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.