The Facebook Effect ( Second Blog )

     What made the Facebook so successful when its predecessors failed one by one? The bottom line was that Mark Zuckerberg's "central thought was that kids have a deep-seated desire to have certain kinds of social interaction in college and that's what drives them is their extreme interest in their friends." ( pg 107 ) From the very beginning Mark was all about freedom for his website, no matter how big is company became. After becoming a million dollar company and having millions of users, Mark knew he had to allow investors to invest. Facebook's first evaluation was a little less than 98 million dollars compared to Google's 75 million dollar's. Now that money was no longer an obstacle for Mark he had to transform his company into a business and himself into a CEO.
     Hiring was never an easy thing for Facebook, but yet again who would want to work for a twenty year old CEO with no experience and an invention considered a fad by many. Steve Chen for example "went ahead and left to start YouTube." ( pg 129 ) Zuckerberg was new to all of this and bought himself a diary to jot all his ideas down. The diary was named The Book of Change and "it revealed in detail where he was hoping to take his company." ( pg 135 ) Mark then took another step towards becoming a CEO by shadowing Don Graham, CEO of the Washington Post. All though Mark was new to all of this, he knew no matter what Facebook was going to forever be for the people. For example the creation of the News Feed wall on Facebook caused major disputes that people did not want their information distributed so easily and to everyone. Mark being an intelligent man tweaked a few privacy settings and quieted the rioters.
     The whole notion of privacy settings is a completely different topic on its own. Facebook deals with users trying to create fake profiles of celebrities or even friends on a daily basis. Mark tries to install the idea that Facebook users should "have on identity" no matter what. ( pg 199 ) But Facebook itself has faults in its program. Their are some users that try to create an account but the system does not allow them to create it due to the fact that their name is a single letter for example. However, users must be aware that these privacy settings are created to ensure no hoax profiles. At the end of the day Mark is both a villain and hero for his privacy settings on Facebook, its up to the user to decide which he is.

Midterm Blog

     Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that offers information to every ones fingertips. People must be aware however, that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia created by people like you and me. Sure there are respectable people offering accurate information from a field, but some information is malicious and incorrect. Wikipedia should not be used as a scholarly source, for the fact that anyone can create or edit a wiki article. Instead the website should  be used as a background check for certain topics. Once someone has a general idea on a topic thanks to Wikipedia they should use a more scholarly source to make sure all the facts are correct. It is truly amazing that a non famous person can contribute to society's knowledge, but not everyone has the same intention of creating a bigger circle of knowledge.
     The technology we have today allows us in a sense to change or alter truth. There have been numerous accounts of Wikipedia users declaring the death of a person and editing that persons Wikipedia article.  Someone who doesn't follow up on the life of this person regularly might stumble upon this information and take it as reliable and site it. The ease of altering reality whether for fun or malicious reasons, creates a bad image for our generation. We have so much technology that we should harness its power to better society rather than fool around with it. This project has reassured my reasoning that Wikipedia can not be taken as one hundred percent accurate. At times the website does tend to leave out information for whatever reason, so anyone using the website for facts should always double check the references.

The Facebook Effect ( First Blog )

     Majority of Americans either know about Facebook or are on it. Many of us are joined Facebook for its social features, but some people over the years have learned how to use Facebook as a "constructive or destructive force." ( pg 8 ) One of the best examples of its constructive force would be what Oscar Morales did in Colombia. Oscar harnessed the power of Facebook to create a group against FARC, a guerrilla group that terrorizes Colombia. The groups sole purpose for Morales was to "express my anger" as he states, "it was like therapy." ( pg 2 ) Soon Facebook became a political tool, where millions of fans could join the group against FARC and express their disgust without fear. This simple Facebook group had the power to construct massive protest groups around the world to go against something wrong in society.
     Some people however don't realize that Facebook is also a destructive power. A lot of members of Facebook allow it to substitute face to face communication. Facebook was created to "make it so people could get access to information about anyone, and anyone could share anything that they wanted to." ( pg 29 ) Facebook should be a stepping stone for relations! Facebook allows its members to access information in a variety of ways ranging from its News Feed to its Poke feature. Most of Facebook features came about from previous social networks such as AIM and its away messages. Making Facebook easy and fast for the people caused it to survive and eventually spread to colleges all over the nation.
     Since Facebook was not the first social network created it brought along with it legal issues. It seemed as if "whenever I do something successful, every capitalist out there wants a piece of the action." ( pg 83 ) This phrase was more than true when Cameron, Tyler and Divya creators of another social network accused Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, for stealing their ideas. Both parties agreed on settlement and Facebook today seems to have "lasting cultural value that could take over the world." ( pg 47 ) Lets just hope everyone uses it in a constructive force.

Made To Break ( Third Blog )

     Electronic waste is spinning out of control, especially in America. Landfills can no longer contain all the waste Americas dispose of, but is it really waste? Working devices are being thrown away especially cell phones. The reason is that companies keep producing new models and "modern consumers tend to value whatever is new and original over what is old, traditional, durable or used." ( pg 265 ) Advertising companies are not the only people to blame, some Americans have what is termed neophilia. There are three types of neophilians that contribute to E-waste, pristine, trailblazing, and fashion neophilians. Pristine's are obsessed with what is new, trailblazers always want the newest technology, and finally fashion fanatics speak for themselves. These three groups give rise to what is known as a social cascade, where Americans tend to follow what others do. Soon a domino effect occurs and we are all throwing away our "waste" to replace it with what is accepted by society, something "new." Such a pattern "renders the term obsolescence itself obsolete." ( pg 265 )
     The never ending advancement in technology is rendering obsolete their immediate predecessor. If we look at slide rulers "death", it came due to the invention of the handheld calculator. Once a new invention is created that offers speed and accuracy companies can not afford to stay behind. For example, the creation of the first four function calculator "the M-27 manufacturer was Fristo, Denner, and Pape, a company that produced slide rulers." ( pg 202 ) The company new that the future would lay in calculators and no longer in slide rulers. The invention of calculators also brought the obsolescence of the skill set that older generation engineers possessed. A line was drawn out between old engineers who wanted to keep the skills they possessed such as using a slide ruler rather than the new engineers that took for advantage the simplicity of the calculator.
     Miniaturization and the short life span of goods is creating the E-waste problem. Durability comes from psychological and technical obsolescence. These new models that seem as necessary are nothing more than companies attempts to extract money from its consumers. A change in color does nothing for a cell phone and its time that Americans notice that. We are polluting our air and water, at the cost of a product that is created by companies to break down in a few months? Americans might one day believe that "marriages are throw away items as well and...on a global scale countries and indeed subcontinents are disposable like Kleenex." ( pg 228 )