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.

#5 privacy

Privacy is the ability that someone has to control what information that person reveals to others. This has the same general idea for internet privacy, what information that one wants or does not want to be able to share with other internet users. A huge challenge in todays privacy is determining what is public or what is private to other people. People all over the world desire at least some sort of privacy in life, regardless in which aspect of life it may be. My perspective on privacy is the information that people would like to keep closed off from others and not let them know anything about it. There are so many ways around people’s privacy today, especially on the internet. There are many sites today that allow the access of strangers into the lives of other people. Certain sites consist of ones like MySpace and Face book. I think that MySpace is one of the bigger problems with privacy today because it allows anyone on the site to be able to access any user on MySpace’s account. Within these profiles is information about whoever you want to know information about. Although it may not seem like a big deal, sites like these can lead to major problems. This is how stalkers on the internet emerge to innocent people and have their lives affected.

These sorts of cases are a big of enough deal, but there are also other aspects of people’s information that is affected out there on the internet. People all over the internet commit fraud everyday, an in a sense are able to access very private information to others, such as financial and banking info. People can gain information to others through things like cookies and ISP’s. Cookies are huge privacy risks, and are a piece of information stored on a computer to help its web browsing. ISP’s are they way that people are access the internet, more or less an address. If someone else can obtain your ISP, then it could be disastrous. What we have here are a few ways in which are processes for others being able to access others privacy through the internet, which may seem harmless, but really aren’t.

A scenario in which I can relate internet privacy too is something that did not directly happen to me, but to my twin brother who also goes to school here. It really wasn’t that big of a deal but it was something that definitely can be correlated with privacy. I think it was last yea during Christmas break, and my mom and I him were taking care of all the school stuff for the upcoming spring semester. In doing this, we each had to go online to the UB website and fill out our housing application and put the down payment on our dorms for next year. Each down payment was 200$, and we each had to take that from our checking accounts. I did mine with no problem or anything that had interfered with being able to successfully complete it. Nick had some trouble with his, not at the moment he actually completed it, but in the future. He had been able to put the payment down with not trouble, but a couple weeks later he noticed that something wasn’t right. He noticed in his checking account that he was actually missing four hundred dollars from the process of the housing rather then the 200 hundred. It turned out that somehow instead of him having to complete the process of housing, the process had already been completed on its own or something like that. I did not really understand the full details that my mom and him and let me known about it, but for some reason his was already paid for before he had actually paid for it. He was reimbursed with the other 200$, but I think it was something to think about when that kind of transaction happens without. This is the sort of situation where you can’t really help but trust, since it’s through a huge academic institution, but it may be something to question.

Gifts that keep Giving

A gift economy is something that can be defined as a type of system where others supply their services to someone else, without the expectation of something in an immediate return. They basically do it for the benefit of the other person who which they are giving the good or service too. Hence the word gift in “gift economy”, the term is essentially self explanatory. A gift Economy can be constructed in many different areas of society involving different sorts of people; systems such as charities, many online sites (.edu, .org), families, and even organ donors. Many gift economies are organized online, connecting many different people, but many also occur outside of the internet. Gift economies can come from many different directions, all with the intent of benefiting someone or something else.

Many people today in different communities are not aware of the gift economies that they may belong to. Like the examples that I had listed above, there are many more that can be considered to have a gift economy within them. One enormous system in which I believe is one of the most important gift economies that I and many others belong to is that of education. The schools that all kids attend I believe are virtually gift economies. The teachers that fill our heads with the knowledge and information in there designated field of study are standing up there in the front of the classroom because they want to expand the horizons and knowledge of the however many students sitting in front of them. This is definitely a gift economy in my perspective, basically because we ourselves are not really paying the teachers in a direct form to tell us what they know and what we should learn.

My public high school and middle school are good prime examples of how I can relate to a system of a gift economy. Like all other students, me myself was not really the one that was giving back to the teachers that I went through during my teenage years as a student in the Frontier Central School System. Sure the taxes that are paid to the teacher as their salary are compensation for them teaching students like myself, but the students are not exactly the ones who are paying those taxes. As you can see, there really is not any immediate return to the professors and teachers that lend their knowledge to young kids in their high school and middle school years. The reason that the teachers get up there is first of all because they are supposed to and that is what is expected of them, and second of all it is because it is there duty to benefit the students with what they know.

Another way in which me and every person is involved in a gift economy is something that as known as family. We all have it, and there is no question of doubt that it may be considered a gift economy. Looking at is from an outside perspective, your immediate family consists of a mother father, most of the time both, and usually some siblings. The reason that your parents raise you with their love is because of the bond and relationship that exists between you and them. They go to work and bring in all this money, go out and go grocery shopping, and don’t expect you to help them pay for it do they? Or they don’t charge you to watch TV and pay rent on the house, right? So in a sense the benefit that parents are giving to their children is the support and necessities that are expected of them, knowing that they don’t expect anything in return from their child. If you want to really go in depth with this and try and argue it, what you may say is that for all the things that you are receiving from your parents, they may expect you to do the same for your child one day. This is something that all me and all people of society can relate to as a gift economy.

COPY RIGHTING IS RIGHT!

The laws of copy righting something today is one of the most honest and well protected rules for inventors, creators and developers in our modern day society. Basically the law of a copyright is keeping safe the ideas and developments that were first brought into our community by the talented people from those thieves who try to act upon them already. The first laws of copy rights had originated in Britain in the 1700’s, however the first object to have its own copy right act on it was the Statute of Anne. What in reality gives us the copy right laws that are still in tact today is from the Bernie Convention in the year of 1887, which went out and set up copy right protection. At first during this time copy right was usually just used in terms of putting protection on books and maps, which were vital aspects of people’s lives in those centuries. As time progressed, so did technology and its industries, as well as copy righting. As these aspects all grew, they had direct effects on each other. The more inventions, developments, ideas and industries produced, the more the copyright protection expanded over our society. Everything began to have a copyright on it, it was a new way of security for the people of this time with these gifted ideas.

Copyright laws are definitely a necessity for our community today as was as much of one since the 15^th and 16 centuries. People would be able to copy others work as an infringement. Sometimes these people were not aware that the works were already invented or developed, but not often. They would be receiving credit for works that they say they had come up with, when it actually should be credited to someone else who had that idea or development before them.

Today copy right infringement is much more common then it once was. Many different ideas are being produced and people are rushing to get theirs copyrighted. The problems that arise here are ones between the general public and the content creators themselves. What the problems that they run into is that the creators who are having their ideas copyrighted are either seeing others (general public) use their ideas at no expense, where they think that there should at lease be some sort of required payment of some sort. On the other hand, the general public feels that they shouldn’t have to pay anything for the use of others ideas. This is where the actual process of copy right infringement comes into play. The general public starts robbing ideas and stealing the creators own ideas as their own. What I think should be done in order to keep this sort of problem is that the action of the federal government should be increased, in favor of the content creators position. What should be done is any sort of case or situation that comes up dealing with copyright infringement should have legal action taken up with it. For example, a suspect who has committed their first offense of copyright infringement should have to pay a fine and also serve some sort of community service or jail time. With each additional offense committed that can have a case, the fine should grow larger as well as the time served in jail or the community service hours. To an extent, for example on the 4th of 5^th committed offense of this crime, a permanent jail time with bail amount should be submitted to the suspect. This proposal of mine is pretty basic, but also very flexible. There are many ways in which this solution can be twisted and turned in the right way that would punish the suspects of this crime. To them it might not seem like a big deal when they are committing this infringement, but in the end it is the law that wins.

A tale of Email!

A Tale of E-Mail!

Email as we know today is one of the most vital parts of society’s modern technological era. It has developed through so many stages since it was first introduced into computers and the internet. As people of our new generation, we see it as something that grew up with us and something we use as an everyday resource to relay information and news to our peers. There are many people, like myself, who rely on email as one of their primary resources to contact people and check it constantly, multiple times a day. So what would our complex community be without our precious email? Would we still be sending stamped envelopes through our mail boxes and the post office? It could be a possibility. Here we look to see the reason why we fortunately don’t need to do things like in our 21^st century.

Some people see email today as an invention, when it was more of an evolution rather then it just coming out of nowhere. Email had actually started up predating the internet. The first stage of it that we use today dates back to 1965 where messages were communicated between multiple people all though one time sharing main frame computer. One of the first facilities in which there was one of these mainframe computers was at MIT in which they had a CTSS. It is believed that a big contribution of the creation of email went to ARPANET, which essentially was one of the first stages of the actual internet and its development. ARPANET was the first link to link computer network that first started out between two different colleges, and technically evolved into the internet today. These types of mainframe computers though were just computers that connected the terminals to the mainframe and nothing else. They couldn’t store any memory or anything modern such as computers today.

The person to be credited with actually inventing the first of first email address format was Ray Tomlinson in 1971. His significance of using the “@” symbol to separate names and hosts is something that set him out among other developers. Email would begin to start developing as time and technology progressed on. Email is seen as one of the most important aspects of the internet today. But how couldn’t it be? Email through the internet grants us access to be able to contact people all over the world, regardless of where they are (via wireless connection). As much credit as Email owes to ARPANET for introducing it, ARPANET owes just as much credit to the introduction of email for being able to expand their network. By 1974, hundreds of military users were beginning to use email. A few years later in1976, ¾ of the traffic that ARPANET held was email, a huge increase from what it started as. The first of the standard email was called SMTP (simple message transfer protocol). Soon, Email would really start to take off; having technological increases year after year.

It is obvious that Email is pretty common; over 600 million users are connected today. The internet that I use today as already mentioned is it is a huge part of my life. Many college students probably have the same perspective as me on this subject. As a typical college student, Email is a pretty big part of all our lives, including professors, faculty, and staff. It is something that connects us all as a common source. Things for me would be a lot more difficult and complicated as a college student without email. How would students be able to come in contact with other students or teachers? Or even Parents instead of long distance calling. This fortunately isn’t a factor for me, since I live 30 minutes away. The main point is that Email in my perspective is a common ground in which everyone we know and who has access to an internet based computer can relate to. It is just something that we grew up with and that we probably can’t live without!

About Me

My name is Matt Finnegan. I'm 19 years old, and from the buffalo area. I'm currently a sophomore here at UB so I still have a way's to go. I’m looking forward to double majoring in communications and something else like sociology or business, I'm not quite sure yet. Taking this class is sort of something that I looked forward to from a friend who told what it was like. All the aspects of the class are the things that I look for in a class that I am interested in doing and learning about, so I think it will be easy.

I like doing anything. I’m a pretty easy going person. I like meeting new people and I can get along with pretty much anyone. I play volleyball for the UB club team and used to play baseball, but I like all sports in general, its one of the biggest interests that I have. I have an identical twin brother too. There are people who will either say “oh you guys don’t look at all alike” and then there are others who couldn’t get our names right if their life depended on it. I’m not really limited to the kind of music I listen to, if I like the song regardless of the genre I’ll listen to it, but I’m not really a big fan of country (no offense to you all cowboys out there).I love the Sabre’s, then again so does anyone whose ever stepped foot in Buffalo. I like hanging out with my friends a lot, I probably wouldn’t have a life without them, so they are a big deal to me. I plan on having a double major, which I don’t know what it will be yet. I definitely want to major in communication, but I’m not decided on what sort of work field I would want to do with the degree.

What I hope to get out of this class is a better understanding of the types work involved with communication and to be able to pass the class with at least a B+. I am looking for this class to be a guide for me to help decide what I am capable of doing with this major.

Hello! My Name Is Internet

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