We would propose a broadband network provided by the local government. This service would only be provided if the community was in favor of devoting government resources for it.

We think it would be good economically to provide such service. Many could benefit for a better community including tourists visiting the area.

By having the people own and pay for it, people will have more control over content and what it is that’s being provided.

Housekeeping

• Points sheet updated : does not include revisions to Diigo or resource/reading posts for this week
• Reminder: I will be evaluating your blogs – make sure you have all posts categorized, a readable design, and something on your “about” page (several of you still have this page published with the default WordPress “this is a sample page” text)
• For those of you writing a book review or paper – these are due by 5 pm this Friday. Book reviews should be published on your blog as a blog POST; research papers should be published on your blog as a PAGE and should be accompanied by a short blog post that “announces” the paper and links to the page.

Lecture/Discussion – Digital Divide + Personal Branding (ppt)

• Broadband per capita (OECD)
• Broadband and GDP

Final Assignment

• A comment on THIS BLOG POST about the course — what will you take-away to other classes or post-UW? What was your biggest surprise? What should be dropped in future classes? What needs more time?
• Worth 7 extra-credit points (it’s a comment, after all); due end of day Wednesday (extended to noon on Thursday).

In fifty years I predict that most people in the world will have portable devices that have unlimited data and very powerful communicating skills, but I don’t think that the majority of people in the world will not have access to the most commercially advanced software at that time.

I was recently in Istanbul, I met a guy that had a smartphone, which was very lucky because I was very lost. We ended up walking into a random park area that just happened to have public wifi so we were absolutely fine. This, although was convenient and surprising, did not change the fact that there were only internet cafes every few miles.

Establishing more networks that have better capabilities should be the main priority. This will allow for a more democratized environment to share information. Information will be the most useful form of currency in the future so integrating a more free model of communicating will be very important.

TiVo was originally made to increase the efficiency and convenience of television viewing. It did both with an additional result. TV viewing actually increased with the ability to personalize television. This can be applicable to the internet as well. We can personalize our internet experience much easier than just five years ago, and we can more appropriately and easily satisfy our “grazing” needs, which could easily influence the amount of usage.

There are still numerous laws and bureaucratic regulations that restrict the access of data. Public space of data went from library to pocket in a span of two decades. This is most influenced by what is the accepted archetype of data availability. It is very important to implicate more online access within school districts, and statistics suggests this has been done. At home, although, only the more educated tend to have more online access.

Cyberspace and accessibility standards are both plagued by the revenue system that has such a firm grasp over our communicative world. It seems morally unjust to cause a loss of jobs or a loss of company health, even though that is attempting to hold onto a dying model.

Universal data access is the most important goal in our media and educational future, in all areas of the world. Cyberspace should be internationally public and connected, which is based up to the authoritative restrictions that accommodate only a revenue model. It’s like trying to put coal in a gas tank, there needs to be synergy between the model and the demand.

• Housekeeping (points sheet)
• Lecture/Discussion
• Group Project (remediation)
• Course Evaluations

Lecture/Discussion

How Google (and website architects) “curate” the information you see

“The domain of learning is significantly hampered by progressive revisions of what it means to learn, to know, and to understand. A subset of connectivism, network forming, is presented as an accurate model for addressing how people learn. The test of any theory is the degree to which it solves problems and incongruities within a domain. The shortcomings of behaviorist, cognitivist, and constructivist ideologies of learning are answered in light of learning as a connection-forming (network-creation) process.”

The article I chose, “Connectivism: Learning as Network Creation”, Siemens speaks about how knowledge and truth exist in different ways and how there are different perceptions in the means of learning. The author speaks about how the information system is a continuum and the process of learning transforms when the knowledge turns into something of meaning. Networking and involves the use of nodes and connections. Any form of elements such as thoughts, feelings,or even new information can be defined as nodes. Once you connect these nodes to others, they will be processed to different networks hence the term “connectivism”.

Siemens talks a lot about how blogs can change your views on learning.  You write about your experiences, thoughts, and feelings. You read about others’ experiences, thoughts, and feelings. People re-blog new information so that others connected to them will see them and re-blog that info to others. This way, there would be a network of information streamlining to many people quickly. Twitter is one example of connectivism where it’s instantaneous.

In Shelly Terrell’s “Why Do We Connect” video, it asks us the question on why we go online and connect to websites such as blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and Wiki. The answer is pretty much to learn. Take a look here.

Why Do We Connect? Short Version from Shelly Terrell on Vimeo.

Citations:

This study explores use of the social network site Facebook for online political discussion. Online political discussion has been criticized for isolating disagreeing persons from engaging in discussion and for having an atmosphere of uncivil behavior. Analysis reveals the participation of disagreeing parties within a discussion, with the large majority of posters (73 percent) expressing support for the stated position of the Facebook group, and a minority of posters (17 percent) expressing opposition to the position of the group. Despite the presence of uncivil discussion posting within the Facebook group, the large majority of discussion participation (75 percent) is devoid of flaming. Results of this study provide important groundwork and raise new questions for study of online political discussion as it occurs in the emergent Internet technologies of social network sites.

Citation;

Kushin, Matthew J. and Kitchener, Kelin. (2009, Nov 2). “Getting political on social network sites: Exploring online political discourse on Facebook”. First Monday, Volume 14, Number 11,  2 November 2009.
http://pear.accc.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2645/2350

The article does, however, discuss the rapidity of change in this space, noting the massive growth in YouTube since the study began along with the absence of Facebook data. Mentions of candidates on blogs are merely mentions, and don’t reflect a positive, negative or neutral tone. Through ratings and ‘likes’, these sources will allow for a more telling set of predictions. Moreover, YouTube and Facebook help differentiate between candidate influence on the voter and candidate influence on the platform. Whereas blog are susceptible to manipulation, Facebook pages allow one to participate in a conversation amongst friends and real people, not just commenters in the blogosphere.

The internet has acted as an augmentation of traditional media, though the growth of Facebook and Twitter since the 2008 election is changing this massively. Mainstream media are collecting data from Twitter, augmenting new media with traditional broadcasting and journalism.

This new dissemination of candidate information is leveling the playing field in elections, allowing easier, cheap access for political voices and influence. The information age calls for skillful use of new media and a discouraging of traditional media manipulation.

Barack Obama (Twitter)

• Housekeeping
• Framing and Discussion
• Google+ versus Twitter

Housekeeping

• Resource posts: reminder -> must include “hot” links
• Points sheet updated (without comments – challenge of mis-categorization)

Framing and Discussion

The research investigated a wide variety of different non-profit organization from the United States. The researcher looked at both creators of non-profit organizations content and people associated with the non-profit organizations. The results found that 90.7% of non-profit organization were online and had their own website. The results also found that online non-profit’s creators stated their main reason for going online was to educate their members and not promote them, which is usually thought to be the main reason why organizations go online.  However, when the research looked into the members in these different organizations it was surprising to find that the members rarely went online for research or to even visit the websites on a regular basis. So, there is a definite disconnect from the people creating the content and the people actually utilizing the content.

This article was related to this week’s readings because both articles addressed how people interact with the internet when it comes to politics. This entire article was addressing the way in which organization create their content and why they do and how people react to the content put out by these organizations. I think this article did a really good job addressing how politics have not yet really begun playing a dominate role when it comes to the internet. But, they are continuing to play a larger and larger role on the internet and their impact in the future could be big. As long as organizations and members get on the same page and have the same agenda’s.

Kenix, LJ. (2008). The internet as a tool for democracy? a survey of non-profit internet decision-makers and web users. First Monday, 13(7), 1. http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2124/1984

In this presentation there is a review of the findings and discussion of how the internet will likely/hopefully/potentially/etc morph the way politics is conducted (just as it has morphed the way we shop, socialize, etc). The study tackled such questions as to what media is used, how they are used, and who even uses which forms of communication. Prudently, the authors even noted how content creation seemed to moving somewhat from the entrenched outlets. In the upcoming 2012 elections it will interesting to see how much further the internet has shifted the way politics goes down.

Citation:

GARRETT, R., & DANZIGER, J. N. (2011). The Internet Electorate. Communications of the ACM, 54(3), 117-123. doi:10.1145/1897852.1897881