Thursday, April 28, 2016

Net Smart Ch. 1-2

      In chapter 1, Sherry Turkle argues that “controlling relationships becomes a major theme in digital communication.” Turkle is referring to the increased level of control that one experiences in digital communication versus face-to-face interactions. When communicating face-to-face, responses are essentially reflexive and instantaneous. When communicating digitally, one is able to take as much time as they desire to draft responses. With this level of control, one is able to take the time to make sure that they are saying exactly what they want to say in exactly the way they want to say it. This increased control can be negative as it makes interactions somewhat less fluid and natural. When communicating digitally, people are able to express themselves in the ways that they want to be received. The digital medium provides them with the time to craft the ways in which they express themselves. With the spontaneity of face-to-face communication, people get a more true sense of who a person is by the way they express themselves in that moment. Another aspect of control that is acquired through digital communication is the ability to interact with multiple people simultaneously. However, the increased quantity of interactions may come at the expense of the quality of those interactions. If you have ever tried to hold a face-to-face conversation with someone who is also involved in one or more digital conversations, you know exactly how frustrating that can be. The quality of that interaction will almost certainly be negatively affected as they are dividing their attentional resources amongst multiple conversations, rather than fully investing their attention in the face-to-face conversation. Digital communication can be a great tool, but people who use it should not allow it to come at the expense of the quality of face-to-face interactions.

 
     In chapter 2, Rheingold discusses “triangulating.” This is a form of crap detection that involves finding three different, credible sources to validate information that is found online. For example, in November 2015 Donald Trump tweeted an infographic stating that 97% of the murders of black people are by black people and 81% of the murders of white people are by black people. The image cites the source of this information as being the “Crime Statistics Bureau in San Francisco.” A quick internet search which reveals that this bureau does not even exist provides the first point of the triangle. A search for available data on this topic brings us to FBI.gov. Here, we find data for 2014 that shows the killings by white people are actually 5 times higher than Trump’s infographic stated and killings by black people are actually 5 times lower than Trump’s infographic stated. This serves as the second point of the triangle. For the third and final point of the triangle, we should try to find where this infographic originated. Placing the image into a Google image search reveals the earliest tweet in which the infographic appeared. It was originally tweeted by an account with a swastika as the profile picture and a bio that reads, “We should have listened to the Austrian chap with the little mustache.” With these three points, we can conclude that the image was clearly created by a racist group with the intention of spreading disinformation.

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