How could mashups serve international governance? Would mashups serve to make government more effective?

According to Wiki, a mashup is a web page or application that uses or combines data or functionality from two or many more external sources to create a new service. Mashup web page is a useful and effective infrastructure for government and citizens which are usually provided by third party sites. They would usually contain different sources together that normally a site would not provide. It is considered convenient to use because the users can absorb diversified information off these different sources from a single website.

Mashups could serve the government with more effectiveness due to the ease of usage of the application that enhances the information gathering and information providing by the government to the citizens. It could also serve as an effective tool for the NGOs where NGOs could apply it on executing their tasks and projects across countries. I think mashups plays an important role in international governance since it retrieves information easily and make things easier. In addition, Mashups allow the government to obtain information through e-governance. E-governance could help the government connect with the citizens. For example, the president Obama video we saw in class showed how president Obama interact with the people and how people can acquire useful information or file complains by the White House website.
Overall, mashups makes government more effective. It makes the society more civilized and therefore, this will however benefit both government and the citizens.

http://dailymashup.com/

http://local.alkemis.com/local/index.htm

What does global civil society look like? Where are the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ forces located, and how do they achieve their ends?

What does global civil society look like? Where are the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ forces located, and how do they achieve their ends?

A global civil society is basically a non government organizations (NGOs) or intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and political actors that share the common interest and value. Global civil society is unlike the markets that earn profit which allow people to exchange goods and services or the government that is non-for-profit organizations which applies law and regulations. It is a non-for-profit but a private informal gathering of people that create effective influence toward governments on issues regarding to citizens. They bring the message across to earn their rights and freedom for the citizens usually with the help of information communication technology, the ICT, and internet which include the social networking sites like the Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube, so forth.

The good forces may be located at places with citizens that are unsatisfied with their government and gather forces to rebel with protests. However, the bad forces may be applying to governments that show propaganda of false promises to the citizens and gain advantage of their election popularity. The global civil society is the society we live in today; it gathers power and protects people with a more liberal and democratized way.

www.mapbuilder.net/users/thomas77lin/84846

Does Internet Democratize the Consumer? Is privacy a concern?

Yes, I think Internet does democratize the consumers.  With the development of Internet, it has transformed our lives from a traditional market into a democratized society with enhanced market of varieties.  Nowadays, internet takes an essential part of our lives.  The convenience of internet allows seller able to promote products and advertise efficiently.  Since majority of people use internet today, companies and businessmen all take advantage of this way of media advertisement.  With the massive variety of choices there are on internet for consumers in modern days, it is extremely dissimilar to how the markets are like back in the days.  Back in the days, there were not many choices of products to select from.  They were actually limited by the lack of promotions and advertisement.  However, having to have diversity of choices when consuming is not always a good thing either.  Since the internet supply consumers with information to products with variety, our expectation rises which leads to less satisfaction after buying the goods.  I believe this is the marketing era that we live in today which the market tries to satisfy customers’ need by supplying possibly more choices for the consumers with the help of internet.  Therefore, it leads to democratize of the consumers and it will eventually result in disappointment to consumers. 

Privacy has always been a great concern to people on the web.  People are aware of personal information leakage when accessing to websites, where websites makes people to fill in their information in order to apply for accounts or when purchasing items online.  However, I personally think that it all depends on the popularity and feedbacks of the site.  When a site is well known, usually they are guaranteed on protecting their customers’ personal information in order to maintain their reputation.  Anyhow, since anything can be hacked on the internet, I think everyone should still be aware of their private information when they put them on the web.

Babel Fish Translation

English to Chinese : Hi, my name is Thomas. -> 餵，我的名字是托馬斯。

Chinese to English : 餵，我的名字是托馬斯。 -> Feeds, my name is Tomas.

What are the main arguments in the two readings for this week? Which one do you prefer and why?

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iu0ztxdsFis

This week’s topic is on the argument from the two readings about either Cosmopolitan Ideal or Cybercentrism make the “electronic global village.”  As it is said, “Global Village” would form democracy, prosperity, and peace.  Communication is necessary and sufficient condition for producing peace, therefore, the world would be better and ideally. 

The Cosmopolitan Ideal suggests that all kinds of human ethnic groups share same morality in a single community.  It means that people from all over the world would get connected with shared values and respect by the influence of the internet.  However, cybercentrism suggests that people all around the world get connected with each other and get to gain knowledge of other different cultures.   

I personally think Cosmopolitan Ideal would not work out well.  Even though the idea of sharing information and knowledge through internet by people seems fine and ideally but the major issue would be the cultural difference between people.  Therefore, conflicts would arise later on.  It is considered hard to accept all the different cultures from people all over world since there are too many.  As to cybercentrism, I think it would be preferred since one can learn and explore culture backgrounds from others and it would lead better to the ideal of “electronic global village.”

What determines the structure of a folksonomy and why? The code, the content or the social process? What does your answer to this question suggest about how we should understand globalization?

I am very unfamiliar with the term folksonomy.  I have never seen the word or used the word before, however I took a quick glance on what the term folksonomy actually means.  According to Wikipedia, folksonomy is defined as “method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content.”  It simply represents a way for individuals to organize and classify information through tagging and labeling.  Thus any sources that you may want to find could be found through search engines like the Google, Yahoo, so forth.  After looking up what a folksonomy means, I have come to understand that folksonomy is the combination of the code, the content, and the social process.  The sum of the three creates the structure of folksonomy. 

I think the content and social process are both what mainly determines the structure of folksonomy. Definitely the content of information will have to be intriguing and effective in order for people to be interested in and therefore click on the tags.  When users are searching for something, the content is essential because it determines whether the information is worth reading and viewing.  Also social process is considered important too because without the participation of the users, the folksonomy would not work out as effectively. 

The information on internet can be uploaded or viewed by people from every nation as long as people have a computer with internet.  Through folksonomy, people can search up what they want with more convenience because it is categorized through tagging and labeling.  However, in order for folksonomy to work, the users from all around the world will have to contribute in the social process and the content of the information; therefore the information on internet can be shared and viewed globally.

Are wikis an effective (be sure to define this term) means of communication? Why or why not? Why does it matter?

What is effective communication? I think effective communication can be defined as allowing people to be able to post their ideas and thoughts on the web and others can view it as references to their own entries. So are wikis an effective means of communication? I think they are an effective means of communication because wiki is a collaborative multilingual encyclopedia which anyone with access to a computer and internet can go on it and create a post or edit one. With the wide range of information uploaded on wiki, everyone can get access to the information they desire for efficiently.

Wikipedia is a convenient search engine that consist of mostly all the basic and well-known topics. For example, when I want to look up information for a certain topic, the first thing that comes up my mind is to use Wikipedia. However, since the information are provided by random users, which they can possibly be a five year old kid, the information are not always as accurate.

Therefore, I think wiki is an effective means of communication but it is not perfectly reliable. It can be useful as a source for quick reference and basic understanding of all topics but overall, I personally would not take wiki as a primary source when I am doing a research.

Should we be worried about the digital divide? Why or why not?

Should we be worried about the digital divide?  Why or why not?

The developing world today has demonstrated the efficiency and convenience by the new technologies.  However, internet, where all kinds of information can be located on, are not distributed in all countries these days.  In developed countries, accessing to internet for faster information and knowledge is considered common which the nation becomes stronger and stronger, but for developing countries, they move further down because they lack of access to internet.  This is when digital divide occurs but I think we should not be too worried about it.  People back in the days lived without internet and human do not necessary require internet to be able to survive.  Internet is just an additional tool and method to access to information and knowledge but faster.

If a country somehow encourages their people to adapt internet due to enhancing in education, I think investing in those one hundred dollar laptop that was introduced in the class would be a great choice.  The laptop is not the best but its cost is certainly affordable and it also contains the basic access to internet.   I personally think digital divide is not a big issue.  Because as long as there is access to internet, it closes the knowledge gap between the poor and the rich really fast.  It allows developing countries to leapfrog where they would skip a stage in their path towards development.

How would being a ‘digital native’ affect my answer to this question?

Web 3.0 seems like it’s going to have huge impact to people’s life in the future.  It allows computer to understand every things which in the future it may do stuff for us when they’re asked to.  This may look really complex and hard to adapt.  However, from my point of view, we digital natives that work with computer and internet everyday in our lives should be able to get used to it and apply it in a short period of time.   Since its a convenient tool to obtain, being a digital native, I am extremely excited and would take whatever it takes to learn and make great use of it in this new web generation.

How could Web 3.0 change my life?

Web 3.0 which is reffered to the semantic web that can possibly understand the meaning or even the content of the data that we are searching for.  When we use web 2.0, it supplies us with as many possible result as possible.  However web 3.0 filters the results by understanding what we are searching for and tries to end up with qualitative results instead of  quantitative results.   For example, when I look up things on the internet, I wouldn’t need to go pages to pages and filter the unrelated information myself but rather the web 3.0 would do it for me.   Web 3.0, unlike web 2.0, will definitely be a convenient tool to have in the future and it makes our life much more easier.  It will for sure have a huge impact on people’s life.