Social Media and Digital Technologies

On or off campus, students have the same amount of access to social media and are undeterred in their quest to stay connected to people. 3G and 4G networks are pulsing with activity on campus as well as the wireless networks located sporatically throughout campus. People want to stay consistently connected even while they are with people they would normally be communicating with via some network. However, in reference to digital technologies, students do not have as much access  off campus as they do on campus. The Avery Lab is an example of a conglomerate of digital technologies that no student would ever have access to off campus, possibly in the rare chance they find a cyber cafe but of course Pullman has none of those.

Social media and digital technologies make daily life remarkably more efficient for students. The Daily Evergreen, while still printing, has the same issues online for those that either have one preference or another. Sports and entertainent events can advertise through The Daily Green in the print and online versions as well as on their individual Facebook pages that students will undoubtedly follow. Going beyond social media, digital technologies such as cameras, placed in particular areas around campus, can act as crime deterrents. At least having a camera there will be better than not and is hopefully aid in capturing the most recent assault on the professor outside of Mike's bar. 

Meet the Spime

   In an age where information has never been more readily available, there is also an overwhelming amount of information that parallels this ease of access. As information becomes easier to access, more information exists. Bruce Sterling mentions two ideas that relate to one another in terms of information accessing and archiving. He discusses the relevance of bar coding and at the end of his article, he has a “map” illustrating the network of a system that employs ambient informatics. The barcoding, in general, is relevant because we now live in an age where everything has an associated identity attached to it. The barcode is the associated identity that is run by the Uniform Code Council and EAN International. Sterling mentions that organizations such as these are colossal, yet the barcode itself is so second nature to people that its existence goes practically unnoticed. The Uniform Code Council and EAN International create barcodes so they can name items or products to track consumption patterns, as Sterling notes. There is big business in consumption patterns and businesses use barcodes to track the real, tangible products that people want in stores as oppose to a virtual economy where consumption data is stored as cookies or mined by companies.

   Ambient informatics is similar to the barcode system in terms of networked information, but it is much less subtle and intended for public use. Rather than rely on centralized development of software applications (i.e. Microsoft), ambient informatics is a universal computing system that involves real time information sent from RFIDs, sensors, and cameras to name a few. This would allow for faster and better quality information such as real time traffic updates, shipping information, logistics, entertainment (i.e. if a show is cancelled last minute), healthcare, and much more.  As I mentioned before, while information is becoming easier to access, more information exists especially with a real time system. Ambient informatics is meant to deliver information to people when and where they benefit from it, so as to not “overdo” it when people are strapped for time.

Information As a Weapon

      One of the most prominent uses of information is just that: how it is used or misused. Flor and Shneier, while writing about completely different scenarios, explain how information is being misused to negatively impact others for their gain. Flor talks about the aftermath of a seemingly successful counter-insurgent skirmish by the U.S. where even though we had “won,” the insurgents immediately went to the press to claim that we had killed dozens of innocent civilians, which was not true. Nevertheless, the damage was done. Shneier explains a similar concept were large industries and agencies are waking up to the idea of empowering themselves through the use of the Internet. The main theme the articles are addressing is an informational gap suffered by the micro population. Individuals, in both the civilian and military world, are receiving the short end of the stick when it comes to the use of information. “No doctrine exists for the employment of information operations at the battalion level and below. Information operations in counterinsurgency suffer from a disparity in the definitions of the term as it is understood by the strategic and operational entities that resource and enable IO and the tactical units that can most effectively employ them. As a result, a doctrinal gap has opened between those best positioned to execute IO in counterinsurgency and those best resourced and trained to execute information operations in counterinsurgency.” (Flor, 2010)

      As I mentioned, the information gap is causing power and reputation to be distributed inaccurately. Of course, being a good propagandist for a cause I really cared about, I would avoid this disparity through the practices the Army has established for information dissemination among the Afghani population. In Baker’s article, he lists several lacking IO qualities that essentially mirror what marketing and advertising have been doing for many years now. For my cause, my audience would be the local population of Pullman since this cause would only affect them. The cause would be delivered, with the same repeating message, through a series of multimedia applications since one medium is never efficient. There would be flyers, a website, a Facebook page, newspaper ads, and possibly a YouTube video all with the same idea in one message. As Booker states, “All too often, organizations develop too many themes and messages for the target audiences they are attempting to influence. Doing this inadvertently impedes their ability to repetitiously drive home the intended message to a target audience.” Depending on the reaction time for the cause, I would continue to advertise for as long as is needed since changing to another cause too soon would be counter-intuitive.