What is cyberbullying??

Cyberbullying, as defined by Google, is the use of electronic communication to bully a person, typically by sending messages of an intimidating or threatening nature. Nowadays there's so many different social media apps and outlets people are using that its easier than ever to be attacked. Its even happening to celebrities. There's been a bunch of recent cases in the past few years of cyberbullying leading to suicide. Cyberbullying can consists of posting rude/vulgar comments on someones page, continuous degrading text messages, and also pictures are being used. The article "Audrie Pott, Rehtaeh Parsons suicides show sexual CYBER-BULLING is 'pervasive' and 'getting worse,'" by Julia Dahl, talks about how laws aren't up to date with the new technology and the threats they can lead to. They have a hard time prosecuting because usually they're dealing with minors and the parents of the kids being bullied aren't happy at all.Some states have begun adopting new laws but not fast enough.  "Law enforcement is behind the times on this,...as it becomes easier to post or text or comment on a photo, sexual cyber-bulling and cyber-stalking is becoming 'more pervasive, more common, and more acceptable.' law enforcement generally lacks understanding and training about the realities of how the old problem of so-called 'slut-shaming' and blaming rape victims for things like how they dress or what they drank has evolved in the digital age 'It's not getting better, it's getting worse'".

Legal and Ethical Issues

Personally I think that some information should be made available free to the public. I find most copyright laws annoying. Like scholarly journals and published books and things like that should be made available online for people who need it. I feel like if it was made for education purposes then students should be able to read it and see it for free and not have to pay for it. Thanks to open access some research is made available to universities as explained in the article, "Open access research grows in popularity", by Joseph Harvey. It says that "Open access research is becoming the prominent way to publish university research due to government pressure. Open access research, which is a push to make tax-funded research available to the public, is not new idea. However, it has gained attention due to recent federal pushes toward these types of results". Copyrighted material works a little different because its legally binding. In order to use copyrighted material you're supposed to be licensed to do so. Although people do it everyday even though it can be considered illegal. I think music and movies are the hardest ones to control. I hate having to pay for my music it was easier to get free music when I had an android phone but I feel like apple makes it alot harder to download "illegal" music. I think it should be free though, famous people get enough money out of us.

Privacy and Security

I think privacy on the Internet is something I worry about a lot. Nowadays technology is growing so much that you really have to wonder if anything is really private anymore. One of the articles that stood out to me was the one about a supposedly "private" picture that was said to have only been shared with friends but was seen by the public. The article " Facebook Privacy is so Confusing Even the Zukerberg Family Photo isn't Private" by Rebecca Greenfield addressed the problem that users have when posting pictures on social websites and whose actually seeing them. " The way Facebook works, friends of your friends tagged in a photo album also see the entire roll, unless you choose otherwise in the settings of the album posted. (It's not a universal setting.) The term "friends" in this album at right indicates my friends and all the friends of people tagged in the post. Changing that involves clicking "custom" and unchecking a box that reads "friends of those tagged." You have to go through extra measures to make sure people not on your friends list don't see your pictures, its not the default setting which is really strange. Personally I feel like if you're willingly to put any photo online then you understand that its gonna be out there forever and most likely seen by people you don't even know. Even people on your friends list can copy your photos and who knows what can happen with them from there. I think Randi Zukerberg made a big deal about her photo getting out to the public to be honest, she should at least know better if she didn't want the world to see it then it shouldn't have been put up. 

Another Article I read that I thought was interesting was "Self-driving Car are A Privacy Nightmare. And its Totally Worth it" by Timothy B. Lee. Ever since I was little I waited for the day where cars like this would exist! I don't think there's a major privacy issue I agree with the article. "The benefits of self-driving cars are likely to be so enormous that American consumers will sign up in droves, regardless of the privacy implications.We know this because American consumers have already enthusiastically adopted a technology that allows the government to track their every movement: the cellphone. To complete incoming calls, your cellphone company needs to know where you are at all times." I feel like if the government or someone really wanted to find me they wouldn't have that much trouble due to today's growth in technology. Some people are more naive and think they hide themselves so well but seriously if the government wanted to find you they will. If you have nothing to hide then you really have nothing to worry about. 

Artificial Intelligence and Robotics

When I think about robots I always picture the robots in movies that go crazy and want to take over the world. There's always been a huge debate about whether humans or robots are better. Personally I dont think robots can do what humans can. I know alot of growing technology is pushing to make everything more life like and realistic like video games and things like that. It looks like robotics is heading that way too. The big thing that humans have over robots is said to be emotions. Robots dont have feelings, but in the article "The Huggable: A Therapeutic Robotic Companion for Relational, Affective Touch" it looks like they're trying to change that. The huggable isnt neccessarily trying to take place of a human but more so of an animal champion and I think it sounds like an amazing idea. "Lessons learned from the study of the neuroscience and the biology about how the human and animal somatosensory system influenced the design of this “skin.” Thus the “sensitive skin” of the Huggable features the four modalities of human and animal somatic perception – touch, pain, temperature, and kinesthetic information." So instead of a a cold steel heartless robot these little guys are programed to react to your touch, how you hold them, etc. 

I think robotic cars are awesome.When I think of a robotic car it makes me feel like flying cars are not to far away. Personally I feel like a robotic car can do more good than bad. For several reasons like people with disabilities, or the elderly or in cases where you're imapaired like the article "Driverless Cars Get California License" by Rachelle Dragani described. The main reason for these cars is the safety factor, they said a machine can react faster than a human can. "When there is an emergency situation where a driver needs to brake, the reaction speed of the driverless car can be as small as 40 milliseconds, while human beings will take at least 500 milliseconds". Thats a huge difference. 

I dont want to say that humans would make more errors than a robot because I feel like humans are the ones who put a robot together so clearly we're doing something right. Maybe technically speaking a humans might make more mistakes but its just cause that one saying I'm only human of course I'm gonna make mistakes. 

Creativtity and Social Media

So theres this new app out that I think is pretty funny. Its called Bitstrips and you can create your own avatar and make little comic strips of you and your friends doing all types of hilarious things. You can connect in with your facebook account and see all your friends on facebook who have already created an avatar. This is mine:

Social Media

I remember a few years back when I had to actually log onto a computer to go on social media websites. Now everything has gone mobile and I can access everything I want on my smart phone so I use it more often. The only social media website I'm really on is Facebook. I also use Instagram but I really only follow famous people on Instagram, Facebook is for real people I know. I'm not a fan of Twitter at all I feel like it limits your thoughts too much and I don't really like the layout of things. I'm also against hash tags. I like Facebook because its become a lot more user friendly. I was totally against the whole "timeline" layout when it first came out but now I don't mind it anymore its pretty useful actually. 

A virtual world is an online environment where people can meet and have discussions using avatars in place as themselves. Nowadays a lot of companies are starting to use them because it makes things a lot easier for them. In the article by Mark Tutton "Going to the virtual office in Second Life" he explains how IBM has began using this a virtual world for meetings and how beneficial it was for the company. The IBM rep said that  "he recently held a meeting with 12 technical leaders from across Europe and Asia. While that would typically involve flying everyone to a central location, he said the meeting was held using the new Sametime 3D. 'Not only did we save travel time, but because the environment was so engaging, a lot more ideas came through'. Using these virtual worlds companies save a lot of time and money and are able to communicate with coworkers throughout the world. 

Companies aren't the only ones using these virtual worlds, the article by Nicole Saidi "iReport: 'Naughty Auties' battle autism with virtual interaction", discussed how people with autism find this technology quiet useful. Autism in some cases can cause difficulties in their social interactions and communication skills with other people in society. But in the virtual world with lifelike avatars they're more comfortable to be themselves because they're still in their own space. "One benefit is that visitors can practice social interaction and find information about the condition. The graphical representations of real people create a "comfort 

zone" that can coax users out of their shells and get them communicating with others".

If I was in a virtual world I would like to be as much like myself as possible. Unless I can be like some multi millionaire who owned the whole virtual world and I had this big virtual mansion! That might be cool.

World Wide Web

To be honest the future of the world wide web scares me a little. I think its crazy the technology people come up with. To a certain extent its pretty fascinating and amazing but I feel like there are some things that are a little invasive on a persons privacy. Google is talking about trying to make some cyber super best friend that knows us better than we know ourselves. The article "Google's New Director of Engineering, Ray Kurzweil, is Building your 'Cybernetic Friend'" says that pretty soon Google "will understand why users are searching for information and provide them with answers they didn’t even know they needed". It sounds like a pretty cool concept but why do I want Google to tell me answers to things I haven't even began to think about, its kind of creepy. Its kind of like when I go on amazon and it shows me things I might like relating to things I've recently searched and other websites I've been too. Where's the privacy in that? I don't think websites should have access to information you looked at on websites that aren't their own, but the future seems to be going in that direction everything is trying to be linked together to make everything "easier" for you. 

'The Cloud' is where you can store your information, data, programs, things like that and you can access it through cyber space anywhere and anytime because its not saved on an actual device. I used
 to think the cloud was something Apple just had but after reading the article, "Clod Computing: As Software Migrates from local PCs to distant Internet Servers, users and developers alike go along for the ride", I understand its a concept that has been around for awhile and has now found its way in normal family homes with personal computer users rather than just corporate companies, etc. The article states that were seeing a second coming of cloud computing and "the change will affect all levels of the computational ecosystem from casual user to software developer, IT manager, even hardware manufacturer".