In the movie Inception, the main character tells one of his colleagues that they can never remember the beginning of a dream; they always just end up in the middle of it without knowing how they got there. I thought of this connection when I sat contemplating how the Internet got to where it is now. I have been surrounded by the Internet for the majority of my twenty years of life, but I cannot remember at all when Web2.0 began.
That might have been a lame connection, but it is true. Can we really remember how we got to this place in the Internet world? Can we remember how the ever-changing Facebook looked just two months ago? How about what Myspace looked like when we stopped using it and switched to Facebook? Seriously, do we remember how we got here? I cannot say that I do, and I doubt that many others can. Perhaps we are living in a dream.
Web2.0 suddenly happened. The only thing I can remember habitually doing on the computer before Web2.0 was playing solitaire and other games. I remember watching my brother play his Star Wars games with a joy-stick as the controller. I remember playing The Sims and making up my future life with the boy I had a crush on. I also remember The Sims making my computer ridiculously slow, but that is another story. To sum it up, it seems as though Web1.0 was more of an anti-social computer experience.
Web2.0, on the other hand, opened up a bridge to connect with others because others were building bridges. A paper written by two lab researchers at AT&T says,
However, the essential difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 is that content creators were few in Web 1.0 with the vast majority of users simply acting as consumers of content, while any participant can be a content creator in Web 2.0 and numerous technological aids have been created to maximize the potential for content creation. (Cormode and Krishnamurthy)
Whoa! Does that mean we are content-creators, too? I have been using Web2.0 sites for years, but I never considered myself an actual content-creator until this class opened up my eyes to that truth. I never thought being an Internet content-creator would be so easy, but that is what Web2.0 did. It made being a computer nerd easy and, well, common.
I am using this reflection as a way to clarify my thoughts on Web2.0, and what better example of Web2.0 to examine is there than social networking? There are many pros and cons about social networking, but how much ground do the cons hold? As it is, I love social networking. Will the cons be enough to sway my opinion? We shall see.
One complaint about social networks is that they lead to brain disorders such as ADHD in children (ProCon.org). We discussed the issue of the switch from deep attention to hyper attention at the beginning of the semester, and it was one of the most interesting concepts we explored. Sure, Facebook is a site we tend to use a lot. In fact, “to Facebook” is an infinitive verb. “I Facebooked during class,” and “I will Facebook her later” are common phrases. It is just something we do. Therefore, it is something we will do while we are doing other things, such as sitting in class or writing a paper at home. Do we really have social networking to blame for this? It is not Mark Zuckerberg’s fault that his website is more entertaining than a boring lecture.
Now, I am not saying that it is the hypothetical boring professor who is making students’ thoughts trail off to the web; I am saying, however, that it all comes down to choice. We have a choice to pay attention in class or focus on our papers, and we have a choice to surf the net instead. I do not believe social networking actually leads to ADHD. I think it is human nature to switch to something more exciting when we are bored. In his article “Divided Attention,” David Glenn quotes a man who sums up my thoughts exactly. Clifford Nass says,
I don't think that law students in classrooms are sitting there thinking, Boy, I'd rather play Freecell than learn the law. I don't think that's the case. What happens is that there's a moment that comes when you say, Boy, I can do something really easy, or I can do something really hard. (qtd. in Glenn)
Facebook is the really easy answer, providing an escape from constant learning and requiring little thought. The amount in which you indulge is where the problem lies. Again, it all comes down to a personal choice. Spending a couple minutes on Facebook to escape from class will do little damage to one’s learning, whereas spending the entire class period on Facebook will likely result in poor grades. If people are foolish enough to waste their education on Facebook, let them. It is their fault, not Mark Zuckerberg’s fault.
When it comes to issues as serious as ADHD, I think Web2.0 itself has indeed played a role in the increasing diagnoses, not necessarily social networking sites. Watching “The Machine is Us/ing Us” is enough evidence of that. The video navigates through web pages and changes text around faster than anyone should, and it is almost too fast-paced to believe it is real. Some parts are indeed sped up, but others are not. The part of the video that best relates to ADHD, I think, is the very beginning with the text turning into hypertext. The links move all over the page, and the cursor keeps clicking on it (Wesch). When we see links that interest us, we click on them, usually no matter what we are doing. It is a weakness of our attachment to Web2.0; we have access to whatever information we want, and when we see that access, we immediately take it. We live in a fast-paced world, and we carry that fast-paced environment right onto the web.
Sometimes, however, the web moves too fast, and we miss things. It is easy to miss things when there are so many things there, and it is scary to think that some of these things might be important. Another common complaint about social networking is its privacy (or lack thereof) policies. This is something we have all heard about, whether from NBC’s To Catch a Predator or just from Facebook’s constantly updating privacy settings. Again, I must ask, are these privacy issues really the social networking sites’ fault? Mark Zuckerberg does not control what people put on their pages; they do.
Of course, then comes the information that we cannot control being shared with other websites. I wrote in my second reflection about how Pandora once suggested a band to me because one of my friends “liked” that band on Facebook. How are these sites getting this information? Is Facebook selling my information? How dare they!
Yes, that was sarcasm. Personally, I could not care less if Pandora knows my friends’ music interests via Facebook. I actually think it is a very good marketing strategy. The information is there; why not profit from it?
Perhaps I do not have an issue with Facebook’s privacy policies because I do not have anything on Facebook that I would not want potential employers to see. I enjoy sobriety, so I do not have any embarrassing pictures of me partaking in activities that take away sobriety. Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt says it well: “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place” (Kirkpatrick). I could not have said it better myself. Again, it comes down to a choice. We know that social networking sites are not as private as we would like them to be, so why share extremely personal information? Just choose not to do it, and there will be nothing to worry about.
Web2.0 is what gives these sites the ability to share information with other sites. It makes everything much more open. Through Web2.0, more than just social networking sites can be overly public: blogs can be public; Twitter accounts can be public; Foursquare accounts can be public if we choose to be friends we people we do not know or post it to Facebook. Ken Yeung states in a blog post, “Just because we have the freedom to post videos or photos of our outings…does not mean that we don’t have to worry about that information coming back to bite you on the derriere” (Yeung). I agree. In order to maintain our privacy, we must remain discreet, or else it might come back to…you know. It is up to us to use good judgment; we cannot blame Web2.0 and its services.
Hacking is another issue that comes up when discussing Web2.0. Hacking is definitely a huge problem in social networking sites because “[p]eople trust messages sent through social networking sites and consider them more legitimate than emails” (ProCon.org). We do not see hackers coming; they are trained computer nerds who know exactly how to slip through the cracks of the Internet unnoticed.
I partly blame Web2.0 for this issue with hacking. In the case of Facebook hacking, these hackers made websites that looked identical to Facebook’s login page, and the victims ignorantly gave the website their login information (Suddath). Web2.0 allows hackers to do this. People are able to create websites basically however they want, and they use the information to spread spam and potentially steal money.
Although I blame Web2.0, I also blame us. Again, we have a choice; we can pay attention to what sites into which we enter our information, or we can follow our hyper-active lives straight into hacker territory. As long as we take steps to prevent this from happening, we will be fine, and hacking in social networking sites will not be an issue.
In this reflection, I have explored some major issues of Web2.0’s social networking, namely Facebook. Through my research, I have maintained that social networking via Web2.0 is not a bad thing. Sure, it can have negative consequences, but only if we allow those negative consequences to happen. I have said it a lot of times, and I will say it again: it all comes down to a choice.
We choose how much time we spend on Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg is not to blame for poor note taking and grades, the student is. It is ultimately up to us to control ourselves and prioritize when it comes to social networking begin a distraction. Web2.0 itself is enough of a distraction, but again, we have to prioritize.
We choose the information we share on the Internet. Web2.0 gives us many ways to share our information, but it does not dictate what we share. We do. Therefore, we the users cannot blame social networking for its lack of security. We cannot blame Facebook for preventing us from getting jobs when we blatantly post embarrassing pictures and information. We must choose to censor this information before it comes back to, for lack of a better phrase, bite us in the butt.
We choose to enter information ignorantly onto hacked sites; social networking sites do not force our profiles to be hacked. We, in our hyper-active lives, do not take the time to analyze what we are doing, resulting in a hacked account. We must take the initiative to prevent that from happening to ourselves. Mark Zuckerberg does not control where we type our information, we do.
Web2.0 created an online environment where we can connect with others but still be our own self. This self is fragile and requires a lot of care. In this digital age, we must keep this self responsible, respectable, and safe from potential harm. The Internet is a scary place, and I find myself wondering where this digital age began. I cannot remember the beginning, and there is no ending in sight. Maybe we really are living an Internet-induced dream.
Works Cited
ProCon.org. “Social Networking.” socialnetworking.procon.org. ProCon.org, 21 April 2011. Web. 26 April 2011.
Glenn, David. “Divided Attention.” The Chronicle Review. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 28 Feb. 2010. Web. 26 April 2011.
Yeung, Ken. “To Social Networks & the Internet, Your Privacy Isn’t Private. Lock it Down.” The Digital Letter. The Digital Letter, 3 May 2010. Web. 26 April 2011.
Kirkpatrick, Marshall. “Why Facebook is Wrong: Privacy is Still Important.” ReadWriteWeb. ReadWriteWeb, 11 Jan. 2010. Web. 26 April 2011.
Cormode, Graham and Balachander Krishnamurthy. “Key Differences between Web1.0 and Web2.0.” First Monday: Peer-Reviewed Journal on the Internet 13.6 (2008): n. pag. Web. 26 April 2011.
Suddath, Claire. “The Downside of Friends: Facebook’s Hacking Problem.” Time Magazine. Time Magazine, 5 May 2009. Web. 26 April 2011.
Wesch, Michael. “The Machine is Us/ing Us.” Kansas State University. 31 Jan. 2007. YouTube. 26 April 2011.
