Friend, Acquaintance or Both?

Years before the advent of the internet, friendships were a very personal thing that usually took much time to form and were usually long lasting. In today’s world, that is the world of Web 2.0, the term ‘friend’ has come to oftentimes be defined as what one would consider an acquaintance when social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter did not exist. There is no question that the average ‘connected’ person enjoys more social interaction today in the digital world than in the more concrete world of yesterday, but the quality of this interaction has oftentimes been criticized. This was evidenced in 2006 when Time Magazine selected ‘You’ as person of the year. Obviously, ‘You’ does not exist as a single person, but rather a ‘collective’ of people working together on the internet to contribute to the ‘new’ social side of the World Wide Web, Web 2.0.

Frequently, people add someone as a ‘friend’ on social networking sites such as Facebook after having met the person only once at an event. While it is true that many true friendships have formed from the use of such social networking platforms, many of these ‘friends’ are never met in the real world again. This act of ‘friending,’ as it is called on the internet, has been said to ‘cheapen’ true friendship. Indeed, many individuals with low self esteem enjoy having high friend counts to gain a sense of popularity in the digital world.

The controversial side to all of this is when professionals engage in online ‘friendships’ with their clients. This is oftentimes a breach of the professional’s oath to always remain professional. Many consider this type of interaction to be inappropriate, yet there are many young professionals and clients who consider it no different from friending some stranger they just met at a party and will probably never meet again. In essense, Facebook and other social networking friendships represent the possibility of someone being a ‘true’ friend, however it usually guarantees that the person is at least an acquaintance of some sort. So perhaps you can still think of your five hundred ‘friends’ on Facebook as such, as the jury is still out as to whether or not they are truly ‘friends,’ ‘acquaintances,’ or both.

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This article was written after reading and reflecting upon Neil Seeman’s article, ‘Facebook dumbing friendships down?’ in the National Post and Lev Grossman’s, ‘Time’s Person of the Year: You’ in Time Magazine.

Digital Media : My Views

In many ways, copyright is the defining issue in the digital media world. The advent of the personal computer and the internet allowed for the easy production, modification and distribution of intellectual property. With the explosion of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing technologies, the media industries are scrambling to reverse a drop in sales and an increasing negative perception of themselves. At first sight, the two sides appear unable to compromise. The media industry wants strict penalties for copyright infringers or ‘pirates’ as they call them, and the pirates believe they should be able to freely download and upload whatever digital media they so please.

The issue is not as cut and dry as some would make it out to be. According to Good Copy, Bad Copy, 57% of American teenagers have created and uploaded content to the internet. In many cases, these productions included sampled material from other artists without any explicit permission to reuse the material. Under most country’s laws, this would be an infringement of copyright law. However, due to the sheer number of people who are taking part in this new culture of creativity, it is very unlikely that they will ever be able to be stopped. Instead, I think this type of creative expression should be embraced by the media industry since it would change their image for the better and thus increase sales by further exposure of their media in the new digital world. The actual percentage of internet users who have used file sharing technologies is even greater, perhaps approaching 80%.

I personally feel that current intellectual property law needs to be rewritten to accommodate the changing legal landscape in the modern digital age. The media industry also needs to rethink how they market their media. I feel that the world benefits from the free exchange of information, and of course this includes artistic expression. Under current law, it is next to impossible for freelance DJs such as those seen in Good Copy, Bad Copy to sample various different artist’s audio for their own mixes. This is extremly unfair as many DJs do not profit from their mixing of audio, yet they have to deal with possible legal repercussions. If intellectual property laws are not revised in the current generation, then I am confident it will be in the coming generations due to the current generation having grown up in a free media world.

Triumph of the Nerds : A Reflection

The invention of the personal computer was a remarkable development in the history of technology having changed the world forever just over thirty years ago in a garage in Silicon Valley, California. Of course, this was only possible due to a group of nerdy guys in their teens and twenties who would rather mess around with electronics and programming languages than try to get a girlfriend. They had no formal training, and in Apple’s case, their youngest was a mere fourteen years old. It’s interesting to note that he is still employed at Apple today. This really exemplifies the nontraditional laid back ‘tech culture’ of many technology corporations today. Living off pizza and soda, they managed to convince venture capitalists to see the potential in their at-the-time crude hand built PCs. Now today these shy nerdy hobbyists have become some of the richest people on Earth, controlling some of the biggest corporations on this planet. I also really enjoyed ‘Triump of the Nerds,’ as I am majoring in Computer Engineering at home in New York. If being a nerd means I get to become a billionaire, sign me up! Ultimately, the nerds of yesteryear have indeed triumphed and forever immortalized themselves.

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