Generation Why Post

While reading the article, I came across one part that I really enjoyed.

"When a human being becomes a set of data on a website like Facebook, he or she is reduced. Everything shrinks. Individual character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility. In a way it’s a transcendent experience: we lose our bodies, our messy feelings, our desires, our fears. It reminds me that those of us who turn in disgust from what we consider an overinflated liberal-bourgeois sense of self should be careful what we wish for: our denuded networked selves don’t look more free, they just look more owned."

This is so true! Being connected to the internet, really anything with technology, makes you lose part of your Self. I know I am addicted to the internet, two weeks ago my roommate and I tried to go the day without Facebook and Twitter, and sadly, that was hard. My individualism is reduced because I do what everyone else my age does, I check Facebook multiple times a day. Conforming, that is what I am doing with Facebook. I conform to what everyone else is doing because I don't want to be left out when it comes to knowing what Sally from home posted as her status.

This also reminds me of the video we watched in class on Ray Kurzwell. He said how he predicts that all of our brains will be backed up onto a hard drive, we will have internet capability in our brains. I want to know what is next then? Having all of our brains on the same networked? Hooked onto the same server? Then there will be hackers who break into where all of your thoughts are stored. From that point forward, nothing will be safe, not even your deepest thoughts and fears. This does not sound like a world I would like to live in. What is the point of living in a world where nothing can be private. Everyone will soon know everything about you, and that is scary. Everything that is said in the paragraph I quoted will be true. We will no longer be free.

Week 8 Extra Post: Facebook as a Presentation of Self

During class on Monday, we talked about how Google is a platform for the choosing self whereas Facebook is a platform for the presenting self. And I totally agree with this. Facebook is what you make it. I choose my profile picture, what part "About Me" gets shared to the public and who my friends are. If someone has statuses or updates that I don't agree with, I can simply unfriend them or delete the post off my timeline. If it comes to it, I can block them from my profile all together.

Facebook gives you a lot of options on how you want to present yourself. Your best friends can be your family members, or even your spouse if you so desire. You can present yourself as a die hard Cubs fan and have your photos and about me all about the Cubs. If you want to show your support for something, say cancer, you can make your profile picture purple. And if you don't want yourself to be found, you can hide your profile, or even hide your name. You even choose who can see your pictures, if you don't want to present an image to yourself to strangers.

I believe that Facebook is what you make it. You literally get out of it everything you put into it. If you don't want something known about you, you don't have to put it on Facebook, you can leave it blank. You even have the capability to take down posts put up by other people. Facebook gives us the power to be who we want to be. If we want to be ourselves or someone else, the choice is ours.

HTML Project

For my project, I am going to talk about how, "You don't need to be at your desk to need an answer." Google, as well as the world, is becoming more and more mobil. We no longer have time to sit at a desk and scroll through our desktop computer to find an answer to that puzzling question we have. These questions come to us when we are all over the world, so why not make the answers accessible to us where ever we are.

I believe Google is doing this. We have access to Google anywhere we are, assuming we always have service. But now with the introduction of how they want to put balloons in the sky that distribute service, and even the Google Car, where ever we are Google will be there.

This reminds me of religion because religion is something that is always around you, even if you can't see it. Google is slowly becoming that. We can hardly tell that these Google Glasses are connected to Google. A car is just an everyday thing, but now to have it hooked up to Google is a crazy thought. These balloons are going to give us service, and we won't be able to tell they exist because we can't see them. Religion is something you believe in, even if you don't see it, and this is what Google is becoming.

Free Blog Week 7

While reading the chapters for today, I was struck by the whole 9/11 debacle. I understand the longer they leave the ribbon up, the more awkward it would be when they took it down, but this was a HUGE event that affected everyone. Google is a page most people use regularly and people want to be reminded that the world still cares about what happened. By seeing the page up longer, it shows that people still care.

I personally think this was blown up so much because Edwards worries too much. He mentioned this earlier in the book, but now I see what he means. Google is more of a laid back company, few rules and a relaxed atmosphere. They have a massage therapist there for goodness sake. It really interests me to see how Edwards deals with this with the rest of his time there. It sounds like he is trying to keep his head above water, it's going to be interesting to see how he survived.

Another example of Edwards worrying too much is the Google Doodles. He thought it was an awful idea, but now it is extremely successful. I think Edwards is too afraid to stray away from the norm. That is a huge issue with Google, because Google likes to be creative.

Google and Self

I think one of the problems with Doug is that he had a hard time establishing a sense of Self within Google. I feel like he always compared himself to everyone else and pointed out the differences. Not being freshly out of college and being older than a lot of people who work there. This added with the unique environment in which Google had, created a confusion for Self within Google.

A good example of how Doug is unsure of his sense of Self is on page 14, when he says, "I was ready, but not sure for what." Throughout most of the first part of the book, he is not sure where he stands as an employee, as a person inside of Google. He never really knows what he should be working on, and he was not used to a company working like that.

I don't believe it wasn't until the hundred banners project when Doug finally felt like he had something to do, like he found his place in this office. After this project, he started to bring his children to work on the weekend. I believe this meant he finally felt like part of Google because he was comfortable with this community by bringing his children to work, merging the two parts of his life. I think between having an important project to work on, and bringing his family to work, he finally found his Self within Google, and knew where he stood.

Week Five Extra Post

During class, the discussion of how Google gives you suggestions about what you are going to type came up. How this is based on elements of trust and neutrality. The more I was thinking about that, the more I agreed with it. I have always thought it was odd that Google would guess what I was thinking, but I never thought about how offensive it could be, if Google guessed wrong.

We also trust that Google will be correct in what they guess, and most of the time they are. Google isn't bias about what we like. They don't care about what side we agree on with controversial topics, they just give us what they know we would like. It is crazy that someone can come up with this algorithm, it blows my mind.

Google as a Medium

To begin with, I wanted to make sure I knew exactly what was meant by Google being a medium. So what did I do? I Googled medium to make sure I fully understood what the word meant. Google functions as a medium because a medium is the method of doing something. To understand this prompt, as well as every word I have ever questions the definition on, Google has always been the method of choice I use to find out what it means.

Also, that I even used the word 'Googled,' transforming a proper noun into a verb, shows that this is a medium, you can Google something. Going back 20 years, if you told someone you were going to Google something, they would look at you crazy. But today, this is a normal thing, almost everyone knows that you are doing if you tell them you Googled something.

Finally, Google is also a medium because Google can be the method of doing pretty much anything. Need directions? Google can help you. Need an image of cute puppies to cheer your roommate up after a bad day? Google again can help you. Need to purchase a house and want to find a good Realtor? Google will be helpful. Google is a medium to so many thing, without Google, most of us would be lost, literally and figuratively. 

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