Monday, March 10, 2008
child predators
I found an article on msnbc.com about child preditors and hpw it used to be so much harder for people to find the children. It talked about how they used to have to go out in public and try to find kids in parks and entice them with candy or a puppy. Now all they have to do it get on the internet to find them. This has made the internet a scary place. The FBI said that 1 in 5 kids on the internet are sexually solicited. That is scary. 20% of all of the millions of kids on the web are being sexaully solicited. This makes me worry about 10 years from now when i have kids and they get on the internet. Im sure this problem is just going to grow. That is if we do not do anythign about it. This article did not say much about protecting our kids. It did give us advise on what to do and not to do. The article made a great point. It said to think of what you put on the internet as a tatto. Whta you put on there is perminant. Even if you try to erase it it is still kind of there. People can save whatever you put on there and use it against you later. This article is just one of many articles talking about how scary the internet has become. We need to do something about this. I have no clue whta we can do, bu Im sure some smart people somewhere can come up with some sollutions.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
AIM
The only thing that came to mind when I read what I was supposed to do this week was AIM or AOL instant message. I am pretty sure it was what every middle school or high school kid used to communicate with friends before myspace and facebook became so popular. I used to use AIM to keep in contact with all of my friends from school. I was not allowed to have a cell phone until I could pay for it myself. I could not just call my friends to set up times to hang out because i could not afford to buy a phone. I had to go onto AIM and see what friends were on and then I could send them messages and make plans.
I had to use AIM a lot to talk to my friends, but sometimes when I would be on AIM random people would talk to me. I would just get a box that asked if I would like to except a message from so and so. I would always click yes because I wanted to see who it was. it always ended up being someone I knew and just did not have their screen name. One time I got a message from a name that I did not recognize, but they ended up saying they were a person I knew. I chatted with this person for awhile and then signed off. The next time I was online this same person sent me some more messages. After a few messages I started wondering if it was really the person they said they were. the messages were getting sexual. This person was a guy and he was asking me questions about things I had done with my girlfriend. this is when I ended the conversation and signed off. I knew it was not the person they said it was, but I did not tell the person that I knew they were not who they said they were.
The nest time I got online that person was online. I decided to trick this person to figure out who they were. The name that they said they were was a guy on my high school football team. So I decided to ask a question that would be answered correctly if it really was my teammate. Myteamate had been at practice that day so I asked this person why they were not at practice. The person said that they had a doctors appointment. WRONG "you were at practice" I said. This person signed off right away. I had caught them. I had proven hat they were not who they said they were. This made me happy, but also made me mad because this random person had been asking me personally questions that I would not tell some one that I did not know. Now I really wanted to find out who this made up person was. I asked everyone on my friend list if they knew who this person was. Half of my friends said no and that they thought it was my teammate. This person had been acting like my teammate for a long time on the Internet and nobody knew who ti really was. I know that everyone reading this wants me to say that I found out who it was, but I never did.
All of this was just to show how easy it is to be someone else on the Internet. It is as simple as saying that you are a different person. You just have to make up a name and your on your way to being a different person on the Internet. I really think that the Internet is a dangerous place and people need to be more careful about who they talk to.
I had to use AIM a lot to talk to my friends, but sometimes when I would be on AIM random people would talk to me. I would just get a box that asked if I would like to except a message from so and so. I would always click yes because I wanted to see who it was. it always ended up being someone I knew and just did not have their screen name. One time I got a message from a name that I did not recognize, but they ended up saying they were a person I knew. I chatted with this person for awhile and then signed off. The next time I was online this same person sent me some more messages. After a few messages I started wondering if it was really the person they said they were. the messages were getting sexual. This person was a guy and he was asking me questions about things I had done with my girlfriend. this is when I ended the conversation and signed off. I knew it was not the person they said it was, but I did not tell the person that I knew they were not who they said they were.
The nest time I got online that person was online. I decided to trick this person to figure out who they were. The name that they said they were was a guy on my high school football team. So I decided to ask a question that would be answered correctly if it really was my teammate. Myteamate had been at practice that day so I asked this person why they were not at practice. The person said that they had a doctors appointment. WRONG "you were at practice" I said. This person signed off right away. I had caught them. I had proven hat they were not who they said they were. This made me happy, but also made me mad because this random person had been asking me personally questions that I would not tell some one that I did not know. Now I really wanted to find out who this made up person was. I asked everyone on my friend list if they knew who this person was. Half of my friends said no and that they thought it was my teammate. This person had been acting like my teammate for a long time on the Internet and nobody knew who ti really was. I know that everyone reading this wants me to say that I found out who it was, but I never did.
All of this was just to show how easy it is to be someone else on the Internet. It is as simple as saying that you are a different person. You just have to make up a name and your on your way to being a different person on the Internet. I really think that the Internet is a dangerous place and people need to be more careful about who they talk to.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
young and old
I started by interviewing my girlfriend Courtney. I just asked her about her general experiences on the Internet and if she could live with out it. i also asked her if she felt safe buying things on the Internet and if she just felt safe in general. She told me that she felt very safe on the Internet. she said that she does not go to any sites were she would feel unsafe. She does not worry about buying things on the Internet. she said that with out the Internet she would be really bored and it would make her life much harder. Overall she said that she loves the Internet and with out it she felt like she would have a much harder life.
I then interviewed my mom about her Internet experience. My mom loves the Internet just like Courtney. My mom said with out the Internet she would never get anything done. She said she pays all of her bills and does all of her communicating on line. She loves buying things and sending emails and watching TV. She said she sits at the computer for about 3 hours a day doing "Chores" as she called them. She said she feels safe doing all of these things online and said she felt like she had nothing to worry about.
Then I asked my grandma about the Internet. she asked my why i wanted to know. I told her it was for a class. she told me I was wasting my money learning about the Internet. She is a funny lady. She hates the Internet and refuses to use it. It was funny hearing her talk about how bad it is even though she has never used it. She said that it is just to watch pornography. I told her she could just use it for email and nothing else and that way she would not have to write letters to everyone. She replied with " I like writing letters". Overall my grandma hates the Internet because it is bad and takes up to much of peoples time and rots their brains.
It was really interesting to hear my mom talk about how she loves the Internet and then hear her mom talk about how she hated it. It just showed my that their has been a huge change in the way people think between the ages of 50 and 70. The 70 year old people do not like technology and do not rely on it nearly as much as the 50 and younger people.
I then interviewed my mom about her Internet experience. My mom loves the Internet just like Courtney. My mom said with out the Internet she would never get anything done. She said she pays all of her bills and does all of her communicating on line. She loves buying things and sending emails and watching TV. She said she sits at the computer for about 3 hours a day doing "Chores" as she called them. She said she feels safe doing all of these things online and said she felt like she had nothing to worry about.
Then I asked my grandma about the Internet. she asked my why i wanted to know. I told her it was for a class. she told me I was wasting my money learning about the Internet. She is a funny lady. She hates the Internet and refuses to use it. It was funny hearing her talk about how bad it is even though she has never used it. She said that it is just to watch pornography. I told her she could just use it for email and nothing else and that way she would not have to write letters to everyone. She replied with " I like writing letters". Overall my grandma hates the Internet because it is bad and takes up to much of peoples time and rots their brains.
It was really interesting to hear my mom talk about how she loves the Internet and then hear her mom talk about how she hated it. It just showed my that their has been a huge change in the way people think between the ages of 50 and 70. The 70 year old people do not like technology and do not rely on it nearly as much as the 50 and younger people.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Myspace
I have had facebook for a long time and have always thought it was a really cool website. I never really wanted to get myspace, but I decided to get it earlier this year. I wanted to see why it was so cool and I also knew it was a way that I could find some family members that did not have facebook. When I got my myspace I was really confused on how to set it all up. It would not let me upload a lot of my pictures because they were to big. it also was really hard for me to figure out how to make a cool background. I already didn't like it.
Besides not liking the format of the page I really did not like the friend requests I was getting. My first few friends requests were from my friends. Well the first was one tom, but then they next few were people I know. Then it started, every friend request was from some fake porn girl. I hated it. I would go on an think I had a new person to get to know and it would be some half naked girl. I am not saying I was upset with the half naked girls, but I was upset that they could have such a lack of security on the website. The website should be able to monitor that better. After ever friend I was getting was a naked girl I stopped using myspace. I still have the page, but I never go on it because I really don't use it to keep in touch with anyone.
I think the idea that people can advertise their porn by making up fake friends is just an example of what our online communities have come to. People are afraid to do these type of things in a face to face conversation, but if it is online and you cannot see them they feel like they can be a gross as they want. There need to be more regulations on these websites or pretty soon it is all going to turn to filth.
Besides not liking the format of the page I really did not like the friend requests I was getting. My first few friends requests were from my friends. Well the first was one tom, but then they next few were people I know. Then it started, every friend request was from some fake porn girl. I hated it. I would go on an think I had a new person to get to know and it would be some half naked girl. I am not saying I was upset with the half naked girls, but I was upset that they could have such a lack of security on the website. The website should be able to monitor that better. After ever friend I was getting was a naked girl I stopped using myspace. I still have the page, but I never go on it because I really don't use it to keep in touch with anyone.
I think the idea that people can advertise their porn by making up fake friends is just an example of what our online communities have come to. People are afraid to do these type of things in a face to face conversation, but if it is online and you cannot see them they feel like they can be a gross as they want. There need to be more regulations on these websites or pretty soon it is all going to turn to filth.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
My favorite thing about the internet is how everyone says that they are on facebook and myspace for social networking. What exactly do they mean by that? If they mean they are trying to meet people to get a job then I don't believe it because you would not put drunk pictures of yourself up if you were trying to get a job. If they mean they are trying to meet people to go hang out with or to part with then I don't believe that either because I have never heard of anyone meeting a good friend on facebook. I'm sure it has happened, but most facebook friends stay just facebook friends.So anyways I wanted to see what books their were on social networking. I knew that if I were to type social networking into Google I was going to see thousands of pages. When I did this I was surprised to see a bunch of articles or blogs just discussing social networks online. It was actually very boring. This upset me because if the internet sources for social networking were boring then the books about social networking were going to be really boring. I was right. All of the books that I could find in the Beaverton library were about how to make your business better by meeting clients online and things like that. I could not find any books about facebook or myspace. It was really no fun at all. I wanted to find some facebook hating book or some book about all the cool things you can do on facebook, but no, all I could find were boring business books.I think if I were going to write a paper about social networks I would not go to a library. I would do all of my research online and I would be much more successful that way. I feel like social networks are a huge online thing and they have not been popular long enough for their to be a lot of book written about them. If you look online you can find a huge amount of information about social networks. In the library you are going to struggle to find any books that will not put you to sleep. So in the end the internet is the better resource when it comes to writing a paper about social networks.
Teten, David. The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors And Closing Deals Online.
Scoble, Robert. Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers.
Benkler, Yochai. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Makets and Freedom
http://mashable.com/?p=1536
http://www.socialnetworks.org/
http://www.orgnet.com/sna.html
Teten, David. The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors And Closing Deals Online.
Scoble, Robert. Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers.
Benkler, Yochai. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Makets and Freedom
http://mashable.com/?p=1536
http://www.socialnetworks.org/
http://www.orgnet.com/sna.html
Monday, February 4, 2008
Writing letters
I'm going to start this by saying that I hate witing letters. When I was younger my mom would make me write hand written letters to everyone I got a gift from. By the time I was 13 I actually hoped that I wouldn't get very many gifts becasue i didn't want to write that thank you letters.
So I dicided to write the hand written letter to my grandma becasue she always writes me letters. She actually called me when she got it because she was so exited. I never write her letters so when she got it she said that "she just had to call". The funny thing about me writing her the letter by hand was that she doesn't even have a computer so she wouln't be able to read an email. She just refuses to mold to what our society wants her to. She thinks what our cultures is doing with technology is great and all, but she says that she is gonna die soon and there is no reason for her to learn all of this new stuff when it changes ever few months anyways. She is 78 and in perfect health so i don't think she is going to be dieing any time soon. My gradma proves to me that we do not need to follow what our cultures is doing. She has a job, a house, and a family and keeps in contact with everyone without technology. It is cool for me to think that she can do that when our culture is moving twords everything being electronic. She uses a phone and a pen an paper.
I wrote to my dad in an email. He got the email within about 30 minutes. He just wrote back that he apprictiated what i had said and then told me prety much that he liked me too. It was funny to see how much more the hang written letter ment to my gradma. My dad liked the email, but my grandma loved the hand written letter. All of this to me meant that the old fashioned way of doing things ment more. The ways we used to do thing way better. Our culture has made things so imformal that we are forgetting what it truely means to be a human. yes I said it. I think that in some ways our culture has created a monster. technology is taking over everything and that is not always a good thing. it makes our lives easier, but at what price. I really belive that we need to keep some of our old traditions around. If we do not do this I don't want to see what our culture looks like in 100 years. I think that people will be so numb that we will act more like robots than humans. All i am trying to say will all of this is that the simple act of writng my grandma a hand written letter made me realize that we need to do things like this to keep our culture how it is. if we fall into the easy way of doing things to often we are going to hurt our culture.
So I dicided to write the hand written letter to my grandma becasue she always writes me letters. She actually called me when she got it because she was so exited. I never write her letters so when she got it she said that "she just had to call". The funny thing about me writing her the letter by hand was that she doesn't even have a computer so she wouln't be able to read an email. She just refuses to mold to what our society wants her to. She thinks what our cultures is doing with technology is great and all, but she says that she is gonna die soon and there is no reason for her to learn all of this new stuff when it changes ever few months anyways. She is 78 and in perfect health so i don't think she is going to be dieing any time soon. My gradma proves to me that we do not need to follow what our cultures is doing. She has a job, a house, and a family and keeps in contact with everyone without technology. It is cool for me to think that she can do that when our culture is moving twords everything being electronic. She uses a phone and a pen an paper.
I wrote to my dad in an email. He got the email within about 30 minutes. He just wrote back that he apprictiated what i had said and then told me prety much that he liked me too. It was funny to see how much more the hang written letter ment to my gradma. My dad liked the email, but my grandma loved the hand written letter. All of this to me meant that the old fashioned way of doing things ment more. The ways we used to do thing way better. Our culture has made things so imformal that we are forgetting what it truely means to be a human. yes I said it. I think that in some ways our culture has created a monster. technology is taking over everything and that is not always a good thing. it makes our lives easier, but at what price. I really belive that we need to keep some of our old traditions around. If we do not do this I don't want to see what our culture looks like in 100 years. I think that people will be so numb that we will act more like robots than humans. All i am trying to say will all of this is that the simple act of writng my grandma a hand written letter made me realize that we need to do things like this to keep our culture how it is. if we fall into the easy way of doing things to often we are going to hurt our culture.
Monday, January 28, 2008
I had never been a big Internet guy until facebook. In high school everyone always used AIM and I never really did. I mean, I did sometimes, but I never really got into it. In college when I heard about facebookI figured I would make an account just to find old friends. When I first made my page I just put a simple picture of my self that I took at arms length. I wrote a few things about my self like my age, sex, and what I liked to do in my spare time. I did not really care what people thought of me when they looked at my page I just wanted to find other people and look at their pages to see what they were up to. After I did this for awhile I realized that other people might want to know what i was up to and things that i liked to do. This was when I decided to change my profile and really try to let people know who I was.
I put all of my favorite pictures of myself and my friends up. I wrote paragraphs about who i was and what i liked to do. I read through my profile to make sure it sounded like I was doing well and looked good to other people. I didn't want anyone to really know if I got bad grades or if I had gained the freshman 15 or maybe it was 25. I organized my profile to make it seem that I was doing great at everything and looked just like I did in high school. I got away with all of this until my girlfriend read my page and called me out on all of it. She told me that it didn't even seem like it was my page. She said that if she read that she would think I was a totally different person. This kind of made me made until I thought about it and realized she was so right. I went right onto my profile with her and changed all of my info to show the real me. I even put up recent pictures showing the real me.
All of this made me think of how any one of my old friends that have facebook profiles could be doing what I had done originally. i don't really know if my old friends are doing well or not because if they are not doing well I doubt they are going to put it on facebook. If I were to speak to them face to face I think they would tell me how they were really doing, but since I just see their profiles I don't really know how they are. this actually really makes me sad because I want to know how they are really doing and since they can put whatever they want online I really don't know the true them anymore. I think this is one of the worst things about facebook. if I were to call my friends of meet them face to face I would know the real them, but since I don't. I just look on facebook to check up on them I end up seeing potentially fake information. It would be cool if people felt comfortable putting up negative information on facebook, but I don't think they ever will so I am going to have to just call my friends. Not such a bad thing I guess.
I put all of my favorite pictures of myself and my friends up. I wrote paragraphs about who i was and what i liked to do. I read through my profile to make sure it sounded like I was doing well and looked good to other people. I didn't want anyone to really know if I got bad grades or if I had gained the freshman 15 or maybe it was 25. I organized my profile to make it seem that I was doing great at everything and looked just like I did in high school. I got away with all of this until my girlfriend read my page and called me out on all of it. She told me that it didn't even seem like it was my page. She said that if she read that she would think I was a totally different person. This kind of made me made until I thought about it and realized she was so right. I went right onto my profile with her and changed all of my info to show the real me. I even put up recent pictures showing the real me.
All of this made me think of how any one of my old friends that have facebook profiles could be doing what I had done originally. i don't really know if my old friends are doing well or not because if they are not doing well I doubt they are going to put it on facebook. If I were to speak to them face to face I think they would tell me how they were really doing, but since I just see their profiles I don't really know how they are. this actually really makes me sad because I want to know how they are really doing and since they can put whatever they want online I really don't know the true them anymore. I think this is one of the worst things about facebook. if I were to call my friends of meet them face to face I would know the real them, but since I don't. I just look on facebook to check up on them I end up seeing potentially fake information. It would be cool if people felt comfortable putting up negative information on facebook, but I don't think they ever will so I am going to have to just call my friends. Not such a bad thing I guess.
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