Human Processors on Amazon Mechanical Turk

In Robert Gehl's chapter, "The Archive and the Processor" he discusses the Amazon Mechanical Turk, which is marketed as "artificial artificial intelligence". On this website businesses can ask people to work on "human intelligent tasks" (HITs) and anyone can get paid to complete these HITs. This website depends on microlabourers and Gehl only mentions how it is used to process massive amounts of data. Since 2011, however, MTurk has had significantly more HITs based on being a subject in psychological studies.

               Issues surrounding psychology's new dependency on the website include a lack of knowledge about the actual workers, which can lead to inaccuracies and lack of diversity in research. On one hand, it is possible for the identity of subjects to be revealed, which is an ethical issue and a breach of privacy for the worker. On the other hand, volunteers for MTurk can purposely distort information they are providing, which would skew data for researchers. Microlabourers may gain a sense of autonomy by being able to dictate their own working hours and being rewarded for their work, but using a profit based website for the advancement of psychological research can pose problems for both the subjects and the researchers.

This is an article which further elaborates on the use of MTurk for psychological studies:

http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/06/psych-researchers-might-have-an-amazon-mechanical-turk-problem-on-their-hands.html

This is an article outlining some of the issues with being a worker on MTurk:

https://www.zerofox.com/blog/five-things-to-consider-before-using-mechanical-turk/

Whistleblowers & Forms of Resistance

After reading the first three chapters of Gabriella Coleman's, "Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy", I would like to direct my focus for this discussion on the final chapter entitled, "Weapons of the Geek". Within this chapter, Coleman explores the whistleblowing sensation known as WikiLeaks. Here is a short video of Gabriella Coleman explaining the importance of WikiLeaks and the type of material they release.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYRbEPLW4u0

Within her interview, she highlighted the uniqueness of WikiLeaks as it allowed everyone to be put on the same page and showed people that we have the capability to have our voices heard. This video allows us to grasp an understanding of how whistleblowers can be extremely powerful news sources as they can inform the public of misconduct and bring rise to important issues that effect millions of individuals worldwide. However, I believe it is important to take this one step further and explore how the whistleblower and the outlet releasing the information are often victimized and punished for their acts of courage. 

In doing so, I conducted some external research on one individual that has been categorized as one of America's most consequential whistleblowers - former U.S. National Security Agency contractor, Edward Snowden. He decided to release confidential information to The Guardian revealing the NSA had been collecting the telephone records of over ten million American citizens. The exposing of highly confidential information also revealed that the NSA had hacked into the servers of nine different social media platforms including Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to track online communication with a surveillance program called 'Prism'. Shortly after the release of this private information, he was charged and fled to Russia where he currently remains. 

Personally, I find this case to be extremely important to our understanding of whistleblowing as it demonstrates the resistance to the circuit of informational capital. Edward Snowden's case in particular, parallels the ideas in our course reading, "Circuits of Labour", as the exploitation behind the iPhone at Foxconn was what triggered civil groups and concerned citizens to come together to establish alternative networks and forms of resistance. 

Exploring the issues surrounding whistleblowing has raised a few questions I believe are important to discuss. Do you think the information released by Edward Snowden is similar to the way the Internet tracks our data today? Why do you think individuals who expose unethical behaviour get harshly repressed and categorized as evil? Lastly, do you think that groups such as Anonymous are beneficial or harmful for our society and to the enclosure of the Internet?

Priming and the Exploitation of Digital Labour

Within Marlia E. Banning’s article entitled, “Shared entanglements – Web 2.0, info-liberalism & digital sharing”, the affective motions of online sharing and its connection to neoliberal capitalism are critically examined. Within the article, the author focuses her argument on the idea that online sharing is yet another avenue through which digital labour is exploited and turned into capital.

After reading and reflecting on the article, one point that stuck with me was the notion of priming. Within the article, the author outlines this technique as a way for Internet companies to create affective situations encouraging user participation and expanding their profitability. Here, she used the example of automated invitations that come from ‘bots’ that imitate the behaviour of a human using contact information they have gathered online. I found this to be both interesting and relatable as I find myself constantly getting friend requests from what appears to be a person I know (due to mutual friends and common interests) only to find out it is not. This technique has recently gone even further as I have received texts from digital companies, which the author calls ‘app-spam’, with no understanding as to how the company got my phone number. Even after reporting these promotional texts as spam, I continue to get messages to join their service or purchase their products. Now that I have read Banning’s article, I recognize the way in which these techniques rely on people’s impulse to respond and are solely used to expand business models.

While this technique parallels several of the authors concepts we have covered in this course, I feel that it can be best explained through Kylie Jarret’s article, “Who Says Facebook Friends Aren't Your Real Friends?”. Here, she notes that the various ways to extract revenue from user information means that all hours spent online by users of Facebook constitute work time, in which data commodities are generated. In our digital world today, many social media users do not even realize their time spent on social media platforms is being surveilled and converted into capital. Ultimately, this parallels how users often do not realize the “friends” they are accepting on Facebook are actually software programs imitating human behavior to fuel the Web 2.0’s business models.

Personally, I feel that priming is taking promotional efforts too far and that it is a complete invasion of privacy. Has anyone ever received a friend request or promotional email from a ‘bot’? Do you think that these types of promotional efforts are becoming the norm for small-businesses to fuel their companies?

Castell -Network Society

Castell focuses the individualization of the labour process and ubiquitous social networks a lot of what he has to say might strike as obvious but writing in the 1990s he was ahead of his time.In Network Society, Castells’ sees the networks as a kind of spirit of ethos of our contemporary society thesis. There are two traits to the horizontal communication flows , not hierarchal, base of communication. First, the technology of information management, power now rests in networks.  Secondly, networks as a basic form of human organization across a wide range of social and political contexts.

 Castells’ argues that the whole new social order, new type of society arises out of the new found technology. Castell contrast the way in which factory labour was organized and fragment to something was so different under decentralization and entrepreneurial behavior, distinguishes this era from industrial to information.  Communication technologies provide an environment for decentralization of operation and focusing of control. Ultimately, Castell argues that power is not static and relational. There are networks at every level in society , professional , institutional and personal. Castell highlights the elements of space and the flows in the concept of the network societies which is the space where most of the important activity operates in our society. The information sharing system has the ability to enhance our common knowledge. 

The Mythology of Entrepreneurship

The mythology of entrepreneurship is to focus on those that have created and sold a technology company.  The myth is based around the innovative and competitive around technological work that rewards the people that work hard and are smart with a large amount of wealth.  The employees are generally young and deeply immersed in social technologies. Youtube and MySpace allowed for user generated content. Ultimately, allowing the promotion of the representations that people make of themselves. There is rarely boundaries about with what is considered work life and what is personal, the young people are deeply involved and embedded into work life.  Web 2.0 employees function as both users and designers, that draw from how  larger tech  firms function in Silicon Valley, that are use the ideology of revolutionary change as the foundation.

"These values (wealth, visibility, access, entrepreneurship) ultimately shape their general interpersonal interactions and self-presentation, including how they seek status, and leave traces in the social media applications themselves.” Marwick

Many work communities around the world admire and attempt to recreate the work culture, buying into the myth of entrepreneurship.  A recent post on New York Times reveals that Chinese entrepreneurs are admiring Silicon Valley’s start up culture. Groups from China’s business world take tourist vacations to visit and absorb the work environment of Silicon Valley.  The Chinese corporate tourists have bought into the myth of becoming extremely wealthy overnight. Management styles are very culturally different between China and America.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/technology/daily-report-china-dreams-of-silicon-valley.html

What the Chinese tourists and other companies do not realize is that the work culture is not the dream world it appears to be. Alice Marwick highlights two components of the Silicon Valley entrepreneurship environment. Firstly,  there is no difference between being off line or online within the entrepreneurship environment.  Secondly, Marwick draws our attention to the wealthy white male experience of technology. The entrepreneur community draws attention to the rich, young, white men creating a narrative of maleness entrepreneurialism, ultimately excluding women.  

Status & Micro-Celebrities

In Alice Marwick's chapter in Status Update - "The Fabulous Lives of Micro-Celebrities," she discusses the concept of status and micro-celebrities on online platforms. She explains how status is someone's value and importance in the eyes of the world... It is what peers think of you. She further explains how people dedicate much of their time engaging in activities that seek status. One study found that undergraduates' use of Facebook was tied to their desire to be more popular. Social media technologies like Facebook have what Marwick calls "status affordances." They are what symbolize social status and are measures of importance. In the case of Facebook, this refers to likes, while in the context of Twitter, it would refer to the amount of followers someone has.

She further discusses the concept of achieved status versus ascribed status. Achieved status is when someone gains status based on their hard work or skills, while ascribed status is the social status someone is just born in to. As such, through the internet, people are easily able to become micro-celebrities through their ability to turn themselves into commodities through personas. A micro-celebrity, as Marwick explains, is the state of being famous to a niche group of people, and can also be seen as a behaviour, through which people present themselves as a celebrity despite who is paying attention.

Through social media platforms, people are easily able to become micro-celebrities. An example of this that I thought of are Instagram and Youtube famous people, who have a strong following and visibility based on the appealing pictures they post of themselves and their outfits. Youtube beauty guru, Bethany Mota, started out making makeup videos in her room, appealing to female pre-teens and teens who were interested in her beauty videos. In the years to come, her social media following grew, and she was turned from a micro-celebrity to a "celebrity" on Dancing With the Stars, even having her own clothing line with Aeropostale.

Taking into consideration the fact that people form personas online that often differ from who they are in real life, do you think measures like someone's following on social media platforms are accurate or fair measures of someone's social status?

Pirates: Their View of Information

In Patrick Burkart's Pirate Politics, he focuses on the policies that surround areas like file sharing, surveillance, software, web publishing, and gaming. Copyright and technological protection that stems from property right laws often restrict users from accessing digital information and content. The factor of anonymity that the internet fosters brings about the issue that it makes it more difficult to find and combat digital criminality. He explains that "leaving aside the implications for civil liberties and an open society, failed information policy in an information society can damage the structures and processes of communication and even stifle economic growth" (109). However, the sharing and creation of content is one of the major ways that the economy can be sustained. Furthermore, proposal 138 suggests that internet access is a basic human right and disconnection by the state would be unlawful. Copyright infringement laws stifle innovation and harm competition such that much of the content we see are from similar sources. Moreover, there is a challenge for piracy reformers to emphasize the intrinsic benefits that information as a shared resource brings rather than information being viewed as a commodity.

The internet now has so many websites and software made available to users so they can obtain music, games, television shows, and other content for free. What are your thoughts on the belief pirates have that the information society should be free and democratic? Is this sustainable or more beneficial than the enforcement of copyright laws?