IoT – Internet of Things

Intelligence of mankind can go beyond anything where I could not believe what have the man invented, the internet is like a substance that the mankind could not live without hence we get uncountable benefits from it. Through so many information technology developments, the mankind are able to expand their logic of information network through the use of mobile connectivity that leads to a creation of an internet of things (IoT). According to Mitew (2014), the term Internet of Things (IoT) coined in 1999 at the MIT Media Lab where it means physical objects connecting to the internet.

Without any attentiveness we tend to expose to IoT ubiquitously in our everday life, our mobile phone is the biggest invention of Internet of Things. The mobile phone has enable us to use various functions and conveniences that have speed up the quality of our life. Our mobile phone, which an object that store and process information as well as independently initiate action and can be remotely located within teir environment (Mitew, 2014). While using our mobile phone, it actually automatically adjust to an auto mode to disclose our location identity without our full observant. For instance, social applications like Facebook and Foursquare has enable us to ‘check-in’ wherever we are, as it automatically detects our own location. Also while we use Google Map or Waze, the application has automatically extracting details and information from our usage to the internet.

However, this smart invention has no doubt brought us a lot of benefits and advancement but it somehow relentlessly exploits to our privacy as the internet of things do all automatically. Mostly our information has uploaded into the internet automatically through the applications hence the internet has stock up big data of everything whether its important or useless. Nonetheless, does IoT is really helping us through our daily life or it unremittingly overpower the authority and supremacy of human? Can you imagine what the IoT can do to us in the near future?

References:

Mitew, T 2014, ‘DIGC202 – The internet of things’, lecture notes, accessed 25/10/2014, http://prezi.com/1lgxfron1kj0/digc202-the-internet-of-things/

Cybercrime to Cyberwar

As discussed from the previous lecture, it is perhaps believable that the act of hacktivism has their very own peculiar motives and some are still remain unidentified of reasons. For instance, Julian Assange has live to his act of hacktivism where he aims to leak secret information to publish to the site called Wikileaks for the reason to attain the freedom of information, while Anonymous is a famously well-known group of hackers that hacks and publicly stunt the act of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) outbreaks on corporate, religious and government websites where their motive were remain vague.

The revolution of hacking has become more intense and terrifying as technology has grow to become more advance where hackings job can dip through every little corner and crook to get to their entry of purpose. Initially, the phenomena of hacking has start off with simple cybercrime where Mitew (2014) stressed the examples like stealing identity of credit cards, passports, Trojans, exploits, rootkits, botnets, phishing kits and credentials. According to Mitew (2014), hacker ethos define themselves as the don’t damage computer system break in and they don’t change the information in those system that share information. Hacker that now act on cybercrime are no longer that humble anymore hence the immoral cybercrime has now grown to more inferior where cyberwar occurs.

Mitew (2014) define the cyberwar activities as a type surveillance, subversion, hacking, impersonation, hardware attacks and exploits to certain organization’s site. Cyberwar is a beyond intimidating where data and information can be sabotage or espionage through the hack of stealing. One of the best example of cyberwar is the Israeli Air Force bombs Syrian in the year of 2007 where Israel had compromised the Syrian air defense system and placed a logic bomb in the system that will bomb at a certain time and the exact time they would be attacking (Yarosh, 2011).

Now we see how the internet technologies have drive our human’s life activities where there is no need a physical war but through just a click of button cyberwar could happen anytime.

References:

Mitew, T 2014, ‘Dark fiber: Hackers, botnets, cyber war’, lecturer slides, accessed on 18/10/2014, http://prezi.com/iiied2_aa8tc/digc202-dark-fiber-hackers-botnets-cyberwar/

Yarosh, S 2007, ‘Cyber War Examples’, University of Pennsylvania, accessed on 18/10/2014, https://sites.google.com/site/uscyberwar/cyber-war-example

Hackers of Heroes or Villains?

The present media technology revolution is the biggest creation and amusement of all to the mankind thus it is somehow terrifying in some circumstances. The internet and media can definitely accelerate our way of improvements in life being in terms of daily activities, businesses, science and technologies and even government authorized data and documents. Today, nodes are intelligent enough to overwhelm the power of code freedom to become cyber-libertarians or hardest it comes to the appearance of hacktivism. ‘Hacktivism’, as it is called, draws on the creative use of computer technology for the purposes of facilitating online protests, performing civil disobedience in cyberspace and disrupting the flow of information by deliberately intervening in the networks of global capital (Sterling, 2013).

According to Mitew (2014), the most conspicuous hacks were hacking into phone switches, network control mainframes of certain websites or corporation or more rampant to an extend into government server. The most well-known hacktivist has given to the name of Julian Assage whom invent the sphere of Wikileaks that it contributed a enormous impact to the realm of hacktivism. Sterling (2013), addressed that the Wikileaks Cablegate scandal is the most exciting and interesting hacker scandal ever. Wikileaks were an intelligent that leaks out voluminous of governmental data to the internet for uninhibited information to the public as an exploitation of transparency towards the diplomatic and political disputes. Conferring to Sterling (2013), Wikileaks has been the world’s most blatant, most publicly praised, encrypted underground site.

However, in the debate of hacktivism are contradictory among their peculiar motives and objectives themselves. Some have concrete reasons of doing hacking jobs and some are just plain hackings. Assange has worked and argued himself into a position where his “computer crimes” are mainly political. They’re probably not even crimes. They are “leaks.” Leaks are nothing special (Sterling, 2013). Probably, Assange are one of the hackers with his own purposes that gain many supports from the publics, however there are another famous hacker named Anonymous whom remain unidentified who vigorously hacked several important sites where the aims were still mysterious.

According to Gunkel (2005), initially the word denoted a kind of obsessive commitment to creative and innovative computer programming, especially the re-engineering of systems that pushed the relatively new technology of the computer in interesting directions which were oftentimes not anticipated or recognized by their designers. For this reason, hackers have been celebrated as the heroes of the computer revolution, the visionaries of the internet and the principle architects of cybersociety.

So the question still left to be indefinite, are hackers heroes or villains?

References:

Gunkel, DJ, 2005. Editorial: introduction to hacking and hacktivism. New media & society, [Online].1-3. Available at: http://www.gunkelweb.com/articles/hacktivism.pdf [Accessed 08 October 2014].

Mitew, T 2014, “Digital Resistance”, Lecturer notes, [Online] Available at: http://prezi.com/hotqlxztvxdb/digc202-digital-resistance/ [Accessed 8 October 2014].

Sterling, B, 2013. The Blast Shack. [Online] Available at: https://medium.com/@bruces/the-blast-shack-f745f5fbeb1c [Accessed 8 October 2014].

The Walk of Arab Spring through Citizen Journalism

The emergence of future journalism contradicts whether technologies can be actually certainly helpful to disseminate information conveniently and rapidly or either it is a threat to the credibility and stability of expediently obtain certain journalism news written by the existence of citizen journalism. The emerging current issues of citizen journalism for instance, the Arab Spring Revolution where how journalism revolves and affected in political movement and also the internet war.

The Arab Spring began on the early 1990’s where Arabian began to use Internet as an alternative way to voice up and challenge the autocratic regimes by opposing governmental censorship. The upheavals in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Algeria, Sudan and other parts of the Middle East and North Africa in 2011 became known as the Facebook revolution. This was one of the most interesting uses of citizen journalism to disseminate information. People were using their mobile telephones to record events, to take photographs, to videotape activities and release them to the world in a way that traditional media could not, because they had no access (Barnes, C, 2012).

The young group of activists are actively using blog, Twitter, Facebook and other social networks that sparked the massive wave of political change swept the Arab world and Internet usage among Arabian are massively increasing and then began to take advantage of it to participate on civic discourse. According to Seib (2007), Arab media, especially the opposition press, were being exploited by the autocratic ruling regimes as a platform for people to vent their angry feelings and resentment toward their authoritarian governments, instead of taking decisive steps in the direction of radical reform and transformation, thus substituting words for action. Citizen journalism from Arab Spring effectively use Internet to achieve their own political goals, educate political issues to Arabians and aspirations.

The contemporary internet and media has given a lot of accessibilities and advantages for the citizen journalism, for instance, by just a click away, information can be disseminate publicly and globally by the speediness of internet.In conclusion, the audiences and readers are too sophisticated on what information they obtain from the new media which also contributed to the growth of citizen journalism.

References:

Barnes, C, 2012. Citizen Journalism vs. Traditional Journalism. A Case for Collaboration, [Online]. Vol. 58 Issue. 2/3, 16-27,179. Available at: http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/docview/1237145950/fulltext? accountid=15112 [ Accessed 6 October 2014].

Seib, P, 2009. New media and the new Middle East. Macmillan. [ Accessed 6 October 2014]

Citizen Journalism

According to Radsch (2011), defines citizen journalism “as an alternative and activist form of newsgathering and reporting that functions outside mainstream media institutions, often as a repose to the shortcomings in the professional journalistic field, that uses similar journalistic practices but is driven by different objectives and ideals and relies on alternative sources of legitimacy than traditional or mainstream journalism.

The emergence of advance new technology have a comparatively relationship to emergence of citizen journalism too. Now we it is inevitable for us exposed to citizen journalism in daily basis for assured, as we always wake up to various social networks to obtain regular day-to-day news and information. Furthermore, many internet users today are assumingly called as citizen journalist as we share and disseminate various types information that are able to gauge attention and interest large attention from groups of peoples.

Thus, citizen journalism are free to share ideas and opinions driven by own different objectives and however not train with professional skill of writing which found to become their first weakness point. However, the convenience of accessibility to the internet today has given the support of the opportunity to citizen journalism on this growing proportion. Internet users and readers are always fascinated with the latest news and hardly consider about the trustworthiness and reliability of the information that has been publicized, what they concern is the speediness of up to date trendy news.

There are various advantages of citizen journalism, just to name a few firstly, although citizen journalism publish news faster than traditional media whereby speed in reporting new stories were relieved by the advancement of internet hence they can post any information, photograph and videos instantaneously. For instance, video images that were broadcast across television screens about the tsunami in Japan would never have been seen by the world if citizens at the scene had not filmed it by witnesses whom significance to the citizen journalism (Abu AlFadel, 2011 ). Also, citizen journalism allows immediate two ways communication which allow responses and comments to be made in freedom within a post, share or discussion. Meaning that audience have freedom to freely express their views henceforth citizen journalism tend to have more honesty in news reporting. This may be due to the absence of censorship for the new media while the flow of information through traditional media is exposed to a lot of gatekeepers in addition to political and ethical constraints which hinder access of the media message to the public (Neuman, 2011).

There are discusses of disadvantages of citizen journalism too, as due to unprofessional and untrained skill, citizen journalism may loose honesty on writing news as they are free to write anything that favored to their own objectives. Hence, the write ups are based on audiences and readers receptiveness where it can largely serves the their special interests and therefore news by them may be lack of credibility. Furthermore, citizen journalism may cause and raise impact on the paradigm issues of political and governmental disputes. For instance, one of biggest impact affected by the emergence citizen journalism is the uprising political movement of Arab Spring.

In a nutshell, the advance of new technology innovations certainly contributes to the rising number of citizen journalism. Now, citizen journalism is driving their ways into new journalism although it is a new concept that also add values to the traditional media entity and however both medias are seek to achieve similar goals.

References:

Abu Alfadel, M, 2011 Citizen Journalism : Arab revolutions media incentive, Middle East Newspaper, Issue 11832. Available at: http://www.aijcrnet.com/journals/Vol_3_No_11_Novembe_2013/6.pdf [Accessed 28 September 2014].

Neuman, W. R., Bimbe, B. and Hindman, M, 2011. The Internet and Four Dimensions of Citizenship, The Oxford Handbook of American Public Opinion and the Media, Robert Y. Shapiro and Larwence R. Jacobs. (eds.) New York University Press. Available at: http://www.wrneuman.com/nav_pub_95_755951903.pdf [Accessed 28 September 2014]

Radsch, C, 2011. Arab bloggers as citizen journalists (Transnational). In J. Downing (Ed.), Encyclopedia of social movement media. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Available at: http://knowledge.sagepub.com/view/socialmovement/n31.xml [Accessed on 28 September  2014]

Fruit VS Robot

The new iPhone 6 and iPhone6 plus has just released close to a week ago and it still capture the heart of countless loyal customers and perhaps a sum of unsatisfied customers phone users from other brands. Still, arguments and criticism are constantly disputing from all sorts of nodes/produser that stretches from their very own interpretations and remarks. One of the condemnation commentary on iPhone is the opposing user criticizes in what way iPhone’s operating system, design and interface are so poorly designed and customized thus it outlay an extremely high-priced, which is totally not value for money.

Arguments in terms of the price of Apple smartphone is overprice as many other smartphones could compete with the functions offer by Apple moreover Apple architected a closed platform which is their prominent iOS operating system. Apple’s iOS is differ from other platforms for instance, Android distributed operating system which allows customization and can be match by various types of smart phone devices rather one but because of it is a democratic usages which disburse more error and fault of hacks of its no control over the platform, users and content compare to Apple’s iOS. Moreover, since Android is a type of open source operating system therefore there are many creation of prevailing demo version or better known as Beta version before the final version of the new operating system officially release.

However, there are reason why Apple happened to be closed and walled garden platform which it is aimed to have a complete control over the platform, content and user to avoid faults and hackers to interfere the platform. Furthermore, it is Apple’s core business to customize closed appliances tethered to closed ecosystem as the co-founder of Apple Inc. Steve Jobs whom discovered and believe on user’s experience. Still, there are various of contradictory within the pros and cons of both open versus closed platform. Nonetheless, it is still depends on user’s preferences to either fancy for an open platform Android or close walled garden Apple iOS. They still walkouts and conquers undeniable unique propositions for best of both world!

Digital Feudalism; Contemporary Walled- Garden

Consequently, the creation of internet has allowed us to interact freely and unlimited consumptions that effortlessness and benefit ease the life of the general public. We, as internet users thought that the internet for instance social networks and applications that obligate to offer us freedom and privacy contained platform that we are ubiquitously attach and put trust in it.

However, the biggest and nevertheless favorite internet corporation for instance Facebook and Apple have actually installed and practices Walled-Garden Feudalism on it’s platform to control user’s to their contents and services. Without the majority user’s aware, walled garden is a type of system that have subsequently control fully and easily access on restricting users to several applications and productions of content. In effect, the walled garden directs the user’s initial navigation within particular areas, to allow access to a selection of material, or prevent access to other material (Rouse 2005).

Hence, through the unawareness within users, this corporations have developed to become big user-generated data assemblies, then eventually turn out to be to feudal lords to holds as an integrated data-empire. User’s believed there were no any parties over their privacy and contents as they comprehend it as a type of liberty platform. Unfortunately, many internet corporations have built a new form of digital feudalism that became kind of feudal lords which means they behold the hierarchal power that possess to your privacy. The old internet is shrinking and being replaced by walled gardens over which Google’s crawlers cannot climb. Sure, Google can crawl Facebook’s ‘public pages’, but those represent a tiny fraction of the pages on Facebook, and are not informed by the crucial signals of identity and relationship which give those pages meaning (Mitew, 2014).

In a nutshell, the internet users should be smart to use the internet platforms as apparently we do not know when are we being monitored or how our privacy are being watched. So, use the internet wisely as there are more surveillance through the rise of a new form of digital feudalism.

References:

Feudalism 2005, ‘A brief history of the idea’, Dictionary of the History of Idea, accessed 13/9/2014, https://www3.amherst.edu/~flcheyette/Publications/Feudalism%20DHI.pdf

Mitew, T 2014, ‘DIGC202-The Feudalisation of the Internet’, lecture notes, accessed 13/9/2014, http://prezi.com/qopqxh6ktl1j/the-feudalisation-of-the-internet/

Rouse, M 2005, “Walled Garden”,viewed 1 May 2013, retrieved from http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/definition/walled-garden

‘Produser’ Overload or Information Overload?

In today’s rich technology improvement, everyone seems to be actively employed and there are way too many opportunities offered on the internet, as in it allows anybody to take equal democratic parts in this economy and production. The technologies have converge to create a new economy whereby diverse platforms surrounded with various content dynamic in which people can create an economy of something new and interesting based on own personal knowledge production, they could be ultimately skillful or zero professional background.

Therefore, the internet provides too many platforms to acknowledge new creativity and business for netizen to work and produce regardless individually or in a group constructed. Hence, it has sway the paradigm where the early consumers are now also the biggest producer of contents whereby the platforms allows people to have own ownership by creating and producing their own productions, for instance, mixtapes, podcast, blogpost, etc. Promptly, every netizen or internet user is an eligible ‘Produser’ where the hybridization of PROduction and USER comes in one. Moreover, everyone are qualified to be a reviewer or judge to comment everything regardless good or bad feedbacks especially through the use of famous platforms like Foursquare, Trip Advisor and Instagram.

Why would people choose to take advantage to make a business out of the internet rather than the former traditional business? Firstly, the internet is yet profound to be the cheapest or I would say low cost of entry to put up your productions or business via a blog or Youtube channel and other sorts of platforms. By publishing content or accessing to these platforms costs nothing to the user where it allows no barrier entry. Hence, it almost require no risk unless there is repressive ecology found in your production or business. Although, the platforms allows us to obtain abundance of built in information from the internet however, there are too many usage of internet productions and businesses which it allows drawbacks too, as there are no proficient of quality filter and the internet are flooded with valuable and also un-useful information.

According to Shirky (2002), the internet imposes no barriers to entry, no economies of scale and no limits on supply. As there are too many freedom of productions and information uploaded in the contemporary internet, it consists of overload information where there is no dictated of incessant sorting at all.

 

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN EVERYONE BECOME A PRODUSER?

I would say there will be infinite amount of information of indefinite values and some to be meaningless there.

 

References:

Mitew, T 2014, ‘DIGC202 Into the cloud: the long tail and the attention economy’, Lecture notes, Accessed 5/9/14, http://prezi.com/nm7rgdlnxhdf/digc202-into-the-cloud-the-long-tail-and-the-attention-economy/

Shirky, C 2002, ‘Weblogs and the Mass Amateurization of Publishing’, Networks, Economics, and Culture, accessed 4/9/2014, http://shirky.com/writings/weblogs_publishing.html

 

 

Liquid Labour

Through the profound of internet, the notion of career and profession has changed and are no longer standardized in which employees are compulsory to assemble at work in a specific time and place. Moreover, the shift of paradigm has enable to the new prototype in which they have the own privilege of flexibilities and freedom which means they are allow to work at anytime and anywhere and perhaps physical work forces by man has decrease as the existence of liquid labour has subsisted by using the global networks indeed the convenience of internet. Gregg (n.d.) suggested that liquid labour allows and give workers the apparent freedom to work where and when they choose, new media technologies have been complicit in inaugurating new forms of emotional and embodied labour—new habits that are taken to be commonsense—from employees who see their working conditions as individual rather than structural.

Now, the labor market has emerge and global networks has arose to become very powerful hence the old deep-rooted forms of works that develops and innovates to an information network and communication economy from the industrial economy. Liquid labour has formed new types of labour which uses centralized and computerized types of technology to produces progress and manufactures product and works. For instance, in a factory based type of work, it is essential to use voluminous quantity of physical and mental man forces to produce product or goods. Somehow, the emergence of liquid labour has move the paradigm of works from hierarchical to decentralized whereby works will be fully dependent to be done by computerize based technologies and machines to produce goods, therefore the need of human resources will be eliminated.

However, the demand of liquid labor has increase thus the rising numbers of institutes, colleges and universities have offered various types and skills of expertise related courses to feed the demand of liquid labor. Promptly, companies now at least employ and exploit to use liquid labor to manage and handle their websites and computer systems, indeed big corporations obligates to have their them for working on it’s very own department called IT Department.

Nevertheless, through practicing liquid labour, “presence bleed” may occurred by many as they will need to posses with their works and tasks at anywhere and anytime even after work or during a holiday, it is because of the speediness of internet and no time barrier subsist although it allows intense progress of works. According to Gregg (n.d.) presence bleeds explains the familiar experience whereby the location and time of work become secondary considerations faced with a ‘to do’ list that seems forever out of control.Also, it has given a big impact of increasing percentage of unemployment and loss of opportunities of works to certain group of people. Indeed agree, according to Castells (2004) why the network society now? The answer is in the development of microelectronics and software-based communication technologies… We know that technology does not determine society. But we also know that without specific technologies some social structures could not develop.

However, still the question have not unravel with answer whether the controversy emergence of liquid labour is a positive or negative type of labour practices?

 

References:

Castells, M, 2004, ‘Afterword: why networks matter’ in H McCarthy, P Miller and P Skidmore (eds), Network Logic: Who governs in an interconnected world? Accessed on 28/08/2014. Available online at: https://moodle.uowplatform.edu.au/pluginfile.php/279931/mod_resource/content/1/Bradwell%2C%20P.%20-%20Networked%20citizens.pdf 

Gregg, M. n.d., Function creep: Communication Technologies and Anticipatory Labour in the
Information Workplace. Accessed on 28/08/2014. Available online at: http://homecookedtheory.com/wp-content/uploads/functioncreepnms.doc 

Mitew, T 2014, Liquid labour, lecture, DIGC202 Global Networks, University of Wollongong, delivered 26 August.

 

 

 

Cyberspace

The Father of Cyberspace

The online citizen has been so use to the internet and somehow cannot go one day without it and they almost move their paradigm of life in there. They somehow depend on it too often and it have became of the norms in their essential daily life, they consider it as their home, they woke up to it, they sleep to it and they live in it. They somehow created a heavenly atmosphere and society called cyberspace on there. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concern of graphic representation of data abstracted from the bank of every computer in the human system (Gibson, 1982).

The father of cyberspace, William Gibson also suggests that our illusions and mirages form the basis of a kind of consensus by being continuously shared by the large group of people and the sharing is achieved by transforming individual experiences into collective representations. People now share anything and almost everything in the cyberspace’s social network to connect communications among the others in the society. Cyberspace now is a global village where all the online citizen use it as a platform to communicate and share experiences in which they find borders is almost irrelevant here. Hence, there are no time differentiations here in cyberspace where it allows the homogenization of time and space in here for online citizen to communicate of any time zone as a one time. Also, I believe people loves to be part of the cyberspace because as stated by Barlow (1996), we are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth

Furthermore, in cyberspace there are free flow of information with any accesses and exposures without borders. People enhanced to be richer and wealthier in knowledge by using the cyberspace to obtain various information here.According to Castells (2004), the networking logic explains the features of the process of globalisation. The world have become more homogenize with the existence of cyberspace where people around the world can share cultures among the networks to the world even they are from the farthest place in the globe, indeed no borders are significant in cyberspace.

References:

Barlow, J.P. (1996) A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, [ONLINE]. Available at: https://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html

Castells, M. (2004) ‘Afterword: why networks matter’. In Network Logic: Who governs in an interconnected world? [ONLINE]. 221-224. Available at: https://moodle.uowplatform.edu.au/pluginfile.php/276810/mod_resource/content/1/Castells%2C%20M.%20-%20Why%20Networks%20Matter.pdf

Cavallaro, D, 2000. Cyberpunk & Cyberculture. Science Fiction and the Work of William Gibson, [Online]. 1, 3-17. Available at: http://books.google.com.my/books?id=CqivAwAAQBAJ&dq=william+gibson+father+of+cyberspace&lr=&source=gbs_navlinks_s [Accessed 23 August 2014].

The Guardian . 2011. William Gibson: beyond cyberspace. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/sep/22/william-gibson-beyond-cyberspace. [Accessed 23 August 14].