Technoscience / Ecomateriality / Literature

Tag: Facebook

Ebocloud Commentary

Ebocloud introduces various aspects that make readers question the relationship humans have with technology. In the book, Desalt, the founder of Ebocloud, utilizes Vonnegut’s theories to create a multi-human system similar to Facebook in the sense that everyone is interconnected. Desalt attempts to mimic the African tribe Ebo by also creating functional family units where “Ebo-cousins” will be at the disposal of their other ebo-cousins. With digitalized tattoos, they are able to check into the network and help their ebo cousins out. The outcome of doing so is karmerits, and the more karmerits an individual earned, the higher the elder position they received.

Although the idea is a bit farfetched, we can’t help but wonder whether a similarity already exists in the real world. The Internet has provided us with the same interconnectedness that Ebocloud offers. Although we don’t necessarily earn karmerits, we still receive the sense of connectivity amongst each other. This can’t help but make me wonder how big of a role technology plays in everyone’s lives. We evidently aren’t part of a system where our hierarchal standing is dictated by the amount of good deeds we de. But we are part of a system that extracts our personal information and resells to other companies for profit. Whether or not we choose to acknowledge that, we continue to be a part of it because we would much rather lose a little bit of our personal data rather than disconnect from the virtual realities social media offers us.

Apart from Ebocloud being a story of a young male protagonist who participates in this social, real world application, it is also a commentary on society and of the various social media which we rely on to become more connected with the world. This book does a very great job of posing questions as the story progresses. It makes us wonder how interconnectivity plays a great role in our lives and how technology helps amplify human connection.

 

Moss, Rick. Ebocloud. New Orleans: Aqueous, 2013. Print.

Data Tracking

A medium that is able to analyze the thoughts you put out into the world constitutes as data tracking. Sometimes this is beneficial. By tracking the data of individuals, the government is able to track down the mood of the nation. Also, it is able to find individuals who are planning to threaten the peace. But because data can be utilized to threaten society, privacy rights where established in an attempt to set boundaries and diminish problems. Then, through the development of various programs, data reading applications were born. These apps such as PrivacyFix, Wolfram, and Tweet Report, synthesize our data in order to show us our Internet footprint. These types of apps are quantified as data tracking due to their nature of grasping our information and regurgitating it back to us in more simplistic forms. Regardless of whether this sounds creepy or not, we allowed them to go into our history in order to bring back to our present the data trends we put out into the internet. In retrospect, this can be considered type of way humans think alongside technology, since without our help, technology wouldn’t have had the ability to create this. In other words, technology needs us as much as we need technology. Through these types of experiences we are able to see on a broader perspective, how we present ourselves to the world through the Internet. A great example is the amount Privacy Fix calculates in order to show us how much we are worth to companies like Facebook. Clearly, such companies are making revenue from our activity, but we as well benefit from their functions. Those 18 dollars Facebook makes through my activity may seem insignificant, but considering they possess a large audience, it is clear how it became a multimillion-dollar company. Thinking about the way we affect data and how data affects us provides us with more awareness of the way we affect this multidimensional cyberspace filled with an almost infinite amount of information.

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