What have I learned from Digital Cultures?

In the beginning of this academic year I`ve looked at Digital Cultures in a suspicious way. Because I thought it is not my type of courses. But in the end of this academic year I have to say that I am glad that I studied this course but yet, it`s still not my cup of tea.

I am glad that I have got the chance to explore so many things that was always around me. Some of these things I knew already but not in an academic way. I was so excited when we looked at citizen journalism because I experienced many types of it when I was in my workplace but I didn’t know the academic aspect of it and how much important it was academically. and later with the central role of citizen journalism which shaped the Middle East latest event and helped change the whole system in a country like Egypt. I followed the events with a different perspective.

Being a "digital immigrant" the course helped me understand many things in Cyberspace and look at my own experience online especially with identity issues and understand how I was before and after the internet. not to mention understanding other important issues such as how much open source matters and the role of digital development in Globalization.

I always struggled when things went deep like when we looked at things like interface and web 2.0. I still find it difficult to even think about those two subject, but I can say that I have got a general idea and that it`s enough for me and I hope I won’t have to deal with them in the future.

Digital Globalisation

From the inventing of Gutenberg printing press in the mid 15^th century until nowadays. Technology helped and shaped globalization as we know it.  In the 1960s Marshal McLuhan suggested that the world is becoming a global village by the advanced technology (Understanding Media: 1964, p. 5). Then many years after that Thomas L. Friedman described the scene from a golf club in downtown Bangalore, India, and how it is surrounded by buildings with brands like IBM, Microsoft and other American or multinational corporations. Then he writes: “No, this definitely not Kansas. It didn’t even seem like India. Was this the New World, Old World, or the Next World?” (The World is Flat: 2006, p. 4). Now most multinational corporation use the advantage of digital technology to outsource its jobs to countries like India and Indonesia where there is a relatively much cheaper labour than the US and EU countries.

This YouTube video is presenting how outsourcing jobs work in a very cynical way. It shows how all kind of businesses are outsourcing their call centre offices to India. And the reason why they always choose India is not just because of the cheap labour but also because there is no English language barrier in India.

So, is the advanced technologies are always good? Or are these problems such as outsourcing is just side effects of something good? What I`m sure about is that when I go to a new place I`m looking to see some new things and maybe shop and eat with different brands. If I ever go to the Forbidden City in Beijing, China, I`m definitely not looking to see a Starbucks there!

Surveillance Society

When I came to UK two years ago, I noticed CCTV sign everywhere I go! In shops, taxi caps, and later I found out that even the streets are full of them. In the beginning I had a general positive impression about the idea that cams are everywhere to protect us from danger, but when I think about privacy I become somehow confused! Now I start to ask myself, how many CCTV have got my face on my way from my place to the university?! Very logical question.

The issue now is no longer that normal CCTV is everywhere, because this is a fact and societies are adapting with it, but what next? A report published in the Guardian last November said “Technologies that used to be the subject of speculation have moved into mainstream use” Link. The report is concerned about the new methods of surveillance such as tracking staff by GPS applications on their mobiles, CCTV in classrooms to control pupil behavior but also monitor teacher performance and the example of a Japanese company developed some weird function on mobiles to monitors cleaner`s way of scrubbing and sweeping!!. Based on this report, Information commissioner Christopher Graham is asking government for new privacy safeguards.

In 2001, few weeks after 9/11 attacks on New York, the US congress passed the Patriot Act, which expanded the government authority to spy on its own citizens like monitoring their phone calls and emails without a warrant in case would help stop terror acts. The Patriot Act was and still controversial. Mr Bush who was the US president at that time and his supporters argued that:”the legal  safeguards traditionally granted to criminal suspects left the US ill-protected against further attacks”. Yet many American political groups claim that the act is unconstitutional infringements of personal liberties. Link



Open Source & Politics

According to an article in Open Source Initiative website, India and Brazil are using open source heavily to achieve high economic development (Link). These two countries with Russia and China are known as BRIC, which mean the four big and fast developing economies that supposed to lead the world economy in the 21 century. The article looks at Brazil experience and activities in open source in recent years, and how Government agencies, private industry, universities have been teaching and implementing open source solutions to create local centers of knowledge. By 2005 Brazil adapted an open source system to make an economy advantage, “the number one reason for this change is economic” says Sergio Amadeu who use to run the government National Institute for information technology in 2005 (Link).  After this very successful use of open source on a government level, other nations like Indonesia started to encourage the idea! But where is the US from all of this? It`s no secret that the US can`t force some countries and tell them what to do especially when it`s one of BRIC. Brazil already had a face to face confrontation with the US over breaking the patent of an American AIDS drug (Link) and producing a Brazilian version to sell it cheap to its citizens, and it`s basically leading this government level open source movement.

 University of Edinburgh`s lecturer Andres Guadamus claimed that the International Intellectual Property Alliance has requested the US Trade Representative to consider countries like Indonesia, Brazil and India for its “special 301 watchlist” which basically mean that these influential lobby group is asking the US to consider countries who uses open source as enemies of capitalism and that will lead to pressure from the US on these countries to make them change their open source policies. Link.

Piracy in Video Games

 I remember When Sony Playstation first came out sometime around the mid 90`s in my country. People were busy with the Sega Mega Drive and didn’t care much about the new technology from Sony, because it was very expensive to buy its CD games. But soon after that, very cheap copies of Sony CD games started to enter the country coming from Thailand and China. So, after people were supposed to buy an original Resident Evil CD by around $90, an exact copy can be bought by around $3! Then, in few months everybody in country bought a Sony Playstation. I don’t know if Sony Corporation loved that or hated it, but I know that their local dealers made a huge profit from selling Sony consoles. The funny thing was that the dealers started to sell “chipped ready” consoles so customers don’t bother to take them to hackers to break its code!

According to BBC Newbeast report “people who play illegal copies of video games  on chipped or modifies consoles, cost at least 1.45 billion pound in lost sales in 2010”. Link.  The report also estimates that it`s resulted in 1,000 fewer jobs in the industry. However, in an interview with coputergameandvideogames.com Christopher Sundberg, boss of Just Cause argues that instead of trying to stop piracy why not try to give hackers a job!. Link.  

Ideology in Video Games

  

I remember long time ago when I use to play Konami MSX video game: The Maze of Galious, which was also my favorite video game at that time. The Star of David can be seen clearly in the background and that was a shock for kids like me and my brothers when we use to play this game. It made us argue about the meaning of this symbol and what does it had to do with this game. We were kids in the Arab world where there is an ongoing conflict with Israel, the Jewish state who has David`s star on its flag!

At that time Ideology in video games was more symbolic. In an article by Saladin Ahmed, a member of The Escapist, Saladin who is an American Muslim, talked about when he use to play the original Prince of Persia in 1989. He said: “it wasn’t until years later that I reflected on the fact that the hero is blonde, while the evil swordsman wore turbans!” Link.

These days Ideology is vivid and straight forward in video games. Especially After 9/11, the war on terror, and the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many military video games show Muslims as the enemies. It`s a very simple reflection of the American attitude towards the Muslim world after the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York in 2001. In Call of Duty 4, it`s obvious that the game scenario take place in Iraq and some Muslim’s supplication can be heard in the soundtrack while the American soldier is the hero and you know who’s the enemy! Also in Call of Duty is the Broadcast mission where soldiers attack the enemy`s T.V station which look very similar to Al-Jazeera T.V news room, the famous Arab news station that former US president George W. Bush thought of bombing its headquarter. Link.

The End of Books

Since the invention of the printing press around 1440, printing mediums such as books and newspapers became the center of culture and knowledge. However, with the fast development of the Internet especially in the early 1990s voices raised expecting the end of the printing press and books. Almost 20 years later books and newspapers still exist, but for how long?!

In Robert Coover`s study The End of Books, published in 1992, he said “The print medium is doomed and outdated technology”. Link.

However, in 1994 Annie proulx published an enthusiastic pro books study, Books On Top, she argues against the idea that expect the end of the traditional books. Saying that the books are small and adorable and can be used in waiting rooms, planes... etc. then she said “if you would know a man or a woman, look at their books, not their software”.  Link. Books are not dead yet but most of her argument can look bizarre now since there is a small devices such as Amazon Kindle and iPads where many books can be stored and can be used to read any newspapers thru Internet. Also now if we want to know somebody we would look at their online profile.

The real argument is how much people like to read, even before people ability to have a whole library in their pocket stored in Amazon`s kindle or iPad. Publishing firms always promote to make people read more! Dorling Kindersley Books made a very nice and smart clip to encourage more reading (watch the YouTube clip above). But maybe digital library is better for knowledge since it’s easier to use and much practical than going to “dusty unattended museums we call  libraries” as Coover called it in 1992. Link.



Prosumer & Crowdsourcing

In 1980 the futurist Alvin Toffler came up with the term Prosumer in his book The Third Wave. The word Prosumer is a blend between consumer and producer. Toffler used the term to describe a type of consumer who get involved in the production process. Link.

The most famous websites are based on prosumer work are YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook. Without the massive video uploaded from users (consumers) YouTube won’t be that popular. So in this situation the prosumer is the producer and the consumer of information. Also Apple don`t make iPhone applications, customers do that. Also with Google for example Google translating allows customers to involve in the service, not to mention Wikipedia. All of the above are type of Crowdsourcing websites.

In the above YouTube video Jeff Howe argues that “communities are able to form simply out of shared interest, a shared passion for a hoppy or craft”. To Howe the Internet made it possible to for a virtual crowd that allows people to come together and share interest. According to Howe Crowdsourcing is “the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated employee and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call”. But the question is why would we do it? Why would a person upload a video on YouTube for free, so more users “customers” can play it, while YouTube stick ads all around and get paid for it from the advertisers! The most logical view to see it is as a win-win situation since we get entertained for free and for example in websites like Answers.com we get all kind of information for free. But also we should not forget the classic con of this which is basically with the example of Answers.com, is it reliable?

Finally, we were always some type of prosumers, think about when you read a novel, your imagination produce the visual side of the story!



Politics in Second Life

In 2007 Estonia held the first online voting for the national parliamentary election. It was a big turning point for Politics in second life. Alec Charles, principal lecturer in Media at the University of Bedfordshire wrote an article about Estonia: The Electronic State: Estonia`s New Media Revolution. Charles state that “technology becomes a tool for the reinforcement of existing power structure” because using e-voting system is seen as an advantage of the educational and capable groups. Charles also talks about when the official government stopped printing its publication and made it exist in an almost exclusive electronic form which a third of the population cnat access and how that increases the existing power structure! Link.

So, it appears like a flawless great idea since it`s making the voting process easier and the government services more practical, but not everybody can access the internet and even among the people who can access the internet many of them are not good in it.

Barak Obama used Second Life heavily to win the 2008 election. And since entering the white house his administrating used social networking and Internet tools, such as facebook , YouTube and twitter to interact with the public. Link. In the same campaign Obama announced his Vice president by sending a text message to his supporters.

The current events in Egypt also reflected in Second life not only with social network like facebook and twitter but also in 3D virtual community websites like Secondlife.com when Anti-Mubarak speeches were banned from Second Life Egypt by the owner of its sim whose clearly a Mubarak supporter. Link. In real life, the people in Egypt were banned from sharing national decisions for almost 30 years under Mubarak`s brutal regime,  and now it can happen in Second Life too! So, is second life really different after all? Or is it simply “he who owns the gold, makes the rules”.

Robots will take over!

Many technological researches and development were meant to make people’s lives easier. Car travel faster than a horse carriage, printing is more practical than hand writing and so on. But later in history of developments machines became so advanced that it replaced the human worker, and that what we can call a Robot. The word robot can be defined as “A mechanical device that is capable of performing a variety of tasks on command or according to instructions programmed in advance” Link.

The word robot was first used in a 1920 Czech play called RUR (Rossum`s Universal Robots) in which mechanical slaves rebel against their human masters. The playwright, Karel Capek, borrowed the world robot from the Slavic Robota, meaning a forced laborer.

Science fictions always raise the concern that robots or machines would take over. But in reality machines took over long time ago with our full consent! In 1962 the first industrial robot was online in General Motors automotive factory in New Jersey (Link).  That first use of robots in mass production lines meant that many people lost their post for the new comer whose multi tasks, fast and much more functioning. American author and entrepreneur Marshall Brain, wrote a paper about this subject: Robotic Nation, he talks about how ATM and self services checkout line is practical from a customer standpoint. however  he also argued that: “robotic system will eliminate jobs in massive numbers. In fact, we are about to see a seismic shift in the American workforce. As a nation, we have no way to understand or handle the level of unemployment that we will see in our economy over the next several decades” Link.

National Intelligence Council released a report titled “Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World” Link. The report talks about how military and economic challenges that will face the U.S from other countries would play a huge role in the development of robots workers. Also the report talks about some benefits such as robots taking care for the elderly, and the fear that the robots eventually will disturb the unskilled labor markets.

Intelligent planes without pilot are used in Afghanistan and other areas by the U.S. Army. It is mainly small planes designed for surveillance but it can also drop bombs. The idea of military robots claimed to reduce causalities, but a Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Noel Sharkey warns that “Terminator-style machines that decide how, when and who to kill are just around the corner” Link. Professor Sharkey believes that their use is likely to make conflict and war more common and lead to a major escalation in numbers of civilian deaths.

Finally, David levy, a British artificial intelligence researcher released a book called “Love and Sex with Robots” Link. Levy predicts that human will love and marry robots by 2050!

One-to-Many medium to the Networked Society

For centuries the most dominate medium was One to many. Such as Public speeches and Books. Nowadays, one to many medium is still dominate but Many to Many medium are taking more space. But still, One to Many is more organized and controlled. For example with blogging, a one to many medium, the message is clear and undisturbed. It flows smoothly from the one to the many. While in an online forums, a  many to many medium there is always too many messages flying around which make it hard to be organized. Nevertheless the variety of opinion and discussion is the main strength of many to many medium.

One-to-Many & Many-to-Many

In 1963 Jurgen Habermas defined what he called the Public Sphere as a virtual or imaginary community which does not necessarily exist in any identifiable space. In its ideal form, the public sphere is "made up of private people gathered together as a public and articulating the needs of society with the state” Link.  In the digital age one to many medium is different and interactive. Most blogs and online newspapers offer a space for people to comment and discuss the content and sometimes refuse it with presenting some evidence, not to mention the massive and active “many to many” online forums. That does definitely offer a kind of public sphere. Bloggers now are very active socially and politically. They can start riots and rallies in many countries. They applied a public sphere as Habermas described it.  Although a limited public sphere was always active, it expanded in a mass revolutionary way through technology. Social communication became very easy; activists can now pass their messages to large number of people with little effort because modern societies are mainly networked.


But Networked society is a two edged weapon. Its pros are mainly “making people communicate in a much easier and effective way”. For example: family and friends can connect all the time by fast and cheap means where ever they are. However, the main cons come as a result to these pros. As much networked society shortened distances between people, it has been argued that it destroyed the real values of simple human face to face communications. It also raise some concerns privacy and identity


More about the Network Society in Youtube video below:

Military Impact on Technology

Ancient Greeks had used technology in military to build their empire. The first advanced catapult was developed by the Greeks. Thousands of years after the Greeks, technology superiority determined World War II when American army dropped 2 atomic bombs on Japan.

Over the years military always played a big role in the development of technology and not just for weapons. Many of the military development turned out to be a very good for civilian use and affected the shape of society. Walki Talki “two way transmitters” was developed for military uses. The most important information and communication system “the Internet” was a result of post World War II arm race between USA and the Soviet Union.

So, Military impact on technology has many pros on making it fast and efficient, but the military use the same means to its own purposes and goals. For example, the pentagon opened a unit in Hollywood for propaganda. As showing in the Youtube video below, Phil Strub “U.S. Dept Defense Film Liaison Unit” said that the relationship between Hollywood and the Pentagon is two way exploitation. In the same video, David Robb, the Author of “Operation Hollywood” said that if a film maker is willing to change his/her script to fit the pentagon point of view then they will get all the military equipment for free!. Films like Platoon (1986) and Full Metal Jacket (1987) were denied support from the military because it was so critical. Also U.S. Military released the Video game "U.S. Army" which considered one of the top Video games these days. The game basically promote recruiting new solders and according to the U.S Army official homepage, top gamers can earn a special invitation from Army to share their practices and ideas!

Copyright, Copyleft and Creative Commons

Copyright as we know it was established in 1709 so writers and publisher can gain protection against copying their work. Since that time a lot have changed and it can be argued that Copyright has lost it purpose in many ways.

It’s alleged now that the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has sued or threatened to sue about 28.000 people for copyright infringement. Most of these people are college students and teens!! Which make a person wonder is this right or wrong. Especially in our digital age. According to the International Federation of Phonographic industry, the global music industry sales had fell by 10% in 2009. Most the blame is on the illegal music downloading of course. So, it look right from the industry`s prospective to sue everybody. Mark Mulligan, Online distribution of music analyst said: “The music industry has been fighting hard against piracy for over a decade, but they haven’t managed to stem the flow” Link. He believe that the reason is because technology is moving to fast  for the Music industry and young people now believe that music is free and they never experienced saving money to buy a record.

Remixers also are targeted for a lot of law suits from the music industry and here things get complicated because remixers think of their self’s as artists and they claim that their work is based on fair use of other copyrighted artists work and that led to what’s called Copyleft  which look like it`s against Copyright but its not. Copyleft basically means that a person who owns a copy of any kind of copyrighted work can reproduce it or adapt it but with the acknowledgments for the original author. Copyleft also refers to any work in the public domain that not copyrighted and free.

Copyleft movement is adapting new idea called Creative Commons. It`s considered as a huge cultural revolution for artists and inventors. Creative Commons or CC means the work could be licensed to be reproduced, adapted or used in anyway by a legal agreement which determines how much and in which ways it can be used, Link. however there some questioning about CC that how is it different from fair use and why would anyone give away their own work.Tom Merritt, executive editor, CNET.com, has argued these concerns in this Link

Copeyleft and Creative Commons are shouts against copyrights laws that limited inventions and creativity and made it only for profit, and forgot the true propose of copyright that was made to protect the rights of inventors and encourage them.

Stanford professor Lawrance Lessing the founder of Creative Commons explains in this Youtube video:

Cyborg: fiction or Reality?

In 1987 the movie “Robocop” was a huge hit. The movie is about a half human half machine cop who has super powers and fight crime. At that time it looked like another super power fictional cyborg, but nowadays, and after more than 20 years it might not be fiction after all.

In 2010 Martin Aircraft Company (Link) introduced the Martin Jetpack as the world’s first practical Jetpack and announced that its going to the commercial market. According to the company`s website there is strong demand from wide range of markets including Military, Civil defense and recreation.

Martin Jetpack

So, what was just an idea in a science fiction movies such as super half machine cop or flying super hero like Iron man is actually becoming a scientific reality.

The term Cyborg itself is still controversial, some scholars such as Dani Cavallario, think that any artificial part to enhance the body make the person using it a cyborg, however, that not the case because many problems aroused with Cyborg. For example,  the double amputee South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius is competing and sometimes winning with “able body” athletes because of what the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) calls “superior mechanical legs”. That’s led to the argument that is it right to someone with super enhanced legs to compete against normal able-body athletes! Link.

Oscar Pistorius

Other problems with Cybrog is not yet here but it`s coming. Since Martin Jetpack is going commercial that’s mean people would be flying around and that need some system, special human airlines so they don`t crash. It doesn`t seem serious now but 20 years ago flying people was just a myth.

According to Roger Clarke in his paper The challenge of Cyborg Rights: The term Cyborg Rights defines them to be “legal, social or moral freedom to act or refrain from acting, or entitlements to be acted upon or not acted upon” Link. Clarke talked about the rights in details and outlined some of the grounds for it like religion or philosophy. He argued that it`s time for Cyborg to be debated and regulated.