Are Crowds Wise?

Throughout these few weeks, we were learning about how everyone is becoming relevant through Social Media. It’s kind of raised a few questions in my mind, but let me link all the topics together first…

We first learnt about Wisdom of Crowds, or how a average opinion would be more accurate than a single individual’s opinion. An interesting quiz was done to see, and the crowd won!  However, we were a pretty smart crowd So, I was wondering what would happen if the crowd wasn’t wise? I mean,(no offence anywhere, of course),  a group of people does not always = wise crowd.

I did a slight amount of research, and apparently there are 4 elements in order to make a wise crowd!Plus, not anything can work in this context as well Interesting, right? Just look at the link below:

http://hughgarry.typepad.com/hugh_garry/2009/03/sxsw-dumb-people-make-wise-crowds.html

So, the main gist would be: We can’t all know the same thing, we need to think independently, we cannot have a ‘leader’ and well, we need to know how to put all the opinions into a aggregate.

This process needed to get the aggregate makes sense if it comes to big events (like an election, though that always remains to be seen in these days), but for simple matters, it seemed quite long and complicated, so it wouldn’t have been something I would have done for everything.

I guess this is when people jump to forums in order to get this knowledge. For example, to me, a review is more credible if there are positive and negative ones. If it’s a pure positive review, then I’m worried that I’m being brainwashed. After all, how can everyone love the same shampoo or line of makeup?

This brings me to Citizen Journalism. It wasn’t really fully covered in class, but I’m sure everyone knows what it is, right? Even though everyone can be known in the Internet, it isn’t easy to get people to find you credible, thus the reason why even though there are over 112 million blogs, only a few are famous. This shows that even though everyone can have a voice, we will still have people that lead us and people we trust. The funny thing is, we don’t know most of them. Isn’t that weird? Haha the main thing is that we’re supposed to trust the people we know the most, yet alot of people can trust forums so easily. That’s another thing I’m still figuring out, I think.

However, if you realise, the more hits a person has on their blog/ Youtube page doesn’t mean much sometimes. I see alot of Youtube pages that have SO many hits, yet they’re not funny(as they claim), not informative, and sometimes not even real(ghost stories, anyone?). Wikipedia is another example. The more edits a page has had does not mean it’s more accurate, just that more people have their own opinion on the page and person/thing. Seriously, when someone can be ‘pronounced dead’ on Wiki and needs to appear on TV to prove otherwise, you know that accuracy is a problem. (And yet, we still all believe it. The irony )

Alot of times, it always depends on whether the people who use blogs and social media like Twitter and Facebook know how to use it in order to market themselves appropriately, like the guest speakers we had. I think that the 2 we had are very sincere people, but the thing with ‘popular’ people is that they always make me feel like they’re not very personal. The 2 we had were very nice and an example of how it is possible to be popular AND nice, but as we can see from the celebrities on Twitter, most of them don’t bother with ‘the little people’. (Well, unless they have a new album/movie coming out, then that’s different.)

I guess, in conclusion…I’m not sure. Everything keeps changing, and who knows? the accuracy problem might solve itself and then we can all be wise crowds!

Is Technology Making Us Stupid?

EH… Wait, let me Google that…

Haha. But seriously, the first thing anyone I know, including me, does when they want to know something is to Google it. Whatever happened to Dictionaries, the Yellow Pages and a Street Directory?

(By the way, I mean actual, tangible books where you find out information, not dictionary.reference.com and streetdirectory.com)

I’m quite proud to say that I checked an actual dictionary just 2 weeks ago, when I was searching for a simple definition of the word ‘mobile phone’(for a specific lesson, *hint*). However, that was after I searched the Internet and gave up on definitions like this one from Wikipedia:

A mobile phone or mobile (also called cellphone and handphone^[1]) is a long-range, electronic device used for mobile telecommunications (mobile telephony, text messaging or data transmission) over a cellular network of specialized base stationsknown as cell sites.

I mean, who wants to explain that?? So, obviously after trying my very best (which equals Google-ing and looking through the first few hits) , I turned to the old-fashioned way: I searched my house for a actual dictionary and then found this definition:

Mobile Phone:

Sometimes we forget that the smallest things are the simplest.

But it does seem that we still follow the basic principles and steps, judging from this blogpost:

http://technollama.blogspot.com/2009/01/is-technology-making-us-stupid.html

I especially like the ending quote, when they talk about the ways that we never change, even after all this technology has ‘tainted’ us. Haha. It just feels like we’re all still human, and there are some things that will just NEVER CHANGE

So we’re still using our brains and minds, thankfully. We’re not totally used to technology to the point where our roots are forgotten, and the way people write and type change. At most, all the processes seem faster and everything goes into our heads faster, but at least we’re still making an effort to think of key words to type, stuff we deem important to read, etc. Can you imagine if in the future we just have to think something and everything gets thrown at us?

I mean, they’re doing that now, but still, at least we get out of bed. We find a WiFi spot, we go to school, we still use books, we search for stuff we want, etc. If we had a device that just provided us all with all the knowledge we wanted, then what would be the point of education? Plus, then we won’t all be fatso pigs sitting at him (ala the people in Surrogates )

So, I guess my answer to that question is:

Maybe. But it’s not as bad as it could be (Plus, you have a choice on what you want, like Newspapers VS Online News )

MinorIT Report

There were only two things in the Minority Report I remember; Tom Cruise using his fingers to control his ‘desk top’, and Tom Cruise (kidding).

After I got over Tom, I wondered what technology was. It had balls. That’s right, one day I shall go up to my grand children and say, “In my time, we had to use a mouse with a ball in it.”

Ironically I think they would reply with “What’s a mouse?” Now all school mice are optical, gaming mouses are laser and who knows whether we would need mouse devices in the future? My current desktop (HP TouchSmart) doesn’t necessarily need a mouse, though poking the screen does tend to get tiring and the insensitivity of the screen makes it tedious.

If the future was like the film ‘Minority Report’, I guess apart from the aching arms from all the shifting and pushing of the screen, it would definitely streamline browsing fluency. IPhones, at the moment, respond pretty accurately to the simple flicks (to change from picture to picture), using two fingers to poke one spot before spreading causes a zoom according to the distance between your fingers.

I bet that after all the arm aching, it would change to eye blinking for double clicks, sticking out your tongue to delete stuff and using your pupils to navigate pages.

Speaking of pupils, the whole eye issue in the film, while highly inspired, was pretty gross. An eye transplant in order to get a new identity is pretty harsh (on a side note, if apple comes up with a system like this would it be called i-eye?).

This ultimately eliminates paying the fine when you lose your IC (eye see?), and it makes identity theft “virtually” impossible. If perfectly integrated with all sorts of personal information, your Eye See would be your ezlink card, Cash card, Credit card, IC, PIN, NRIC and Passport.

If the list expands, it could even be your resume, criminal record and purchase records.

Eyes are windows to your soul, and if this is the future, that would virtually be true.

P.S Isn’t it scary that it was so well-received? This is just like horror films. We hate it if everything in the film actually happens to us, yet we’re spellbound when it’s on the screen and touted as Science-Fiction. Just imagine, in a few years, we might actually be living it.

Do You Want Your Privacy?

You know how parents always seem to find the right things at the exact time? I’m pretty sure something in my Mom’s mind clicked when she passed me a book right before school started.

The book is called ‘Roadside Crosses’, and it’s written by acclaimed novelist Jeffrey Deavers. To read the summary of the book, here’s the link: http://www.jefferydeaver.com/Novels_/Roadside/roadside.html

So, if you didn’t bother to read it, basically, it’s about a murder that takes place and how the detective uses clues dredged up from the Internet to figure out whodunit. The link to the title appears in that the murderer puts eerie roadside crosses with roses to mark the places and times when he’ll kidnap his next victim. This is a variation from the American culture, where many people put a roadside cross when someone dies in an accident. Some die in auto mobile accidents along highways, some in bicycle accidents, and hence their loved ones put up crosses with the victim’s name and the date of death to commemorate them. The murderer, however, uses the crosses to show his intent to kill.

The book starts with a girl getting kidnapped and left to die, but she survives thanks to a twist of fate. However, a roadside cross appeared where she was abducted, hence making the detectives worry that a serial killer is on the loose. To figure out who is the perpetrator, they consult a professor, who uses the girl’s computer to find out people she knows and may have offended. With the amount of cyber-activity present, they find that she has taken part in the cyber-bullying of a boy who was involved in an car accident and hence killed 2 girls. The Chilton Report, an online site(which, incidentally, does exist, thanks to the author), was the forum where the boy was bullied.

And hence the detective, together with the professor, try to find the boy, tracing his movement in the game DimensionQuest, thus creating and explaining alot of tech-speak for me to learn, like l33t speak. They also try to find his potential victims from the Chilton Report, as many of them do not hide their information and unknowingly give away too much information about themselves in the Internet Age.

Personally, I don’t really like the twist at the end, but it really is subject to the reader. And the book taught me alot about how we aren’t as smart as we think we are, and hence we can leave far too many clues and information about ourselves to anyone who has an Internet connection. Basically, the main point I got from the book was to protect my privacy and not to say too much online.

And then NCT started, and everything went out the window. I’m not trying to say that this is a bad thing, because as Media people, we should definitely learn how to use the hottest new things, like Social Media now, to our advantage in the world. It is slightly overwhelming, since this is the first time I’ve ever had to think of how to market myself as a brand, and to truly think through what I’m saying. I normally do try by not saying anything bad about anyone, but I didn’t know that the way I type and sound on the Internet would also reflect on me.

It’s definitely been a learning experience for me, especially because learning how to juggle privacy and openness is hard, especially after reading the book. One of the main themes in the book is how we judge people by what others say about them on the Internet. This is pretty important, because many things that people say might not be true. This is in line with the ‘Take Wiki and what you read on the Internet with a pinch of salt’ rule. Many people, including me, tend to take what people say on the Internet as the truth. For example, reviews of products by consumers are much more important nowadays, and the reviews will taint our view of the product, no matter what our own experience has been. Personally, I like to search for reviews on makeup products, and if reviews don’t talk highly of it, I tend to take my experience as just a temporary high. For example, if a product seems gorgeous at first glance, the reviews might keep implying to me that the finish does not last, and it is true because, well, people say so!

But back to the point about Social Media. Social Media is something we use to show off our personality, and now, to market ourselves. I think the main issue would be with us learning how to juggle our privacy in order to market ourself as a brand, and yet not tell everyone EVERYTHING about us. For example, pictures I put up on Facebook may not be offensive to me, but others might think differently. Nothing that is private on the Internet is really private anymore, as it can always be found even after you delete it. Especially when we go out to work, and technology catches up to the point that an employer can find out everything about us at a glance, as can be seen in this video that was shown in class:

http://blog.ted.com/2009/03/sixth_sense_demo.php

Especially with the way that Communication is now dependent on the new Technologies that are being researched, our course will always need to be updated, and hopefully the new ways of communication won’t be too scary

BTW, I think I might have gone off topic, but you get my point, right?