Sunday 28 September 2014

WEEK 9: Cloud? What shall we do if it “rains”? 


During the blog era, one of my favorite entertaining activities was reading Google Reader. Even though the amount of active bloggers was dramatically declined later, I still found much fun there. Last spring, as you all know, Google announced its discontinuation and gave us a specific date. I started to feel extremely gloomy: My Google reader is dying, and no one can stop that. I even tried to take part in several web discussions on How much money do we need to donate to save Google Reader?

So when almost every IT giant provides its beautiful looking cloud service to the public, I start to hesitate, not about whether it’s good or not, but how long it could live. As Lametti (2012) emphasizes, on the cloud, “The structure could be more easily controlled” (p.222). I can’t stop thinking about one paradox: if I assume that one day all cloud services would discontinue (do you agree with that?), what shall we do if we overly dependent upon them? After all, if it’s “cloudy” for too long time, there is a great possibility to start“raining” in the end.

Perhaps the best way I could think of to avoid the Google Reader Tragedy is too maintain as many users as possible. Anyway, the thing is that how to guarantee your chosen service always be popular enough? Yes, some of you might argue that services like Google Cloud would be quite safe, but this is just how I felt about Google Reader several years ago.

So personally, I’m not yet ready to face the potential consequence of the sunset of cloud service, at least for now.

Work Cited:Lametti, D. (2012). The Cloud: Boundless Digital Potential or Enclosure 3.0?. Virginia Journal of Law & Technology Association, 17(3), 192-243.x

Sunday 21 September 2014

WEEK 8: Surveillance in China, with fun


The readings from this week remind me all the memory about my concerning about Chinese surveillance. In my university in China, you can find webcams everywhere: above the canteen entry, beside the park lane… literally, “everywhere”. I still remember every time when I enter my dormitory, I always put my middle finger straight up to the conspicuous webcam above the main gate. For sure I do understand that webcams are powerful to maintaining security in public area, but there are just too many placed everywhere, which far beyond my tolerance ability.

As a consequence, I’d like to say that I agree with the idea that reasonable paranoia can give you a comfortable defensive position under such ubiquitous surveillance, which can be treated as “healthy paranoia”. I mean that it’d better to maintain a moderate suspicion to the whole society if you want to live a healthier life in China. A moderate suspicion means you don’t need to distinguish every single issue around you, just don’t trust them at all.


Well, my dear classmates, I am aware about the surveillance issues happen in NZ recently. As a Chinese, my advice is “try sousveilling back”. In China, a famous artist, Ai Weiwei, played games with the authorities when he was monitored and guarded by the police. When he was surveilled by webcams set by the government, he started to install four webcams in his own house and showed it on the internet to “help” the police to surveil himself. Obviously, the authorities were irritated and forbidden him to do that again. Ai Weiwei didn’t quit and sculptured a webcam made by marble as part of one of his art project.

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Unlike you guys, I have lived with this kind of social surveillance for years, so I’m quite accustomed with this issue already. I just try to make fun with it since I cannot change it.

In the end, I’d like to share several pictures about surveillance situations in Beijing, China. 

Have fun^_^

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Sunday 14 September 2014

WEEK 7: Will ubiquitous media affect our daily life, I mean, to some extent? 



The reading material from this week seems to have much fun to me. It managed to help me continue some of my pessimism feelings about ubiquitous media. By using computers, we humans are already becoming half-cyborgs in our daily life to some extent. The chapter 8 from Along Together gives an interesting example about one situation we are facing to. For instance, when we sit together to have dinner and chat with each other, one of us might take out of his/her mobile phone from his/her pocket and begin to read it. At this time, he/she could be set as an outsider by rest of us and might be labelled as “absent”. From my point of view, the convenient mobile internet sometimes has a negative effect on us.


According to the author, “multitasking” seems to become a normal phenomenon of humans from a bad habit. As a consequence, we are getting used to be interrupted from thinking, talking and even sleeping at any time by reading mobile phones or other media. Just a sounded information push from your Facebook or a stupid picture sent by your friends that you are going to delate as soon as possible, every tiny notification from your mobile phone or your future ubiquitous media could affect your concentration. For me, it is really horrible to imagine about.


I could even imagine further that when ubiquitous media are become that normal in our daily life, we could be surrounded by different notifications (even they could be mute) anytime and anywhere. Little by little, ubiquitous media could be able to lead us to act and to think. At that time, we could become real cyborgs. Finally, the boundary between machines and human beings becomes more and more narrow and vague.


That is to say, we could be assimilated with machines at that time.