black box democracy

The movie Hacking Democracy involved a woman set out to discover the truth about electronic voting machines. She traveled to controversial polling places like Florida and Ohio. Both of these states had troubles with electronic voting machines during the 2000 and 2004 elections. Bev Harris is the main story teller in the documentary and it is her goal to expose the failures of electronic voting.  One of the worst cases was the computer system that calculated negative votes in a florida state election. It's frightening to look at the way these systems are kept behind closed doors as far as the ways they are produced and the methods used to count the actual ballots. It took Bev and her team around 5 minuets to hack into the machines and change the out come of any election. They did this in front of several different election judges and even brought one of them to tears because of the possibility of unfair elections. It seemed so simple to have such a massive effect on the outcome of important decisions in american history. It has a very eery tone throughout the entire documentary alluding to the idea that any decision in our government may have been controlled by private interest and people with a knowledge of computers. Black Box voting is determined to counter act the current process of our democratic process of voting. They are determined to expose the current ways of private interest control over voting.

The Future of News

I have researched this topic quite extensively in the last month. I believe it has a great connection with our current topic of the negative effects of technology. To quickly give my conclusions I firmly believe that even though newspapers are struggling with the shift to online, Journalism as a practice will be unaffected. A great example  of this theory is the website mediastorm.org. I attended a presentation by the founder Brian Storm and he explained how his system works. Their operation is both a news producer and outlet. Photojournalists and Videographers go out and do their stories and then go to mediastorm.org to produce it into a polished piece of news. Media Storm has the power to search through the hundreds of projects they are presented with and decide which are worthwhile to produce. After creating a multimedia informational project as well as either a video or audio slide show they are able to go to outlets like msnbc.com and sell the story for money. The site then creates revenue from ads and links back to media storm who will split any profits 50/50 with the actual journalist who did the story. They now have a system that allows several websites to bid on the projects to generate as much revenue as possible. They have an average site time of 11 mins. That is unbelievably huge. Other news sites are around 30 seconds. The fact is they are a small news corp that is able to keep their costs low and their stories in high regard. They're not making a ton of money, just enough to stay afloat. However, Brain says thats what we need in today's new form of journalism. People not in it for profits, but for the spreading of important stories and information. Their next project will be released later in May.

My Space Kid Freaks Out

Watch this you tube classic and witness a fairly great example of internet addiction in today's youth as well as a great example of people being convicted of crimes through the internet.  Much like several red cup incidences with underage drinkers, the people involved with this video ended up being convicted and pleading guilty to assault on a minor. This draws a line between sibling bullying and abuse.

The content of the video shows a kid that is so attached to his internet usage he is emotionally damaged after his brother disrupts his myspace account. I find it similar to the boy on the frontline video who lives his life attached to his computer. Computer usage to him was so important to him that he has to hide from his parents what he's doing. Kids today are using the internet more and more as an internet outlet. In this case of the video he feels that his entire social life is over with his brother disabling his profile. It's understandable to if that's the only way of him reaching out and making connections to his peers. The anorexic girl from the video described a similar situation in that she would have online relationships that didn't continue offline. He was possibly a bit overboard when he says it was more important than his family, but put into the light of it being his only means of communication it becomes a bit more understandable.

Futurism/Capitolism

I walked in on a philosophical conversation among friends no more than an hour ago. They were discussing how horrible the current state of the world is and how our human want for consumer goods was the thing to blame. Arguments were made that without without that need people could remain completely sustainable and be able to survive equally. Well sure, but that would be ignoring one very important human trait, Curiosity.

With the idea of futurism our view of the future will never be achieved, but it will always be sought after. It will always be different to the individual and that person has means to be progressive towards it in some way. No guarantees, as well it is constantly being hindered by things like a person's socioeconomic status for example. The evening factor in all of this is the currency unit. Yes people say it's the root of all evil, but it allows us to obtain the things we want.  It may be goods, information, power, but it's in the eye of the beholder. Even if they want to have the most honorable intentions with something like wildlife preservation for example. To help the tree's they have to study at a college to obtain information, which they pay for. All of this work and money to achieve a future that is a better planet. 

The person in the discussion stated that he was completely against the idea of capitalism. Claiming he was going to retreat into the woods someday and try to not be apart of it. Of course he woke up and went to school this morning. Paying into the system to go to school as well, went to a job to pay for school. By striping down this system and focusing only on our needs we would no longer be enjoying life, simply trying to survive it.

Mac, Charlie, Keen

If you're not familiar with the TV show It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, simply stated it's a group of friends who run  a bar and get themselves into ridiculous situations with with stupid decisions. In the third season of the show "the gang" (as the group is referred to) finds two of it's member wanting to become local news reporters. Instead of simply quoting lines I figured I'd upload clips from the show it self. 

This first clip simply pokes fun at the contrasting views of the young and old. The young viewers are misguided in what they consider to be current events, but even state that no one gets their news from a newspaper anymore. This is obviously contrasted by the old man who believes that reading something like instyle is pointless when conventional news has always been given through newspapers.

Here after the constant suppression of free voice a citizen decides to rebel against the gatekeepers of the mainstream media. Even if his views are down right stupid he feels they must be broadcasted to the world and they decided to "make news". They feel that by themselves telling the news and bypassing the corporate gatekeepers they are finding real news. 

They are the nobel amateur that keen fears so much and they are displayed very stereotypically in Keen's sense as uneducated people with good intent and drastic consequences. They feel that having the access and ability to create and broadcast news makes them professional journalists. Even though the characters in the show barely completed high school.