Community #7

So much of society today revolves its use around the internet. There are many different groups who base a lot of the information they distribute to others through the internet, using it as a type of medium where everyone can share the same aspects of something. Many large corporations, if not all of them solely run a good majority of their business over the internet, and continue to do so as the technology for the access to the web increases dramatically all the time. One group in which I belong to that uses the internet for mediation is me being a part of the student body hear at UB. There are over 27,000 students that attend this university and it would be very difficult if the use of the internet as a mediated source for communicating to students was not possible.

In a narrower sense to better explain this, I can say that our com 125 class is a group in which we use the internet as a mediated source. As many of us have learned from the beginning of the semester, almost all of the work we complete in this class is done online. Along with that, we can include that the blog posts, the emails we receive and comments we make are all parts of this medium through the internet. As the growth of technology continues to expand, I think that the social ties in which me make with the others in our class does as well. I can say that I have personally experienced this because of the current project my group and I are working on for our presentation. Since this class started, I knew absolutely no one in the class. In order to be able to get a group together to complete this project, I had to make ties with some people. Initially I did so face to face in class, but as days went by, I started using blogger and email in order to get on a better level of trust and familiarity with one everyone in my group. This had definitely helped my gain a better sense of comfort as I continue to work with the group I am in.

The way that the kids in the class interact with one another over the internet reflects the way in which they perceive themselves in class. I see this in a way that on the first day of this class, no one had said a word to each other, we were all strangers to one another and the ice had yet to be broken with the vocal barrier that surrounded us all. I know that through blogger, posting comments, through emails and all sorts of online sources that connect everyone in the class, I feel more secure with what I am doing and who I am interacting with. This also includes Derek, who has made atmosphere in the class a lot more reasonable and comfortable then it did on the first day of class where it lacked theses aspects because of the unfamiliarity that each one of us possessed with each other.

If there is one thing that the use of technology through the internet does with people within a common group is that it strengthens the ties between all of the members of that group. There is not too many ways in which the internet breaks people apart before they even know each other, of if they know each other already. As stated before, the use of internet within a large community or a small community is a vital part of the processes of relationships that are built between two people.

IDENTITY WOO WOO

Identity is the way that something represents someone. Identity Theft is one of the most common crimes in the internet world today. People who commit identity theft are usually more or less after either money, or to ruin a reputation. Other things that can be taken from identity theft are personal information that the user who actually owns that name hold. The discovery of this by a thief could be disastrous for the victim who has the theft being done to them. Things like credit card numbers, social security umbers, bank account accesses, anything that the person holds can potentially being taken , depending on the type of identity that the thief is trying to impersonate. Identity theft is also commonly known as fraud, where one person is acting as the identity of someone else. A broad definition of identity theft or fraud is “a deception made for personal gain”. Carious forms of identity theft is considered in things like email, avatars, instant messenger screen names, user names, pretty much anything that you can think of that is use to represent someone on the internet.

For anyone who has ever used internet in the modern day, which is roughly everyone, then they are probably familiar with the use of a screen name or email address. If u ever belonged to any sort of site or had any reason to use a password somewhere, then you will usually more likely have a user name or avatar to represent you. For kids today, such as myself, the use of AOL instant messenger is one of the primary ways of communicating with their peers. When you sign on your buddy list, your name pops up on your friends buddy list, letting them know that you have signed on and are available for chat. Will it always be you as your name signs on though? To you it will be, to them it may not be. The instance of someone else being able to obtain the screen name and password of someone else is an example of identity, as well as identity theft. Being typical like most kids are today, I have a screen name, and I’m pretty sure almost everyone in this class does as well. The way that the screen name works on AIM is pretty basic. Mine is Mfinnro22, so when I get online my friends see that I am there. I have my buddy list sorted in a few different categories, my best friends in one, kids from UB in another, and then girls and guys. An example referring to the interaction between my name and my friends name is straight forward. If I’m looking for something to do on the weekend while at home and I am on my computer then I will most likely look through my best friends list, or if I’m at UB I look through the UB list. It’s a pretty basic way of interaction the name with the correlation to my friends. The names on my list represent my friends, its nothing that complicated.

Finally, being able to assume this identity as me is easy. Who ever has the ability to get my password, or anyone’s password for their screen name can potentially have someone’s reputation screwed up. If someone you know gets online with your screen name, your friends with see that your name has signed on, and automatically assume that it is you. A lot of time when one of my friends get online, as its one of my other friends, or someone I don’t even know saying that its my friend who owns the screen name, I can usually tell by they type to me whether or not it is them. In general, when someone assumes your name as it is represented, then they will usually believe it is you. But when its not, things can go really wrong.