Social networking sites, such as Twitter & Facebook, are becoming increasingly popular. One of their most trendy features are status updates. In moderation, they can be fun, informative, and useful, but for many people they have become a daily, hourly, or minutely routine, and an addiction. One of my friends went to Lollapalooza in Chicago last summer, and was agitated by her boyfriend, who persistently updated his Twitter statuses while Rage Against The Machine was playing. I’ll occasionally post a few updates, but I try to fight the onslaught of unnecessary information (Sorry people, I don’t wanna know when you’re getting a pedicure, or going to the mall, or whatever).

Okay, you might be thinking, “Spencer, that’s so hypocritical. You run a tech site and blog!” But despite my interest in technology and the internet, sometimes I wish I live in the 1950’s, where you called your friends down the street, and there was no MySpace (ew). And things like Ebooks are the bane of my existence. Why can’t you just read a d@!# book! Yes, I can understand the ‘new possibilities’ of having a digital and compact ebook reader. For example, you can take hundreds of books on one little chip, or subscribe to newspapers, saving hundreds of trees. But is it really necessary? I once heard somebody say, “Historians are screwed.” This is (technically) true. Many many parts of our culture are being digitized, therefore decreasing their lifespan from 2,000 years (a book), to 5-10 years (a memory chip). This whole post may sound cynical; I guess I inherited a little misanthropist gene ;D

I guess the world is just changing. What do you think?

Examples of Social Media sites. This is just a fraction of the lot of them..

Move over Second Life. The 3D Web is starting to make inroads into the plain old browser. By “plain,” I mean only Internet Explorer on Windows machines—which for now is what you need to experience Vivaty Scenes. But at least it’s a start. (Firefox support on PCs is coming in a few weeks, but Mac support is being pushed off further). - TechCrunch

Am I the only one who thinks 3D internet absolutely pointless? Think about it. With Vivaty, you walk around your Facebook life, interact with the room and virtual newspapers or whatever. Here’s what I think, “Guess what they just came out with! Real life!! You can eat and walk around and like ride cars and stuff!” How about that for 3D stuff? Well, I guess Vivaty and its kin could prove to be relatively entertaining sometimes, but still. But not only is it just a waste of time, a lot of people, including me, feel that things like this (and also World of Warcraft, especially) promote bad habits and anti social behavior. Its actually proven in a lot of cases that it does.

As always, post a comment and say what you think about Vivaty or Second Life or virtual worlds in general. Thanks!

Feeling quite shocked, I am writing this post after viewing a short video that informed me about the ideology behind Google. I had known before that immense amounts of data can be collected from the internet, but I had not known the slightly sinister scheme that some major website administrations have. Now I realize just how hopeless the battle against excessive internet data collection is. Although it will take very much time and effort, our identities–you, your person–can be rescued from the clutches of this virtual evil.

Although some company’s practices for data collection are intruding and unlawful, it can be for a good cause, although not entirely. Facebook is known to send peoples profile data to businesses, allowing them to adjust their sales methods by targeting certain types of people. The data that these companies now have access to will allow them to pin point customers that they almost know will be interested in their product. This boosts business, but exposes our identities. Another instance of good natured data collection is when it is used to fight crime. Police and government agencies–and, unfortunately, bad guys, too–have access to information that could potentially save lives. Using computers, police officers can track the exact location of almost any criminal. If you feel insecure and unsafe now, you should begin to practice internet safety measures. These won’t do very much, but slightly reduce data collections effect. For more information on how to do this, either leave a comment here, email me, or find references through a search engine.