Culture and Society - Online civil disobedience and political activists

After researching Anonymous and Lulzsec it's clear to see a difference between the two. Lulzsec hack into different websites and systems just for the fun. They want to show people that they can do it and that their site's are not as secure as they would like to think they are. There is no meaning behind what they are doing just purely the fact that they can do it. They are responsible for high profile hackings such as Sony, Nintendo and the CIA website. They claim to have 7 members with one as the leader. They don't hack for profit but just for fun. They even opened a telephone request line so fan could request potential targets. 

Whereas with Anonymous they have political reasons for what they do. They are trying to protect users freedom online and free speech. Anonymous defended Wikileaks as a way of defending free speech but they also hacked into the accounts of Amazon, Paypal and Mastercard. To me, hacking into these accounts doesn't make sense in defending free speech so I think that in a way they also do it because they can but they want to be seen as doing good. I think that they do have good intentions and when they hack into these accounts they don't release any of the information but a lot of the time they aren't doing good for the general public. They contradict themselves by shutting down websites in the name of free speech.  They protest against things that they are passionate about and obtain private information of people who may not be passionate about the same cause as them. Although the other side of this is that by hacking into these large corporations they are showing a flaw in their security and therefore people loose trust in these companies resulting in them losing money and some control. Anonymous is not a specific group of people it is a mass of people all existing separately or some together. 

I understand the fun aspect of it coming from Lulzsec. If they can do it why not point out the flaws in national security systems. In the long run they are probably helping these systems iron out the bugs in their security. I don't agree with taking personal information of account holders though. With Anonymous they seem to have a good cause that I also agree with which is freedom online and I think that they are good at creating awareness. I also like the whole mystery aspect as who these people are. I think they both have good intentions but don't always end up doing good. You're never going to get everyone to believe in your cause anyway. 

I don't think that I could be convinced to become politically active through targeted social media. For me it's not about the means in which you are targeted but it's if you are targeted for something that you are actually interested in or passionate about. I have no interest what so ever in the politics of this country. I choose to ignore it and not watch the news and live in my on little bubble because it's just depressing otherwise. So if there was a social media political campaign I would swiftly ignore it and move on to doing something even more useless with my time. My own little world is a happier place this way.

Information

http://www.cjr.org/the_news_frontier/are_online_attacks_civil_disob.php

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13787229

Culture and Society - The Networked Public

Children today are growing up in a networked society. They are connected to everything through the internet. The internet is now widely available on mobile devices making it easier to be connected 24/7. People need to be careful what they put online though. I like to think I monitor my online profile carefully on sites such as Facebook. 

I have my page completely private so that potential employers (or stalkers) can't find me if they search for me in google or in the Facebook search bar. I also have my Facebook chat divided into groups of people I don't want to talk to that I keep offline all the time and then my friends who I talk to all the time and keep online. I also de-tag myself from photos I find to be unflattering or even ask my friends to take certain photos down. My profile photo will always be a photo I think represents me best whether its a photo I think is nice or a photo of something fun. I decide how I want to come across on Facebook by a way of micro managing my profile. 

The future of people growing up as digital natives means that they will not have the same childhoods as us. I can't say whether they are missing out on certain things growing up that we had because thats not for me to decide. They may think that they have a better upbringing because of all the advances in technology. But older generations will always think they lived in a simpler time. Children now will communicate through the internet or over the phone. Even phone conversations have decreased. Texts are widely used now to communicate. Long gone are the days of people talking on the phone for hours. Now people choose to text all day long instead. The implication of this is that your tone in a text message could be taken up wrong by the other person whereas this wouldn't generally happen over the phone. 

People no longer call to each others house unannounced. You will always call or text someone before arriving to their house to make sure they are there. When i was growing up if you had nothing to do you would just arrive at your friends doorstep to see if they anted to come out and play. The notion of the doorbell also seems to be dying out. Now people will not get out of their car to ring a doorbell they just text or ring the person to tell them they are outside eliminating the need for a doorbell. I can't decide whether it's laziness or convenience. I think it is a combination of both. Children will no longer hang out  down the road, outside in the cold. They will hang out online. 

I think people who engage in online deviance are people who feel bad about themselves and like to see other people suffer to make themselves feel better. They are clearly people who have nothing better to do with their lives only sit at home on a computer and make other people feel bad. Sometimes I read comments under certain blogs posts and a lot of the time they are comments from people abusing the person who wrote the blog. This is one thing i don't understand. If you don't like a blog or the person who writes it then why do these people continue to go on and read these blogs. If people just stopped going onto to these sites and giving people abuse for no reason they'd be a lot happier in themselves. 

The networked public also seems to have giving rise to a new form of bullying. Online bullying is very common now. I don't think that it has made more bully's but I think that it has made the bully's that are already out there more powerful. Now if someone gets bullied in school it doesn't stop when they go home. They continue to get bullied once they are home whether it's online or over text. This tragically results in school children taking their own lives because they never get a break from the bullies. For the person being bullied the want to kill themselves can then further be fueled by pro-suicide websites where people can talk on forums and make suicide pacts and even get tips on how to kill yourself. 

There is a never ending world online and nearly anything you want or need can be found online in some way, shape or form. It is clear that there are both good and bad sides to this. The sad reality is that whether you want to seek help for being bullied or whether you want to get tips on how to kill yourself, there's something out there for everyone.