A fine line...

Activism has always tread a fine line on the issue of legality and usually it is the ends that justify the means. Most people judge activism by motives rather than actions and see something that starts a revolution as courageous rather than illegal. But where do hackers stand?

The internet is a political tool used by many already with 12.6% of blogs on the internet are of a a political nature (Herring, Kouper et al. 2005). However there is a difference between simply blogging about politics and actual doing something about it.

Hacking is a much misunderstand "medium" for expression as early movies about hackers proves. The public as a whole are continually driven by media-hype in believing that hacking is 100% bad and illegal. People such as Julian Assange divide opinion wherever you go (Khatchadourian 2010), so is hacking to uncover the truth or to help democracy really just?

Take the recent attack on the Playstation Network. A supposed statement from hackers rebelling against Sony's actions to track down those people who have cracked their PS3's in order to charge them. However whilst they were in the system they just decide to steal a few thousand credit card details? This is a case where I am sure everyone agrees, the message definitely got lost.

So what about hackers that don't leave a trace, don't ruin or destroy anything, and don't "steal" but rather copy. It is interesting to note how stealing now does not cover online technology. Stealing used to refer to when one thing was taken from one by another. However now it is possible for someone to simply take a copy whilst leaving the original intact and freely available to the owner. But that is a side note.
So if you agree people such as Julian Assange who simply uncover the truth are in their rights to do so, then surely organisation such as the CIA and ASIO have the right to monitor computers for threats and the like? An interesting discussion in class found that this was not the class that rather, people tend to like the idea of people standing up against governments through hacking, but do not like the idea of the government retaliation with the same tool. Food for thought.

Hacktivism, is it a justified crime?

Crabtree, J. 2003, 'Civic Hacking: A New Agenda for E-democracy', 6 March, Open Democracy, accessed 13/9/2011, http://www.opendemocracy.net/media-edemocracy/article_1025.jsp

Herring, S, Kouper, I, Paolillo, J, Scheidt, L, Tyworth, M, Welsch, P, Wright, E, & Ning, Y 2005, ‘Conversations in the blogosphere: An analysis “from the bottom up”’, Proceedings of the 38th Hawai’i International Conference on System Sciences, vol.4, pp.1-11, accessed 10/8/2011, http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/HICSS.2005.167

Khatchadourian, R. 2010, 'No Secrets: Julian Assange's mission for total transparency', 7 June, New Yorker, accessed 13/9/2011, http://newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100604fa_fact_khatchadourian#ixzz1Y7jrtkW7

The Evolution Of Twitter

From humble beginnings, Twitter was ridiculed by most as a network for people to share their favourite cereal. However it has evolved to become an integral part of no only world news but also activism and an agent for change.

The idea of using twitter as a medium for activism has been met with differing attitudes and results. There are several famous events that have taken place thanks to twitter such as political activists in Egypt and China using the site to break through censorship barriers. There is even a guide about how to effectively use twitter to start a an activists movement. It certainly has come a long way from the twouble with twitter.



One of Johnsons main points is how twitter is continually being used in new and creative ways (giving the example of all the end-user applications designed for it
). An interesting idea was developed after people in New York were reading tweets about an earthquake hitting before feeling the vibrations themselves. The idea is that people use twitter as a warning system with real-time alerts and updates. This idea was used and carried out by people in Bangkok during the rioting to keep people out of areas that were filled with rioting and violence as pointed out by Ted (2011) in the lecture.

Despite some believing that online activisms and petitions are useless such as Clay Johnson from InfoVegan who said that online organizing is a great lie and does not work (Horn 2010). However I believe he is completely wrong. Although online activism seems like the easy way out, I see it as a tool to get like minded people to work together and although a lot of it is simply playing to the crowd and acting socially aware by changing your twitter page green, there are those who are willing to do more and use twitter to meet others who feel the same.

Horn, H. 2010, 'Your Online Petition Is Useless', The Atlantic Wire, 12 August, accessed 7/9/2011, http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2010/08/your-online-petition-is-useless/19146/

Johnson, S. 2009, 'How Twitter Will Change The Way We Live', Time, 5 June, accessed 10/9/2011, http://www/time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1902604,00.html.

Mitew, T. 2011, Citizen Journalism and New Media Audiences, DIGC202, Global Networks, University Of Wollongong, delivered 12 September.

Blogs are poisoning the air supply

'Oxygen is more vital to human like than gold, but because are is abundant, oxygen is free. Weblogs make writing as abundant as air, with the same effect on price' (Shirky 2002, p.2). As such instead of a handful of news sources we can now find thousands if not millions of blogs on different topics around the web. But with such an abundance of people publishing items, he likelihood of it being incorrect is growing higher.

Epitomised by Gus Cirola (2011) when he said 'you found it on a credible site not just some persons blog'. Shirky's argument about online blogging killing print media is true in a sense, however it is not killing the Giants of the news world. People still visit big newscorp websites to receive their news than other we resources. Granted places such a reddit and ohmynews are growing in popularity but even things on those "trusted" sites need to be fact checked before sharing them.

Kevin Kelly put it best when he said 'trust is an intangible that has increasing value in a copy saturated world...you'll pay for authenticity'. The relationship built up by big news networks through years of being the only news source does not simply wash away once free items and other sources become available. Humans are creatures of habit and stick to those habits as much as possible. I am not saying that newspapers and big news companies are "authentic" simply that they are trusted by most. Big media companies tend to avoid having egg on their face by reporting wrong facts as much as possible, that isn't to say theyw on't spin it to suit their own agenda.

Cirola, G. 2011, podcast, The Drunk Tank, RoosterTeeth, 9 June, accessed 6/10/2011, http://roosterteeth.com/podcast/

Kelly, K. 2008, Better Than Free, accessed 3/9/2011, http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kelly08/kelly08_index.html

Shirky, C. 2002, Webligs and the Mass Amateurization of Publishing, accessed 3/9/2011, http://shirky.com/writings/weblogs_publishing.html