Third World Country + First World Technology = One World?

I'm a bit on the fence about the OLPC idea, on one hand, I'd like to think that children in poverty stricken countries deserve the right to a device that would help to bridge the digital divide and get a fair chance at some sort of education. Yet a part of me thinks that the money could be put to better use such as providing better health care, water pipes to villages where it's needed most and teaching them agriculture and farming so that these places can learn to feed themselves.

Some of my main concerns are that these are 6-12 year olds; I'm just not sure how well they'll look after such a device. If I recall correctly, when I was that age I was quite rough with many of my own possessions. Other points of concern are that the children won't have enough strength to physically power the hand generator so that the laptop could run, they could sell it off for food, find online pornography if the Internet was available to them, or theft and jealously could result in them losing the device forever.

But perhaps we're being a bit harsh here. OLPC is a nonprofit organization with a specific mission. Think of it this way, (for example) World Vision let's you sponsor a child and pay for their food, healthcare, water, etc…, but it may not pay for other things such as footwear, a family to live with, education, etc... So let's give them a chance. If you look up the specifications of the OLPC laptop, you'll find that it's available to children in schools and they have battery rechargers that can charge 10 batteries at once.

A very interesting research is being done by Sugata Mitra, an education researcher who says that "There are places on Earth, in every country, where, for various reasons, good schools cannot be built and good teachers cannot or do not want to go..." And that's true, even for those who teach for World Vision. In his research, he planted some computers in a slum in New Delhi, India and monitored the results of the usage. What he found was that kids will learn how to use the computer and then teach each other; a peer teaching peer environment that invokes curiosity, self learning and competition for knowledge.

We may think that children in these countries won't want to learn on a laptop or that their energy is better spent doing something else. But seriously, what will the kids do in their spare time? Make Nike shoes and clothes for you and me? Enslave themselves to prostitution because no one else gave them a laptop and a bit of hope that they could overcome third world struggles? Or give them a laptop, an education and a better chance at an equal future?

Google It

One of the things I most often use the internet for is a simple ‘Google it’. I see or hear a phrase or word I don’t understand, I can Google it. Someone on Television mentions something technical that goes over my head, I can Google it. It’s a simple and easy way to learn a little about a lot. For all that some talk about television, the internet and everything new media making younger generations stupid; it’s more of an argument of the need for the retention of knowledge.

For example, if one hears the phrase, ‘Statute of Limitations’ and has no idea what is meant, it’s simple to type it into Google and go to the Wikipedia entry and get an explanation. A couple of weeks later someone mentions it again, do you remember? Yes? Great. No? Don’t worry about, just Google it. The internet gives us the ability to change the way we remember information. If we can use the internet to so easily recall the information for us, what’s the big deal with not trying really hard to make sure something sticks in our minds without the extra help from our friend Mr Google?

Is Software Piracy a problem?

Personally, I have always thought that using pirated software was ok, mainly because I wasn’t using the software to make any money. I kept telling myself that I don’t download music illegally, so I should be able to borrow and use free software. I understand that downloading music illegally takes away profits from the musician, which is why I purchase songs that I like on iTunes and from various music stores. We always hear how much money software creators have; therefore I don’t feel bad when I decide to use their creations without paying for them. After attending lectures and tutorials I am starting to think differently.

I found an article online that discusses the problem of software piracy. (http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/news/2003/04/58306) It explains that if “the piracy rate dropped to 30 percent, economic growth could increase by $400 billion and it would create 1.5 million jobs and generate $64 billion in taxes. That is alot of jobs that could be created if people didn’t use pirated software. I just think that software creators and companies need to think of a new way to distribute their products. Gaining access to a pirated version of nearly every software is extremely easy, and since it’s so easy, people choose to use them. Another contributing factor to why software piracy is so high is because of the software prices. Most everyday people can’t afford to buy a $2000 copy of Final cut pro deluxe edition. Maybe some kind of online renting option should be created for people that do not intend on using software to benefit them financially.

The article goes onto to say that they believe they can stop a high percentage of people from pirating software by simply just raising awareness. Kruger states, “There's a moral and ethical reason for respecting people’s intellectual property rights. They deserve to receive a return on their investment”. From spending time thinking about this topic of software piracy, I now see how unfair it is to the creators of the product. From now on I won’t be downloading any more pirated software.

Laptop has been eaten. Now what?

Are you weirded out by the fact that an 11 year old owns a cell phone? So by that same train of thought you would be just as weirded out by the concept of One Laptop Per Child. As I was reading the reading (LOL) for this week, I found this concept by Negroponte very bizarre and slightly unnerving.

This could severely impact the social and cultural aspect of a child’s life especially for children growing up in Third World Countries who are not used to a lot of technology in everyday life. I grew up in the Philippines so I know what it’s like to not have technology at the press of your fingertips and we used to make up our own games to pass times. As for education, I believe schooling is the most effective tool for a child’s learning and so I agree with Brian Winston’s stance that is slightly against Negroponte’s vision.

Though if you were to look at it from a different perspective, this could be just Nicholas Negroponte’s way of trying to help shape the world through technology. As there are a lot of organizations out there, such as World Vision (http://www.wvi.org) and Oxfam (http://www.oxfam.org) , who help children that are worse off with basic necessities like water, food, shelter and schooling.

You can’t help but be slightly cynical and critical about Negroponte’s vision for the 2 billion children out there in the world. Questions arise on how are these Third World Countries are going to find a power source to run these laptops let alone finding a decent and constant water supply. I think for electricity is my biggest issue with these laptops. Winston quoted Bill Gates in the reading in which Gates was more worried about how certain countries were going to supply the energy as a normal laptop would take about 20-30 watts to run within a few minutes and a child in a Third World Country could only handle 5-6 watts. It just seems odd to supply kids between the ages of 6-12 (I mean c’mon SIX-YEARS-OLD) with technology laden instruments and expect them to learn this way. Maybe I’m a little old fashioned but a lot of people in tutorial found this solution very odd indeed.

If I had to make the world a better place, laptops for kids would not be my ideal solution. Even that phrase, laptops for kids, and associating laptops with children boogles my mind!

Video Games considered Sport?

The popularity of videogames has excelled as a large part of new media technology, especially with prominent interest amongst youth. These games are continually becoming the socially acceptable outlet for physical play, and this is becoming more acceptable and is infiltrating more households, especially those with children. My arguement is not if videogames are appropriate, (although I think many are not, as they construct and play into generalised gender roles) but instead if we consider them a fully fledged extracurricular activity, to the point where as a culture the lines of technology and sport have become so blurred that we begin to associate values of sporting achievement with those of achievement in the undefined realm of videogame activity.

The clip below is an advertisement for Nintendo Wii which does just this. The game is a multiplayer format, which includes various simulations of sports, as played by a stereotypical nuclear family. The game offers various adaptors and controllers to perform the functions of such sports to a more realistic degree; just a few of these include car racing, tennis and boxing. As children grow into this obscure realm, where now sporting achievement is able to be simulated in a fun family environment, we look at the youth of today and their personal choices and they reside in a world full of technological choices, and it is not before long that they may begin to choose technology over the real thing. It is interesting that this product is marketed at the typical household or family, but without realising the potential results. The seriousness and popularity of this game is one which deems it successful and profitable to have made enough of an impact on a the present generation, and in doing so redefines sport, and demeans it to pressing buttons over competing in a physical game.

Work, Leisure, and Profit

Source

Do Facebook owners owe users monetary rewards for using the network, popularizing the network, and facilitating profits into their pockets? Is "profit" one-sided? Does using Facebook count as Marxist' notion of 'leisure'? This post will answer the questions by: re-examining Marxist's idea of 'profit' on popular social networking sites like Facebook, and re-defining 'leisure' within the context of capitalism and Facebook use.


Facebook and its Profits
It has been said that advertisers take advantage of the time and free labour users invest in interacting on Facebook to make money. From a Marxist perspective, this is unfair on the user as he or she gains nothing in return. I find this perspective when applied to digital capitalism highly problematic. I say so because the social networking site is not one-sided in its profits. Marx considers profit to solely mean 'money' or anything monetary. I think that for SNS, profit means a 'gain' and the gains of SNS works both ways - Corporates AND users. Some people gain unconscious and conscious profits from using Facebook, so it really depends on personal motivation. Besides the site as a network to find friends and maintain connections, other two non-monetary profits I want to point out that has been discussed in lectures are: Facebook as informing identity, and Facebook as facilitating news-sharing.


I don't want to go in-depth into the theoretical facet of identity, so I will just summarize in a few sentences. Facebook provides its young adolescent users with opportunities to experiment with identities and maybe settle on one. Though identity is a process of "becomings", that is, it's never stable, the site enables these young teens to portray online who they are or who they'd like to be in real-life. This informs the person they eventually construct themselves to be in real-life. The site for them is also a platform for social interaction and esteem boost. My point being, though they popularize the site which monetarily profits advertisers and Facebook developers, these users also gain something that influences their lives in the long run (whether they know it or not).


Concerning the profit of news sharing, journalism has now expanded beyond the television set and the newspapers. People are now active in the production and consumption of news, and this is facilitated on social networks where they can share news with other users. News is now a "social currency" disseminated through social spaces like Facebook. This gift economy is profitable to users as they shape who they are and examine their ideologies around the news they share, while corporates consequently earn monetary profits. To me, it's a win-win situation, only the gain/s or 'profit' differ.


Of course, if you're a stale Facebook user, you need not worry your money is being laundered as you only need to be active on the network before you can blame advertisers for money laundering. Even if we admit they’re making money out of our network use, we are not labouring for free; rather, we’re only paying for the beneficial services they’re providing. These services include: keeping in touch, facilitating social relations and identity negotiations; and sharing news. If Facebook owners decide to start subscription, that to me, is money-laundering. The subscription will be the surplus value where what we gain in return is less than what goes out of our pockets and the amount of labour we exert.


Facebook-use and Leisure
I’m however not completely on the side of Facebook or any other monetarily-profitable social networking site. This is because of the notion of ‘leisure’. I agree with the Frankfurt School theory that leisure is supposed to be a compensation of work but it benefits capitalists and not the individual. In the case of Facebook, I don’t see the site as a place of leisure. We are still using our bodies to produce surplus value. In a way, ‘leisure’ can involve consumption which according to Marx is only encouraging capitalism, as we consume to buy more. However, consumption should be outside of work. If using Facebook during ‘leisure times’ only produces more profit for the capitalists behind the network, then that is not leisure. Though we may gain the three gains I highlight above, we're not partaking in leisure. Leisure should be free of two-sided gain or profit, no matter what 'profit' entails. Using an example from a student in my tutorial, if cleaning the toilet which gives the person a feeling of fulfilment means this reward is productive, at least, there's no monetary value attached to it, thus it is an activity outside capitalistic gains.

Do we have the right to completely "own" our profiles, or is Facebook ultimately the property of its owners? 2) Do users have the agency to ignore or click adverts?

Privacy, Profile Ads, and Agency

Source

 Are money-making advertisers who import personalized ads into our "private" spaces online manipulative culprits? Do we have the right to completely "own" our profiles, or is Facebook ultimately the property of its owners? Do users have the agency to ignore or click adverts? This post tries to answer these questions by: asserting the rights Facebook's advertising has to "invade" our profiles, and examining the active means the average user uses to respond to advertising.

Personalized ads
So you open your homepage, click to browse profiles or play a game, and to the right hand side, you notice a line of different sorts of adverts. Of course, you get this all the time, so it's only natural to ignore it instantly, but you don't. Why? Because at least two of those ads appeal to some of your personal interests. For a moment, you start to wonder how in the world Facebook could direct ads that the personal information you'd put on your profile. You remember reading somewhere that Facebook measures the quality of our interactions and relationship to determine what we see in our news feed, so you settle for this scientific justification. But the thing is, you can't stand adverts anymore especially when they invade the space you thought was private. You can't stand it, but you can't get rid of it.

I certainly feel like this and I'm sure I'm not the only one. I don't want anyone to measure up anything about me, deliver it to advertisers (who make money out of my free service), and then dish me with ads I didn't ask for in the first place. The questions to consider are: do they need permission from me? Should they pay me money if I respond to that advert? My answer shockingly is...no. I say this because just as the information we disclose to the public sphere is no longer in our control and ownership, so is what we put online in a public space like Facebook. We may own our profiles, but we don't own the site in which our profile is situated. Though privacy settings may apply to its users, it does not apply to the corporates behind it. Is it unethical for employers, educational institutions or commercial entities to access and use information we make publically available online, or is it our own responsibility to limit and control personal information? On Facebook, no matter how private we choose to set our information, the control we have is minimal because of the context the information is situated. Same thing applies to e-mails and any other site where we get random adverts in our 'private' spaces. So, I don't think we should complain about this. BUT, what about when they're making money off this, what do we get in return? How do we respond to adverts though?


Agency
As Marxists would claim, consumers and producers of cultural products have little to no agency to think and reflect on what they're doing - that is, assisting the capitalist system. These bodies of thinkers reckon the cultural industries manipulate us into using our bodies for free labour, and we get paid less than the amount of work we do. They see us as passive consumers who think we need something, when really, we only fulfil temporary desires only to keep the manipulative system of production going. Cultural theorists claim otherwise. According to them, we are active in our production and consumption. I lean towards this cultural perspective in terms of advertisements and the amount of 'control' or agency we have on them. Marx would say because these ads are specifically personalized and imported into our online private spaces, the capitalist (advertiser) gains his money, and due to our false consciousness, we go ahead and succumb to the ad. This is a bit far-fetched. Certainly, we do not always respond to ads on television, so why would we respond to online ads? We are neither passive nor are we oblivious to the profit advertisers make from this process.

So in short, privacy is limited whether we like it or not. Corporates are ultimately in control of our online spaces and the private information we put there. With adverts, it’s a choice to click. I ignore it if I have no interest in it. Facebook is its owners' property so I believe they can do what they want to do with my information, as long as it does not harm me or any other user in any way. Thus, it is no longer a matter of privacy, it is a matter of harm.

1) Advertisers make money off our information, should we get anything in return? 2) Does using Facebook count as Leisure?