Brave New World

Google – the ever – growing empire produces nothing but seems determined to control everything. This quote comes from Henry Porter who criticises the monopolist character of the Internet. And indeed, regarding businesses like Google, which seems to take over every single bit of the Internet, he might be right.

It even seems to take over the role of the owner of intellectual property, when announcing that every book will be scanned and available to everybody through the Web now. This is just an extension of the already existing debate around pirate bay, regarding the infringement of copyright of music and films.

To be honest, my opinion about all this is a bit two hearted.

I totally agree that Google developed into a monopoly in the Web and this is questionable regarding the freedom and individuality the Web promises. This is the question many producers and authors face as well, since Google announced its plans with the books.

The authors do not have a chance against Google, as they were not asked beforehand. The only way Google could be stopped would be through users taking action and denying the use of the online books, like it happened in Broughton, when villagers prevented Google to take pictures of their village for Street View.

It is feared that through moving the literature into the Internet a loss of culture will take place.
But then, regarding reading and writing as a basis for democracy, the digital books might be a possibility to encourage more people to read.

And regarding all the information in the Internet through blogs etc. a question of loss of culture could be asked here as well. Wouldn’t it be a chance to enhance the quality of ‘literature’ in the Web, if some real literature would be available?

So, Google might not produce something, but maybe it can help to maintain parts of culture through storing it and making it available?

I just came over the term mommy hacker in the dictionary and it grabbed my attention, as I immediately had this controversial picture in my head: a mum hiding in the darkness of the night, following her criminal intentions…

Well, it is actually not that bad. The real explanation is: A mommy hacker is a mom, who out of worries controls the Internet activities of her children.

Following an article in the Guardian, those worries do not come out of nowhere: the book described in this article (Consumer Kids by Agnes Nairn and Ed Mayo) reveals that kids are becoming more and more web savvy and are spending an average of five hours a day in front of their computers. This makes them an easy target for marketers and webpages like Stardoll. This website targets more than 30 million girls, which create their avatars and dress them up in designer labels and are following role models in the Stardoll community.

Superbelly11, one of the young users of Stardoll finds that Stardoll is the only place in the Internet where she feels safe. Really?

Like on every other website, the children are asked to provide personal information like their email address for example. Therefore Stardoll counts to the 85% children’s websites that collect key information about their users, even though they are children; that makes it easy to market to them directly.

Brands know what the particular child purchases in its online world and use this information for their marketing.

Although websites like Stardoll provide Kid’s Privacy Policies and an Online Security Guide for Parents, as soon as the email address is out there it can be used and will never come back… not even the hacking mom can get it back.

And maybe she won’t even see the need to get it back, as she might discover in her nightly activities that the websites seem harmless, because the desire for the products they might create are invisible at the first glance as is the way brands market to children.

I just had a discussion with some friends on to what extent potential employers would check out our Facebook profiles or other social media networks we joined before employing us or inviting us for an interview. We weren’t quiet sure to what extent we should “pimp” our profiles before applying for jobs.

As a recent research conducted by talent management consultancy DDI shows, 25% of 1,910 potential employers world – wide and 12% in the UK check out profiles and photos of candidates to get an idea of their personality. At least half of the 25% said they used this information to actual decide whether to invite to an interview or not.

On the one hand I think it’s a good thing to make a selection before actually inviting the people to the interview.

But on the other hand don’t the employers might miss some good potential when judging the person by photos and social network profiles? Lets say there are some pictures showing the applicant having fun on a party, although this person has really good grades and experiences than that just shows some flexibility and organisational skills and the ability to have a balance between private life and profession without letting influence one the other.

And isn’t it all about promoting ones personality in networks anyway? So most of the information on Facebook might just be true to a certain extent, especially when “pimping” the profile. And honestly, if the profile would look too perfect – that can’t be real either…

A friend of mine made me aware of this Youtube video a few days ago, starring little David who is on his way home from a tooth surgery. He is still under the influence of drugs from the surgery and filmed in this condition by his father. 

I guess it is supposed to be funny and many people actually find it funny as can be seen on the 31,536 comments the video got – it even has helped some people to get through a bad day or tough times, as Davids father happily mentions on his “David after dentist” blog.

Thats just another example on how easy and quickly people can turn into ’someone’ in the web. I guess David and his family were just a normal family before his tooth surgery. 

Some people might recognise themselves somehow in the video, when your good friends post some party videos or pics on Facebook, showing you making a fool of yourself. The difference to David – we’re all adults and have (hopefully) chosen consciously to join Facebook and, well, getting in the condition on the pics.

That leads me to another point that catched my attention (obviously not just mine) in the last week: the briefly considered change of Facebook’s terms of use. Mark Zuckerberg and his friends refrained from activating these terms after many Facebook users commented against it. The basic change would have been that Facebook had the right to keep copies of user messages online, although the user has already signed off. 

But how do we know what really happens with all the information we publish in the web? And to what extend can real restrictions exist in the web? Another friend of mine called the web ‘lawless’ the other day – somehow I agree with him. I think the web is developing too fast to regulate it and it already circulates too much information to control theire use.

And what will little David think when he is old enough to realise the consequences of his tooth surgery? Probably he will not care, because he is born into a ‘culture’ where sharing of every moment in life is quiet common and also very transient. It might be considered as his past. The same with our data in several parts of the web – they’re part of our past – our web-past.

When I was asked to set up a blog for my New Media course in the MA Public Relations, I felt some doubts against it.

When reading other Blogs or simply information in the Web, I always asked myself the question, who is the person behind the author? How reliable are they and the information they give? How can I know if it is true what they’re saying? And do we really need to know everybody’s opinion and experiences on every possible topic? I came to the conclusion that we don’t necessarily need to know all these opinions and experiences, but that it is a form of democracy to enable everybody to express their opinions and thoughts. Well, actually it is democracy.

Andrew Keen calls the web therefore in his book ‘The Cult of the Amateur’‘democratized media’. But he has an extremely critical view on this democratization through Web 2.0, as it opens unlimited channels for manipulation and blurring of the truth. Peter Mandelson seems to confirm that when he stated in his first post on LabourList, the Labour website which was launched last month, that ‘the days of command and control are over’ with the use of New Media.

Audience and authors become nearly indistinguishable in the web and consequently becomes the border between truth, manipulation and simply untruth. Blogs ‘blurring with the mass media’, as it could be read under the definition of the term Blog on Wikipedia.Therefore it is in fact hard to distinguish between real journalism – and therefore trustable information – and information written by non-professional journalism, which is appropriately enough also called democratic journalism.

As many possibilities Web 2.0 offers – and they seem nearly unlimited – as many dangers it holds. After my initial doubts regarding blogging, I’m now really looking forward to explore and describe my experiences and thoughts about Web 2.0 as ‘democratized media’ and its unlimited facets in this blog.