Technology and Government

As with the past few assignments, this particular one has truly allowed me to take a deeper look into a very important current issue: technology and government. The question brought up on Slashdot makes readers reflect on exactly what kind of change it is that we have all been talking about, and how we are going to get it get via technology.

It is known that Barack Obama reached a much larger audience during his campaign through his website and youtube videos. I can personally say that the internet influenced my political views during this historical time in our country. Specifically, I just posted a youtube video of Obama on my blog last week that dealt with net neutrality. I can honestly say that with all of the websites that I read to understand the topic, Obama's speech (broadcasted from an MTV interview with a younger audience) is what helped me to most understand what was going on, and seeing him speak about the issue made me feel confident in where he planned to lead our country in favor or net neutrality.

Point is, Obama cannot just leave behind the younger audience that he has spent so much time uniting and making his followers. There is a whole new crowd in the political atmosphere and it is crucial to keep their eyes on the issues. Speaking on behalf of the new generation that is involved, I think it is a great idea for Obama to post weekely addresses on his website.

Focusing on other uses of technology, rather than just Obama's interaction with the public, one of the most interesting ideas that I came across was in a response to the Slashdot question posted by rwa2:

"The easiest way to give the control back to the people would be to give them some control over how their taxes are allocated. Right now, we pay a certain percentage of our income in taxes, and the government decides how much to budget for each department. Wouldn't it be great if you could actually "earmark" your tax dollars? Don't want to support the war in Iraq? Want a certain percentage of your taxes to go support the Dept. of Education or NASA space exploration instead? This would be a great way of directly measuring people's priorities, and give people the sense that the work they do to make money does not go towards what they consider "waste"."

Contrary to what it may seem, I did not copy the his whole repsonse to take up space, haha. I really feel that this response says it perfectly. Although I do not believe in electronic voting, I haven't been since I saw the movie 'Man of The Year' with Robin Williams (check it out) I do however think that allowing the public to fill out an online tax 'allocator' I guess you could call it, would truly solve a lot of problems. Using technology to our advantage in this way is like bringing our government back to a democracy that truly listens to the people. It actually reminds me of a lot of the goverments that I have been learning about in world civ this semester, like the very first republic and democracy with the greeks.

There are alot of ways that technology can help our government, but we definitely cannot go rushing into it. I am confident that Obama will lead us in the right direction.

Let It Flow. Network Neutrality.. I'm all for it.

(Sigh of relief) You heard the man! Obama's unwavering support of an open-internet definitely allows for content providers, no matter how much bandwidth they are taking up, a reason to stick their chests out a little further in their battle against major telephone and cable companies. I'll admit that before actually being able to write this blog I had to do a lot of research. What did I type into my Google search engine? Yup, 'Net Neutrality For Dummies,' and only after I had read and sifted through countless websites and other online sources did I realize that the steps thatI was taking to learn about net neutrality were actually illustrating the exact reason why net neutrality must be protected.

So, let's break it down. In one corner of the ring we have the big guys, the cable/telephone/Internet network providers. To name a few, we have AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner, and Comcast. In the other corner of the ring we have the content providers, basically anyone who contributes information to the Internet. Major content providers that are most familiar are Google, Yahoo, and YouTube. However, we must remember that we, too, are content providers any time we post a blog or comment on a website. Clearly ISPs are outnumbered in the fight, yet this is not a debate that can be won based on numbers.

Bandwidth has been referred to in many of the articles that I have read as 'the pipes of the Internet.' ISPs are paying big bucks to create and maintain the 'pipes,' or network connections that are the pathways for all of our information to flow. These companies do not feel that it is fair that companies like Google, Yahoo, and YouTube are using up so much bandwidth and are making huge profits through advertisements, while ISPs aren't seeing any of it. ISPs feel that they aren't getting the credit or the financial compensation that they deserve; they basically see content providers as freeloaders.

"Between 1996 and 2005, the cable industry spent $105.3 billion in capital expenditures, which included new fiber-optic cables that deliver television, phone and broadband Internet, according to Kagan Research." (WSJ 2006)

Ed Whitacre of AT&T told BusinessWeek: "Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain't going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there's going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they're using. Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?"


As President Obama describes it in the video above, ISPs want to be able to be 'gatekeepers' on the Internet, in other words decide which content on the Internet is delivered the fastest; they feel that they have the right to prioritize and direct the speed of the flow of information. A factor in prioritizing what sites can be accessed with the most efficiency will be their ability to pay a fee.

On his site Chez Clark gives us this example:

"Net Neutrality is about forbidding an ISP (Verizon for example) who has a business relationship with, say, Barnes and Noble, to charge Amazon punitive rates just for the privilege of reaching the ISP’s customers. Customers who, it should be emphasized, have paid for access to the Internet just like everyone else. There’s no good reason why ISPs should be able to throttle traffic selectively, based on their own interests, and that’s what Net Neutrality aims to prohibit."

Net neutrality effects everyone's interests. It is not just a battle amongst big online businesses and ISPs. It is a battle that involves anyone that has ever used the internet. What has been happening over the past few years since this has become a major issue, is the presence of the government. They are in essence the referee to our metaphor, and they have yet to decide on the winner of this fight. As I mentioned earlier, the recent election of President Obama will definitely impact this debate, pro-net neutrality.

I absolutely support net neutrality. Just the possibility that the information that I want on the Internet may come at all different speeds, or not at all, is stressful! Think about YouTube for instance. If YouTube could not afford to pay my ISP with the expected fee for the amount of bandwidth they are using for all of their videos, I would not have been able to browse quickly through the 'net neutrality' videos and find what I was looking for (Obama's speech). We are always using YouTube as a means for academic assistance, especially in this class. Who are ISPs to take away that facility? The absence of this new medium on the Internet would be far more detrimental to innovation and ideas than the 'hole' in an ISPs pocket would be if YouTube could not/would not pay a fee.

While looking up information on this topic I was able to search through Google to find tons of websites, all of which I took bits and pieces from to fully understand the issue. These sites included blogs and videos from all different kinds of people. The fact that I could access all of these sites at the same speed is what makes the internet, the internet.

One of the most helpful and interesting sites that I found was 'Save The Internet.'. They clearly break down who will be effected. (from the perspective of someone who is pro neutrality) I know it is not in my own words, yet this site is what helped me to truly understand so many different aspects of the issue. Here is how they break it down:


Who will be affected?

* Small businesses -- The little guy will be left in the "slow lane" with inferior Internet service, unable to compete.

* Innovators with the next big idea -- Startups and entrepreneurs will be muscled out of the marketplace by big corporations that pay Internet providers for the top spots on the Web.

* Bloggers -- Costs will skyrocket to post and share video and audio clips -- silencing citizen journalists and putting more power in the hands of a few corporate-owned media outlets.

* Google users -- Another search engine could pay dominant Internet providers like AT&T to guarantee another search engine opens faster than Google on your computer.

* Ipod listeners -- A company like Comcast could slow access to iTunes, steering you to a higher-priced music service it owns.

* Online shoppers -- Companies could pay Internet providers to guarantee their online sales process faster than competitors with lower prices -- distorting your choices as a consumer.

* Telecommuters -- When Internet companies like AT&T favor their own services, you won't be able to choose more affordable providers for online video, teleconferencing, Internet phone calls, and software that connects your home computer to your office.

* Parents and retirees -- Your choices as a consumer could be controlled by your Internet provider, steering you to their preferred services for online banking, health care information, sending photos, planning vacations, etc.

* Political groups -- Political organizing could be slowed by a handful of dominant Internet providers who ask advocacy groups to pay "protection money" for their Web sites and online features to work correctly.

* Nonprofits -- A charity's website could open at snail-like speeds, and online contributions could grind to a halt if nonprofits don't pay Internet providers for access to "the fast lane."

There you have it. So I say let it flow (information), and let it flow at the same speed for everyone, no matter what the content. Charging content providers will only help in forcing our country to take steps backwards in this age of technology. And as the Wall Street Journal has reported, our country is already paying much more for internet access that is much slower than that in other countries around the world. Isn't our country supposed to be based on the support of innovation and the spread of information?

At the risk of sounding, well, corny... I really learned a lot this week about what is going on with the issue of net neutrality, and it was a topic that I was pretty much clueless on prior to this assignment. I have mentioned in my previous blogs that I am a person that really needs things to be extremely simplified and spelled out for me when it comes to new things, especially political or new technological topics. I'm not dumb, I just don't feel comfortable at guessing at what things might mean; I need to be able to learn in a way that shows me how these things affect a person in everyday life. That is exactly what the internet helps me to do. I kid you not, I read at least a dozen sites that answered to my 'net neutrality for dummies' search, and it was the access to these explanations that made everything 'click.' Net neutrality is giving a student the ability to learn with whatever source will benefit them the best, and they do not have to wait.


Sources:
Wall Street Journal. "A Battle for Control of the Web." 10 Nov 2008.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd8qY6myrrE

All others sources are linked within the blog.

Whatever Happened to Playing Monopoly? Virtual Worlds: Too Much For Me To Handle.

My least favorite high school classes: Politics and Economics. Conveniently our most recent blog topics, you can imagine that I have been struggling to put all of the pieces together. So, my way of understanding new concepts is to really simplify and make elementary school comparisons. . . work with me here.

Going into this week's topic of virtual worlds I was clueless other than my freshman year experience of watching a kid down the hall become addicted to World of Warcraft. I laughed at Levy's reference to the term 'Warcrack' in his article when he discusses the addiction and excessive time consumption of the players in virtual worlds. The photo below was actually taken last year during one of our very own (attempted, yet never successful) Richmond 2nd Floor WoW Interventions.



So, that was then. I thought that after reading about World of Warcraft and Second Life that I would come to some profound realization of how or why these worlds well, become like crack (or 'Warcrack') to users, yet I'm still not there yet. This is how my brain works:

First I think that sure,back in the day I would put my Barbie in her convertible and push her around my room, which you could say became my own little world. But like most, I grew out of that phase in my life and I crossed over from pretend to reality. (even though I spent my high school years driving my mother's mini van and not a convertible, you get the picture)

Then I look at my brother, a 21 year old senior here at UB, who proudly still plays video games and yells at the screen, something I'm not sure that he will ever grow out of. But thankfully this does not take up the majority of his day and he is capable of returning to the real world.

Now, I am just starting to scratch the surface of the lives of virtual world residents and avatars. Some users are spending 12 hours a day or more trying to advance and reach goals in their virtual worlds (Barboza 2005). I read all of the articles and the only reasons for participation that made sense to me were those based on financial gain...the real kind, not the virtual kind. I understand that social scientists can do a lot of research by observing virtual worlds (Giles 2007), however where interpersonal aspects would usually interest me, it is the economic aspect of virtual worlds that are more intriguing to me.

The question was to compare an open virtual economy like that of Second Life, to that of a closed virtual economy like World of Warcraft. Whether declared open or closed by creators, it is being proven that even an attempt at a closed virtual economy will make its way into the 'real world.' Andrea's blog really helped me to understand the features and possibilities involved with Second Life's open economy, especially the video she posted of her Professor's research with creating a virtual sweatshop. Clearly society has moved on from simple games such as Monopoly and The Game Of Life which used simulate 'another world.'


Looking at online role-playing games like World of Warcraft, Ultima, and Everquest, which strive to maintain a closed economy, companies are straying away from intertwining real currency (other than what users pay in subscription costs) and virtual currency. This is becoming more and more difficult to do as 'black markets' have been created so that users are now not simply bartering inside the walls of the online world, but using sites like Ebay to purchase with real money items that are not even tangible such as virtual goods, armor, skills, and property.

"There are dozens of people out there making a real living selling virtual goods. . ." (Dibbell 2004)Those who provide these goods and resell them in accounts are kind of like the drug dealers of the virtual world I suppose. Dibbell recognizes one man who does just that, Bob Kiblinger, a chemist who quit his job and works full-time buying and selling virtual goods. He says in the article that he is making more doing this than what he was making at Procter & Gamble.

Another crazy off branch of what is supposed to be a 'closed' virtual economy are the businesses being generated in China. Groups of 18-25 year old men in China are spending 12 hours a day or more, 7 days a week, and getting paid about $250 a month to find valuable virtual goods and create accounts that surpass entry levels, that will then be sold to other users. (Barboza 2005)

"For the Chinese in game-playing factories like these, though, it is not all fun and games. These workers have strict quotas and are supervised by bosses who equip them with computers, software and Internet connections to thrash online trolls, gnomes and ogres." - Barboza

What I have learned is that pretend worlds are creating real economies, whether their creators want them to or not. Imagination and make-believe worlds have come a long way since Barbies, Monopoly, and MarioKart, that's for sure.

Sources:

Lynch, T. (1996). DS9 trials and tribble-ations review. Retrieved
October 8, 1997, from Psi Phi: Bradley's Science Fiction Club
Web site: http://www.bradley.edu/campusorg/psiphi/DS9/ep/
503r.html

Barboza, David. (2005). Ogre to Slay? Outsource It to Chinese. Retrieved November 6, 2008: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/09/technology/09gaming.html

Levy, Steven. (2008). World of Warcraft: Is is a Game? Retrieved November 6, 2008. https://ublearns.buffalo.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_2_1&url=%2fwebapps%2fblackboard%2fexecute%2flauncher%3ftype%3dCourse%26id%3d_61661_1%26url%3d

Dibbell, Julian. (2004). The Unreal Estate Boom. Retrieved November 6, 2008. https://ublearns.buffalo.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_2_1&url=%2fwebapps%2fblackboard%2fexecute%2flauncher%3ftype%3dCourse%26id%3d_61661_1%26url%3d