Anonymous: An Evil Good

          I first heard of Anonymous sometime in 2008 when they launched Project Chanology, the ongoing dispute between Anonymous, Tom Cruise, and Scientology. At the time, I wasn’t aware of Anonymous’ purpose – why it existed, or how it was causing enough commotion to grace the front page of every newspaper. I knew about Anonymous through the context of Fox News, CNN, and television; specifically, I knew about the negativity that surrounded Anonymous. True, it is easy to think of Anonymous as the troublemakers of the web. Some go as far as considering Anonymous as an online "cyber-terrorist" group.Their unorthodox practices are often frowned upon; yet the many institutions who slandered this online activist group when they first emerged have adopted a different outlook. It wasn't until 2011, when Anonymous claimed responsibility for attacked Westboro Baptist Church, where I sought to learn more about Anonymous and its goals and understood the good that it brought. I became more conscious of Anonymous' influence in the social setting and how it had morphed greatly from its original roots as a 'hacking community.'

          In Anonymous In Context, Gabriella Coleman lays out a timeline for us. When Anonymous began in 2008, its definition was synonymous with "trolling"; it started out as an internet parlance that originated on 4chan and was responsible for pulling online pranks. Current day, Anonymous has morphed into a group that fights against political corruption, hypocrisy, and corporate secrecy. Particularly in New York, Anonymous has become the face, the leader, of social and political discourse. Although the true significance of the mask still has underlying notes of hacktivism and trickery, more importantly, it has become a public symbol - a symbol that signifies protest and dispute over many court vs. public agendas, almost adopting a "If Anonymous is present, everything will be okay for the people" ethic.

          In recent events, Anonymous has participated in social rallies different from those they took on in their early trolling days: Justice for Trayvon Martin rallies, and Occupy Wall Street. Dramatically speaking, Anonymous has become a type of "savior" for the citizens of America. But from another perspective, Anonymous has proven itself as a dangerous organization that corrupt corporations should fear. Coleman explains that in the 2012 election, President Obama's campaign chose to not touch on topics relating to Anonymous in fear that it would attract their attention. Time after time, Anonymous has proven its hacking capabilities, so much to messing with our national security and the FBI.

          The question we've long waited to address concerns the morals of Anonymous: Is Anonymous a force for good?  Anonymous has been a credible source in bringing government and corporate corruptions into the limelight. Although their practices might seem unorthodox, they seem to carry out a specific message: "Don't mess with us. Don't mess with our rights. We do not forgive. We do not forget." I don't believe that their releasing of personal information of over 4,000 bank executives was a smart move (they jeopardized the safety of all these innocent individuals to seek revenge against the United States Sentencing Commission). But in other cases like their campaign against child pornography (Operation DarkNet) and their aid with the Steubenville Rape Case has proved the importance and effectiveness of Anonymous over and over. In conclusion, Anonymous' campaign to defend the rights of its people and to annihilate political corruption is righteous. If anything, Anonymous has done more right than wrong, especially in lending a voice to American public. Ergo, the follow-up question we fear to ask is: What if Anonymous becomes corrupt? I hope that's a question we don't ever have to address. 

Google: Surf at Your Own Risk

                Imagine the day you go online, type in Google’s web URL, and find its page blank. Next you search for Yahoo!, Bing, Ask – or any other well known search engine – to find that its web pages also lead to a dead end. What now? How are you going to verify whether or not Miley Cyrus smoked a joint onstage at last night’s EMAs? What about the growth on your foot? How are you going to find out if it’s cancerous or not? As a college student, I use Google heavily for its academic and entertainment purposes; yet it is our society’s reliance on Google that is a bit problematic.

                Google plays a greater role in our lives much more than we think it does. In Siva Vaidhyanathan’s book, The Googlization of Everything, he explains that Google impacts our social lives, the way we retain knowledge, and our privacy. Google dominates our lives through the number of platforms it owns: Gmail, Blogger, StreetView, GooglePlus, and now, YouTube. Our present generation lives in a culture where we view Google as a ‘seal of validity’; after all, it’s only true if it’s on Google, right? So far, Google sounds like a life saver. The services they offer are free and its technology makes our lives easier, online and offline. But it is actually all that great? Vaidhyanathan argues that our participation with Google comes with a sacrifice: our privacy. Google's default privacy settings are set to maximize the benefits of the company. For those unaware, this means that the patterns, locations and content of our searches are logged. Google's success comes from the participation of its consumer base. It uses our data to perfect its 'search algorithm' to better order its web searches.

               
                 On March 1, 2012, Google updated its privacy settings to share the data it collected about users between all of its platforms. Prior to that, Google's web searches has always been cordoned off from its other products. This protection was important because search data can reveal sensitive information about a user, including age, race, sex, health, and religion. Recently, Google proposed yet another plan that will further expose our personal information. These new privacy settings will allow Google to share its users' data with ad companies; thus, increasing Google's ad revenue, but more importantly, further exposing its consumers' once "private" information.
               
                 Google begins to sound more and more like a death trap. On one hand, Google's mission is to organize information and create better service; on the other hand, it is continuously updating its privacy settings to further expose its users. More eloquently put, Marc Rotenberg, director of the online privacy group EPIC, argues that Google users "shouldn't have to go back and restore their privacy defaults every time Google makes a change."  A simple search of 'Google + Websearch + Privacy' shows more links in relation to how users can protect themselves against Google's privacy settings than anything else. Clearly, it's time for a wake up call. Google continuously tests our tolerance with every new push; ergo, the new question becomes, "How much do we care about privacy? and "Do we need Google?'
 

             
              Users can opt out from most of the Google-related dilemmas I mentioned above by continuously updating their personal privacy settings. If we are worried enough about the effects of publicizing user data, then we should take care to check our account settings once in a while. But an easier solution to this problem is to eliminate Google altogether. In this day, this world, and this age, life without Google seems a bit impossible. This is mainly because Google is becoming synonymous with the Web itself. Vaidhyanathan brings up another point that our lives are becoming so reliant on Google that it is starting to impact our knowledge - what we know and learn. In a way, Google is the 'glass wall' of the American society - it is changing the way we process information and the way we learn. As Nicholas Carr explains to us in his article, 'Is Google Making Us Stupid?', our reliance on computers to understand the world is problematic. The current young-adult generation is adopting a 'We know only what is on Google' mantra. Our reliance on Google causes us to sacrifice something not only within ourselves, but most importantly, something within our culture.  

Piracy: The Moral Theft

                Piracy is illegal. To download a movie online without paying for it is a crime. In 2004, Motion Picture Association (MPA) launched a short video to start a campaign against piracy. Their message was simple: You wouldn't steal a car. You wouldn't steal a handbag. Why would you steal a movie? Yet millions of people download and torrent movies off the web daily without considering that they are committing a crime. We fail to acknowledge piracy as a crime because we consider that everything online is under public domain. If we download a movie without benefiting from it monetarily, why is personal use of media illegal? Piracy is theft only when you view the production of material as private property. But in the age of new media, does originality still exist?

                

               Ramon Lobato defines piracy in his essay, Six Faces of Piracy, by uncovering its six facets. Piracy cannot be linked to one sole definition because its meaning is different to the consumer and the producer. In his segment, Piracy as Authorship, he explains that both authorship and creativity are piratical: “The act of creation [is seen] not as the labor of a unified expressive soul but as the selection and combination of fragments of already existing discourse.” The flaw in considering piracy as theft lies in the fact that every piece of new media originates from preexisting media. Yet piracy is such a saturated conversation because of its deep connection with money. Major US studios estimate they lose $6.1 billion globally as a result of piracy. $6.1 billion U.S. dollars is A LOT of money, and certainly enough for them to make piracy a legal issue.

               In the legal world, piracy exists as a continuous, cyclical blame game. This TechNewsWorld article goes as far as blaming search engines for piracy, tackling the question: If there is no legal intention, is it still piracy? Very much so. Following the construct of any legal matter, intention isn't considered a viable excuse. Lobato explains that piracy exists because there is a rift between consumer and producer. The problem with piracy rests in the lack of access the audience has to a specific medium. Understand that certain films that are no longer in circulation can only be obtained through piracy. More so, as prices of DVDs and movie tickets continue to skyrocket (in order to compensate for the money lost through piracy), poorer communities lose the means to participate in the film culture. In context, piracy is no longer just a disagreement between consumer and producer – it plays a great role in changing class politics, hierarchy and social stratification.

What I Think I Do

                It is hard to imagine technology in the 21^st century having biological characteristics. It is even harder to imagine the TV, internet, or radio having more biological similarities to a plant than a plastic cup would. In Epic Win For Anonymous, Cole Stryker explains how popular information travels across the internet. He argues that a meme behaves like “an interactive, living organism,” and participates in a competitive environment. Like real world organisms, memes also have life spans that are determined by a few factors: longevity, substance, audience, and most importantly, memorability. Thousands of memes are created on the daily, yet only a small percentage are continuously circulated throughout the web. To understand Stryker’s “memetic ecosystem” module, let’s take a look at the life cycle of this meme.

                  I found this meme and shared it on Facebook July 2012. By the end of the day, only five people from my humble group of 900 friends “liked” the post. The lack of people “liking” my post made sense: firstly, all five of them are lifeguards and secondly, the context of the post wouldn’t have been funny to people who have never lifeguarded. Memes are a form of social currency. Popular memes like ‘Awkward Penguin’ and ‘Philosoraptor’ cater to a larger audience – they generate a larger pool of social currency because more people can relate to them. The most important factor that makes a meme successful is its memorability. Memorable memes are able to survive in the virtual and real world. A successful meme is shared through conversation between high school students in a cafeteria. In short, if you’re meme isn’t talked about, it has reached the end of its lifecycle.  

                This particular Lifeguarding meme isn’t popular outside the global circle of lifeguards, but the format of it is. This meme is popular because of its format and the flexibility it provides. The pattern is simple: pick a noun and find six pictures that depict stereotypes associated with the group of people (though sometimes it is applicable in other situations) described in the header. Beneath the images, you write what so-and-so thinks you do - it can be what your mother thinks you do, what the president thinks you do, or what Smokey the Bear thinks you do. The point is: it doesn't matter as long as what you write follows this pattern:" starting with "what ___________ thinks I do" for the first five panels and ending with "what I actually do" for the last one. In this example, the meme's layout is what makes it popular and memorable; however, the significance is not entirely there. Like a virus, a meme is able to morph and adapt to the different communities (or in biological terms, "environments") it finds itself in.

                 According to KnowYourMeme, the "What People Think I Do/What I Really Do Meme" was created in February 2012. The first of it's kind was a meme directed towards science majors; therefore, at the beginning of the meme's life cycle, its social currency was only applicable towards science students. As more versions of this meme were created and shared, its social currency was applicable to a wider range of audiences. A meme grows as a plant does: given the right condition and environment, it is able to grow, thrive, and sustain itself until it dies. While a plant dies from the lack of nutrition or age, a meme dies when it has lost its audience. This analogy relates nicely back to Stryker's explanation of his memetic ecosystem and his point that memes can relate back to biology more so than one would think. Is technology a more complex imitation of biology?

The Rise of a Monoculture

                I like to count my blessings when I sit alone in my room on a rainy day. I’m thankful to have a TV in my room, I’m glad that my fridge is well stocked, and I’m grateful that last-night Michelle remembered to plug the laptop into its charger so it could be used this morning. My life is surrounded by technology I cannot see myself living without – the internet, the laptop, and the phone. These appliances are crucial to my everyday living, yet so many of these objects which I deem as necessities are frivolous in developing countries. But, the times are changing and third world countries are swiftly graced with the new technology brought on by the force we call ‘globalization.’

                
                   Lisa Nakamura tackles the effects of technological globalization in the introduction to her book, Cybertypes. She argues that race, and the “authentic aura” is disappearing on the web. Through her research, she discovered that virtual-world gamers often adopted a persona that gave them the flexibility of acting in a certain way without “real life” consequences. The anonymity the web allowed users to portray themselves in their “better selves.” Nakamura explains that this leads to a problem where the internet is covered in a “landscape of whiteness.” While technology is bringing people across the world together under one platform, it is also contributing to the rise of a monoculture. The rise of a monoculture leads to an erasure and replacement of cultures in less dominant communities. The fostering of the Western culture onto these cultures causes a “mental retraining,” in which cultures are cloned to be alike.

          
                   Nakamura’s points are valid: the Western influence onto some communities may result negatively. But is it really all that bad? A recent article published by the MIT Technology Review talks about how mobile communications are changing the health care in Nigeria drastically. Nigeria has gone from a country with only 30,000 cellular subscriptions to over 140 million in just ten years time. Now, nearly one in six residents owns a cell phone. This change has benefited Nigerian residents through faster forms of communication, particularly those related to doctor appointments and health emergencies.  The technology discussed in this particular example does not add or subtract to the diversity of cultures in Nigeria; the addition of cell phones to their communities does not take away the “authenticity” Nigeria had prior to the influx of technology.

                Societies are built to change – to be flexible to the norms and trends they are influenced by. While Nakamura’s argument is sufficient and plausible, I believe that we are far from engendering a monoculture. Although the virtual web presents a threat to third-world cultures, it is not as imminent as Nakamura makes it to be. Simply put, technology and globalization presents itself as an aide to less developed countries, while culture and “authenticity” is preserved by a community’s will to pass it on from generation to generation.