Friday, 3 May 2013

CCDN 271 - Assignment 2 & 3


CCDN 271
Assignment Two & Three
Make a Claim and Substantiate It
Julio Inglez - 300237929

Statement of Intent:


Contemporary society is surrounded by technology and social networks in which they are incentivised to distribute their personal information in order to fit within the standards of these network and technological frames. This scenario arises a discussion topic that explores the privacy contained in people’s exposed data not only within social intention, but also in relation to technology as a whole. A strong and substantial standpoint generated from this discussion is that personal data should be private from any external use, focusing towards a more restricted system of data collection, leading to limited information being transmitted between one party and another. Being cognizant of the importance retained in people’s private data, I will research a perspective that differs from the idea of restriction and coincides with the perception that massive data collection can be used for good purposes and lead to self-humanity and environmental development.

Elaboration and development of the given subject will be my main focus as well as targeting a convincingly standpoint that explores the several comforting prospects linked to the correct and ethical use of gratuitous data propagation.
The book Digitalia by Susannah Hagan 2008 will be my source of information extraction since it cites several examples of data that are collected towards the development of architecture in relation to the environment as well as the avant-garde.

I will assign ‘Massive Change’ to my thesis as my intersecting theme considering my interest in environmental and architecture augmentation. It will also cooperate with my standpoint by convincingly expressing massive environmental and architectural changes as positive artefacts. My starting point reference that quite often relates back to this subject is the book Architecture and Beauty by Yael Reisner and Fleur Watson. It contains a few examples of data being expressed as architectural work as well as creative abstract art created by well recognised artists and architects.



[Start of assignment three:]

Data privacy concerns can get in the way of mass data collection for relevant sociological research due to its enforced restricted and public unawareness.
Companies that have the job of managing huge amounts of personal data such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr automatically have the task of restricting the use of the same. The same way that people are insecure about the idea of what is done with their data, they are also unaware of how restricted its access is already set. For example, Sprint, one of the largest phone companies in the United States will allow only specific data to be shared with their researchers that are related to their topic of focus. Several laws are applied to their employment system so that their data is never exposed all together. The reason being is that the business does not want to get involved with lawsuits for breach of privacy, which would lead to excessive fines and a bad reputation. This can be related to many other big companies and also be the background reasoning to why such companies are so popular and trusted the way they are (Monavich, 2011, p. 2-4).
The first time men stepped on the Moon in 1969, was the earliest stage of a new ecological era, where Earth could be then analysed as a whole and humanity could then start to predict massive and smaller possible environmental changes. This moment in history was only achievable through one of the most spectacular mediums of data collection at the time, photography. Since then, the idea of capturing data that exposed Earth’s ecological information has only developed and has helped humanity reach a point where thirteen-thousand satellites are in orbit around the globe at this right moment only to monitor its conditions (Gurevitch, 2013, p. 3-4). The measurements taken to improve on Earth’s ecological system can only develop and bring society a better future, thus, several aspects about data restriction that involve environmental factors can be rather concerning, such as Google’s “Street View”, which is also based on the collection of data but becomes restricted due all of the lawsuits it is involved with (Monavich, 2011, p. 5).
Data distribution can be seen as a breach of privacy to many people and there will always be ethical reasoning behind it, however, an awareness of the rules that are already applied to companies that manage such important information need to arise. Such restrictions could very easily slow the process of self-humanity development and even affect discoveries made about our own environment.



Bibliography:


 Monavich, L. (2011). Trending: The Promises and the Challenges of Big Social Data. Retrieved April 25, 2013, from http://www.manovich.net/articles.php

 Gurevitch, L. (2013). Google Warming. From Media Ecology to Ecology as Media in Google Earth, p. 3-4.

Reisner, Y., & Watson, F. (2010). Architecture and the beauty: Conversations with architects about a troubled relationship. Chichester, United Kingdom: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Hagan, S. (2008). Digitalia: Architecture and the digital, the environmental and the avant-garde. New York, United States: Routledge.






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