads their work to a wider audience and allows for their fan base to grow. As Lessig puts it, “Every important sector of Big Media today was born out of a kind of Piracy.” (Lessig, 53) Lessig also mentions the benefits of Piracy as allowing users to find and download content that has lost its copyright and thus is unavailable in stores. This makes old artists or writers avoid becoming obsolete by keeping their work in a readily available state, and allows for even the rarest of old albums to be uploaded on a p2p sharing site and be maintained.

                There are many artists who understand how popular p2p sharing is, and especially recognize its benefits. One such artist, who is also an actor working for a major television network, is Donald Glover (AKA Childish Gambino). Glover originally profited from online sharing by becoming part of a comedy sketch group that gained thousands of viewers from Youtube. They gained so many viewers that they created their own web site and grew in popularity even more. I remember when some of their videos were all that kids my age would joke about, and quotes from their sketches were known by anyone my age with a computer. The next time I saw Glover was on the show Community on NBC, and I was amazed. The sketch group had gained enough popularity that Glover was able to make it onto an NBC show. The way that they were able to make it so big was through a type of Piracy, since the people who uploaded their sketch videos onto Youtube were not even always affiliated with the group. They allowed for them to upload their content, however, because it widened their audience. They realized early on what Lessig also noticed, that by allowing others to spread your work for you, you are basically getting advertised to different audiences for free. I loved the show that Donald Glover acted in as a major role, and then was even more enthused when I heard that he also rapped and had a musical identity, Childish Gambino. He has allowed for almost all of his music to be released on a blog account, but has asked for no money. He is allowing his own music to be shared online for free on this blog;

http://www.childishgambino.blogspot.com/

It’s a genius way of spreading his music, since after hearing about him, people have little reason not to get his music since it is free and easy to download legally. Thus is an example of how Piracy can help make an artist popular, and gain enough fame to make it into major corporations like NBC.

                Without the ability to share music online through peer to peer sharing, there are tons of television shows, music albums, and movies that would not have gotten much recognition, but thanks to the internet’s ability to spread things to large audiences with ease, these artists, filmmakers, and other beneficiaries are able to “make it big.” Besides, artists have no good reason to be bothered by peer to peer sharing, since the only people that lose money because of it are the labels that have already purchased the rights to the artist’s music anyway. Artists make a tiny percentage of what the labels make off CD sales, so the Artist mainly profits from going on tours and gaining more and more popularity and becoming worth more to their labels. As was the case with Donald Glover, artists can develop a huge fan base through Piracy, because all it essentially does is provide them with free advertisement. After understanding how the media industry works and makes profit, it is hard to not agree with Lessig’s argument that Piracy is beneficial. Especially once the fact is learned that when buying a CD, you’re supporting the label rather than the artist themselves, and since the laws make it illegal to make mixtapes to give to your friends or spread (as we heard about in the Civil War within Sony), the buying of a CD doesn’t really help the artist become more recognized.

Flickr and its Effect on Professional Photography

                Our last project in which we told a story using Flickr was very eye opening. I have made videos that told stories before, but never have I tried telling a meaningful story in 10 photos or less. My group had an idea to do an “above the influence” type story, in which we showed a student’s typical night if he chose partying, or if he chose to go out but stay sober. The first five pictures portrayed him getting invited out by friends, then getting into a party, then getting offered and taking drugs, then throwing up, and finally waking up the next morning hung over and getting helped up by his friends.  The next five photos were meant to show what his night would have been like if he hadn’t chosen to party and take drugs, so the first few photos stayed the same, but this time when he was at the party instead of a beer he held and Gatorade and turned down drugs, then helped his vomiting friend, and waking up the next morning bright and early and not hung over, in his own bed. Using Flickr turned out to be easy, since instead of uploading pictures my previous experiences with the site had been downloading pictures off of it that I thought were cool. This project gave me an opportunity to put a piece of art out on the internet on a site where people could view it easily. Flickr was not hard to use, and I think its popularity is due to the ease with which anyone can put their work on the internet. I think Flickr’s user friendliness definitely made it easy for me and the group to put our project on the site and the layout of the site makes the photos so easy to view and experience. Our ten photos would definitely have not told their story as effectively if Flickr had not provided a place where the pictures could be shown at their best.

            The site has become so popular that literally thousands of photos are uploading every day that can be randomly discovered by refreshing the home page. Flickr provides a place where people can learn more about photography and become more than just an amateur purely by viewing other’s work and having people give these amateurs helpful tips on how they can improve. As mentioned in the article Flickr changes lives, launches Photocog careers, “The way Flickr is designed makes discovering new images and new people easy and even fun.” (Madarazo) This shows how Flickrs site layout and different aspects encourages users to view tons of different people’s work. In this way amateurs like Daniel Krieger can rise to popularity and a professional photographer skill level purely by putting their work on Flickr and having people give constructive comments. Krieger says that “He joined in January 2005 and he learned 85% of what he knows about photography from Flickr.” (Madarazo) Now you may say that learning these skills doesn’t make him a professional necessarily, but he actually became a real professional working photographer, showing how Flickr truly can change lives.

The Flickr phenomenon is even more apparent after learning that after a survey in Britain in which 2,000 UK residents were questioned, the fact was learned that 10% of Brits now include their passwords to sites like Flickr in their wills. These is amazing, since it seems like people are now placing their work on the internet and its really becoming worth something. There have always been private photography sites on the internet where professionals put their work to get their name recognized, but now Flickr provides the same possibility for recognition on a far grander scale. People putting their artistic work on the internet has never been so prevalent, or worth so much. The reason so many Brits are leaving their passwords in their wills is that they are really starting to be worth something. “It discovered that Brits have collectively somewhere in the region of $3.6 billion worth of personal videos, music, books and photos stored in the cloud.” (Survey: Ten percent of Brits include Internet passwords in will, Trevor Mogg) The ease with which me and my group for the Flickr project put our work on the web was eye opening because it made me understand how people can become professionals so easily. Through reading these articles and using Flickr myself, it became apparent that becoming a professional simply takes dedication to your craft, the right tools to put your work out to the public, and a community such as the one on Flickr who are willing to guide you on the path to becoming a working professional.

The fickleness of the internet.

             The internet is a great tool for politicians or celebrities trying to get their name out in the public eye. Howard Dean is a perfect example of how fast word can spread through different circles on the internet. Dean used a site called meetup.com to launch part of his internet campaign. This site was originally used for trading beanie babies, and this caused internet followers of Dean to be coined as “Deanie Babies”. Dean’s was the first campaign that relied on the internet for a lot of financial help, and the internet following he acquired was the main reason for his success earlier in his campaign. Ironically, these internet communities of followers were his downfall. He made one mistake in his campaign, which was when he let out a wild scream at the end of a speech in Iowa. He was a fiery speaker, which his internet followers loved at first, but this turned against him as soon as his screams sound byte started circulating. The internet is a double-edged blade due to how fickle online communities tend to be. A person saw the speech and decided his scream was worth making fun of on the internet, which led to a massive amount of parody videos on the internet. Perhaps the mere loss of his internet following wouldn’t have lost him the campaign, but when the sound byte starting appearing on broadcast television he lost an entirely new and more expansive community. This is what Henry Jenkins was writing about in Photoshop for Democracy, when he said “If the internet made Dean’s candidacy, television unmade it.” (214) Alone the internet affects a specific community of people, but when combined with broadcast television the audience grows and any story can be spun in any number of ways by the broadcasting network.

                The reverse is also true, since the internet can blow television clips way out of proportion, or at least spread them to a vast community on sites that have a large audience like Youtube. When Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift while she was receiving her VMA award for her best music video, the internet magnified the event tenfold.

http://youtu.be/1z8gCZ7zpsQ

Youtube created an environment where people could watch the video and comment on it, which led to tons of cruel comments aimed in all sorts of directions, but mainly at Kanye. Since he had no way of responding on the internet, his apology for doing it did not go viral as quickly or to the extent that his interruption video did. Over 16 million people have now viewed the video on youtube, and this took a serious chunk out of Kanye’s fan base. It also allowed for people to express their opinion by creating parody videos and response videos. Before this Youtube had just been a place where people could go to listen to his songs for free by watching people’s uploads of them, but then the internet showed how quickly it can turn against you by making his interruption one of the most viewed videos of the year on Youtube.

                The fickleness of the online community also adds to this double-edged nature of the internet, since just as in real life, people tend to agree with the larger community in whatever situation they’re in. In a community as large as the internet, this is multiplied because people’s general opinions change so fast. One minute Kanye can have tons of followers, the next he can make a mistake and lose just as many, which starts a snowballing effect. Perhaps not everyone saw the same video on Youtube, but if a person sees it and posts the video on a different site such as Reddit, then that entire community knows about it and the cycle continues. The video on Youtube of Kanye’s interruption was from MTV, and they didn’t even ask it to be taken down. They allowed for the video to stay on Youtube to create hype for the story they were putting forward. In this way, Broadcasting networks can expand their viewing audience by utilizing the online community to get the word out. Because of this, and the Howard Dean story, it seems as if the only real winners whenever this situation presents itself are the broadcasting networks who get a lot of people watching their channel because they provide clips and videos that go viral online.  The people like Dean and Kanye are the victims of the mass media’s love of drama and circulation of it, even though they use it just as much to create their own positive hype. But perhaps I’m wrong, and the internet is not as double edged and fickle as I think, after all, I’m just a guy.