On Nicholas Carr's "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" & McLuhan

I believe I had read this article before this class, but I remember when I first read it, I completely agreed and empathized with almost everything Carr said, specifically the part about the Net becoming a universal medium and it being the conduit through which most of the information that flows to me through.  McLuhan's assertion that all media, regardless of the message they communicate, exert a compelling influence on man and society.  I definitely agree with Carr that media and the way we access information does change the way we actually think.  An example of this McLuhan points out is prehistoric, tribal man.  He existed in a natural, harmonious balance of the senses, perceiving the world equally through all of his senses.  Technological innovations that have changed the way we perceive the world are merely extensions and alterations of our senses.

I don't think that this change in thinking due to various technologies is necessarily a bad thing, but I definitely think it's something that can and should be explored.  I also don't think that our focus and old way of sort of interpreting, thinking, and focusing is lost.  I definitely dislike the way McLuhan talks about the phonetic alphabet as sort of the beginning of the end of sensory balance in man.  It just sounds like he is automatically biased against the increase and advancement of technological mediums that we've experienced.  McLuhan's method of looking at the medium as the message without taking so much of the content into account is really helpful for examining the effects of technology.

-Daniel Francis

Youmans & York Six Strategies for Activists

I found Youmans and York's six strategies for activists interesting.

First, the authors suggest that activists can assert their power as consumers and influence market forces by mass migration into more activist friendly platforms. However, as they point out, such a migration would create activist-niche social networks and actually be counterproductive to activists' goals as they attempt to outreach to the greater community.

Second, the authors suggest that activists use legal systems to draw out parallels between existing legal protections in consumer law and social media sites.

Third, they suggest that activists can appeal to states which have expressed interest in protecting an open internet and encouraging democratization. The United States is given as an example of such a state the authors acknowledge that the United States lacks the necessary regulatory framework in itself and thus must first establish this.

Fourth, it is suggested that activists can advocate towards industry self-regulation. Yet, this option much like the third one doesn't look very promising since existing initiatives have yet to attract substantial support from the ICT sector.

A fifth option is to pressure popular social media companies through long-term advocacy to shift power towards users. However, the authors cite MacKinnon and reiterate that such a "citizen-centric" internet would require substantial participation and a sustained movement.

The final sixth option is for activists to embrace "civic technologies" with open architectures that evolve through user creation and participation. Wikipedia is one such civic technology.

I personally find the sixth option most promising since empowering and popularizing civic technologies could potential shift popular perspective on the internet. Wikipedia serves as an item of citation within Youmans and York's work and through its position as such this civic technology preserves a promise towards a more open and interactive internet. It is structurally promising as a decentralized site and has found mass appeal. The popularization of such technologies normalizes their permeation in  different functional roles. I think as we embrace civic technologies more and more, the restrictive qualities of corporate sites will appear contradictory to our new-normal way of operations and thus their appeal will decrease.