"The Social Network"

***WARNING: SPOILER ALERTS! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!***


On the last few posts I've mentioned and referred to the recently new film that's come out in theaters called "The Social Network". For those of you who have no remote interest in short-lived fad culture "The Social Network" is the new, "rave" movie of the month to see according to corporately-funded product placement and the precise targeting tactics of a well-paid marketing team. "The Social Network" tells the story of the early Harvard days of Mark Zuckerberg, Co-founder and CEO of Facebook, and how the creation and rise of Facebook came to be the behemoth of social networks it is today. Jesse Eisenberg ("Zombieland") depicted the character of Zuckerberg as a gifted, yet deeply aloof Harvard undergrad who is obsessed with trying to "distinguish himself" in an institution of the best and brightest America has to offer. The movie starts off with Mark eventually getting dumped by his girlfriend after he vents his frustrations through backhanded compliments and borderline narcissistic juxtapositions that would make Donald Trump blush. So now Mark's drunk, depressed, and worst of all dumped. Is he so different that he'd actually go home, sleep on it, and move on with the rest of his life? Not at all.

In shallow spite he creates a website called "Facemash", which is compiled of pictures of Harvard women posted on the directory (dubbed "facebooks") of each Harvard house and displyed as a attractiveness contest similar to www.hotornot.com (Note: This is after he publicly blogs about the comparison of women to farm animals. LOL!). As he goes through each houses' website Mark narrates the methods of his data mining in detail using the technical jargon that 99% of a usual audience wouldn't even bother to learn let alone understand. This happens to be one of my favorite part of the movie, not because of the character's expression of inner sexual frustration, but because I knew enough of what he was saying to have a genuinely nonchalant expression and respond to rest of that scene with thoughts like "Easy enough", "There's a faster way to do that", "I did that when I was 10" (/brag). Anyway his site garners enough web traffic to overloads Harvard's server database in what was presumably thought to be a denial-of-service attack. Soon after, Zuckerberg creates "Thefacebook" the original predecessor of "Facebook". From this project Zuckerberg has an epiphany of how the structure of today's society is followed with students joining exclusive clubs, guys having to go through courting and "the game" to fulfill their sexual desires, and how this incorporates with the survival of the individual human being (...or maybe it's just me)

I'm going to stop the detail here because the rest of the movie follows the lawsuits of his (ex-)business partners, post-pubescent drama following the entrance of Sean Parker (co-founder of Napster, portrayed by Justin Timberlake) and the obvious legal and technical stuff that you can all read on Wikipedia (seriously, it's all there, you don't need to pay $12 to know the story).

And now we have Facebook, that seemingly addicting website that you can't just log off of, that you can't leave for one day without getting the itch to check on what your friends are doing this very minute, that you need to change your password and have someone hold the account until you finish studying for that big midterm next Monday. What's interesting about this movie is all the hoo-hah about making the real Mark Zuckerberg look like the greedy, self-centered, narcissistic asshole that Eisenberg's character portrays pretty decently with regards to his previous movie credits. The movie's poster shows the caption "You don't get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies" superimposed on Eisenberg's stoic countenance. Technically, the script is based on author Ben Mezrich's "The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal", which was consultant primarily by Eduardo Saverin, who was portrayed in "The Social Network" by actor Andrew Garfield and currently holds 5% share of Facebook's stock. So what does this all mean? Should we think of Mark Zuckerberg as the quintessential overnight billionaire who sacrifices his humanity for personal wealth? Is it fair to justify this impression based upon a movie? How about a book that tells the same story with the input from a Facebook business partner? What about the fact that Zuckerberg donated $100 billion to Newark public schools prior to the national debut of "The Social Network", despite his honest attempts to keep the two events separate from each other? Did he try to save face or was he being a philanthropist?

These are questions I had raised for myself before, during, and after the movie. All I can say is: I don't know. All I know is Mark Zuckerberg created a "monster", a monster we all love to hate, hate to love, and, for most people, quick to use on a daily basis. Honestly, it's inspiring me to create something, something I can share with the world one day that'll benefit me and the rest of mankind. Someday I'll look back at this and laugh and wonder "If I was so cool, why didn't I do that when I was 10?".

The Power of the Social Network (cont'd) - Pros and Cons

Now that I've described to few of many social networks that are out there and described their own unique purposes let's explore the overall utilization of this concept. There are pros and cons to anything - plain and simple - to everything; everything has a trade-off, one thing for the other. In the economics part of academia there is one famous saying that most econ students learn in their first year: "There is no such thing as a free lunch". But where does this all lead to?

Social Networking has no doubt change the world. Whether for the better or worse is subjective to the individual. It has brought new wealth to corporations that fiend for any type of en masse method to get their message or brand across. It has created new businesses that thrive solely on the mass popularity of a/the social network to sustain itself. People from anywhere can connect their own representation of cyberspace (i.e. profile) with another person anywhere in the world - even from Iceland to New Zealand - as long as both computers have access to the network from the Internet. "The Internet has flatten the world" is a budding new maxim in our generation. I agree with it (figuratively, of course) and it has made my life a litte more convenient.

In my case I can organize my friends' info into a streamlined database that automatically handles new information as it comes. Now I don't have the convenient excuse of forgetting anyone's birthday because Facebook punctually reminds me everyday of who's birthday that us, subconsciously drilling into my guilt-ridden soul that I should take the minute amount of time to go to their wall and type in "Happy Birthday" to whoever. However, in all seriousness, Facebook had brought me closer to my family in Italy than I can be without physically being there. My grandmother just turned 89 in August and I talked to her over Facebook. With the help of my uncle (who at 58 has a profile and admittedly is above most people his age when it comes to being tech-savvy) I was able to communicate to my grandmother in my broken Neapolitan dialect of Italian to wish her Happy Birthday, tell her about how my life is going here in New York, and ask how she's doing. I could have done this as easily over the phone but there's just a sort of inspiring moment I had when my grandmother, who still drinks wine with her "blended" mush of food and still works the farm on a blue moon, can still have the ability to message me through a device she has only seen in her golden years. Forget businesses and keeping with your old classmates, just being a witness and a participant to that is nothing short of the magnanimous power of the social network.

Now on to the dark side, the tradeoffs. If you honestly think that having a profile on the Internet that contains all of your submitted information is safe from anyone who has any malicious intent against you, I'd suggest never going on the Internet until you learn the world is not, and never will be, perfect. The moment you click that submit button and transfer packets of data that are eventually converted to text, pics, videos, etc., is the moment Facebook, or whatever social network your on, co-owns your property. That's right, Facebook has rights to those suggestive photos of last night's party or your candid shot of aliens in the night sky in the middle of your neighborhood desert. They own every piece of information you put up on your profile and every other profile and they enforce that ownership seriously. Not only that, speaking of that party last night, let's assume you did some things you'd rather not remember let alone let the world know. Well, maybe some of your not-so-honest friends would and, in fact, intend to show the world what happened. Before you even brush your teeth on your way to work/school and you check your email to find an album of pics dedicated to your (dis)honor. What now? You can't take it back; the damage has already been done. Research conducted by Alessandro Acquisti, a Carnegie Mellon University professor of public policy and management has found that individuals' perceptions of privacy are flexible depending on the context of an interaction. In a recent "Information Best Security Practices" conference at the Wharton School at UPenn, Acquisti states that "people [say] privacy [is] important to them, yet they engage in behaviors that indicate a remarkable lack of concern". Your privacy on the Internet is at significant stake no matter what you do or don't. As long as you have a reasonably visible identity on the Internet you are liable for your actions and the actions of others potentially against you. The only way to avoid any and all of these pitfalls is to not participate in any online social system. But...can you resist? Kinda reminds me of the abstinence stance :).

The Power of the Social Network

The power of the social network in this day and age is colossal. The concept of a person's contacts, whether it be friends, family, acquaintances, co-workers, etc., being easily accessible to that person is invaluable where and when the Internet is the super-platform of communication. Businesses, especially advertisers and marketers, see the digital "word-of-mouth" as gold mine to spread the word to as many people as possible in a cost-effective setting. Social network giants like Facebook, MySpace, and Friendster have been repeatedly tempted to sell their accounts at a price much like dating websites do. However, the most successful ones have kept it free of charge because of the potential velocity at which the entire network can grow. Since the popularity of social networking began there are many competitive social networking companies vying for the potential user to create and maintain an account on the network. As a college student that has grown up with the change form Web 1.0 to 2.0 I reminisce of earlier times where MySpace and Sconex were the sites to be on, subconsciously sizing up real-life friends to how many friends they have on this social network, or whether or not you kept Tom as a friend or not. Hell, I remember a time when AOL was the "social network" back in the day. It wasn't as free financially or conceptually as today's social networks are but it had fulfilled its purpose well for its time. I recently saw the movie "The Social Connection", which is (loosely) based on Mark Zuckerberg and his rise to power in creating Facebook and more on the book "The Accidental Billionaires" by Ben Mezrich. It was entertaining to say the least if the movie, which I suspect, doesn't exactly cover the origins of Facebook truthfully.
My Facebook profile is used more for leisure and social network (e.g. finding out about parties, keeping tabs on friends, use as an alternative communication tool). However, LinkedIn is strictly business for me. I use LinkedIn as a digital addendum to my resume and keep connections solely on the basis of the chance that I may further my career, which will be fully decided by the time I graduate. The layouts between Facebook and LinkedIn are distinguishly by most aspects. Facebook's profile formatting displays the person's name in bold, picture, date of birth, relationship status, gender of romantic interest, and political and religious views. It also shows your networks which primarily consist of high schools and colleges that the person is or has been a student of. These networks separate student bodies en masse in order to make finding friends from your local area easier. There is also space to add activities, hobbies, favorites that include, music, books, television shows, and movies, and a favorite quotes section. There is also room for photo albums, which can contain anything from your trip to Europe or last weekend's party, videos, and applications that range from games to other social knick-knacks. Photos arguably have the most versatility on Facebook since they can be "tagged" to a profile (for example: a picture that has you and two friends that both have a Facebook profile can be linked to their respective profiles without their consent. Of course, they have the option of "de-tagging"). All of these features are provided to the user in order to obtain the perfect (or less than perfect depending on opinion) digitalized social experience.
MySpace is what I would consider the predecessor to Facebook in terms of rank of popularity. MySpace was the site that initially caught my interest into social networking. Back in the day, MySpace used to be like Facebook, with the profile picture, age, hometown, and the other personal information. The big difference with MySpace and Facebook is that MySpace was almost completely HTML and XML based and that customizing a profile was not only considered easy, it was ubiquitous. MySpace's system was so easily accessible anyone would have been hard-pressed to find a decent profile without any background, music playing in the background, or any silly applications that gave the "kiddie", yet fun personal touch.
LinkedIn has a more refined, minimalist display, which professional job-seekers create and market their digital representation to a potential employer. Appropriately, most of the profile is in a resume format, with additional "skills", "summary", and "recommendations" sections. It also shows "connections" to other profiles instead of "friends". LinkedIn also has a news feed, but has less coverage compared to Facebook's. LinkedIn's privacy policies and application recommendations are tailored to the benefit of the professional as opposed to the casual social network user. LinkedIn is a social network that attracts a specific target market of the user instead of the all-around, something-for-everyone, market that Facebook currently dominates.
I use both Facebook and Linkedin religiously, digitally separating business and pleasure. There are no links from my Facebook to my LinkedIn account and vice versa solely for that reason. LinkedIn provides me with an accessible, reliable history of my school and work stints. Facebook is my platform to get in touch with all my friends and sync their information to whatever device that needs the collaborative information (e.g. my cell phone's address book). Facebook and LinkedIn have their merits to their specific service and they provide their respective services wonderfully. Most of the executives who run such successful websites are usually linked to each other in some way, shape, or form. For example, the Founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman, has funded Facebook during a part of its inception into the social network market. Sean Parker, co-founder of Napster along with Shawn Fanning, was President of Facebook and was portrayed in "The Social Network" by Justin Timberlake. Needless to say, even the social network executives find their own product addicting.

The Blog vs The Wiki

Blogs and wikis: two forms of communication born and used under the same realm, yet so different in how they are utilized. A blog is usually defined as an online journal, a virtual spot for an individual to share their experiences via the Internet. These experiences range from the minutia of details of someone's day or a expert opinion, review, or criticism on a particular subject or item. Blogs are seen as personal, individual, unique to the person who creates and maintains it. Wikis, on the other hand, are created specifically to inform the reader about a particular subject in an encyclopedic fashion. Individual wikis may have many authors, most of them anonymous, some that are registered users, and even fewer who have expert or significantly plausible knowledge about the subject at hand. This put the entire wiki site's content at risk for being false or vandalized. Wikipedia is the pinnacle of this type of utilization, garnering its international popularity and success by providing access to detailed information on an accessible platform. However, despite Wikipedia's success there has been much controversy to the veracity of Wikipedia, particularly because of the open-edit system.

Old Media vs. New Media

Technology growth is one of the many active facets of human society. As technology changes so does our language, which changes according to our new definitions used to identify and distinguish the technology of yesterday and today. Enter "old media" and "new media". New Media is a relatively new phrase that denotes the ways our society currently accesses information and current events in. Most media formats belonging to the category of "New Media" is mostly accessed through the Internet via electrical-based, graphic-user interfaces with Internet access (e.g. PC, Smartphone, Workstation). "Old Media" denotes the formats that were or are being vastly replaced with New Media formats. Books, TV, radio, and the newspaper are a few examples of old media. They all share one thing in common: each medium is physically tangible and can only broadcast information through their own set of proprietary protocols. Physical tangibility is easily seen with books, newspapers, magazines. Television and radio, on the other hand, are broadcast via EM waves on a physical set and the information cannot be "held". However, visuals can't be broadcast on a radio set (as opposed to radio waves) and even radio stations outputting through television must be converted into frequencies used for television before broadcasting. New media, which includes but does not limit: wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds, and streaming television, are all broadcast through one perpetually accessible source: the Internet.

The internet is a global network of a myriad of local computer networks that are used to exchange data between different parts of the world. The Internet is the primary nexus for every new medium that has been invented and implemented into today's society since the invention and application of the silicone chip. From Wikipedia to Skype to CNN to Google to World of Warcraft, the Internet has become the absolute standard to broadcast information to any magnitude of an audience. Without the Internet, the category of "New Media" would have no relevance to our society whatsoever. An old medium exports the information via its own source whether it be text, still photos, videos, or radio waves and does not rely on anything else other than its own individual source.

However, new media are still a new implementation in today's society. Many people, especially those who are older and grew up with the prominent industries of newspapers and television back in the day, are prone to be inept or even resistant to the new ways of learning about our world. I was born in a time where the Internet had only become a ubiquitous data exchange and the world was completely brand new. I remember my times with dial-up and AOL, frustrated at how long it took to load a web page or download a song. But since I grew up learning how to use a computer through experience and little formal training (if you count typing class in elementary school), I'm more adept at using the computer and accessing as a young adult just as anyone older than me who still remembers how to use 8-tracks and vinyls when they grew up with it. This comical Youtube video shows how the technology barrier is prominent and that most people are naturally resistant to change.

The fact is success in our society is achieved by, among other things, being dependent on integrating with new technology. In this Forbes article, Anthony Savikas writes about how the initial reaction to new technology parallels that of the natural fear and resistance to change. Fear is most prone to those in powerful positions based on the social dynamics that allowed them to create and maintain those positions. The most prominent positions are top government and military officials and the wealthy merchants. It is not rocket science to understand that many of them do not want to compromise anything they have worked to gained over their lives and will pull whatever strings in their power to make sure the status quo is maintained in their favor. Anyone who wishes to change these dynamics, deliberately or inadvertently, will incur the wrath of those already powerful and little support from those who would benefit from the change. However, Savikas quotes "how common big changes are in our cultural history (and that we nearly always end up better off in the end)".

In the end, society changes regardless as we discover new ways to make our lives longer and more convenient. The medium is only useful to the masses who use it. If we're still listening to commercial radio stations in the next 50 years because of its appeal as a privately-funded, genre-specific playlist, so be it. Eventually, all that we are using now will somehow be obsolete in the new technological generations to come. I just hope when I get old that I embrace the new tech coming out instead of sitting there and frustratingly reading a manual on how to work this newfangled contraption.

Wikipedia - The Most Trusted Research Database Authored By The Average User

Hello all,

This is my approved proposal for my final project. It's under the working title "Wikipedia - The Most Trusted Research Database Authored By The Average User". The project will focus mostly about how WIkipedia has changed the way we search for specific information about a particular subject. The function of schools and libraries have changed drastically thanks to a system that is not only accessible to anyone with internet access but can be edited by anyone with various degrees of expertise on that subject, including none. Does that mean that only certain people with a specific, significant amount of expertise should be able to edit a wiki or should the general public have an equal say? Where is the line drawn? How do students access and learn information? How do schools adapt to this technology? Do they resist instead? How do local library branches cope with being an expensive brick-and-mortar version of a free technology? Should people have to pay to access this information? All these questions have been answered in one way or another by those who are familiar to the technology. However, the use of wikis is still relatively new to the developed world, which means traditional institutions (i.e. schools, libraries, even our own government agencies) have not yet fully adapted. My project focus on a brief history of wikis and the impact it has on the macroeconomic status of our current global economy.

The Start of a New Blog...

Well, this'll be my first post on my new blog. This is really just the test post. More to come...