Information

Today’s lecture was about information overload. It is interesting to see that information brings us convenience but also frustration and headaches. 

I have strong feeling about the questions Rodney raised at the beginning of the lesson. I really do waste time looking for folders, especially those contain photos, I need on my desktop. I opened lots of folders to organize the photos and files I have, so there one big folder with many small folders inside. Sometimes I duplicate files into different folders because I afraid I will lose the files. They are actually not useful to me, I just afraid I might need them someday. However, if I really need them someday, I will search for additional information and open up multiple tabs in my Firefox. It seems that I can finish the work easier and faster with additional \information, but in fact I need extra time to filter out information and pick the most reliable sources.

Google is my favorite search engine as it always provides me with a very large number of search results. As long as I spend time to do the searching, I can always get what I want, like video, images, map, news and translator. However,to be such a powerful and dominated search engines, Google is collecting data by storing our personal information when we use its services like Gmail, Google calendar, Google Latitude, Google voice, etc. without our permission.

If you go to youtube, you can see there are many videos people made to show oogle’s dark side and mock Google for privacy invasion.Here are the two cartoon and animation I found in youtube which are ironic.

The Google Toilet: SuperNews!

 

The new "Don't Be Evil" google video - Final Version.mp4

They show how Google control us and our concerns about our life in the future, like in the first video said ' How I can trust you with so much power.' .  It is funny to see we enjoy and love  getting informative we want, but at the same time we hate the way Google used to collect information.

My digital life

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It is interesting to think about what digital media or communication technologies/devices that we use every day.For me, both desktop and laptop computer are probably  used most frequently in my life and the rest of my life. It is so important for me to amuse myself. I am really addicted to Youtube, Facebook and Hotmail I can sacrifice anything for even one second time for them. I particularly like Youtube,because I can find songs from different times and a bundle of videos, shows or drama in the world. Also, I can make my own playlists so I can enjoy music legally.


Here is an Indian stand up comedy I found in Youtube, not all of his shows are good, but this one is funny.

Besides, Yahoo, Google and Wikipedia are really really important for me to search information and images for leisure or study. However, there are a flush of search results, we have to read carefully to see which sources are reliable.

Television and radio are another digital media I live with every day. Having some noise in the house is important for me to relax.... and of course mobile! I can't lose my mobile because  I treat it as a clock as well.
I don't catch up with the latest technologies, I don't use hi tech things at all. The other day, my friend asked me why I don't use iphone. I said it is because I don't need so many functions. Some people buy it only because they want to follow the trend. They even bought one for their parent without considering if it is necessary and easy for their parent to operate such device. 

I think its existance is a very good example to show the changes in the relationship between people, the management of information, social identity, communities and spaces etc.  and these are what  I  expect to learn in this course.