Did he do it?

In a recent news story that has been all over TV and the Internet, Phillip Markoff allegedly set up appointments on Craigslist with two women who were then attacked by him. One women died. There could be other victims, they are still investigating. 

I think this is a serious case and I think I can definitely relate this to my theme of enabling or suppressing your identity within new media. I have not talked much about Craigslist on my blogs but I think it is a type of new media and social networking site that sometimes gets overlooked because of all the hype of Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. 

This type of site allows you to search for services, jobs, houses, and post ones that you are willing to sell or advertise as well. Many probably did not know there was a section titled “eroitc” on there though. I feel like that is just asking for trouble, but anyways the results from this service has left one woman dead and who knows what else has happened to others. 

I think this man who is luring these women into his hotel rooms etc, has obviously suppressed his identity to his fiance, neighbor, and family (if this is true) and let another side of him be enabled on the Internet. KSL reported on this story and here are a few quotes from people talking about the alleged murderer:

"He could not hurt a fly," Megan McAllister said in an e-mail to ABC's "Good Morning America. "All I have to say is Philip is a beautiful person, inside and out," she said in the e-mail read on Tuesday's program.

"He was smart, he carried himself well, he was clean, a good looking guy," said Bernard, a retired electric company worker. "He seemed like the type that would have it all. It doesn't make sense."

Those quotes do not sound like someone that would commit this type of crime so obviously he is hiding part of his identity, and then felt that he could show a different side of him on the Internet, which in turn got him into some serious trouble.

Another thing that I thought was interesting in this case was that the investigators were trying to reach his fiances family through Facebook! That shows you how valuable this new social networking site has become, that police are using it to find people!!!! I think that is crazy because you don’t really know if the person who they say they are on Facebook is really who they are. They could receive false information or be wasting their time thinking they have the right person. 

So I think this story teaches us a lesson that most of us probably know. You cannot automatically trust who you meet online. You have to be careful when meeting people you have contacted on the Internet, and especially that people who say they are one minute could be a different one the next minute. Don’t you agree?

Match.com

Before MySpace and Facebook were as popular as they are today for finding new friends, potential dates, or even a husband/wife, there were other services people might not be aware of. 

Services such as Match.com or eHarmony were, and still are places to search for a potential love interest in a safe, secure way. 

Match.com give singles the opportunity to express themselves through various writing sections, photos, as well as select preferences regarding the person they’re searching for. With the click of a mouse, members can instantly see photos and read about potential matches in their area.

I think this type of service is a great way to enable your personality/identity in ways that was never thought possible before. You are able to post things about yourself including interests, hobbies, and what physical features you have. AND you can also post on your page what you are looking for in a partner which shows your personality in a different way. It lets you show the people looking at your page if you would be interested in them or not. 

A big controversy that has been hitting these dating sites is that the gay community was unable to use them until recently. Match.com has recently added the feature to allow gays to use the service just like anyone else. I think this is great because it might be hard to meet people in your area in the gay community and this gives them a chance to see who else is out there in a safe and fun way. 

Another great thing about Match.com is that they understand the importance of privacy and integrity. All communication between members on Match.com happens through an anonymous email network. The names and contact information of all our members are kept confidential until the member personally decides to share it with a potential match. And, to help ensure the integrity of their community, every profile and photo is screened by their Customer Care team for appropriateness before it’s posted to the site.

I think their privacy policy will help people to say what they really feel because they know it is safe and being kept confidential. It also is a place where everyone is there for the same purpose. Unlike Facebook where some people are there for friends and local events, this site is clear that it is to find a match. 

On top of being safe, and fun, I believe Match.com will allow many people who are too shy to go out and meet people to have a chance to find someone they love. Just like some people are too shy to talk in class, imagine how hard it would be to speak up to someone you might like. This is a space where you can break our of your shell and feel empowered to say what you want and maybe talk to people you never would have had the chance to before.

What do you think about online dating sites? Good….Bad……?

Who's really behind the words?

As Twitter is increasingly becoming more popular by the day, I have been seeing many great news articles being written about it. 

I found an article written April 6 that talked about fake identities of celebrities on Twitter. They talk about it in a more comedic way than usual, which gave it added appeal.

If you want to read the whole article here is the link:

 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30032294

I think this article is interesting because I have mainly been touching upon “normal” peoples identities being involved in this type of setting, but we have to think of the people that are in the spotlight all the time too, and how these new technologies are affecting their identities as well. 

This can relate back to the article we read titled Evaluating the Social and Cultural Implications of the Internet by Brey. Specifically, when he talks about some of the benefits of the Internet including Information Dissemination. As a reminder, this just means that the internet makes it possible for anyone to quickly and easily post and disperse information and make that information available to a large amount of people, even though that information might not be completely true or appropriate. 

For example, recently Dina Lohan, mother of Lindsey Lohan, was impersonated on Twitter by “clever Twitter troll Matt Cherette. He recently raked the exposed nerves of sensitive Twitter fanboys and inadvertently punked E!’s alleged comedian Chelsea Handler by posing as celebrity mom Dina Lohan on an extended rant regarding the unfairness of Twitter’s 140 character limit.” This proves that not only net newbies are falling for these fake identities, but other celebrities too!

Now as we all know, with the fame and fortune of being a celebrity, there is also going to  rumors and false information posted about you online, but it is still not right, or is it?

On top of people impersonating celebrities that are alive, there has been a recent spike in people pretending to be people who have died like Edgar Allen Poe and Walt Whitman.

Do you feel like this is okay? These people have passed away and now someone is pretending to be them and they have no control over it. Not that the celebrities who are alive have control over it either but still…….it’s a touchy subject. 

Ubiquitous Computing

As we all know there are several different ways that our identity is at risk when we talk about ubiquitous computing. I have grabbed a few different ways that our privacy/identity would potentially be at risk if this new technology was implemented around the nation. 

 

First of all, ubiquitous computing has many benefits but we still need to look for those dangers or downfalls that might not be so obvious. 

One downfall that we might not have noticed before is that the government could potentially track your every movement and potentially use that evidence for the legal prosecutions of crime or things like a cheating spouse, etc. As we talked about in class, is our privacy more important than being able to have these great new breakthrough technologies?

I would tend to want to be somewhere in the middle, but if I had to choose one, I think I would choose to have new technologies and lose a sense of my privacy. That is me personally, but I’m sure there are many people who would not look at it that way. 

I feel this way because I am usually apart of the early adopters and I always want to be one of the first to have and use new technologies. I want to have it and use it even if I have to sacrifice something important. Plus, when the Internet was first started up, I think we must have been going through something similar to this, maybe just not so extreme. Before we had the Internet it was difficult to track some ones interests etc, through technologies and when the Internet was introduced that all would change, so I believe we have had to give up things before and its just a part of the cycle of new technologies being introduced. 

As Weiss says in his article, “The future world of ubiquitous computing may very well shift from one of ease and convenience to one where each of us has an inescapable 

sense of being watched, at best, and no control over our personal information, at worst. He also goes on to say that, “These issues are already being argued in the contexts of corporate e-mail snooping and the use of IT software that can track user activity down to the level of individual key strokes.” 

As this new phenomena is approaching dangers will surface and people will be worried, but when this becomes an everyday kinda thing, I think we will see more of the benefits being talked about and not worry as much about the downfalls. 

After seeing some of the negative effects, I found an interesting quote from Hazel Grian who wrote an article about the Sixth Sense Computing. 

She says, [Sixth Sense Computing] “It's the opposite of virtual reality, instead of me going into a world that doesn't exist this brings the world that doesn't exist into the world that I live in. Ubiquitous computing reality means you can pull in all sort of data from the cloud as you walk through a real space rather than Second Life.”

I thought this was interesting because we talk so much about “reality” vs. “virtual reality” and I thought that was an interesting way to look at it. 

Watch what you say online...

Just recently I have become more familiar with different social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg etc. I have seen the advantages and disadvantages of both, and recently some of the downfalls have been standing out in the news. 

For example, a man was using twitter for his personal use recently and said a few things that could backfire.

He said, "Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.” Which was then replied with, "Who is the hiring manager? I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web."

This just shows that we have to be careful what we say on the Internet, because it might end up in the wrong hands at the end of the day. 

I think this example shows how we are now expressing ourselves on the Internet, in ways we might not have before, and how this is enabling our identity and personalities, but sometimes things do not need to be said online where anyone can see it, especially our co-workers and bosses. 

This shouldn't make you feel like you can’t be yourself on the Internet, or that you have to hold back your true feelings, you just have to be careful who is allowed to see your site, and if something could potentially be seen by someone inappropriate, then take the right measures to ensure your work or anything else important will not be affected by this. 

Popkin, an msnbc online writer, has a good rule to live by, “Never post anything you wouldn’t say to your mom, boss and significant other.”

Another example I found in current events was this new idea of “people search engines”. This means there are sites out there that are designed to let you dig up information on friends, foes and anyone in between. It releases information on what you have been searching, what kinds of music you listen to on Pandora, and even who you have in your address book. 

This idea seems scary that anyone can see your personal information at the click of a button. But, the author of this article, JR Raphael from PC World Magazine, gets into something deeper. Something we have been talking about in class. He says that even though this service provides information that may seem insignificant, the cumulative effect of seeing it all together, is very powerful. 

He says, "A lot of people know that they have a public MySpace page, a lot of people know that they have a public Twitter album. But, when combined together, it's not one plus one equals two -- you actually create a new identity."

This relates back to what Bugeja says about having dual consciousness due to this ever-evolving technology. Maybe he is onto something….?

I think these two examples show how new technologies are enabling us to share our true identities, but in the end, these advances might be harmful to our “real-lives”. What do you think? 

Read the whole article about people search engines here:

http://tech.msn.com/products/articlepcw.aspx?cp-documentid=18632762

Gold Farming and Identity

After our discussion in class about goldfarming, it became apparent that ones identity is sometimes easily spotted just by their ranking on a game, or the amount of "gold" they have. As Americans are increasingly using the benefits of goldfarming to advance in their gaming worlds, their identities are in turn being purchased instead of earned. 

Like we talked about in class, one can buy themselves to a higher level if desired, instead of putting in the long hours of earning their way up the gaming ladder. In my opinion this seems like cheating. Just like Dibbell says in her article “The Life of the Chinese Gold Farmer”. She says that “This development has not been universally welcomed. In the eyes of many gamers, in fact, real-money trading is essentially a scam — a form of cheating only slightly more refined.” 

So are these M.M.O’s ultimately enabling or suppressing identities? I would have to argue that they do both in a way. The are enabled because people who might be afraid to express their views (ex. political, gender, or financial) can now participate online in games such as Second Life. Here they can express themselves in a way they might not thought was possible before. But they now have the power to live in two three maybe even multiple lives at a time, and be a different person in each one that expresses different sides of their personality. 

But on the other hand, these M.M.O’s can also suppress ones identity because people might be afraid of how they they really feel and so they act in other ways that they think will be more accepted online. For example, even if you don’t have a lot of money in “real life” you can play long enough and be rich on the game. You can buy weapons etc.... and “pretend” to be wealthy and powerful.

In a virtual world it would be ideal if we all started equal but you can become powerful with money by buying gold and advancing to higher levels. Some individuals don’t have that advantage and have to work 10 times harder to achieve the same status. 

So what does this mean for the future Americans? Have we become too lazy of a nation that we have to purchase peoples precious time just to advance in a game? The gold farmers are only getting paid a fraction of what they deserve, so Americans can get their instant gratification. Do you think goldfarming is unethical?

"The Internet Has Taken Over My Life"

In a recent episode of the Tyra Show (I know... I like to watch Tyra, sometimes good topics like this one come on!) she had a show called "The Internet Has Taken Over My Life", and there were several young girls who claim the Internet is ruining their lives.

The first young girl says she is addicted to Facebook because she seems to miss appointments and sometimes she checks it up to 100 times a day. She has 1,336 friends on there, and I feel as if she is doing this because she wants to be popular and liked, and the online environment allows her to achieve that. But is she really making friends? Will these people make her life more enjoyable? I wonder what she gains from spending so much time on in Internet rather than “real-life”?

Another fad that is going around among young girls is reading celebrity blogs. Some girls say they are reading the blogs up to 25 times throughout the day. They say they don’t want to go to school or even on vacation because they might miss what’s going on in those celebrities’ lives, and they NEED to know. Has this fad made young girls want to change their identity to be like the celebrities? Are we going to see a difference in this age groups online activity in the coming years because of these blogs?

Along with the girls, young men are getting caught up in this as well. Boyfriends are checking Facebook pages out of jealousy. He checks her page up to 4 times in 1 hour! Is the Internet making him question his trust in his girlfriend? Or is he just using the Internet to show his true personality?

Finally, the most drastic case was a young girl who participates in an online anime community and in turn, it has totally isolated her from the rest of the world. She spends about 14 hours a day on this site. She said “The more time I spend on the web, the more I start feeling it’s the only world I’ve got. She now has no friends to physically hang out with, she failed high school and is re-taking it, and had gained 30 pounds because of lack of exercise. She also never even goes out of the house if she does not have to. She locks herself in her room isolated from her family and friends to live in this online community.

Are all of these people afraid of something? Are they ashamed of who they are? Do they turn to the internet because people are maybe more accepting there?

I am still trying to figure out why people spend this much time on the Internet and hopefully with further research I will be able to come to some assumptions that will clear up this grey area for me…..