Failure of Our Filters Deserves Our Attention

What’s do you think is wrong with Facebook? Does the newly added timeline seem to be more of a hassle and overwhelming rather than a cool, new, exciting way to display your life on a website? Or maybe you are one of the long-time users who have found Facebook’s lack of a good filter to keep unwanted friends or family members away from “friending” you as problem? These two cases are very common amongst users worldwide, but this problem extends more to just this networking sites. It extends to the Internet as a whole. Are the websites with too much gadgets, tabs and unwanted videos (YouTube) too much for you, or does the unwanted spam reaching the thousands in your Yahoo! folder becoming an atrocity? Either way society is facing two problems that need to be taken care of a.s.a.p. But which one should be handled first?

          It’s should, or logically would, be whichever is perceived to be a larger problem, and to me, it’s filter failure? I think of it in this way. Going back to the Facebook example, which one seems to be more of the hindrance: all the timeline information and links you can click on, or the possibility that your boss or family members may read some of the very personal information you release on your status or during the changing of your relationship status? I think Clay Shirky from the “It's Not Information Overload. It's Filter Failure.” video would definitely agree that filter failure is a bigger problem just from his similar story present in his speech. Those clickable links and timeline information are only a nuisance when you not interested or not in needed of whatever they offer. You don’t care about the link to change your privacy until you actually need it to change your privacy, so until that time comes, it’s in the way. So in this situation, information overload may not be such a bad thing. On the other hand though, there is no way to cope with personal information somehow getting out to the crowd of people it’s not intended for. Some could say that you should make that privacy link less of a irritation and change your privacy to keep certain people out (or simply be more careful when sending out precious information). But what about the world wide web, where there isn’t any universal “privacy links” or consistently successful filters of information?

          Maybe that’s the answer to this problem of how to solve filter failure. A tool that is attached to Internet Explorer or Google Chrome that keeps certain individuals blocked from all information that you release to the world (Yes, I know it’s kind of harsh). Maybe Facebook should think about adding a way to selectively block certain friends you are forced to have from information you are posting at any moment in time. Or maybe the answer is that there isn’t an answer at all. Filter failure is a problem of unwanted or too much information being displayed when only a smaller amount of information was assumed to pop-up upon requested. So how can we limit the amount of information that we received without limiting the creator of the information in the first place? Isn’t the internet suppose to be a playground for the mind and a canvas for the web blogger who want to make something that they feel as though is necessary? If there was a way, and I’ll reiterate that I don’t think there is, it definitely won’t be done through legislation anytime soon because wasn’t that what the whole SOPA and PIPA scare was all about?


Clay Shirky's "It's Not Information Overload. It's Filter Failure"
http://blip.tv/web2expo/web-2-0-expo-ny-clay-shirky-shirky-com-it-s-not-information-overload-it-s-filter-failure-1283699

GPS: Gramps is Probably Stalking

After reading the two pieces and follow-up research on GPS, I feel as though we should definitely be utilizing the technology less, at least on a domestic level. Although it is something that is used for directions and is “cool”, it’s easy to see that the technology is too powerful to be given to some individuals for just a few hundred dollars. The common man is only able to really do three things with the GPS technology: halt being lost, track a stolen car or teenager down, or do some type of heinous crime. Finding where you want to go and possibly helping to save a life is of course great, but is also being stalked or tracked unknowingly by someone you know also a benefit? Or taking it further, what about when it’s by someone you don’t know? The answers to the last couple questions are obvious, and the happenings seem to be occurring more often than the actual saving-lives part does. People with mental illnesses or those that are just plain evil are able to equip themselves with a tool to hinder someone else’s life or worse, and that isn’t “cool”. Or maybe it isn’t complex-enough for you why it is more of a risk than a benefit? What if a father wants to just see if his daughter is being taken to a party instead of the library to studying (like she said), so he places the GPS device underneath his car to track her every move. Is GPS technology still a good thing? From the father’s standpoint, it’s pure gold and will probably further fall in love with it’s capabilities. But from the daughter’s standpoint, her right to privacy was just violated. Is this any different from the government utilizing GPS to spy? Maybe not on the same scale, but they are definitely correlated in immorality. To clarify, I do not condone the death of GPS for all these negative usages. I am simply stating what may happen if the technology is improperly used, so in fact, condoning even more so that the user be punished. The author of the article linked below can back me on this (and majority of the things I’ve stated), and they even seem to take a very similar approach to persuading why the risks outweigh the benefits. Frankly, GPS is just too much for some to handle civilly; but it’s still smart to keep in mind that GPS doesn’t kill people, the deranged persons utilizing that GPS technology does.

http://www.gpsfortoday.com/gps-tracking-is-not-all-good/