The arguement of those who are for the regulation of the internet is that they feel that with these main operators owning the market and setting up barriers for any other competitors is that it will take away freedoms of the consumer and they will be forced to have the resources that the big companies want them to have.

I would have to side with those that are for the regulation of the internet.  To me personally, I feel that this is just the big companies trying to prevent any competition from coming in and stealing some of their market share and in turn their money.  I think that the thing that makes the internet great is that it provides a way that anyone can put any type of information and media for anyone to go on and see.  I feel that if these big companies were to gain too much control over what information is on the web and what information could be seen by their customers than it is taking away what makes the internet a great source of connecting with people and finding information.  After looking at those that are opposed to the regulation of the internet, it is all the people that could be losing money from it.  I do understand why they feel this way and if I was in their situation I would probably feel the same way.  When these companies entered into the internet business they did it in order to make a profit so if something comes along that is going to hurt their chances to do that then of couse they would be apposed to it.  But after looking at the situation I think that it is in the better interest for the internet as well as for society and those that use the internets resources, I feel that it should be regulated so that a select few don’t have too much control over it.

Automotive Technology: Active and Passive Safety Systems’

This article begins with discussing how a good portion of the automobile accidents are due to driver negligence.  Drivers are spending less time on focusing on their driving and more on making an important phone call or filing through their cds.  It also states how most drivers have begun to look at driving as just a routine activity which no longer requires as much focus.  It also states how a majority of fatal rollover accidents occur during routine traffic maneuvers.

In order to fix this problem, there are now more safety devices that are being invented in order to keep these drivers aware when they are in danger of getting into an accident.  The first is a forward collision system; this system uses a system that measures the distance between the driver’s vehicle and the vehicle in front of them as well as if the vehicle in front is slowing down or has stopped.  If the system senses that a crash is imminant than it deploys a system that pretensions the safety belts and automatically applies the break.  There are also new systems that warn drivers when they are drifting into a different lane as well as infrared sensors that detect if there is something coming up on the drivers blind spot.

This article is about the government trying to gain permission to start using a computer program in an attempt to monitor all information online in an attempt to be able to track down any illegal or terrorist activity.  If this motion is passed by congress then it will be an amendment to the Privacy Act of 1974.  I have mixed feelings about this type of data mining because I feel that there are some pros to it, however I do feel that there are some cons as well.  It is good in the sense that they will be able to gain some knowledge and info on terrorism in they ways that they might be able to prevent it from happening or at least in larger ways.  If this is something that can prevent such a horrible event as 9/11 than I feel that it is something that could be very important to have in the sense that it could potentially save lives.  However I am against it due to the fact that it does take away a lot of privacy from people.  I don’t feel comfortable in knowing that the government could be looking in on some of my personal information even though I’m not a terrorist and am not planning on being involved in any type of terrorist attacks.  I think that this is something that if it is put into affect that there are still some limits to it that need to be required.  There should be some type of way for the government to be able to provide some type of a viable motive as to why they need to see this person’s information before they just go ahead and do it.

Wikipedia: Data Mining

This wiki is basically discussing the process and history of data mining.  It talks of how people have been data mining for a long time but it is now reaching new heights and importance with entities such as the government using it to be able to track people and information.  This article gives me just about the same impression as the first article did.  I do feel that this type of information gathering does show some very positive potential as well as it shows potential for it to have a negative impact.  I think that there are some people who do things that lead to them not really deserving to have their privacy if there motives are harmful but I feel that most people deserve the right for their information to be private.

This article discusses negatives on RFID’s based on them being able to shut off medical equipment that patients are relying on.

http://www.rfid-weblog.com/50226711/rfid_benefits_reaches_london_tube.php

This article discusses how locamotives in London are using RFIDs to track were they are when they are in underground tunnels which is good because GPS’s don’t work once they are under there.

However one of the differences between me and Carr is that this is a problem that I have been experiencing as far as I can remember where as he states that it is something that he has noticed ever since he had become a frequent user on the web. I don’t know if this is because he is older and has more experience of what it was like reading to gather information without having the alternative of being able to just go and look for it on the web or if it is just the fact that he may have just been more able of comprehending knowledge out of reading than I am able to and that maybe he is just losing that ability or if it really is an effect of our minds becoming over reliant on the internet and sites such as google.

As it goes for whether or not google and/or the internet are really making us dumber, in my opinion I don’t believer that that is the case.  Though it could be having an affect on the way that our brains are able to comprehend information through reading, I don’t believe that that is a good enough reason to just go out and proclaim that the internet is necessarily making us dumber.  I feel that the internet is making us more knowledible through the fact that it has opened up so many more doors to so many different types of information that we wouldn’t have normally thought of looking for or that we may have just not been able to find through the more traditional methods of research.  Now this may just be due to the fact that a majority of my life, or the majority of my time in which I have had to go and look for this information, that I have had the internet there at my disposal and have indeed become over dependant on it. I just believe that the even if it is making us dumber just because it is affecting our reading habits because I don’t feel that that is necessarily what makes us smart or dumb because there are so many ways to get information that just because you read it doesn’t mean that that is the only way that that knowledge is accesible, again though this is just my opinions from my experiences in the age in which  i have gotten my information.

P.S.  Sorry this was a little late but I was having trouble with the internet earlier and couldn’t get back on my blog.

That leads me to the next similarity that I have between the students in this article and the experiences that I myself have gone through while trying to do research and that is all the frustrations that arise from the difficulty of trying to find viable information for a course related topic. This is mainly due to the fact that with anyone being able to put anything on the web, this leads to not only having to find material on the topic but then having to find material that is deemed credible. I know that through my experiences, especially here at Adrian College, professors stress more than enough not to use sources unless you know that they are credible, usually through using the library’s search engines, or else you aren’t going to recieve the credit from using that source.  This does add difficuly and frustration due to so much information being out there that isn’t credible it makes it like looking for a needle in a haystack to find something credible.

One of the differences that I noticed from the text is that they mention how the students tend to take the big picture, wait and see, approach to doing research where they like to take a week or so to look through the project and to get a general idea in what direction they want to go in with the assignment and to then start to do the research. As far as I can remember I have never attempted to take this approach to a research assignment. The process that I have always stuck by is to start by doing the research and to see what kind of information I can find and to then use that as my guide as to which direction I want to head in with this research.  A big part of this is due to what I discussed earlier with having  a hard time with finding a good pool of credible sources that have to do with my topic, so I find it easier to have the research and then pick the topic rather than picking the topic and risking not being able to find the research.

Another similarity that I noticed was in the list of frustrations that they had which was coming across too many irrelevant topics. A perfect example of this would be with my business policy course when we are to find an article that relates to the case that we are to discuss the next day in class, I find myself reading through all these articles that have nothing to do with the topic that I am trying to research.

The main purpose of this article is to point out the possibilities of using social networking online with programs such as Second Life and World of Warcraft as methods for gathering research.  These programs give people a chance to interact in a different world in which they can be a completely different person or character and can interact with others in a way in which they wouldn’t normally act.  Social scientists view these worlds as somewhat of a social science labortory to do research on how they act in a world in which there are no major consequences. Some of the advantages seen in this research is the ability to observe millions of subjects, another is that they will be able to gather data from subjects from groups that they normally would not be able to cover, they can observe trends of these subjects over a long period of time whether it be weeks or even months, and it would allow these experiments to be viewed by any researchers who aren’t from the major research universities. I think that these new worlds are definately a great opportunity for these researchers due to the fact that these subjects that they will be observing are going to be acting in a way in which they would not be able to in the normal world. They will be able to act out their fantasies and show signs of who and what they want the be and do that they would normally not want to say or be too embarrassed about but will now be out there and able to be observed.

Scientists Get a 2nd Life

The main purpose of this article is stating how some professors are actually creating avatars in the 2nd life program and are studying real life sciences through the program.  Through this program people are acually going on and have laboratory and are actually starting to teach people through the program. There have actually been events set up through the program where they will have scientists log on to their avatars and give lectures on the program. Second Life was originally created as a recreational source or a huge interactive playground but is now being served for real life purposes like science. I think in a way this is sort of scary because it is showing that there is some signs that technology taking over a huge part of reality has some potential of in some forms happening.

 This article starts by discussing what the information age is as well as why it is important to have a good understanding of what it is.  The information age is difficult to predict due to the fact that it progresses with technology, which has been at a violently rapid pace, which has led to numerous predictions on where it will end up.

There are three categories of attempts made to determine this future.  The first category is those who predict it by looking at the informational technology and what future that will lead us to.  The second category consists of people who would rather invent where the information age will lead us rather than try to predict it.  The third category consists of those who look at similarities and trends of the past in order to predict what the future will be.

The author is more in the historian category and believes that the event in history that correlates most to the information age is the invention of the printing press. The parallels that he belives will take place are:

• The changes will be just as dramatic
• The future will be dominated by unintended consequenses
• The effects won’t be seen for decades
• The above factors will argue for keeping an unregulated internet and taking a more experimental approach to information policy.

The aspect of the information age that the author addresses the most is the parallels between the printing press and network computers.  He goes on to mention that since the invention of the printing press, the closest tool to creating as big of an impact on society and communication was the invention of network computers.  The exponential growth of internet users has been uncanny and to the point where the author asks what will happen when the growth eventually tails of, which is expected to be pretty soon.

One of the things that the author mentions near the end of this paper is how both the printing press and networking computers have both developed a dark side to their uses which consist of people who have used these inovative creations for the wrong and sometimes harmful uses.  The printing press had to deal with people starting to use it for propaganda and to create secret societies.  The dark side of networking computers are those that go on and find ways to break into other systems illegally, people who start harmful chainletters, people who create spam adds, people who located people’s addresses with harmful intentions, and people who send out viruses that could damage people’s computers.

Through these reasons, the author of this article makes their claims as to why they have used the parallels of the invention of the printing press and have compared them in order to determine where this current information age is going to potentially take us.

Scan This Book!

This second article starts off by discussing the dream of one day having a universal library that will hold all of the worlds information in one area.  They discuss how it was once tried with the library of Alexandria and how when that library was gone, it seemed like that dream of the universal library was gone as well.  Then when Google anounced that they were going to take the information from 5 of the top interest centers that the dream seemed to have come alive once again.

They then go on to talk about how all the information in the world today, the books, articles, movies, music, images, etc. is all being digitized and scanned and with the way that technology continues to keep progressing, it won’t be too long before all of the worlds information will be able to fit in your pocket.

The question is asked that will the current scanning of books and everything being put online, will it eventually eliminate the use of making books on paper or will there still be the books that you can sit and read?  The author answers yes to both of these questions.  The author also goes into how the information of these texts will be able to be minimized to the point where it can be summarized into a paragraph or even the length of an actual book just like how an album of songs can be picked apart and reordered in order to create a personalized playlist. 

The author also toucher up on how the ability to copy someones work so that it can much easily be spread out to the world.  They mention that back in the day it was easier to just create your own work rather than to create a copy of someone else’s work.