How Far Are We Going to Be Able Keep our Privacy?
How Far Are We Going to Be Able Keep our Privacy?
In this week assignment I had to search about the Google and how it compromises our privacy. I have decided to search the topic at the Academic Search Premier. I used EBSCO host for my research because is the search tool that I am more used to, and because it gives me the opportunity to narrow down my topic and use both keyword at once. I only had to search the keywords (Google and privacy), and I found enough articles about.
At EBSCO host I found the article called “Is it ok For Google to own Us?” by Lisa Vaas. The article was written in July 9, 2007 for a magazine called E-Week. The article discusses the concerns by privacy advocates regarding the massive amounts of personally identifiable information (PII) that Google collects for Internet information searching. It acknowledged that the company is been continuously criticized by privacy groups such as Privacy International. Such groups questions privacy policies and procedures, including what it does with the PIIs and how long it retains the data. However, Google argues that data collected are used to improve services and it is protected against abuses.
The article is in form of informative leading the reader to know how far their privacy is being compromised by Google, what types of services the Google provides and what kind of information they collect and save in their database. The article tries to explain the concern over the volume of personal information is being gathered by Google database, it questions if Google can be trusted or not. It also tries to convince the reader that some law should be imposed by the U.S government in regard of personal information privacy in case of internet databases such as Google. Some privacies procedments are already being in process in some European countries such as German. On my point of view I haven’t recognized any bias from the writer.
The article was very useful for me because I was always concern about my information being compromised while I use the internet. It is very unpleasant to know that everything that we do on the web is being saved and gathered by a database. It is like that we are being watched and spy 24 hrs a day, and we never know when all those information can be used against us. Another concern that I always had was that every time that I would search about any specific topic I would start receiving cookies and pop-ups about that subject on my computer or via e-mail, now I understand why. This topic of privacy in the Google database really concerns me because nowadays it is everything done by computer, and Google is usually the first choice of research. All of our information at least mine might be save some where in this immense Google web world that only few individuals have access and know how to use it. However, we never know who is using those information and in what purpose. There are good and professional people there but there are also untrustworthy people that we never know what they are capable of doing it. This privacy issue is scary!!!
Future on Web
Anything is possible nowadays for the future in the web world. If I was asked 15 years ago how we would research on the web, i would never imagined as far as it is today. However, the information technology is getting advanced by the minutes nowadays. In 15 years from now probably the search tools will do almost everything for us. We would not have to even think about the topic anymore, the computer will do it for us. As Metz cited,”it’s not necessarily about making the pages easier to read but creating and designing software that can better read the pages already on the web”. It is already very practical to search on the web, and it will be even more practical in the future. The time spending researching will be cut in haft, or not even that, in fractions of a second. Software will choose what article that is more convenient and the one that we should use and it will summarize the article. We will be probably be able to visualized any moment in history at it is happening at the moment of your research. More information will be able to get accessed than before, we will get more aware of our surround, its gets easier, more practical, more efficient, and faster. However, we might get lazier, the future of a library as we know will might end, and we will not know how to search on a book anymore.
It might get in a point that we will not be the ones controlling the machines, but they will control us. All our information will be on the web and all the databases. The computer will be the one telling us what to do, what time we should do it, where, when how, and with whom. It will be like living in the world of Wall.E (cartoon from Disney). It might get in a point that we will not know who we are anymore. In 15 years we will be manipulated by machines and we will be the robots.
RSS, blogs, or delicious?
The technology and information revolution is providing an enormous, easy and fast access to any type of information as we desire. Some tools at the internet changed how information can be created and received. Some of those tools are Blog, RSS and Delicious.
Blog is a web based publication used by individuals or groups to share their common interesting and discusses about. It provide the opportune for the person to shares his or hers ideas and works. On important figure of the blog is the opportune for others to write comments. The way that the information is presented in the blog is in reverse chronological order. It is very easy to build and maintain a blog account and no programming knowledge is necessary. One other important characteristic of blog and an importance is that anything can be written, as in compare to newspaper where usually some subjects are hidden. Moreover, blog might have begun to shape the direction of the news and how we are informed by.
RSS is a new format that allows the users to get their information easily from any site they wish to read and store in one place. Other than to have to access many different sites to read all their information the reader can stored all in one place for better and easy access. RSS is interesting also because tracks all the information that usually changes frequently.
Delicious is a social bookmarking web service that provides the opportunity to store, share, and discover others bookmarks
From all those three tools the one that I liked the most to use and I will probably continue to use is the RSS. I have already opened an account at the Goggle reader and subscribed many web sites of my interesting. It provides a chance of monitor all the information that I desire to know, other than having to access many different websites. About delicious I never heard before and I found kind confusing the way is presented. But, I cannot say that I will never use or not find interesting in the future. Blog is very easy to use. However, I have never used before this class. For now I will not use with frequency, but maybe in the future when I find a blog of my interest.
In conclusion, the new information era is providing enormous and different opportunities for one to access their information of interest. Those three tools are just a few example of how information can be spread.
Copyright law is in need of change!
As like everything in the world needs to get adjusted and changed throughout the time, copyright law is in need of change as well. I am somewhat in between; I am not against copyright at all or completely in favor of all the rules as well. Copyright is essential for a healthy cultural society, to protect the rights of the artist, to protect their “original works of authorship” for no one else takes their creation and uses as its own and earn a profit from it. I do not think that is legal to make a copy of a DVD, a book or a CD and sell the product without the creator permission. However, I do not think that should be considered illegal to share music over the internet. On my point of view when a person is sharing music and download in form of personal use and entertainment without selling there is nothing wrong. Who has never photocopy a textbook for college? Most everyone has it, this is illegal also. But people will still keep doing. It is not everyone that can afford to buy all the CDs, DVDs or books that desire with those crazy prices that it is out there. So, if the new technologies provide this for us, why not to use and take for our advantage? Because at the end, the truth is that the entertainment, music and published industry are a cartel and they are only interesting on their own profit, and how much Billions they will earn next. So, if the new forms of technology are hurting their industry and profits, they should adapted and find new other forms of earning their cash. The truth is that at the end they still making enough money even with all this “illegal actions”.
Google Books or Cuny + (Emily Dickinson)
Google books or Cuny+ are very good, helpful and informative tools to search any specific book or title. However, there are considered differences in consideration oft format between Cuny+ and Google books.
Cuny + is very helpful research tool, but the format is much simpler and less informative that Google Books. Cuny+ allowed the research to search by author, title, subject or keywords. There is not as many advertisements as Google books has, which is helpful because do not take our attention from our objective. Cuny+ seems to be more dedicated to scholars or professional researchers than to general public as Google books is. Cuny+ does not give the opportunity or option to preview books or to buy the book from any other institution. Cuny + is an online library catalog it only provides if LaGuardia or other CUNY’ library holds the book or cd or video that is been searched.
Google book is very informative and easy to use. Google Books might be easier for a general public to use because one might be already familiar in how Google works. Google book provides too many advertisements which might be distractive, and their objective is more to make a profit and sell books. Its provides the opportunity to read the preview of most of the books and also it has a huge variety of topics, subjects, titles, authors and whatever we can imagine. By having the chance to read the book preview the person can make a choice to buy the book or not, or to search a library that holds it. Google books also provides the opportunity to downloads books that it is already in the public domain or not protected by copyrights, which Cuny+ do not provides.
In conclusion, even thou Cuny + and Google Book is extremely helpful research tools fro searching for a book. I personally prefer to read a paper book other than read a book from a scren. Threfore, I would use those research tool only in the porpose to help me find a particular book and then buy or borough it.
News Habit!
My life is always in a rush, so it is very hard for me to actually find some time to stop and read and an entire newspaper. Therefore, during the day I try to update myself picking a little bit from different news sources.
Early in the morning while I am waiting the train and during my forty minutes ride, I usually read the free newspaper, The Metro. I know that it is not the best source to get inform. However, it gives me an overview of what is going on in a small proportion. While I am waiting for the elevator at my work I like to pick a little bit my boss’ newspaper, The New York Time.
Between one class and another I like to suffer in the Web and scan over different news site. I usually read two different Brazilian’s newspaper, the www.oglobo.com.br and the www.JB.com.br. What I like the most of those sites is that it gives me the information of what is happening in Brazil, and in the world in general. Those newspapers are very good sources and very trustworthy it.
I usually don’t have much time to watch television. So, the news that I like to watch the most when I have some time is the 360° from CNN by Anderson Cooper. It is my favorite because it is not just about the NYC news or only about The U.S, it talks about what is happening in the world.
So, I don’t have a regular habit to actually read a newspaper or watch a news everyday. But, I try to pick a little bit from different sources during my day.
Barack Obama
The article that I chose about Barack Obama is called “For Obama, a First Is Not a Misstep” by Richard A., Oppel Jr., and Jeff Zeleny, published by The New York Times on July 22, 2008. The search tool that I used to get the information about Obama was the LexisNexis, and the Key word was Barack Obama. The article is written for the general audience. However, is trying to sell the idea that Obama has a better military plan towards Iraq, and is better view by the International Community. The article is about Obama’s weeklong international trip, which he stopped at Iraq. It states that “The Iraqi government … left little about doubt that it favors a withdrawal plan for American combat troops similar to what Senator Barack Obama has proposed, providing Mr. Obama with a potentially powerful political boost on a day he spent in Iraq working to fortify his credibility as a wartime leader”. However, the article argues that McCain is against Obama due to he believes that the military withdraw from Iraq is a surrender and would leave Iraqis in a dangerous straits, accusing Obama of not having military experience.
John McCain
The article that I chose about John McCain is called “Will the Real John McCain Now Stand Up?” by Mike Lupica, publishe by the Daily News, and written on October 6, 2008. The site that I used to gather this article was the LexisNexis, and the key word was John McCain. The article is written for the general audience. However, is trying to cell the idea that McCain has not found his campaign voice yet, other that just attack Obama. The main idea of the article is about how the second debate between McCain and Obama in Nashville was going to be. The article criticizes that the McCain campaign is only focusing in criticizing Obama, and they are using the Sarah Palin figure as running for Vice-President to play her to attack Obama. Also, says that it is very hard to believe in the vote pollsters, because many people lie when they are asked if they would vote for an African-American, and it is not possible to know how many youth would really vote. Therefore, McCain still has a great chance to be President.
“The Information Revolution”
The article “Future Reading” by Anthony Grafton supports different main ideas about the new digital era in the twenty-first century towards how one receives information and what could be the future of the traditional books.
The article discusses Google’s ambitious projects such Google Book Search, which has the aim to “built a comprehensive index of all the books in the world” and Google Library, which has the aim to digitalize the most books in the world as possible. However, comes in question of how much information a database can hold? How accurate the research on a search engine can be? How good the pages are scanned? What about the books that are cover by copyrights? What about documentation and books which are nfitable for the companies to digitalize? Also, there is too much documentation and books to be digitalized that are might not be possible to be available online anytime soon.
The article brings in question of what about the future of the traditional books. How magical is to go through individuals original pages of a book or document, and discover the smell of the time that that was written, or to whom it belonged? Also, it page of an original book was designed to fit each perspective of what is written. However, the new digitalized books and documents cannot provide all those sensations to the researcher or reader.
The article also criticizes that the digitization process in only being provided for the western books, leaving on the side the non-western books from the poorest societies. This means that those societies already have alack of information access for their own literature and history, due to limited access to printed books. So, they might have access to the western literature and history, but not their own. Therefore, they will still be in the dark in regard of information access during the digital era.
The article also argue about that some companies that are digitalizing some of the documents are interesting in only make profits other than historical information. Some information like books, articles and documents can be destroyed in the process. Like what happen when the microfilm was introduced in the Libraries and many books and newspapers that could be preserved were destroyed (Grafton).
However, the technological information process is a two blades sword. It has the negative aspects that I presented before, and also the positive aspects. Never before in any time in history has information traveled as fast and cheaper before. Nowadays, one can access any type of newspaper in the world trough the internet in just a second. The digitalization of information made possible researchers to reached books and documents that would be abroad or in hard access. Today, historians and researchers can study original documents and books without even going to the original place that hold it. As an example, The United States Declaration Independence is available to anyone in the world to read by the Library of Congress database.
A large amount of information became available to mainstream society, which did not have access before, after Guttenberg invented the printed system. It made possible to open the world’s mind to new cultures, religions and civilizations. At that time information became to travel faster and cheaper. Nowadays, the new technology of the internet and the large amount of database and information that it can holds, created an revolution towards information in an even bigger proportion that was never seen before in any time in history. It is a new modern revolution, the Information Revolution, which the end result and the final consequences one might can predicted, but one does not know for sure yet. Therefore, it might be that in the close future the “electronic library would be able to bring all the texts – past and present, multicultural – on a particular subject together, gaining a clear sense of what we as civilization, as a species do know or do not know” (Grafton). However, the end of the books and documents are not coming anytime soon
Hello world!
My name is Silvia Gill, but I alike to be called Silvia Anita. I am from Brazil; however, I have been living in NY for the last 6 and haft years. I love NYC and every time that I go back to visit my family in my country, I feel out of place. It is like that I don’t belong there, so I want to come back home as soon as I can. Even though, I have grown up in a magnificent, beautiful and friendly urban city (Rio de Janeiro). NYC for me has its own modern identity. It is fast-moving; we are always in a rush – which in consequence our precious time goes very fast – which is sad. However, I am amazing with the NYC and I feel that I belong much more here than in my own home country.
I am 27 years old. My horoscope sign is Taurus, which I have much of the characteristics that I “Taurus person” supposedly have. This means that I have some what a strong personality. I am very stubborn. Most of the time I am 8 or 80, or I am very exiting about something or not at all. I can only love or hate something or someone; there is no middle ground for me. I am extremely shy on unfamiliar environment, at the point that I feel completely uncomfortable and I find myself with difficult to express myself. However, when I am on familiar environment, I am not shy at all. I am completely out going and one of the most “crazy” one. I am very authentic and most of the time I do things different that others would do. Usually I am more an observer than a talker. I considered myself a private person, which loves to stay at home by myself or with families and love ones. I am not much of a party girl and I don’t enjoy being involved in a crowded place, only in special occasions or to break the routine a little bit. On my free special times, I like to paint colorful designs on canvas, but I don’t do that very often. One of my passions is to travel and every opportunity and time that I have I try to travel around. I have already traveled to many states, countries and continents, which most of people of my age wouldn’t dream of. Due to a hard that I have to find a travel partner, I usually travel on my own. Most people think that I am insane to travel alone, but this is one of my unique characteristics and strong personality. I don’t wait for others to do something that I want. If I don’t have someone to go to the movie theater, Broadway show, to a restaurant or to travel, I just go and enjoy the time on my own and do my best to make friends there. Most of the time I do and I find to have a bless time. So, I considered myself a unique and different person. I am very friendly person that makes friends where I go. However, due to my privacy way to be, there are not many people that understand me. I know many people and I have many colleagues, but only few special ones that understand my own special way to be and I carry all of them with devotions and on my heart. Theoretic as 27 years old I cannot considered myself a girl anymore, but inside I feel that I still am. I am very different in my own special way to be, I respect others in their own way for I can get the same respect back.
It took me a long time for I could find my education goal. Back in Brazil I was studying Library Science at College. However, it wasn’t me at all. I didn’t have any passion, talent or desire to be a Librarian. Took me a while to find out what I really want to study. But now I fell that the clock is ticking and I don’t have much time to be “playing” around trying to figure it out what I am good at and keep placing education on the side. Some people born with their skills and passions others have to search inside their own infinity identity throw out their lives. I am one of them, I still trying to find myself. But soon or later I am getting there. After couple years away from an education, I have decided to apply to a college with a beginning level, for that I could build my skills, cultured and education step by step. LaGuardia seems to be the perfect option, due to the international student community. LaGuardia has helped me to build and develop education goals and self-esteem. Since I have started at LaGuardia I feel more passion in studying, more concentrated and closer to achieve my dream. At the moment I am studying Liberal Art in International Studies, but my real goal is to earn my Bachelor in International Relations and MBA maybe in Economics. I am not sure yet what University I will have a chance and opportunity to transfer when I graduated from LaGuardia with an Associatie’s degree. I am planning to transfer to one University that I can continue my education towards and International Relations Degree. I am hoping that I graduate as an honor student in LaGuardia for I can get a chance to earn a scholarship in a top University. My dream job would be to work in the UN. Maybe I might have some talent in the future to help to work out and solve some of the problems in the World. Wouldn’t this be great?
At the moment I have decided to take LRC 103 as an online course due to my busy schedule and the flexibility that would provide me. Due to the fast technological and information times in which we are living, it is possible to get all different information from different sources easily through the internet to educated ourselves. Therefore, I hope that the Internet Research course helps me to develop a better and strong research skill in which would help me in my professional field as in my private life.
So, this is all that I have to say about myself at the moment. Welcome to my World!
My Weblog 