The Fruits of My(Space) Labor

In Trebor Scholz' article, "What the MySpace generation should know about working for free," the argument is made that what we do on SNS sites like MySpace, messaging, meeting people, writing blogs, etc. is all part of "immaterial labor" that has taken over the internet. 

From the perspective of Wanda, the filling out of surveys on MySpace may well count as labor. On the other hand, she’ll get something out of spending time on MySpace as well. No doubt! People feel the pleasure of creation, they gain friendships, share their life experience, archive their memories, they are getting jobs, find dates and contribute to the greater good.

 

Now, when most people hear the word "labor", they think working in the field or working a real job. Of course, we don't make money from using SNS. Instead, as stated in class today, we get something else. 

As Scholz says, SNS becomes the product itself. Companies such as MySpace are sold to big media conglomerates, such as News Corp, which is flat out amazing. Even after the dot.com economic bubble that inflated and burst, people like Rupert Murdoch are willing to roll the dice again on what some may argue to be another world wide fad. The question is, why?

The fact that one person lives of another’s labor is natural to them. Just consider the social context that allows a company to emerge that is build on the idea of advertisements created by the people who watch them. You create and give away for free (or for a sum that is not equivalent to the value that you generate), the advertisement that is aimed at yourself. Such companies do in fact exist and they are thriving.

It's an awfully big risk to take for these companies. For all we know SNS may be as good as dead in five years. In any case, this entire system of people laboring to make these companies viable in a bidding market adds up to one simple model for Scholz:

The labor of the very very many creates massive wealth for the very few 

 

Do I have a problem with this? Absolutely not. It's capitalism, and nobody is getting ripped off here. There are other things besides money that one can get in return for their labor on these SNS sites. For me, it's the pleasure of being a part of a revolutionary time in our culture. A time where through websites like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, we can express ourselves in ways never before seen or heard of. 

That's the value I get out of my labor, the ability to tell my kids and grandkids that I was a part of this technological revolution. The personalized ads aren't bad either though...

Why Parents Have a Point on Teen Privacy

I think everyone in this class has heard it from their parents. "Don't do this, don't do that. Make sure you do this, etc." I think we've all heard this speech from our parents in regards to SNS.

I didn't realize this until I got older, but parents really fear for their kids' safety. Not just fear as in scared, but trembling in fear. The worst case scenerio is in the back of their minds at all times.

I can remember when me and my friend were eight years old. We lived on the same block, and one day, we decided to take a walk downtown to the park, alone. Our parents called the cops, and the next thing I remember, a police officer in a squad car was blaring his siren at me. My parents were angered, but they were also relieved at the same time.

So it should come to no suprise that when I signed up for MySpace, my parents found out and they gave me a little talk. They thought I gave out too much information on the internet (in hindsight, I didn't, but the standards for amount of information are different from my parents and myself). They did not want some pervert stalking my profile and contacting me. I told them it was ridiclious and to start treating me as an adult.

Now, as I read the article "MySpace Bug Leaks 'Private' Teen Photos to Voyers," it's not so ridiclious anymore.

"If kids are doing what they think they need to do, and are still having their photos picked up by slimebags on the internet ... then these are serious issues," said Parry Aftab, executive director of WiredSafety.org, a children's-online-safety group. "It's a matter of trust and it's a matter of safety." (WiredSafety is not connected to Wired News or Wired magazine.)

Representatives for MySpace did not return Wired News phone calls Thursday.

The flaw exposes MySpace users who set their profiles to "private" -- the default setting for users under 16 -- even though MySpace's account settings page tells users, "Only the people you select will be able to view your full profile and photos."

Clicking on the photo link on a private profile gives unauthorized users this message: "This profile is set to private. This user must add you as a friend to see his/her profile." But anyone -- even those without a MySpace account -- can plug the target's public account number, called a "Friend ID," into a specially constructed URL that grants access to those photos.

Now I can see why parents are so worked up on the dangers of SNS. Part of it is fear that their children were not listening when the parents gave them the talk about the dangers of online social networking. The other part of it is the fact that the parents simply do not trust the technology. For example, my mom never uses her debit card online to buy things, for fear that her bank account will be hacked into. I think that fear has translated into fear that my profile will be hacked into.

New Media 2009 vs. Rock and Roll 1969

This week I had the pleasure of reading a great article by Emily Nussbaum entitled "Say Anything" that appeared in The New Yorker. I'd like to take this space and highlight one part of article I found interesting and very informative.

Nussbaum highlights the generational divide that has emerged within the past ten years or so between those who grew up with New Media in their lives, and those that did not.

It’s been a long time since there was a true generation gap, perhaps 50 years—you have to go back to the early years of rock and roll, when old people still talked about “jungle rhythms.” Everything associated with that music and its greasy, shaggy culture felt baffling and divisive, from the crude slang to the dirty thoughts it was rumored to trigger in little girls. That musical divide has all but disappeared. But in the past ten years, a new set of values has sneaked in to take its place, erecting another barrier between young and old. And as it did in the fifties, the older generation has responded with a disgusted, dismissive squawk.

A lot of people don't realize this, but older people back in the 50s and 60s hated rock and roll. It goes back to when Elvis was a twenty-something year old sensation, but it continued throughout the sixties, when Woodstock rocked upstate New York. The kids that listened to the music did not surrender when their musical tastes were rebuked by their parents. Instead, they rebelled, and kept on rocking. That's the reason why Paul McCartney can open up the Mets new ballpark and sell it out, and why Pete Townshend of the Who can still smash his guitar on stage.

Now, I can't help but to think of it as ironic that these same rebellious people that went to Woodstock at 17 with a case of beer against their parent's wishes are now cracking down on their children being on Facebook and MySpace. Why would these same people that forty years ago rejected their parent's attempts to limit their freedom of expression do the same to their own kids? Professor Clay Shirky of New York University has an opinion on this.

“Whenever young people are allowed to indulge in something old people are not allowed to, it makes us bitter. What did we have? The mall and the parking lot of the 7-Eleven? It sucked to grow up when we did! And we’re mad about it now.” People are always eager to believe that their behavior is a matter of morality, not chronology, Shirky argues. “You didn’t behave like that because nobody gave you the option.”

Now, I don't completely disagree with this assessment. After all, if Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace are for the young, then why would older adults be joining these sites? They want to feel young again, and they are somewhat jealous, even if they don't show it, of the younger generation for having this much freedom of expression.

At the same time, that's not the motive of the older generation for rejecting new media as a form of expression for the younger generation. There's another consideration to be had, parenting. We may not know it yet, but our parents have had to put up with a lot.

Their number one priority in parenting is protecting their son or daughter, which is made harder tenfold when the son or daughter has a computer. More often than not, parents have no idea how to begin to tackle the problem of their children posting too much information on the internet. They're not familiar with new media, so they have no idea about how it works. That's enough to make any good parent nervous.

The best parents can do is talk to their kids, and often that's not enough. As the article notes, they have an invisible audience, their skin is tougher, and, often enough, they archive their adolescence, which, at the ends, provides in some cases for a nice future shock.

The fact is that many of these same kids that wore their hair long, that went to rock concerts, and experimented in risky behavior when they were young have grown into conservative parents, which, I believe, is why they resent the phenomenon of New Media. Yes, they may want what we have now, but they're also concerned about us making mistakes they made in their youth, mistakes that are available for the entire world to see with the click of a mouse.

On Social Networking and Privacy

It's no secret that Social Networking has changed our lives. Applications such as Facebook and MySpace have enabled us to reach out to new people, renew old friendships, and keep existing ones from drifting away to oblivion. It allows us to share our thoughts, feelings, and opinions in a community setting surrounded by a select group of friends, and not the general public. It seems like social networking has changed our lives for the better...

At least while we're still young that is. You see, some of us are a little bit more outspoken than others. Some of us, like to share information about ourselves freely. Some of us, give out a little too much information.

In other words, some of us will be burned in the future. This is explained in the article, "Social Networking Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship."

Acquisti and Gross (2006) argue that there is often a disconnect between students' desire to protect privacy and their behaviors, a theme that is also explored in Stutzman's (2006) survey of Facebook users and Barnes's (2006) description of the "privacy paradox" that occurs when teens are not aware of the public nature of the Internet.

I think we've all heard this at one point in our lives, whether it was a talk from our parents warning us to watch out what we did on the internet, or, in my case, from a letter sent home during high school from the headmaster, effectively telling our parents that some of their kids were embarrassing themselves on the internet. Most of us didn't listen, or at least I didn't. I didn't think of it as an issue for myself.

The good part of this all is that young people are beginning to realize the inherent dangers of social networking, as explained in Boyd and Ellison's article:

Pew found that 55% of online teens have profiles, 66% of whom report that their profile is not visible to all Internet users (Lenhart & Madden, 2007). Of the teens with completely open profiles, 46% reported including at least some false information.

Unfortunately, there are still 34 percent that sill don't get the picture. For my part, I try to read everything I post, and consider the ramifications. Unfortunately, I am not perfect. What about you? Is privacy and security always on your mind while browsing?

The problem with Wikipedia

Much has been said over the years about the establishment of Wikipedia as the go-to destination for the quick collection of information. There have been people from all walks of life that visit the site and love it, and just as many that criticize it.

The main criticisms have stemmed from it's lack of legitimacy as a source. Not only is Wikipedia a few years old, thus lacking a reputation for objectivity or reliable information over a period of time, but the fact that anyone can edit a page, and post anything they want. No, not just false information, literally everything. The fact that theoretically I could go on to Barack Obama's wikipedia page, post that he's a left wing, racist, marxist who wasn't even born in the United States, scares people, and it should, as it ruins what is supposed to be a site where people can go to get information quickly, as well as killing any chance for Wikipedia to achieve it's goal, a community-oriented website where people exchange information...that is people post information that is reliable and other people read it.

This opinion piece from Jaron Lanier, entitled the "Hazards of the New Online Collectivism" from 2006, argues that it's not really the problems of Wikipedia itself, but that it has risen too fast as an unchecked form of insane collectivism.

The problem I am concerned with here is not the Wikipedia in itself. It's been criticized quite a lot, especially in the last year, but the Wikipedia is just one experiment that still has room to change and grow. At the very least it's a success at revealing what the online people with the most determination and time on their hands are thinking, and that's actually interesting information.

No, the problem is in the way the Wikipedia has come to be regarded and used; how it's been elevated to such importance so quickly. And that is part of the larger pattern of the appeal of a new online collectivism that is nothing less than a resurgence of the idea that the collective is all-wise, that it is desirable to have influence concentrated in a bottleneck that can channel the collective with the most verity and force. This is different from representative democracy, or meritocracy. This idea has had dreadful consequences when thrust upon us from the extreme Right or the extreme Left in various historical periods. The fact that it's now being re-introduced today by prominent technologists and futurists, people who in many cases I know and like, doesn't make it any less dangerous.

Lanier is right, the fact that Wikipedia has really become such a part of our culture that it has the capability to recycle an old danger of collectivism and thrust it on to us in the new form.

I agree, but I don't think that's really the problem. The problem is the fact that there are idiots in this world, and idiots use Wikipedia. As a result, we are always going to have morons posting factually incorrect information. The key is not to get sucked into the vacumn of collectivism, but to also use common sense when browsing.

Unfortunately, when it comes to the internet, common sense is severely lacking.