Knowledge vs. Information in the Age of the Internet

Imagining life without immediate access to information is a difficult task for anyone younger than about 25 years old. As college students today we’re often told harrowing stories about how in the “old days” you had to spend hours in the library pouring through actual books just to write a single research paper. For us, “research” consists of logging on to a library database and typing in keywords to find relevant articles. This technology has had profound effects on the culture of our generation, most specifically our understanding and application of knowledge and information.

In philosophy, knowledge is often broken up into three conditions that are required for someone to know something. These conditions include belief, truth, and justification. A person must believe a statement is true; the statement must be in fact true, and finally, the person is justified in believing the statement to be true. Thus, knowledge involves attaining the three conditions through either experience or education. Knowledge is not synonymous with information, which is defined as “facts provided or learned about something or someone.” In our online society however, where information can be accessed immediately anywhere at any time, our generation often treats these two institutions as the same thing.

Information provides the basis for two of the three conditions for knowledge, including truth and justification. The internet is simply a vehicle for instant access to these conditions, and therefore can be a channel by which knowledge spreads rapidly.

How do you see that our generation treats information and knowledge online? I plan to continue this thread and add more opinions as I get feedback.

Posted by Victoria Oestreich

Social Networking: Good or Bad?

Human society cannot exist and develop without communication. People communicate with each other to meet the needs of love and being loved, which have been developing throughout human history. We communicate through sounds, symbols, and words. But nowadays, thanks to the information technology, email, chat groups, Facebook, and many more, are the major and most popular social media which are used widely and have a deep effect on human communicate. 

 Over the past few years, technology has rapidly developed and changed the way people communicate. As the result, many social networking like Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace have emerged. These are some of the common websites that are familiar to a lot of people and quite often we hear about them on TV, or of course in the internet. These platforms allow the users to share their personal information and get connected with friends and family members around the world. The popularity of using online social network has immediately become one of our daily necessities and one of couple things we could not live without. It has become a daily activity in many of people’s life. The popularity of using online social network as a way of how we communicate has spread remarkably among the online users. 

Social networking is a popular form of communicating with friends around the corner and around the world. It allows Internet users to register and create a personal profile and communicate with selected others who are in the follower list. When we talk about friendship in real life so-called “friend” on Facebook or MySpace, we define each term separately. Friends we have in real life have strongly embedded to our private lives, with a build of trust and strong empathy to each other. While in MySpace or in any other platforms, when a certain Internet user has, for instance thousands of friends, it is extremely hard to think that he or she could actually exchange social interaction with all of them, and that he or she could consider them as real friends. However, human beings are social creatures. At such, social networking is based on a need to connect and expand connection. 

 

Here is an article that is relevant to the topic from American Psychological Association: 

http://www.sciencecodex.com/social_networkings_good_and_bad_impacts_on_kids

Social networking can be beneficial but it could have great negative impacts on individuals. It creates a tremendous risk in privacy, safety, social skills, and health. Networking, at best, could bring people around the world together, but at worst, the social skills deteriorate and is extremely dangerous for children as well as adults when networkers are unaware of predators lurking in the network. 

The Life of Smart Phones. Safe or No?

Smart phones are becoming a necessity around the world and are providing a large community for hackers to prey on. You can hardly go five minutes without seeing someone pull out an iPhone or pull out their newest Android phone, but is this a good thing for the public. Are we on our devices too often increasing our vulnerability to hackers? Is it not reasonable to believe that our phones can be hacked just like our home computers and lap tops? And to top it all off, should we be more careful about our smart phone usage?

Here's an article from USA Today regarding the issue:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2011-11-22/bring-your-own-devices/51438324/1

In Music, There's a Place for Us

Consider the above music video for Wiz Khalifa’s hit, ‘Black and Yellow.’ This song, an ardent anthem for the city of Pittsburgh, the artist’s hometown, has garnered over one hundred million views on YouTube. The metropolitan population of city of Pittsburgh, however, consists of 2,300,000 residents, a number dwarfed by the online success of the song itself. This begs the question: is there a reason beyond ‘catchiness’ that a song so concerned with a specific place is such a great success? What, if anything, does the success of this song say about the way our generation views connection to a location in the context of music?

Wiz Khalifa’s song is not the only recent hit to use as inspiration a city or state. Jay-Z’s smash hit, ‘Empire State of Mind’, and Katy Perry’s ‘California Gurls’ also were embraced by not just the subject of their lyrics but by the country (and the world) as a whole. All of these songs, admittedly, are considered ‘catchy’– the melodies infectious, the beats certainly hum-able. Yet one may argue that the reason these songs are so popular is not completely fixed to their respective sound, but rather the sense of belonging that each song and the artist behind them imparts upon their viewership. One can feel Jay-Z’s love and appreciation for his city in ‘Empire State of Mind’– as our society entangles its roots more and more deeply with online communities, one seems to forget the distance between, say, a kid on the West Coast and a mega-superstar in New York City. One might argue that we, as humans, desire community, and connections to each other. Is it a product of our modern closeness to the Internet and technology that those who cannot find or create such a connection in real, physical life stray to the Internet or other channels of media to forge an online connection to a place to which they have never been? Do we view connections to a place as a sure sign of safety?

Far-reaching: comments for Empire State of Mind come from around the globe, emphasizing a love for New York, despite often having never been there.

In contrast to the previous songs, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros’ surprise hit, ‘Home’, presents a different view on people and by extension society in context of place. This song, oft-played on popular radio, emphasizes the importance of connection to each other rather than to a fixed location– “Home is wherever I’m with you.” The Lost Generation had Paris to anchor its thoughts and its actions; this band might argue that our generation has each other to do the same. The song ‘Home’ rejects any notion that one must have a certain relationship with a physical place to be safe, to be fulfilled or to live a good life. Instead, ‘Home’ again argues that all we really need is each other.

Of course, there is the chance that we listen to these songs because we just like catchy music. I’ll leave you to ponder these questions with a video of one of Seattle’s newest favorite sons- Macklemore, a Northwest sensation quickly expanding his fanbase to the entire country.

Publicity

With the advent of social media on the internet, the personal life has unarguably been changed; but is this for better or for worse? What implications does this hold? In the past, not considering the affects of rumors, what was said and done in public or with a certain group of people could be expected to stay relatively private. This is not the case with the online social domain, where an intermingling of private and public has caused the “fired for Facebook” phenomenon. While one might sympathize with, or pity the stupidity of these people, it is clear that the definitions of public and private, at least to the laymen, have changed.

Here is a link to a relevant article:

http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-fired-2011-5

IDK my BFF Jill

Cingular Commercial - 'BFF Jill' (by solarmax via YouTube)

Remember when Cingular became AT&T? Seems like ages ago, which is probably why this commercial seems so old. I found it interesting how I didn't really need the captions to understand what she was saying and I'm sure others could agree. A lot of these texting acronyms I use while texting, chatting, and sometimes in my actual speech as well. Cingular must have seen what we as a society are becoming. We may never come to talk like her, but it is shaping how we communicate. It's also interesting to see how the mother could understand her daughter, but she struggled communicating back. This gap in communication shows just how much technology has shaped how we communicate in a short amount of time.

(Derrick)

They Met On the Internet

"Nev" in Catfish (Trailer is here)

The documentary Catfish (Or is it really a documentary?) starts out as what seems to be the study of a young girl with an extraordinary amount of artistic talent. The camera follows Yaniv “Nev” Schulman, a 24 year-old photographer living in New York City. One day he receives a package of painting one of his photographs. The artist in question is an 8 year-old girl named Abby living in Michigan, thus the friendship between Nev and Abby begins, and Nev’s two friends decide to document this unusual bond.

Not long afterward Nev befriends Abby and her family, which includes her mother Angela and Abby’s half-sister Megan, but only communicates through email and over the phone. The focus of the relationship between Nev and Abby, shifts to the relationship of Nev and Megan, an attractive and aspiring artist, horse rider, and musician.

The documentary then actually becomes an insightful look at online relationships, platonic or otherwise. Nev and Megan began to have an emotional connection through Facebook, even though in a humorous scene, he’s not quite into the things Megan is into as much as she is, but he is definitely into her and admits to actually deeply caring about her as they talk more and more.

It poses the question: Can a real bond exist when we have no idea who the person really is, or what’s going on at the other end of the web? In this day and age, social networking sites have become so streamlined and easy to use that deception and lies are only a few keystrokes away. Even a simple status update or comment can be carefully calculated to a staggering degree.

As the film progresses, it becomes more and more apparent that Nev is falling for someone based exclusively on the photos, text and a voice over the phone but as it unfolds…all is not as it seems.

The film was marketed as a thriller but the last half hour or so is actually a poignant portrait of lonely souls, and asks another question: is putting up a whole new persona online, whether it’s a skewed version of ourselves or pretending to be someone we’re not, taking away our real selves? Having an internet identity allows us to do or say things we never would do in real life (I.E. trolling) but when does that boundary mark between the illusion and our “real” selves start to blur together? Catfish doesn’t go for the exploitative and shocking route, but instead invokes great sympathy and understanding of those that do develop emotional attachment through a chat box or phone call. It also empathizes with those who try and compensate for dissatisfaction in the real world, past and present.

I dare not go into spoiler territory about what’s really going on in Nev and Megan’s relationship, nor would it be right as to explain why it’s called Catfish to begin with, but it’s a tense yet moving glimpse into how much of an impact social networking has on our lives, and is a tale caution about what’s happening beyond the computer monitor. While some may find the events in the film arguably fit in too well to be a true documentary, it remains an important commentary on the changing social world.

Technology & Culture

"It's technology, not business or government, that's the real driving force behind large-scale societal shifts."

- Sean Parker (creator of Napster)

Seen in Vanity Fair

(Victoria)