FYS FINAL Prezi

http://prezi.com/ugz5ttn9zmij/present/?auth_key=eskox4i&follow=epbccuyyyppp

if that doesnt work try this: http://prezi.com/ugz5ttn9zmij/fys-final-project/

eWast Action Blog

I chose not to take a side because I believe that we are at a certain point where we can no longer fix our pollution problem. There are ways in which one can try to slow down pollution and waste of computers but, in order to keep the electronics we love these chemicals and metals need to be used. Also our pollution locally is so drastic that companies and our government will do anything to put it somewhere else. Even if we force laws for companies to “take em’ back” the damage has already been done, and if we continue to use our computers and cell phones people will always find it easier to just throw them away. We can also prevent from disposing our waste in developing countries but our damage is so catastrophic that it will take thousands if not more years for those countries to recover. I am not saying we should sit back and let it happen. What I am saying is that we can’t reverse what has already been done. The best we can do is try to slow it down and change our ways in the future prevent more damage to our earth and to ourselves.

Phthalete

1) It is not mined anywhere on earth. It is a man made chemical compound

2)There is no enviromental effect from mining since this is not performed. However the production of phthalates is regulated by the Enviromental Protection Agency (EPA)

3)Human health concerns come in the form of asthma and allergies in kids, possibility of precocious puberty in females, high hormone levels, and birth defects.

4)Health impacts relate to women prematurely delivering their children.

question 1

question 3

Harkin, James. "James Harkin Reviews ‘Death to the Dictator!’ by Afsaneh Moqadam, ‘The Net Delusion’ by Evgeny Morozov and ‘Blogistan’ by Annabelle Sreberny and Gholam Khiabany · LRB 2 December 2010." London Review of Books · 17 November 2011. 2 Dec. 2010. Web. 16 Nov. 2011. .
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Gladwell, Malcolm. "Twitter, Facebook, and Social Activism." The New Yorker. The New Yorker, 4 Oct. 2010. Web. 16 Nov. 2011. .
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Montefiore, Simon S. "Every Revolution Is a Revolution." Nytimes.com. The New York Times, 26 Mar. 2011. Web. 16 Nov. 2011. .

question 2

sources:
Zuckerman, Ethan. "The First Twitter Revolution? - By Ethan Zuckerman | Foreign Policy." Foreign Policy - the Global Magazine of Economics, Politics, and Ideas. The Slate Group, 14 Jan. 2011. Web. 21 Nov. 2011. .


9, October. "Why Social Media Is Reinventing Activism." Social Media News and Web Tips – Mashable – The Social Media Guide. Web. 21 Nov. 2011. .

cartoon topic 3

citation:

Harkin, James. "James Harkin Reviews ‘Death to the Dictator!’ by Afsaneh Moqadam, ‘The Net Delusion’ by Evgeny Morozov and ‘Blogistan’ by Annabelle Sreberny and Gholam Khiabany · LRB 2 December 2010." London Review of Books · 17 November 2011. 2 Dec. 2010. Web. 16 Nov. 2011. .
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Gladwell, Malcolm. "Twitter, Facebook, and Social Activism." The New Yorker. The New Yorker, 4 Oct. 2010. Web. 16 Nov. 2011. .
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Montefiore, Simon S. "Every Revolution Is a Revolution." Nytimes.com. The New York Times, 26 Mar. 2011. Web. 16 Nov. 2011. .

Annotated Bibliography

Brand, Jason. "Jason Brand: How Can Adults Improve Social Networking Sites for Kids?"Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post. Huffington Post, 10 Apr. 2010. Web. 27 Oct. 2011. .
• A man talks about an interview he had done with a student about Facebook. His main focus was about how we could make it better and safer for kids to use and learn how to use it properly. He talks about things as privacy, empathy, mentoring and so forth.

"Are Social Networking Sites Good for Our Society." Social Networking ProCon.org. Web. 28 Oct. 2011. http://socialnetworking.procon.org/
• A Pro/Con website that talks about the pros and cons of social networks on our society. It gives a lot of statistics and draws forth many issues related to teens abusing and not knowing limits on these sites.

Lisk, John. "Can Social Networks Help People During Trying Times? | ABC 6 WJBF-TV."Augusta Georgia, Aiken South Carolina, Central Savannah River Area #1 Source For News, Weather, Sports, Entertainment | ABC 6 WJBF-TV. WJBF News Channel 6. Web. 28 Oct. 2011. .
• Video report about a man with many types of problems like bi-polar disorder and extreme anxiety who has found that facebook, twitter and other sites have actually helped him. Not just using the sites but by talking to other people through them about his problems he is building connections with others, and helping him.



Strom, Stephanie. "Social Networking Sites Move Into Charity World - NYTimes.com." The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. New York Times, 19 Dec. 2010. Web. 28 Oct. 2011. .
• This article talks about how much social networking sites have changed to help non-profit groups and raise awareness. But is it too much? Is Facebook and Twitter becoming fund raisers? Many people don’t like this and is it doing more harm than good? If so how can we change it and make it better.

blog 10

I do believe that Facebook to be considered a “Superorganism”. The deciding factor, that every little part plays a significant role in creating the whole. People on Facebook form groups in a literal and not so literal sense. Not only do they join smaller groups but a group could be considered as the people you are friends with. And their group could be the people they are friends with. They are a group because people tend to follow the pack, either if it’s intentional or not. According to the article a superorganism has organization while still being a community even though they are divided into various parts. Competition is very much involved in Facebook as well. My favorite example of this is the “Like” button. When someone likes someone else’s status or a comment on a status or picture, they press the like button under such status, picture or comment. It now seems to me that people only do statuses and such to get the most likes out of it. People won’t post things on Facebook if they think people won’t like them. In this way people are staying unique to themselves yet connecting with everyone else. Facebook is the superorganism of tomorrow; it’s how people connect now and since its constantly growing it will never die.

Blog 8

I’d have to admit I was a skeptical of what the purpose of our activity this Wednesday. I thought it was kind of silly and was sure that this would be some sort of waste of our time. I was proven wrong. I learned something as well as everyone else did about human behavior. Some emergent behavior that I witnessed was in the dinosaur exercise. During this exercise after we were giving our instructions to form a dinosaur everyone just stood where they were for a few seconds and just laughed. I know the first thing that went through my head was, "where would we even start?" After a while people started talking to the person next to them and a sort of plan was under way. Groups of people formed, and even declaring what parts of the body they were, like “I’m the tail!” What I believe what was supposed to be seen as experimental behavior was how people adjusted to what everyone else was doing. If everyone just started to do their own thing there would be complete chaos. But due to some people grabbing a leading role and others following, in time a structure was made. This is very similar to the internet. People don’t just try to do their own thing. People follow others into different areas they want to be. And it forms and interconnecting structure or even picture. But even being part of a smaller group or “tail” different groups form together to create that picture, and our picture was a dinosaur.

blog 7&8

1) In fys we have been talking a lot about the censorship of the internet in china. China’s government has been blocking websites, programs and even search engines in order to block out ideologies different than that of the Chinese government. The people obviously do not like this. Many of the websites and search engines the Chinese use are American made and run. Many Americans don’t like this because it shows that we are giving in, in a way, to the corrupt government of China.
The U.S. government should ban sales of technology to China that would be censored. Censoring the internet is a violation of the human right of freedom of speech. How would it look that a country founded on the freedom of the people was supporting a system where the government controls and has all the power? This will be good for both us and China. Hopefully it will force China into changing their ways to improve their internet quality and it will help keep our integrity of the companies that went over to China and had to forfeit their rights. Even the companies that are doing this said they aren’t happy about the situation but it’s the best possible one. What better way to show this than to boycott their system. Which side are we going to fight on? Are we gonna side with the over powering government or the people that make up the country and are the real reason we talk about this today?
This could also be bad. There are many hackers and proxies used now but kids and adults in order to get around the “great firewall of China.” If the surveillance is taken away, how much power will the people want next? Sort of like give them an inch they will want a mile. Also this is the Chinese government’s decision, why are we so special that we can tell them how they want the views of their people to be. They don’t try to convert is to their ideologies. These companies that are working in China are some of the largest named corporations in our country; Yahoo, Cisco, Google and Microsoft. Taking them out of the largest populated country would be a significant loss to the United States in a sales view. People come here and they adhere to our laws why should it be any different when we do business there?
I still think we shouldn’t let them censor our systems. It’s against everything our country believes in. Think about how much the Chinese population is being effected. There could be some great ideologists and modern day philosophers in China, but because they are having their resources limited, they are basically losing knowledge. A human being should have the freedom to free though t and learning and to choose what they believe in, not have it be chosen by the government in which they live.

2) Microblogs are ways for people to interact throughout the web through links, posts, videos, etc. Microblogs are a serious part of the growing social media and most people rely on them to give or receive information. The Chinese people probably use these the most. Due to the intensive watchful eye of the Chinese government the people are allowed very limited rights when it comes to the internet. Constant surveillance and ongoing censorship prevent many citizens from connecting to each other like the rest of the world does. This sort of isolates the people from the world and effects there ability to learn new ideas and get facts about certain events. According to the article “www. (censored)” the Chinese government employs thousands of people to site at a computer and read what people are searching and looking up and if the government finds it not suitable they can block them. This is in accordance to the 750,000 filters that are already in place to block citizens from looking up information the government doesn’t want them to know about. The filter such sites like “China Digital Times.” After a deadly train crash occurred people wanted their questions answered, like how did this happen, or how many survivors are there? Statements were released by the government but they were very inconsistent. On this websites thousand if not millions of messages were sent through this microblog about the lack of information the government would give out. People continued this for days and they still don’t know the correct answer. Many think that with sites like this and many other microblogs, that the people of China can obtain freedom of the internet. How would they do this? This is still unclear to me, maybe by pressure and showing the government they can proxy themselves anywhere wil change their mind. Or maybe overtime and increase in influence can bring someone into power that can eventually give this freedom to the people that much so deserve it. I think it’s a sort of lost cause. Because until someone elected to power with the views to do this happens, the people still suffer. And the likelihood of someone being elected to power is very unlikely because due to their governmental structure the people in power now would not allow such a thing to occur.

initial proposal

In our social media and justice class we discussed a lot about the digital divide, and how we as students use it. The average teen today is a wizard in the social media department. But are we using it for the best purpose?
Yes social networking sites are fun but how can we make them better? Is it possible to make Facebook or twitter better for our society yet still make it fun? This is going to be my topic for our social media project. I love social media, if it wasn’t for social websites we wouldn’t be as united a world as we are today. But this is a double edged sword. As one part of society grows and connects with Facebook other parts of our society are moving farther apart because they do not have this technology. This isn’t justice. If everyone in the world had the resources many upper middle class Americans had, we could get a lot of stuff done faster. Twitter is now faster than most websites and news reports around the world. When sports teams win championships people hear it from twitter first, when minors are rescued, twitter has it; even when public enemy number one has been terminated, people heard it from twitter.
My question is; how can we utilize this power of social media and our connections all the way across the world? Would we have been able to help Katrina victims faster? Could we have warned more people in Haiti? The possibilities are endless. Like in Paul Grabowicz article about digital journalism. In this article he talks about broadening the social media and nit limiting it. Many people are afraid that with the internet containing so much information, many kids are just Googling it and they are done, making parents afraid that the love for long literature is fading away. But Paul talks about using this to an author’s advantage to grab interest in the reader and increase the interest in storytelling.
What other frontiers can be explored? A hindering factor is a person’s internet literacy. Like a person who doesn’t quite know how to use Facebook, therefore lacking in knowledge to utilize the site better; if a person doesn’t have a higher internet literacy they could face troubles that cannot really be taught. Since the web and social media sites are so busy a newcomer may take longer time adjusting to the site and hence losing interest. This is a serious problem for sites like Twitter; people become bored and lose interest over time causing a decrease in applicants. Also many cultures and societies don’t have the technology to gain in their technology literacy hindering them from people who have the resources.
It is a constant cycle that we face and instead of just saying lose the sites like Facebook, twitter or form spring, lets enhance them make them better for those who use it and for those people who don’t.




Grabowicz, Paul. "Multimedia Storytelling | The Transition to Digital Journalism." Knight Digital Media Center. Berkley Graduate School of Journalism, 6 Sept. 2011. Web. 30 Sept. 2011. .

Weblog 6

                The problem with current social networks, is one’s ability and knowledge of how to use it.  I always tell my parents that they wouldn’t want a Facebook because they wouldn’t understand how to use it fully.  Even though I say this just because I don’t want them to have a Facebook, it is very much true.  I hate to have to this to my parents, but guys you’re old.  Not old in the sense of age but in the sense of social media.  People my parents age or even now in their late 40’s aren’t properly using sites like Facebook, twitter, or blogger.  This is because most of these sites enable you to stay close with the friends you have now for longer periods of time.  Most people aren’t friends with their original friends from high school because they didn’t have the resources.   I shouldn’t take as much though, I don’t even have a lot of knowledge when it comes to twitter.  I understand the premise and the purpose and how people use it; but what I don’t understand is the hash tagging and re-tweeting.   Even though I would say my twitter literacy is about average, like if I made a twitter today I would totally understand how to use it.  Twitter is evolving too fast, it is always changing, I feel like twitter and other social networks are starting to get too busy.  Its lost its cool factor, like that feeling that this is new and not everyone has it yet.  I would say that 21^st century literary skills are the knowledge and understanding of social media and how to use it.  Social media is everywhere, soon we won’t even have television companies like DIRECTV and Time Warner Cable; it will all be run through the TV internet through ones Facebook or twitter, and people will “like” the show and share it as they watch it.  You cannot be taught literary skills you have to teach yourself.  Schools will teach you how to use the computer but they don’t necessarily teach you how to better yourself on it.  

http://youtu.be/dYP-wBaqQAI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYP-wBaqQAI

webblog 5

For as long as I could remember I have been around computers and technology.  My parents were very technologically advanced because of their jobs, so as I grew up it was normal to have one or two computers in the house and be able to know how to use them.  However I didn’t become a creator of internet content until I was in high school.  I didn’t know that there was a consumer and a creator, I always thought that everyone was a consumer.  I never really took the time to think, wait someone created this application, or someone created this site that I am learning from.  When I got to high school it was actually my English teacher who got me to start using wikis.  Over time my ICT skills have significantly increased.  At first when I was a kid all I knew was video games and instant messenger or the social aspect.  But as I grew older I began to understand more about the inter web and what I could learn, and also how programs worked and how to better myself trough use of certain programs or applications.  As shown in a table created by Mark Warschauer, I can say that I did not know the economic era of ITC, or even the receptive skills.  When It came to computers and technology it was pretty cut and dry, write something on paper for fun or draw a picture. But now I can write papers, look up information, connect with old friends, organize myself, and overall better myself.  Thanks to my parents thrusting us into a technology filled world from the beginning I was able to be current with all computer and internet technology at an early age.  And due to this I can be social, productive, organized and current all in one area.      

 

Webblog4

It has always been seen that social justice has been equally unfair for years and years.  But this is actually untrue because we have hidden the fact that we have our racially segregated past is much part of the socially unjust.  We have forgotten the fact that not 60 years ago our country was still segregated due to the laws people followed called Jim Crow Laws.  These laws have hindered the ability for African Americans and other races that where not white to be separated from those who were white.  Even though they were said to be separate but equal, the fact was the many African American children were deprived the right to an equal education because of the color of their skin.  It wasn’t just education; it covered everything from water fountains to social security.  Due to these laws we made our society an unjust and unequal society.  Is that social justice?  I would say not because even though a person usually have the opportunity to better themselves,  not in this case because we discriminated so much that we psychologically damaged them.  Any person that was seen as not part of the “white class” thought there was something genetically wrong with them.  This is not fair because every person should have an equal opportunity as the next man, no matter of skin color gender, height what be it.  

Social Justice

            In Ursula Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas,” Through this I discovered two theories of what I believe social justice mean.  Social justice is equality to all no matter of social structures, race, or gender; everyone is treated as the same.  Also it means that all of those who do wrong are punished, no matter what way it is, for their wrong doings. 

            In “The Scope of Social Justice,” the author talks about how some people pay taxes that go to good school systems but may not have kids or their kids may not go to those schools.  I believe this follows my theory that social justice is equality to all.  It is not fair that some more wealthy parents can send their kids to good schools while lesser families cannot.  In a utopian society there would be no difference in school because every child would have the same learning abilities, therefore no need for higher quality teachers and resources.  In our world we would see this as socialism or even communism.  This shows that social justice cannot fully exist because there are always ways to refute it. 

            The author also talks about how the society may be in a free for all but there is a guideline that people should follow in order to keep others in line as well.  This is like a chain reaction, if one person breaks from the pack then chances are everyone will.  This leads to my other theory that those who do wrong should be punished.  I realize that this may not necessarily be true because who would do the punishing?  This would refute my classless society and cause social injustice. 

            Social justice can be defined in many ways and can be used in different forums such as a workplace, a home, or as big as a nation.  It is very fragile and very improbable because the main point is that for social justice to be real, stuff like pain cannot exist.  As shown in Le Guin’s short story even though people ignore the kid’s pain, it still was relevant therefore refuting the possibility of social justice because now it is part of their society and equality no longer exists.   

Le Guin Ursla " The ones who walk away from Omelas"

           Social Justice is equality through all.  What i mean by this is that every person no matter of age gender skin color height or what be it is totally equal in stature.  At first we see this in Le Guin Ursala's short story, but once we get to the end we discover that all their happiness and joy in their world is at the expense of one innocent child.  Is that fair?  I would say not; even though is only one child and there is a lot at stake, it is against the laws of humanity.  Another theory is that for justice to occur truth shall be set free and all of those who did wrong shall be punished.  That would mean almost everyone in the town could be punished for witnessing the cruelty of the child.  The only ones who are exempt are the ones who walked straight out of town.  We assume that every person has a belief of all of their emotions; it is just the ones that bring happiness that the people feel.  But not until they see the child that they feel regret sorrow and the other side of joy.  This implied point by Le Guin helps us see that unless pain is seen or felt, it is to be not known of.  The social justice issuffer; this is not justice. lop-sided in this story because of the peoples joy one person needs to

class survey Vujcec

Brendan Vujcec, Williamsville NY, bvujcec15@jcu.edu
Call me whatever you would like, Brendan, vuj, etc.
I am extremely into movies and television.  I love movies and have seen so many that chances are if you've seen it i have or even know everything about it.  I am always full of useless information, and am a huge Bills and Sabres fan.

I feel best working in a group that way i can build off of other peoples ideas.  I feel everyones views need to be heard because i am not perfect and can't think of everything.

I believe the computer because it lead to so many other great inventions.  We even refer everything we own to its "computing power".
1. My Apple Iphone
2. My computer
3. My TV
I have a lot of experience with working with computers and social media; i would even call myself a social media junkie.  I am about a7 or 8 with my technology proficiency; i may not know everything i but i learn very quickly.

Dr. Shutkin: How long have you been involved in social media.  Whats your favorite social media site to use?