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.