I failed. Unfortunately. It isn’t even the browser or YouTube. I changed my phone’s browser/home screen to Bing. I would have thought that would be the hardest due to the fact I always have my phone in my hands. But no! I that was the easiest. Google did pop up once or twice but I immediately closed it. But what i failed to and couldn’t over come was the trusty google maps and google translate. I used the maps twice once to pick up my best friend and once to pick up  my mother. Its crazy how just a few blocks can throw you off. And how much you depend on navigation. And Google translate my trusty friend.  Used Speak to my family and close friends back in  Montenegro everyday. Used it maybe three times to either check a spelling or to write a really long message to make sure they understood it word for word.  Usually I translate to Serbian or Albanian depending on the person. Very hard.  But this week not once have not used gmail, youtube, google  browser, google searches and waze

Tough assignment Google is everywhere! Unfortunately i have to take the  walk of shame and post this blog!

I didn’t mean to do it, but I needed to quickly look up the train schedule and I was at a friends place.  I clicked new tab in their browser and typed “MTA schedule”. Looked up the train times, and then realized the browser was Google Chrome.  It was by accident, but it felt fantastic.

10:46am Friday February 13th – Dear diary, I almost had a relapse this morning. I promptly ported my plethora of open Google Chrome tabs to Firefox, only to realize that with every newly opened Firefox window my homepage Google was staring me down face to face. I quickly entered bing.com into the search bar, carefully typing the url as to not evoke an unwanted Google search on “bin.gcom” or some other mistyped url. Only moments later did I realize how close I was from utter failure, one little character could make all the difference. A simple period holding all the power within it’s little pixelated blackness. Dear diary, I’m scared. This is my first entry, it will certainly not be the last. Lord help us.

3:14pm Friday February 13th – Dear diary, I can’t bring myself to turn my back on the amazing inspiration contained within my open Youtube tabs. I was finger twitches away from yet again another relapse. An opened Youtube page, lying dormant, one click from being watched. My self control is dwindling and my mental stability is not far behind.

3:17pm Friday February 13 – Dear diary, Bing is terrible. I can hear the colorful ‘Os’ of the Google logo calling my name. Whiispeerrrrrss echo in the halls….The sweet overtones of the network giant have been hard to overcome.

3:18pm Friday February 13 – Dear diary, Bing is still terrible. TO HELL WITH YOU GOOGLE ! ABSTINENCE IS THE ONLY WAY!

3:23pm Friday February13 – Dear diary, I am being taunted. “Get to Google Faster. Switch your default search engine to Google.” is what the beautifully styled blue banner read. I shielded my eyes from the downright fallacy implied by the enticing blue text. Only time will tell if Google’s public projection is terrible prevarication or not. 6 days, 152 hours, 9147 minuets, 548863 seconds…but who’s counting.

3:46pm Friday February 13 – Dear diary,  I sent an email to my mother using no other server than Google’s Gmail. I have failed you.

5:23pm Friday February 13 – Dear diary, I checked my Gmail. I knowingly broke the rules! I COULDN’T HELP IT! *Sheds tear* *Shows remorse*. I’ll be stronger next time! DAMN YOU GOOOGGGLLLEEEEEE!

5:52pm Friday February 13 – Dear diary, I clicked a link not knowing it would bring me to Youtube’s Googley lair. I continued to watch the video. I’m a filthy human.

6:38pm Friday February 13 – Dear diary, all of KhanAcademy videos are hosted through Youtube. I had to watch some. I HAD TO DO IT! IT HAD TO BE DONE! I’ve failed again. This has been my fourth failure of the day.

5:27pm Sunday February 15 – Youtube access.
5:09pm Monday February 15 – Youtube access.
2:34am Tuesday February 17 – Youtube access.
3:56pm Tuesday February 17 – Youtube access.
1:39pm Thursday February 19 – Dear diary, ‘Youtube’ and it’s fiery red logo have bested me again!

Reflection:
Regardless of the comical (or not) quality the above entry possesses,  this exercise has raised some very important and meaningful questions. To name only a select few: How much do we (as a society) depend on the connective service of the internet? What will it mean if the internet becomes run/owned by several large corporations? How will this affect society?/The way we share information? Who owns the information we share?  How does the monopolization of the internet affect the way everyday users interact online? Does that interaction affect our real world social interactions as well? Many of these questions have been touched upon in class discussion and as you could imagine, most of them don’t have clear cut/well defined answers.

The important thing to remember is that we are talking about these topics, thinking about them, and becoming aware. A well informed society holds much more power than an ignorant one. The more naive a society is to the forces working against them, the more susceptible they become to the dangers of power hungry network giants (google). “These days, whether you are online or not, it is easy for people to end up unsure if they are closer together or further apart” – (Turkle, Alone together pg24) Turkle hints upon the idea that unaware users are becoming increasingly more disconnected as the internet grows. This is in part, due to the social shroud big companies like google have created, hiding their internal workings from the general public. These companies are making it very difficult to abstain from everyday use, thus creating an inherent dependency that nearly everyone with internet access is experiencing . “The technology has become like a phantom limb…it’s so much a part of them”-(Turkle, “Alone again” pg26). The danger here is not so much the technology, but the lack of understanding and the ‘blindness’ our society is experiencing. This exercise has helped me step back and realize how much I depend on a service (google). The exercise has raised questions I wouldn’t normally think about, it has helped me become more aware, and has helped me mentally break away from the zombified network based society we have become a part of.

Digital Communication & Technology Interview – Mary Weiss

1. What social media platforms do you use?
   • I use Facebook and Instagram and Tumblr. I have a twitter but I don’t use it.
2. Which platform(s) do you like the most?
   • Instagram and Tumblr.
3. Why do you prefer this platform over others?
   • I like Instagram and Tumblr better because I use them to search for poetry and photography. Facebook is good for seeing what people are up to and sharing articles, but it doesn’t seem as friendly. It isn’t really a space that seems open to post whatever you want to it. I do use it to message my friend’s articles I think they would like, and it’s also a good way to share articles that people maybe wouldn’t look for on their own. I see this a lot with feminist articles, they aren’t very popular on Facebook aside from a few people. On Tumblr I can find and share as often as I want, and has a lot more to look through that inspires me.
4. What kind of pages do you follow?
   • I follow a lot of artists, music, and feminist blogs. I like keeping up to date with gender issues and Tumblr is really good for that.
5. What other websites do you use often?
   • I read the New York Times every day and Rookiemag.com is another favorite of mine. It’s a blog dedicated to empowering teenage girls.
6. How do you think social media/technology have had a positive or negative impact on you?
   • There are times where social media makes things difficult. It’s distracting and sometimes it’s frustrating to constantly see what other people are doing, but I also think it exposes me to a lot of good things. I recently heard about a woman working for DoSomething.org whose job was to text younger girls to let them know about opportunities that they could take advantage of in their area to help empower them. She got a response one day from a girl who had been raped, and that was the only way she wasn’t afraid to reach out for help. I thought that was really powerful and it was good to hear about media being used for good.
7. How much are you concerned with your privacy on social media?
   • I don’t like people knowing what I’m doing all the time, which is part of why I don’t feel the need to post on Facebook that much. Sometimes I care, but other times I don’t think it matters as much. It depends on my mood really.

I know in the past Mary has mentioned that Facebook doesn’t seem as socially conscious at times, so I decided to streamline feminist hashtags from Twitter to my Facebook profile.

When there is a Twitter update in the search for #genderequality, #weneedfeminism, or #heforshe

*A few of the links didn’t work so I had to delete them, and it hasn’t been posting recently, so I’m trying to figure that out.

“Want me to talk about how much I hate Facebook?”

For Exercise 3 I interviewed my mother, Maureen.  Here is the audio recording:

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My mother worked for IBM from 1982 to 1998, then at AT&T until present day. She started as a secretary for the creators of the internal IBM network, the Corporate Consolidated Data Network. Then she worked for the helpdesk of that network. Since then she has been managing corporate accounts and was a salesperson for a short while. She started out when users had to open up a new Terminal for each application they ran, and personal computers were a security risk to the emerging corporate network. She now will often work from home, since few of her coworkers are local and the office space is underused. She can now remote connect to the corporate network from her laptop, cellphone or tablet.

While interviewing my mother if found that she had some opinions about communications technology that aligned with those of Sherry Turkle. She really prefers to talk to someone over the phone so she can hear their tone. She works with technology but as a manager or salesperson she finds it important to connect or understand the person on the other end of the communication in order to complete the job. She feels frustrated about Facebook communications, because it is impossible to tell the tone or subtext in a written comment on someone’s wall or photo. She is also “on call” almost around the clock, especially when working with people around the world. I’ve heard her get up at 6 or 7 to make a phone call to the other side of the world where it is long after business hours, and the people on both end of the call are tired and frustrated. She recently purchased a new Bluetooth headset for her cellphone; it’s a headset that can rest around your neck and vibrate when you receive a call. Since it doesn’t need to be in your ear when not in use, it is more comfortable and harder to misplace than her previous devices. Right after she explained it to me is said, “…so it’s a collar?” and she laughed but I knew it slightly changed her opinion on her shiny new device. In Postscript on Societies of Control Deleuze perfectly described this device before it even existed. “The conception of a control mechanism, giving the position of any element within an open environment at any given instant (whether animal in a reserve or a human in a corporation, as with an electric collar), is not necessarily one of science fiction.” She often had conflict with the systems of access that plague the control society. If a technical or network issue prevents her from running the secure programs that connect her to the corporate network, she cannot work. She needs to be logged in to access email and passwords that would allow her to log in to other phone calls or work services. And if the issue arrives, she must either travel into the office to connect physically to the network, or she must turn over control to technical support who have access to administrator privileges on the computer she uses every day. As she mentions in the interview, she spends all of her day on the computer, so she wants to spend her free time offline but often can’t.

Her primary social media platform is Facebook. She is the third of 8 brothers and sisters who are spread along the East coast from Maine to Virginia. In order to keep up to date with the family, she relies on Facebook and phone calls. Often, a post on Facebook will be the impetus for her to call someone and start a conversation. However Facebook’s gradual increase in advertising content is causing frustration and interferes with the social aspect of the network. As mentioned in both the Theory of Everything and RadioLab podcasts, Facebook and other social media platforms are simultaneously experimenting with and selling this focused access to users. By logging and analyzing the choices made on a screen, they have not only evolved their methods of how users report embarrassing photos but also how they structure their advertising on the page. Rather than the intrusive pop-up ad they mix in advertisements as “suggested posts” along with the standard banner ads on the side of the page.

So in an effort to catalog and store all the important photos she posts and is tagged in on Facebook, I used IFTTT to link her Facebook to Dropbox. I had her setup her own account on IFTTT in case she wants to modify or add to her recipes, or in the event that she shifts to a new social media platform and wants to automate something in relation to Facebook. She would like it if her family found and moved to a new platform that wasn’t so focused on advertising, or often riddled with negativity. Hopefully this automated download process will assist in that by storing her photos in an alternate location so the leave from Facebook can be swift and easy.

Below are the images from creating the recipe as well as the results: 

“Oblique strategies is a set of cards created by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt used to break deadlocks in creative situations. Each card contains a (sometimes cryptic) remark that can help you resolve a creative dilemma.”

http://www.oblicard.com

Below is the interview with my friend, Andy P:

What social media networks do you use?

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Soundcloud if you consider that a social network

What would you say are your top three interests or hobbies?

Making music, listening to music, fashion, design, photography

How do you feel about these specified networks? Which one works best for personal relationships? Which ones work best for your interests?

Facebook is one of my favorites in regards to my relationships because I can message with close friends. I also love twitter but it is seems less intimate. Soundcloud helps to cultivate my musical progress and interest.

What are your issues with social networking and the apps that are available? 

I have been having trouble getting inspired lately. I’m having trouble thinking outside the box with my creative flow for music with all of these apps for different purposes. There is too much going on with my phone and it gets overwhelming.

How often do you check your phone?

All the time. It is hard to say how many times I check it.

My recipe takes tweets from an “Oblique Strategies” account and sends the tweets to your phone in notifications. This way, it will come at random times (whenever the account tweets a strategy) and will help to eliminate creative blocks or inspire at any time in the day.

Knowing that my interviewee is a creative individual and also uses his his phone throughout the day, I decided this recipe would work quite well for him.

I originally set this up just for my friend because he felt like he was having creative blocks with his music, but this could apply to anyone who needs a little inspiration sent to them. I found that I really enjoy having this set up and I am a big fan of Oblique Strategies, so it is useful for me.

I was worried about the issue of my friend having to download the IFTTT app in order to use my recipe but he didn’t mind. However, I think that it might bother some users and have them be less willing to use it if it requires another app to be downloaded.