Anonymous

            One group that I have begun to become more and more interested in is the internet group Anonymous. Anonymous originated on the imageboard 4chan, and represents thousands of members from all over the world. They are involved in many different things, but I am most interested in the ways that they have affected culture and politics.

            The term anonymous came from the fact that the posters to 4chan could post in a way that gave no indication to their identity. After a few hours each post would also be removed from 4chan’s servers. This is primarily done to save on server storage, but lends itself well to preserving an anonymous identity on 4chan’s website. 

A flag that symbolizes anonymous.

            One of Anonymous’ most publicized efforts was known as “Project Chanology,” a protest against the Church of Scientology. When an in house propaganda video was released into the mainstream media, Anonymous picked up on it and began their protests against Scientology. They began several methods of protest against Scientology including denial of service attacks to their website, prank calls, and black page faxes to their fax machines. These protests were not only behind closed doors or online. Anonymous also began to organize in protest on the streets. I find this particularly interesting. Some people will argue that online relationships do not ever amount to anything in the “real world.” 4chan, however, proved that they can indeed organize effective mass protests.

A protest outside of a Church of Scientology.

            One of the most recent actions that Anonymous has undertaken is its defense of the website WikiLeaks. These efforts have been named Operation Avenge Assange and Operation Payback. Their goals have been to attack websites of those that do not support WikiLeaks such as Amazon, Visa, Paypal, and MasterCard. One thing that I found interesting is that these attacks were actually successful. On December 8^th both Visa and MasterCard’s websites were successfully taken down. Anonymous has also worked to help raise awareness for cables that they believe were possibly overlooked by the media. They want to raise awareness for the cables that are especially interesting or that are embarrassing to governments and corporations.

            Anonymous was also involved in the recent revolts in Egypt. Websites that were created with the purpose of keeping Mubarak in office were taken down.

            The successes of these protests are particularly interesting considering 4chan’s nature. Because everyone is Anonymous, there are no real leaders of the group. And information that is posted could not be available even 2 hours later. If 4chan was able to organize these mass protests against the Church of Scientology I wonder what websites with a more organized structure could achieve. These vigilante acts can be dangerous, however. In my opinion, the attacks that I discussed were arguably done to benefit the greater good. Some efforts of Anonymous have not been as heroic. Sometimes 4chan will choose to focus their energy on harassing a single person for some small flaw in their beliefs or in their personality. This can be dangerous for that person and for their family when there is no accountability.

WikiLeaks

                  I want to do a short writeup about WikiLeaks. I seem to have missed all of the media buzz about it but I believe that it is still a great example of how technology has affected culture and society. WikiLeaks, in my opinion, is an example of how the internet can be used as a medium to equalize information and make it accessible to everyone. Wikipedia has been doing a great job of this by providing huge amounts of information from science to information about television shows to anyone with internet access. WikiLeaks, however, has taken a more controversial role of releasing private government documents to everyone.

                  This has obviously created a huge outpouring of various opinions about whether or not WikiLeaks is doing a good or bad thing. Some will argue that governments are created by the people so the people should be aware of what their government is doing for them. Others would say that it is expected for governments to make “tough decisions” and that the information is private. They would further argue that releasing sensitive information could put lives (such as spies or government officials) at risk. In my opinion, I think that WikiLeaks is a good thing. I feel like in a Democratic government the people have the right to see what the Government that they elected is doing. I can understand, however, why the United States Government would be working so hard to shut down WikiLeaks. If certain documents were released relationships with foreign countries could begin to deteriorate.

Too much emphasis in the media has been placed on Julian Assange instead of WikiLeaks itself. If WikiLeaks were to only leak documents about other governments such as North Korea, China, or Egypt and not the United States Julian Assange would be would be considered a revolutionary instead of a criminal. Assange is not the most important thing about WikiLeaks. If Assange were to be unable to speak for WikiLeaks anymore, a new spokesman would step up and carry on the job. In this way I feel like WikiLeaks represents the culture of the internet. Once something has been created or uploaded to the internet it is almost impossible to contain. If the initial source of information was to be shut down, several more websites would be created in its place, similar to the Hydra. WikiLeaks itself went through this process. Once the United States government became extremely interested in WikiLeaks companies began to try to not associate themselves with the company. Amazon, who was the host of WikiLeaks initially, pulled the website. WikiLeaks then had to find a way to host the website themselves. Until this time, however, you could find copies of the leaked documents on places such as Usenet and Bittorrent. The supporters of WikiLeaks banded together to voice their support in several ways. Some would simply make monetary donations to WikiLeaks for server fees. Others such as the 4chan group “Anonymous” would attack the websites of those who were outspoken against WikiLeaks or the Anonymous operations. They would perform denial of service attacks among other things in attempt to ensure WikiLeaks would remain on the internet for everyone to access.

My Media Diet

Sunday Jan 20:

-       Phone Call (45 min)

-       Reddit (1 hr)

-       Gmail (20 min)

-       Facebook (10 min)

Monday Feb 21:

-       Watching TV on my computer (45min)

-       Gmail (20min)

-       Reading for classes- entire weeks’ worth of reading assignments (3 hr)

Tuesday Feb 22:

-       Gmail (10 min)

-       Pandora Radio (3 hr)

-       Applying to various jobs online (1.5 hr)

-       Homework (1 hr)

Wednesday Feb 23:

-       Gmail (15 min)

-       Playing Battlefield Bad Company 2 with a friend (1 hr)

-       Reddit (1 hr)

-       Phone call (15 min)

Thursday Feb 24:

-       Gmail (20 min)

-       Facebook (10 min)

-       Phone Interview (1.5 hr)

-       Movie on Netflix (1.75 hr)

Friday Feb 25:

-       Phone call (20 min)

-       Watching TV on my computer (1.5 hr)

-       Reddit (40 min)

-       Facebook (15 min)

-       Played Pandora at a party (5 hr)

Saturday Feb 26:

-       Grooveshark (1 hr)

-       Gmail (30 min)

-       Reddit (1.5 hr)

-       Watching TV on my computer (3 hr)

      During the week I also would use my phone for texting. I did not count this in my time because it was too hard to calculate. It was a few minutes here and there.

                  I feel like my average media consumption is slightly different than most people. During the week I never once watched television. This did not surprise me because I almost never watch television anymore. I will exclusively use Hulu, Netflix, or stream a show from a site like MegaVideo. By far my most commonly visited website is reddit.com. Reddit is an aggregator site similar to Digg (except better) where users will post things that interest them. These posts will either be “upvoted” or “downvoted” depending on how well the community likes the content. Because of this I find that Reddit is the best way for me to find the most interesting, though provoking, or funny things on the internet easily.

                  I think my media diet reflects my personality. I tend to like to learn and do a lot of different things rather than focus on one specific task and go into tons of detail about that one thing. Reddit is an example of this. With Reddit I can read topics about programming, quickly switch to videos on YouTube, and then finish with stupid pictures of cats. I also noticed that I do not use social networks very frequently. I would only be on Facebook for at most 15 minutes a day for a total of 35 minutes over the entire week. I think that most people my age spend around 35 minutes a day on Facebook (and maybe even more). I have seen numbers that reflect that on people’s blog posts. I don’t see either trend as being “right” or “wrong,” it just reflects my personality.

                  I also found that my technology use reflects the way that I like to work. On Monday, for example, I did all of the reading and most of the homework that I needed to do for that week of school. I like to do a lot of work at one time and get it all done. Right now I am doing three blog posts at once rather than spacing them out of the quarter. If I do not do this I find that the work will loom over me and make me feel uncomfortable. I also like to get my work done early if possible (even through these blog post assignments have not reflected that…).

                  I think my media consumption reflects America in general; maybe not the times that I used each technology, but the fact that I used the technology consistently. If for some reason the internet went down, or technology was suddenly not available I think that society would not function. I know that I would have a hard time. I don’t know what I would do to replace the time that I once filled with technology, and I don’t think that I would be able to complete my schoolwork. Because of this I do not have any desire to change my current media consumption. What I am doing now works for me, and I do not see any problem with what I am currently doing. I do think that my current social situation influences the media I intake. I am very well versed in using computers so most of my time is spent on the internet. My grandparents, however, tend to consume television media more, because that is what they are used to. When I am older, maybe I will not use the latest technology as much as I would use the internet.

Technology and Social Interaction

Technology has not had a negative impact on my face to face interaction. I do not use social networks very often to connect with people because they are not interesting to me. I mostly use my phone for texting and phone calls to connect with people. I feel like it has been a positive impact on my everyday face to face interaction. Texting makes it very easy to set up a time to meet with my friends, so I see them more than I otherwise would. I use texting also to keep in contact with those that I cannot meet up with physically (such as friends back home in Austin). Technology has helped me keep strong relationships with more people more easily.

In my opinion, technology has had a varying impact on face to face interaction. I do not like to generalize and say that technology has had a negative or positive impact for society in general. I think that it depends on the situation. Using the internet to meet people can be a great thing. For example, in the open source software community, technology such as internet forums has made it possible to do things that would not be possible otherwise. These people can become great friends over a topic that is mutually interesting and work together to produce something amazing. I see no problem with this and think it is only a good thing. Meeting people online can sometimes be negative as well. Craigslist, for example, has a section for “personal encounters” (I forgot the exact name) where prostitutes will basically sell themselves online. I don’t have a problem with people using Craigslist for this, it is there business. However, it can be dangerous because it is impossible to judge a person’s personality or intentions online. I think that a prostitute could get into a really bad situation that they may have been able to avoid if they were able to meet their clients in person. Online dating sites, however, can be great. These sites allow for people to make friends or meet their future husband or wife. These sites encourage more face to face interactions than what would have been possible before these websites existed. I think online dating sites are a perfect example of how online communities are a viable way to create meaningful relationships. There is not a relationship more meaningful than the marriage of two people. I talked about open source development before, but this is another example of how people can pull together and do great things online, even without ever meeting face to face.

I don’t think that society needs to focus on “real” spaces for people to connect and interact. I feel like online communities do exactly this. Online communities will help people connect face to face when it is possible. When it is impossible for the two people to meet, because of factors like distance, then online communities have created more friendships than what would have been possible otherwise. I think that that is a good thing.