After reading through the list of questions we have to choose for our essay I have decided to go with question 6 -
Increasingly mobile devices are an aid to the gathering and reporting of information, both by professional journalists and “citizen journalists”. Outline the advantages and disadvantages of this sort of news gathering. How might it impact on journalistic practices and news values and ethics?
The reason I chose this question pretty much came down to the tute exercise. I really enjoyed the process of making our own news story and find the concept of citizen journalism interesting.
My plan of attack on this question will be to find some examples of citizen journalism, both positive and negative. I'll also look for some journal articles and credible online sources that can support the positive and negative arguments.
A possible problem I see my self having is the word limit. This is a very involved question with a lot of areas to cover. I'll need to keep my arguments to the point and make every work count.
Well this is the last post for a week while we have semester break.... And let me tell you, it is long overdue!!
This weeks lecture topic was Cyberpunk... which would have been better to have last week... considering the tute exercise we had. But anywho I get over that.
Once again Daniel opened me up to another interesting topic. Thankfully this week was much easier to follow compared to last week. Daniel manage to explain a bit about cyberpunk and were it all began. Cyberpunk's common theme or tone is the dark seedy side of humanity; lust for something and capital, which is street cred or as Daniel put it cold, hard mother f#$%ing money.
Daniel also talked about William Gibson, who is a leading writer on cyberpunk. We watched some clips of him and his work at the end of one William mentioned Gabriel's hounds, Daniel asked if anyone knew what he was talking about... No one did so he left it to us to find out.
What I found was either it is a reference to a band or a pack of hounds lead by the Angel Gabriel. I think it was a reference to the later. The hounds are ment to fly across the sky and bring ill fortune and death to anyone who hears them. So they are a kind of dooms day, end of normality kind of thing, which is a theme of cyberpunk.
With the semester break coming up I think I'll hunt down one of William Gibson's books down and see if it's all that Daniel made it out to be.
For this weeks tutorial task we were asked to research a cyberpunk theme, find a creative piece that reflects that theme; then link the two to a current news story. We then had to re-write the news story to include the cyberpunk piece showing it as a prediction of what is occurring now.
I chose the theme of "corporate control over society", which is basically the oppression of a larger group or society by another, either a corporation or government. The creative piece I used was a 1995 movie called "Hackers", it tells a story of a group of hackers who are being framed by a oil company for causing a oil spill. The group of hacker try to revel the truth that the company is causing the spill them selves to cover up the millions of dollars that have gone "missing".
I found an article on the ABC news site about the Rio Tinto executive who was arrested for stealing secret competitor information and the link with the Chinese governments involvement in hacking international companies to gain secret information and also to frame company employees.
My edited news story is below.... I'm off now to go update my laptops firewall before I fall victim to something like this....
Rio hacked at time of Hu arrest
Rio Tinto has been attacked by computer hackers, in what experts say is a growing global problem.
Rio Tinto's computer network was attacked by hackers around the time of Stern Hu's arrest, the ABC's Four Corners program has revealed.
Rio Tinto declined to comment on the incident, but former Rio employees and a senior government source have confirmed the company's Singapore office was taken off-line for three days to upgrade its security.
Senior mining executives also told the program that fellow mining giant, Fortescue Metals, was targeted by cyber attackers.
The Chinese embassy has denied any government involvement in the attacks.
But international security expert Professor Alan Dupont says there is increasing evidence that China practices commercial espionage.
"I think China, in particular, has seen opportunities to gain competitive advantage commercially through accessing commercial secrets," he said.
"I think that's become now part of a conscious strategic policy by China to improve its competitive position in all those fields."
“I think that's becoming now part of a conscious strategic policy by China to use hackers to steal commercial secrets from international companies”
Former CIA case officer Daniel Slane told the program there had been many cases of hackers stealing commercial secrets from US companies.
And he said there was a lot of forensic evidence that pointed to the culprits being based in China.
Former CIA case officer Daniel Slane told the program this was a bigger issue then most people are aware.
"We believe that numerous corporations have been attacked, not only in the United States, but worldwide, and many of them are even unaware that they're being attacked," he said.
In a bid to shift the focus from the Chinese government they are using their hackers to place false evidence onto the computers of innocent parties. Reminiscent of the 1995 film Hakers where a large corporation uses the cyber word to frame a group of people for an illegal act committed by the corporation.
However in the present day it is not a corporation but a government which is using the cyber world against innocent people.
It is easy for China to use government hackers to steal information from an international corporation and even place incriminating evidence onto the computers of the employees of the company;which looks to be the case in Sturn Hu’s situation.
Computer security expert Ajoy Ghosh said hackers in other cases had gone as far as planting child pornography on victims' computers so that authorities had a reason to seize the computer.
"They can also insert files on to the travelling executive's computer and a common thing to do is to insert compromising material, perhaps it's a photo of that executive in a compromising position. Perhaps it's child pornography.
"Increasingly, there's a recognition that national security agencies and hackers for hire are being used to gather economic information."
With institutions like the Chinese government undertaking these acts we are in for a very uncertain future where our safety is not guaranteed and the information on our computers may not be our own.
"So once you've infected the computer the hacker has full access to that computer. So the first thing they can do is to browse files on that computer. They can copy the files from that computer to their own computer," he said.
"They can also insert files on to the travelling executive's computer and a common thing to do is to insert compromising material, perhaps it's a photo of that executive in a compromising position. Perhaps it's child pornography.
"Inserting child pornography has the benefit that later on the authorities can come knocking on the door and seize the computer legitimately because it has child pornography on it."
Mr Ghosh said hacking was increasingly becoming big business.
"There are multiple reasons that your computer might be compromised," he said.
"Increasingly, there's a recognition that national security agencies and hackers for hire are being used to gather economic information."
Editor's Note (May 11, 2010): A portion of the article claiming that Chemical Abstracts Services' (CAS) computer system had been breached by Chinese hackers has been removed. After the broadcast of Four Corners CAS told ABC this was untrue. They told us that several university systems with access to the online research tool SciFinder were hacked but at no time was the IT security system at CAS breached.
Ok... so that was a little full on to say the least.... Covering 2000yrs of information in 40min was hard for my brain. Starting with Plato and his philosophical ideas, through to electrodes in the brains of monkeys. Yes it was all covered.... What I took away from the lecture was to question reality. What makes something real? Does virtual reality make what is being displayed real because we can see it?
While I was extremely engrossed with what was being said I think more time is need to full explain the theories and allow it to sink in. Hopefully some of the topics will be built on in the weeks to come.
To get a bit more of an idea of what was covered in the lecture I did a search online on the topic of reality and virtual reality. Some... most of what I found was useless but one page stuck with me.... While I'm not 100% on the credibility of the author "Ken Ward", he does talk about some stuff I remember from when I was doing a science degree in Canberra. This particular page talks about the fact that the way we see and how we interpret that information is dependent on chemical and electrical reactions in the brain. The easiest way to think about it is most people see grass as green, but a person with colour blindness sees it as brown... so what we perceive to be reality may not be what others would call reality.
Well that's a little full on so I'll leave it there.
So this weeks tute is researching some topics and discussing what I find. Here I go....
1. What is creative commons and how could this licensing framework be relevant to your own experience at university?
Creative Commons was introduced to us in the lecture, I had never herd of it before but I like the sound of it. I think while copyrights have their place in protecting a persons creative works. There are situations where the rigidity of the copyright doesn't allow for current uses of works. I got this quote from the Creative Commons website to help explain;
"Creative Commons is a world wide project that encourages copyright owners to allow others to share, reuse and remix their material, legally. We offer a range of free licences that creators can use to manage their copyright in the online environment, each providing its own specific protections and freedoms. We have built upon the “all rights reserved” of traditional copyright to create a voluntary “some rights reserved” system."
While I don't think Universities would accept some works from other artists even under a creative common license, there could be a way for it to work. Just as with an essay you provide a bibliography, if you where to create art or music with creative common work you could provide a reference to the original piece and the creator....
This may not be a area that I use a lot of academically but it will definitely by something I'll be using personally and professionally.
2. Find 3 examples of works created by creative commons and embed them in your blog.
This question I had a bit of trouble with. I found it easy to get creative commons licensed work, many search engines now provide a "creative commons" option and sites like flickr have heaps of examples. However I found it difficult to find a creative work which was made from the use of creative common licensed work.
3. Find an academic article which discusses creative commons using a database or online journal. Provide a link to and a summary of the article.
I found this article called "Made for Sharing" by Eliza Williams it gave an overview of creative commons and it's beginnings as well as the benefits and pitfalls of the licenses. I have provided a link to the full article and bellow is an abstract.
Abstract: "AB The CreativeCommons company has created a system of alternative copyright licenses. The company was formed in 2001 by a group of cyberlaw and intellectual property experts, an MIT computer science professor, and an Internet publisher. According to co-founder Lawrence Lossig, the company is attempting to generalize the free cultural production approach of the computer software movement. Its licenses aim to provide an alternative copyright system that is more in line with the sharing ethos of the Internet and the creative possibilities of digital technology. For example, the Attribution license allows others to use a person's work as long as that person is credited as the creator. "
4. Have a look at Portable Apps (a pc based application) – provide a brief description of what it is and how you think this is useful.
This is another new topic for me "portable apps". A quick search showed me that they are pretty much a program that doesn't store information on the computers hardware. I found this awesome site called gizmo's freeware review which has a whole heap of portable apps. and some info explaining what they are for the uninitiated like me. The benefit that I see of these types of programs is that you don't need to have it installed onto the computer so you can use it where ever you go, internet cafe, uni, friends place.
Once again we had Adam which I really enjoyed. His lecture topics are really interesting to me. This weeks topic was all about sharing knowledge and building on previous works or ideas. Before the advent of Lawyers and capitalism knowledge was freely distributed in the community and available for anyone to use, expand on and even change. At the moment the norm is to keep control of all the content you create and protect it from use by others.
While I see the point to this kind of protection, the concept that we were introduced to this week of 'creative commons' is a great compliment to the existing copyright laws. Creative Commons is another type of copyright, just a more relaxed version. Instead of the creator retaining all rights over a piece they can choose how much of their rights they wish to release; allowing it to be used by other creators to use to make their own works, or to build on the original.
Adam also talked about open source software and asked us to look into some and try to use one for a week and judge if it better or worse. This is an area that I have been getting more and more familiar with. I love my iMac and adobe programs and doubt that I'll ever change from that, especially with the industry focus on these. However I do already use open source programs on my laptop. The ones I use most are Firefox and Openoffice.
Firefox is a free web browser, I use it because I find it to run smoother with less glitches then explorer and I refuse to use chrome out of principle because of Google. OpenOffice is a free word processor, very similar to Microsoft's version but you don't have to empty your wallet every time there is an new version update. I like Openoffice awesome, I can do everything Word or iWork does; while it's not as refined it does get the job done.
In my research of this topic I found a blog by a Turkish designer which made me laugh. Its opening is kind of relevant to this topic. Check it out; click here; plus there are a few other posts on there that are very good.
This weeks task is to look into who actually owns the information and content we put onto the web. Ilogged onto my facebook page and went straight to the terms at the bottom of the page and started reading. What I found was while I have control and ownership of the content, by putting it on the site I give facebook permission to use or share that content with who ever they want. But I can limit their use by changing the privacy settings on my site.
While I'm not a lawyer I'm not 100% on exactly what they can do with my content this did prompt me to go through and change all my privacy settings to limit the amount of outside access I have have. It also reassured my decision when I first started my facebook account to only have "friends" that were actually friends that I knew in the real world. This decision came from my 'myspace' experience, where it seemed the goal was to have as many friends as possible regardless of the fact if I had ever met the person. So I deleted that site ending my friendship with over a thousand people I had never met and started with Facebook.
From this lecture while I will continue to use Facebook I will think about what I put up and definitely will not be putting any future art up that I want to retain full control over. Now I'm off to look into who owns my email accounts.
This week introduced us to a new speaker, Adam Muir, all the way from Nathan... He talked about the history of the web and it's changes over the years; and the changes it has brought to the community and how the internet community has evolved.
I haven't been involved with the computers and internet all my life like some of the younger people in this class so it was interesting to see how peoples perspectives have changed towards the internet. And the change of the on-line community from groups with a common interest to an ego-centric network where it's all about who is linked to you.
With the change of the internet from just viewing content to the web 2.0 where it is a read-write web, meaning that users are involved in the creation of the content which raised the question as to who owns that content?
This was a very thought provoking topic for me as a budding designer the issue of content ownership will become an increasing issue for me. While right now I have no content that I have created as a graphic artist on the web I do have personal photos and information on facebook. From that topic I will be very conscious when I put content on the web.
