Abstract: How can children use the internet effectively and responsibly?

New Media, New Liberty

The internet allows people to come together and manifest a common goal. It also allows for individuals to express whatever they want, wherever they want. Compared to old media, we have transgressed geographical boundaries and through hyper speed connection, we can share them easily. The old media didn’t do that; newspapers and TV’s were controlled by an organization, filtered through groups of people. As of right now, we possess the ability to express any of our ideas while being able to access an endless sea of knowledge. However, with this freedom comes a responsibility so high that the government doesn’t fully trust the public with. With the altruistic, free sharing of data to the people using new media, there comes an unjust, overseeing power that forbids the freedom of many.

What differentiates new media from old media is the logic. According to Lev Manovich in “The Language of New Media”, Manovich defines new media as “post-industrial”, with logic of “individual customization, rather than mass standardization” (Manovich, 30). With the mass integration of diverse ideas in a space so localized that’s it fits into your pocket-sized phone, our ability to translate and transform our own opinions onto something internationally accessible becomes much more possible. For example, it’s a lot more difficult to personally customize a channel on TV, but it’s a lot easier to create your own YouTube channel. Before new media, people got their outside, current information was from reading the news and watching TV. Both broadcast information to a wide audience, but now the tide has turned where the public are the owners of the information they themselves want to broadcast.

In new media, programming has become a popular tool for inventors alike. Programming gives the people the tools to recreate ideas and inspirations and express them online, similar to how Aaron Schwartz used Rich Site Summary (RSS) as a tool to enable online publishers to syndicate their data automatically, and led to the invention of the popular social media network Reddit. By tinkering with new technology, especially the internet, people can take a bigger part in building the world. This is how cyberspace came to be what it is today – full of individual ideas synthesized with others to invent new ones. The internet can work as a creative outlet; everybody has a channel – like a blog or a Facebook page – whereas old media has only TV channels. In this sense, everyone is allowed to speak, it just becomes a question of who gets heard, and who becomes silenced.

The internet is a humongous library condensed online. It allows us to get public access to public domains. But in the beginning, “confidential” information that was in court trials were so hard-to-access and expensive. For example, Pacer.gov was an open-access website that had interesting information, but entering was pretty pricey. At the time, there was debate whether information like that should be given freely to the people or “owned” by those in power. Controversy over what information should be public or private is still an ongoing dispute between public domains like social media and private ones such as the National Security Agency, NSA for short.

The NSA got a foothold on the people privacy’s after the 9/11 attacks. Although the NSA claims they are doing it for the safety of the American people, there are some boundaries they cross that are not constitutionally acceptable. A recent, major story was broadcasted where information that the NSA was spying on millions in the U.S was leaked out by Edward Snowden, former NSA agent. This is done through linkability – the ability for the government to link up people’s data in their daily lives. For example, if someone swipes their debit card at the train, the government can link up all of the data that the debit card has been through. Essentially, the government can track where they go, what they buy, even who they hang out with by comparing it to other people with similar travel patterns. By linking up multiple sources of data, the government can condense it into “metadata” which are a list of facts that may not necessarily be true but can still be used evidence in a trial one is convicted in. This gives the NSA an incentive to investigate almost anyone, no matter how minuscule the relation is. Snowden explains that before the internet was inspected by the NSA, people would freely express themselves. Afterwards, growing terror of being surveilled caused the imprisonment of many people’s curiosity. Now, it can be the imprisonment of people with the justification of them being a possible terrorist. Once Snowden exposed the injustice, people became more mindful of the privacy way they were battling in. People began to realize that what people used to call liberty and freedom is what people now call privacy. So, if the people’s privacy is endangered, then the people’s liberty are also at stake.

In another case, the FBI targeted young Aaron Schwartz when he was found tinkering with MIT’s data to access Jstor.com’s information network, which was described as unnecessarily expensive at the time. Aaron saw this as injustice: sharing knowledge was a moral imperative. Those who have access to exclusive information, like a college student’s paid database, are privileged and should share it to those who are in need of knowledge such as people in Third World countries. Yet, Aaron was still indicted with multiple charges even though he did not do anything with the data he discovered. It was the government’s need to make an example out of Aaron – to show to all the other hackers. That was the real incentive, not breaking the law.

However, with the power of the internet, people can create changes to this unjust system.  Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), an act proposed to attack copyright infringement by enforcing censorship, was at war with the American people. Demand Progress, an anti-SOPA campaign led by Aaron, unexpectedly overrode the SOPA act. At first, many of the supporters did not actually believe it would work, but once it started getting momentum, the possibility was greater. In just a few days, congressmen and senators switched to be anti-SOPA as many major websites blacked out to prove that SOPA was unnecessary censorship. As a result, freedom of speech for the people won over the government’s radical proposal for censorship. This is a prime example of how powerful the internet really is in demanding and inspiring change, and that the internet is not a force to be underestimated with.

Although Aaron and Snowden may seem like the 1%, the war between privacy of the individual and the “protection” is driven especially by the average internet user. For instance, the large hacktivist group Anonymous, originated on the image board 4chan, helped support Tunisia citizens fight during the riots by providing them dial-up internet when there was a total wipe out of their country’s internet. Yet, people in Anonymous were still targeted by the FBI for protesting in trivial matters such as the possibly cult teachings of the Church of Scientology.

As Aaron said in Guerilla Open Access Manifesto, “Information is power, but just like power, people want to keep it to themselves.”. The war continues for the fight for the people right to privacy, information, and ultimately for democracy. Living in the U.S. many citizens fear what will happen to their data, metadata, and essentially their pursuit of happiness if censorship stands in the way. Although widely spread apart, U.S. citizens stand together on the same ground for individual expression using new media as their creative outlet and tool for moral innovations.

A Day of Abstaining from Technology

It was a day where the only technology-related activity was turning off my laptop, and a day where I was trapped in a cycle of entertainment-seeking greed. I abstained from technology to the point where I never even picked up my phone, tried to not look at the laptop screen (my roommate was printing something for me), and played several loops of different songs probably to keep my mind entertained. 

There were moments where I had to do something with my phone, such as setting a timer, that I tried but immediately realized that I didn’t even have it. It was a reflex, an unrealized habit, for a stimulated headspace that was unaware of the muscle memory of picking-up-my-phone-in-my-pocket. It’s something I do so often that it might as well be one word. Moments like these make me realize that I’m pretty damn addicted to my phone, but I’m comparing to my pre-smart phone self.

I brought a pen and pad when I went to go eat with my coworkers to fill the “void of stimulation”, in my mind and physically in my pocket (I literally felt unbalanced). I actually got some pretty cute ideas down, but maybe because I didn’t have much to really talk about so it was a way to ease my boredom.

Surprisingly, I did not be more productive that day. While trying to read, my mind was in constant loops as if it was desperately seeking some form of entertainment, something to fill this void of entertainment. It was honestly the most difficult time I had doing homework. I guess it shows how high my baseline for stimulation is, and how essential technology is for lifting up my entire mood basically. The mindset of always “doing something” via technologic gadgets set my baseline so high that I forgot how to fall back.

Logging a day of technology

Saturday

I used about 3-5hours of technology Saturday.  I went to the SESRP conference for a few hours  and noticed how I was able to take notes, but multitasking with social media. The intention was to spread the livestream around, not to scroll down the page. I was also contacting a friend on social media even though we lived on the same floor; it somehow appealed easier to me. I checked my messaged based on what event happened; if it was after dinner then I would check to see what my friends were doing tonight. If in the morning, I’m checking to see if there’s anything I need to organize my day for. Overall, I used technology to a moderate extent, but there are still point where it’s just unnecessary, such as texting my friend instead of going to his dorm when we live on the same floor.

I keep my phone alerts on at night while I'm sleeping, but that's because I have an alarm set. Most of the time I don't get any other notification besides my alarm, and even if I do, it doesn't wake me up since I'm a pretty heavy sleeper. If I know I'm getting a lot of notifications, then I'll just mute them. I obviously don't respond to them; I'm not going to waste well-needed sleep for a message that most likely doesn't even need my attention. I've received too much spam to try to respond to everything quickly. Maybe instant-validation in instant-messaging left me apathetic with instant-responding.

I don't remember seeing many advertisements, especially since I either used my phone or have the adblock extension on my computer. Sometimes when I read through some articles online, I see links to other posts that seem like shallow, attention-grabbing news that don't have any real relevance to my life, so they're super annoying. However, I would sometimes give in depending on how bored or how much free time I have. I guess freedom without purpose is an instinctive incentive to do meaningless things.