Boyd

In Boyd's analysis of the differences between Myspace and Facebook, and the supposed "white flight" that occurred from Myspace to Facebook, she seems to be altogether too into the idea that racism affects young peoples reasoning for doing this. While it is an interesting cultural fact that white people did migrate to Facebook before many minorities did, it seems to me that Boyd is doing what many people who agree with affirmative action do, and looking for the racism in anything to affect how people think of it. This approach simply does not work in terms of the electronic world due to one simple factor: signing up to Myspace or Facebook has nothing racial involved in the process. It is not like applying to college, or for a job, or for anything else. There is no box that you put "Caucasian" or "African-American" for that precludes you from joining Facebook or Myspace, you simply sign up for it. While the fact remains that Facebook began as a social media website made for college educated students from Harvard, this wasn't because the creator wanted it to be racist: he simply knew the most people from Harvard, and as such that was the most likely place where people joining would be coming from. All good business ideas are helped along by our friends first, and as such Facebook was first joined and promoted by Harvard students and graduates. If Facebook had been invented in the ghetto by a black kid, I have no doubt it would have progressed the exact same way in pulling people from Myspace, and the argument about white flight by Danah Boyd would be invalid. Boyd, in my opinion, needs to take off her own racially profiling glasses and realize that young people for the most part simply go to Myspace and Facebook as a way to talk to friends, not as a way to exclude others.

Mackinnon

The Mackinnon readings made me realize that there are two different kinds of censorship, both of which she discusses, but which she doesn't quite do justice in separating in my opinion. I feel that their is a huge difference in a company like Apple censoring its App store to help its image, and a government censoring entire sections of the web to help its image. Apple is a private company, not government owned (though government regulates all companies), and as such has the option to censor whatever they want especially if they feel that it would harm their companies profits. Being publicly traded and partially owned by shareholders, Apple has an obligation to do things (like censor) that will help make its shareholders more money. If this means taking down apps like an app I heard about some time ago, the "baby shaker app"(more or less what it sounds like, an image and sounds of a baby crying appear and you shake it to get it to stop)then more power to them. If people want to complain about it, then they are in essence complaining about capitalism, because if a company is doing something in its best interest to make money, then there is nothing illegal about censoring certain sections of apps. Just like a grocery store is only going to carry certain brands of groceries, "censoring" in a way what people see and have the ability to buy. This is simply a tool to make money. Government censorship, however, is in my opinion almost always a bad thing. Unless national security is threatened, I feel that the government should not have the right to censor anything that people may want to see published, drawn, written, or filmed. That governments like China censor certain news media simply hides the fact that they are struggling to keep a hold on their people. Fortunately, while this censorship worked for a few years, the coming of the Arab Spring and the overthrow of numerous dictators in the Middle East has shown that government censorship can only hold back a society pushed to the brink for so long. The government should work for the people, and if it has stopped working to protect the people and make their lives better, than the people can and often do overthrow that government to emplace a new one that better serves their needs. And censorship has rarely been successful in preventing the overthrow of governments that need to be overthrown.

McGonigal

In writing about video games McGonigal is of the viewpoint that they are good for the world and can be used to enact change, invent new and exciting technologies, and generally save the world. I disagree. I was a fairly hardcore gamer for most of my life, playing games like World of Warcraft and Call Of Duty, along with many other games starting from around the age of 5. I have seen nothing in video games that has the ability to change the world, and unfortunately the reason for this is not because of the games themselves: it is because of the gamers. Because gamers use the games they play as alternate reality's they often take on totally new personalities as opposed to the ones they have in the real world. This means that in most games, someone you may think of as a nerd in the real world might act like a bully in the game world. This is especially common in the games that someone like McGonigal might be seeing as the most likely to change the world: MMORPG's. Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games, like World of Warcraft, are the only games with the huge customer base necessary to be tools for progress. The problem with these games is that, like politics in the real world, the politics in the game will prevent most people from using their power for good. The reasons for this are myriad: some people just wouldn't want to, being "trolls" for no reason; others would choose not to participate due to the idea that the video game is an alternate reality, one that they don't want to infect with ideas from the real world. The point is, that like anything in life, you need a majority of people to agree on something for it to actually work and do some good, and gamers are the last group of people who you could get to agree on anything other than gaming. While I don't believe the hype that video games promote gratuitous violence, or children who grow up playing video games become violent killers, I also don't think that video games are a machine for change of any sort other than the kind associated with video games themselves.

Baym

Baym's question of "what is a friend" in terms of social media is one that I have mulled over multiple times, whether casually while thinking about adding or not adding a person of Facebook, or whether I am having a serious discussion with friends (in the real world) about Facebook friends and what it actually means. I think that adults, and younger critics of social media, often overstate the meaning of being friends on Facebook, and how our whole society is turning into one that is based on electronic media and talking to someone without actually talking to them. The idea of a Facebook friend, to me, is not unlike the idea of an old school paper phonebook: I have a lot of Facebook friends, but very few of them are people I am likely to contact. However, it is nice to have the ability to contact them all the same. Just like a phonebook, which is a listing of thousands of phone numbers (somewhat taking privacy away, just as Facebook does) most of which you will never need, but are nice to have...just in case. The reality is, for me anyway, I tend to only contact 10 or 15 people in my life electronically frequently enough for me to consider the impact of electronic media on my relationship. And I would tend to both agree and disagree with Baym that electronic media can help to make relationships stronger, and build better relationships than physical interaction could. I agree because the fact is, if you are in constant communication with someone, relationships can become much, much stronger, and if you are contacting them through numerous outlets, you have the opportunity to find similar things you like and ideas you agree on much more easily. This is turn builds stronger relationships simply due to the ability we have now to always be in contact with people. However, this ability can also hinder our relationships due to misread or intentionally hurtful texts, emails, and Facebook messages that can hurt ones feelings or drive them away from someone, sometimes due to a simple mistake. Most often, however, rational people can realize that the Internet is one thing, and real life is another, and people generally saying things on the internet are not to be taken quite as seriously. While I think that social media certainly has cemented a place in the world as one context we use to communicate, I think that face to face interaction is always going to continue to be the most important way that relationships are built and prosper. This is simply proven by the fact that if one builds a relationship up to a certain point online, the next step is always simple: take the relationship offline and meet in person.

Lievrouw

The most interesting part of Lievrouw's chapters written about culture jamming to me were those discussing memes and their place in the culture jamming world. While I do tend to agree that memes and their various forms were originally used for purposes of activism using new media forms, I think that at this point memes have become something that are not at all looked at as "activist" media. When I am scrolling through facebook and see a meme, more often than not I click it due to its humor and do not read into it any further than that. This unfortunately happened because of the overloading of the internet with memes and associated graphics. Websites like I Can Haz Cheezburger have taken memes, which could be used for political and social activism, and turned them into something silly and meaningless (that isn't to say they aren't entertaining). For the activists this is a problem, because it means they either have to try to continue using things like memes to promote and spread their ideals, or they have to move on to new methods of promotion. It is possibly that the activists could continue to use memes as a tool, however because memes have become mostly humor based, the activist writing the meme would have to be very good at subtly getting across his/her message without losing the interest of the reader. For readers on facebook and other social media websites, the draw in many of these is humor, and if there is an obvious political undercurrent, they are often skipped (unless the person reading them is very politically oriented, which most young people are not) because of the lack of humor seen in most political activist movements (in my opinion, the humor mostly used by young people is in how stupid politics and politicians are in the first place, and this only helps spread the ideal that politics need changing, but not how or why).