Marketing Yourself

Online communities almost market themselves on the idea of “connecting” with people. Facebook, now the cliché example, is a good example of how individuals interact with other individuals online. Technically, anybody can be anybody elses friend with the accepting persons approval. Another benefit of websites like Facebook and Myspace (Facebook to a larger degree) is that you can find old friends/contacts, and ultimately add them to your friends list. This scenario can cause problems on a larger scale.

Even though one can accept/deny requests as one of Facebook’s privacy options, more complicated factors may come into play. For example, if someone might happen to know the requester in an “offline” relationship of some kind, a refusal to accept the friendship request could cause real life awkward and social tensions. Surely that person would want to know why the person they requested to be Facebook friends with had turned them down. This could bring up unwarranted animosity between people by bringing together peoples work/school and private lives.

Social networking sites, especially Facebook and Myspace where the “friending” aspect is most used, are being used as “relationship monitors” for many. Numerous examples can be given about middle and high school kids starting real physical confrontations about either rumors or personal materials on these sites. The article below from November 18, 2008, goes into more detail about how real social anxieties can be brought out through the online world.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27775484/

The internet has made an enormous headway in turning itself into a modern, technological marketplace. In this case, social capital being the main product for the consumer to take in. If social capital is a concept of not just how many contacts or “friends” someone has, but rather what one can make out of those ties, then can we use these online public spheres into something useful for our forward social mobilization? It may depend on how well we can market ourselves, and time will tell.

Social Skills Online...

Social skill is something we all had to, or must go through to gain connections for our social networks. Most often, the cliché example is children learning how to interact with other children in the “playground” scenario. Since technology has been greatly implemented in our everyday lives, it gives reason to suggest that kids are going to take part in exploring new information, as well as others and themselves online.

Class rooms across the country are constantly changing the way they approach education mixed with technological advances. For example, many schools have online ways of interacting with classmates and teachers through means of blackboard, blogging, and other variations of FDU’s web campus feature. Others question the method of teaching through online resources because of the fear of not equipping children and teens with adequate social skills that would prepare them for adulthood. Even the workplace has vast amounts of technology supporting the way business is done across the world. Can children and teens be ignorant of how to apply these new technologies to their future careers?

Social skills result from ones associations, networks, but most importantly the trust holding those networks together. These factors are all dependent upon each other, and rely on each other to advance in society. In the “public spheres” of Myspace and Facebook people can play different roles depending on what their specific intentions are, but for most children and teens that is maintaining their social capital. There are certain etiquettes which go along with any online community that take onto social networking sites, but usually never stray from their own circle of friends. In other words, they are voluntarily putting themselves on display to their peers to broadcast how they want to be seen.

An article from ABC News entitled “Study: Kids developing social skills online”. The author, Ravi Baichwal, discusses how online tools may be a benefit to those kids who are growing up in an already technologically globalized world. One of the arguments for this is that parents have to be in tune enough to monitor how much time/what their child is doing online. The idea is that the more versed in online communication someone is, the higher the likelihood that they would advance in a future career.

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=6517076

Big Brother Surveillance

Surveillance is now an everyday part of our society. Almost everywhere someone goes, there can certainly be a possibility of them being recorded or monitored by video/digital surveillance. What started as a “new” trend in the 1990’s, in a post 911 world, is now seen as a mandatory strategy for the security of the country.

The idea of constant surveillance derives from “panoptic surveillance”, which is the notion that if the public feels they are being watched, then they will curb their natural behaviors and obey the laws. The “Opticon” reveals the sociology behind this method of security, whereby the structural design of a guard tower where the prisoners cannot see inside the tower, erodes their sense of freedom. Guards may not even be present in the tower, the theory being the prisoners will behave knowing they are being constantly monitored.

In cities such as London, the video surveillance has been an even greater threat to civil liberties because of the centralization of information being collected. This means that the police intercept all of the footage being recorded, and review it with facial recognition software to watch for suspected terrorists. The article below describes this concept from the British point of view, and talks about the laws being considered by European Parliaments, and even possibly in the United States.

http://thejournal.parker-joseph.co.uk/blog/_archives/2007/8/23/3177099.html

The solution to losing our civil liberties in the name of security could not be just unless there is transparency. In order for their to be an effective law enforcement and security priority to stop terror plots and attacks, there needs to be a way that the public could watch law enforcement, watching them. Modern societies cannot be considered safe, until there is a much more highly evolved form of trust between the people, and their elected officials in the Government.