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Showing posts from May, 2022

Wiki Review - The History and Impact of Youtube

 Review of YouTube Group Wiki The written wiki on YouTube is comprehensive in its breath and depth. From informing the reader of the history and origins of online video streaming, the wiki provided detailed account of notable specific events affecting the trajectory of the now gargantuan platform.  The wiki includes a deep dive of the technical aspects of running a large video streaming service including the business model of advertisement to pay for the infrastructure. What was most interesting is the social impact of YouTube. The positives democratizing and bringing education to the masses but the negative problems of radicalization and astroturfing. What is impressive about this wiki, is that diving deep into the content moderation guidelines allows readers to understand the nuance and complexity of regulating YouTube. For many of us, YouTube is more than just a media consumption medium. The content hosted on YouTube is a place of Cultural discussion, sense of belonging and where pe

Book Review - Age of Surveillance Capitalism - Shoshana Zuboff

Surveillance capital is about the monetizing the human experience through raw data. The hoarding and privatization of user data goes beyond the intrusion of privacy in forms perverse and unsettling.   The issue of surveillance capitalism parallels the problem of advertising where the idea of invisible coercion is disturbing in the belief that human will or beliefs can be modelled, predicted and controlled. Most people do not realize the power of sublimal messaging where the use of targeted words, imagery can nudge them to think in a certain way. From the Cambridge Analytica Scandal which fueled Donald Trump's win in the presidential election, to dividing the public against each other. The data which Google and Facebook brokers to geopolitical and business interests has allowed them to fracture society. The author makes use of an analogy there her house is on fire and while waiting for the firemen she was frantically rushing to save her valuable belongings. The issue with Surveillan

Week 15 - IT Ethics

 Cultural Relativism Theory Cultural relativism is the view that ethical and social standards reflect the cultural context of the background from which they are derived. Cultural Relativists uphold that cultures are fundamentally unlike each other and so are the ethical frameworks that structure relations between different cultures. So according to them, whether an action is wrong or right is determined by the ethical standards of the society that action has took place in.  As such, the moral norms of a culture can not be evaluated by the ethical standards of another culture.   The fundamental logic of Cultural Relativism was established by Franz Boas in the first decades of 20th century and has gotten increasingly popular since then. Boas first articulated Cultural Relativism in 1887 with thoughts that state quote on quote "civilization is not something absolute, but is relative, and our ideas and conceptions are true only so far as our civilization goes." In the modern day

Week 14 - Computers, Technology, the MacGyver Way

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The MacGyver Way to saving lives During the first few waves of the Covid-19 Pandemic, hospitals around the world were scrambling to secure enough medical supplies and equipment to treat their patients. Due to supply chain issues, hoarding and insufficient pandemic mitigation responses, the lack of ventilators to assist breathing was key to reducing mortality rates. In this case, the resourcefulness of hardware engineers, software developers and medical professional have come together to design low-cost portable ventilators. From using 3D printers that replace expensive industrial molds, to testing the effectiveness of the device using widely available sensors.  Collecting feedback from healthcare professionals, allow hackers to iterate their product so these make shift face-shields and ventilators are accessible to patients of different ages,sex and sizes.   References: https://www.startribune.com/university-of-minnesota-is-going-full-on-macgyver-against-covid-19/569000032/ https://new

Week 12 - Hacker Culture, An Ideal or still Relevant ?

Hacker Culture When the word Hacker is mentioned, most people have the misconception perpetuated by Hollywood and "The Matrix" where a person in a hoodie is crouched down, staring at a computer screen in a dark room. For those of us who study IT and programming, hacker culture represents passion, to  discover the unknown, a collective where meritocracy earns respect and admiration.  As a person who is leans more towards social science, what relates me the most to Hacker culture is the indomitable spirit of learning, curiosity and sharing. In this age of worsening social inequality and climate change, most people of our generation are anxious, depressed and beaten down by the complexity of these wicked problems. We seem resigned to our fate that nothing changes and our quality of life will continue to deteriorate.  Perhaps what Hacker culture brings in this context, is about being creative and resourceful in tackling these issues. While the news and social media often utilize

Week 11 - Implications of Online Censorship and Internet Privacy

Online Censorship and Internet Privacy The freedom of Speech is imperative to a functioning democracy. However in Authoritarian Regimes, free speech is threat to their political power. As many people are familiar, China has the "Great Firewall" which blocks youtube, google and any other major website serving news and information. Behind this Virtual Brick, Chinese people consume pre-filtered and approved content which praises the Chinese Communist Party and frames the existence of the political party indistinguishable from their own country. Like Russia, the capital outflows of the Chinese Elite has inflated housing bubbles in major cities of Canada,USA and Australia. However, the over reliance of Chinese international students as university tuition funding and infiltration of political parties and media companies has led western institutions to self-censor the atrocities of the Uyghur Genocide and human rights abuses. Due to the information bubble, many Chinese nationals cla

Week 10 - IT security landscape in Singapore

 Singapore's Security Landscape in the context of the Mitnick Formula Kevin Mitnick is an American Computer scientist and renowned hacker who have been arrested for various computer and communication related convictions. With his extensive experience of breaking into systems, Kevin has listed out a security formula consisting of: Technology - networks, firewalls, computer viruses Training - awareness and knowledge of various angles of attack Policy - standard operating procedures and mitigation strategies The Singapore Security Landscape Singapore has one of the highest global connectivity score scoring 2nd out of 79 countries surveyed. From broadband penetration to IT infrastructure investments, 91% of Singaporean are social media users.  In the recent pandemic, the online shopping expenditure has risen to 3.21million SGD. Coupled with high internet usage this means that Singapore is an attractive target vulnerable to cyber crime.  To reduce the rate of security vulnerabilities

Week 9 - Examples of Ergonomics and HCI, Success and Failure

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Thoughtful and context dependent design in mobile interfaces Since the advent of mobile phones, websites have evolved to scale their interfaces to fit a small screen. However, the layout of mobile websites were often designed as an afterthought rather than a native experience.  Often, the website takes too long to load, the buttons are too small, icons discernible and the font of the text unreadable in a small screen. Coming a long way since the era of Palm and Blackberry personal devices, smartphone prevalence heralded an interesting approach called "native" or "mobile first" user interface (UX) design. One such example is that of contextual hidden navigation Depending on the device, modern websites can scale according to the size of the screen to show the most used information. In addition,  the icons app-like bringing familiarity to new visitors and viewers from other platforms. Example of Catastrophic design In 2017, Juicero sold a juicer which required a phone

Week 8 - IT Pro or IT cost Centre ?

IT in Singapore In 50 years since independence, Singapore has grown rapidly to become a finance and trading hub. Part of her success is attributed to the authoritarian yet business friendly approach to politics and governance.  Like many East asian countries, education has been a primary focus in shifting the economy from a cheap manufacturing hub to that of a high skilled knowledge economy. Established 2 years after independence,  the Singapore Computer Society (SCS) has always been committed to shaping the technology sector in Singapore. Like many developed economies, outside of Universities, the SCS connects like minded individuals in promoting professionalism and certifications. However, due to addiction to foreign labour and Multinational Companies, small medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are rarely incentivized to train and nurture their talent. As such, before the second Silicon Valley tech boom after 2009, most SMEs view IT professionals as a cost centre rather than a valuable hu

Week 6 - The effect of Copyleft and choosing a software license

Types of Copy Left Software Licenses Copy left is a witty play on Copyright where the software licenses allow users to copy, modify and distribute them with the condition of not monetizing and copyrighting it.    Types of Copy Left Open Source Licenses are subjective, as such having a broad classification of licenses is due to the complexity of legal compliance. Strong Copy Left (GNU GPL) Modified software under this license are required to have the same licenses as the original software. In the context of Linux, distros such as RedHat, Ubuntu use such licenses to build a business supporting and consulting on extra features. Changes and dates must be tracked in the source file. Weak Copy Left (MPL) Developed by Mozilla, Weak Copy left or Semi Permissive Licenses such as MPL are often used to combine with proprietary components. MPL1.1 requires a notice in each source file, but MPL2.0 is compatible with GPL . Permissive Licenses  (BSD) Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) licenses do

Week 5 - The Case of Copyright Reform ?

Importance of Competition and Consumer Rights   Aaron Swartz The idea of a copyright or Intellectial property is to encourage innovation and protect the investment one has made to solve a problem or create value. However Copyright laws have been abused to the point where public monies funding public research has been locked behind close doors. Case in point, publishers of research papers such as JSTOR have been, and are actively gatekeeping journals which the tax contributing public has to pay to view. The tragic death of Aaron Swartz who died in vain, in his pursuit to make information free.  Aaron Swartz was a digital pioneer, civic advocate who contributed to RSS and he sought to protect Internet freedom. The problem with DMCA The Digital Millennium Copyright Act  stifles scientific research and free expression when magazines, online boards and service providers are forced to censor discussion on any topic which includes computer security.  In the lawsuit against the magazine "

Week 3 - New and evolving mediumts, The impact of MSN in instant messaging

As a 26 year old, I grew up having to use the phone line to call my friends. Of which, if someone picks up I'll have to ask for if they're in or I had to relay a message. Then came the mobile phone, SMS and then came internet messaging.  While many teenagers today use Instagram, Tiktok, Snapchat and Discord, there was a time where everyone used MSN messenger.  Back then, the smart phone was not invented and there wasn't a "always online" option. In other words, friends weren't reachable at all times and we had to use the school library or if you're lucky a home computer to chat with others.  In that age, Hotmail (not Gmail) was the norm, the internet was spotty and not everyone had a 512kpbs dialup connection.  To hide from our parents or snooping siblings, just like limited SMS messages abbreviations were used such as "g2g", "brb" and "lol"(which actually meant laughing and not a passive aggressive reaction). The use of emoti

Week 4 - Review on Information Society Report by Pekka Himanen (2004)

Perspectives of an Information Society in 2004 vs Now Pekka Himanen wrote the report in 2004, where the United States was still the Global Hegemon and Cultural power. He envisioned a future where globalization led to a more enlightened world where information access would alleviate the complex pressures of social inequality and global trade. While Pekka had a realistic view of the challenges faced with tax heavens and aging societies he had perhaps underestimated that technology perhaps IT has accelerated the problems rather than alleviate them. The rise of Social media has turned information access into a privatized filter bubble where vested political and business interests have turned the common man against one another. We see this phenomenon in the divide of the "Right vs the Left" and polarized youtube comments. The fundamental issue of this problem is the lack of reforms in the political structure in social democracies which has allowed authoritarian governments to rise

Week 13 - Ubuntu vs Fedora

Ubuntu vs Fedora   Linux is an open-source operating system that is based on UNIX. It was created by Finnish American student Linus Benedict Torvalds as a pet project in 1991 at the Helsinki University of Technology. Mr. Torvalds was inspired by Richard Stallman and wanted to make his own pet operating system.  He learned how to create an operating system through Andrew Tanenbaum’s book on the subject which included its own personal Kernel called Minix. However, Minix only supported a 16-bit architecture which was going out of fashion and was not portable, furthermore, Minix’s license prevented it from being used in commercial products and made it only viable for educational pursuits. This was the reason that Mr. Torvalds set out to create his own kernel that could be used commercially and for free(FOSS). Linux-based operating systems are now extremely popular with over 600 Linux distributions and over 411 million websites opting for Linux servers. Ubuntu Ubuntu is by far the most popu

Week 2 - Internet History, Obselete devices and Surviving Technology

Floppy Disk vs USB The floppy disk is defined as “a type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined with a fabric that removes dust particles from the spinning disk.”. The first floppy disk was invented in 1967 by disk storage pioneer Alan Shugart who was then under the employment of tech giant IBM.  The invention was completed at an IBM facility in San Jose California under the leadership of David L Noble. IBM intended to use the floppy disk to replace the punched cards which they had been using since its creation in 1911. It is said that even in the early stages a single disk could hold as much memory as 3000 punched making it an incredible invention for its time.  The floppy disk was however made obsolete with the invention of better storage devices like the Compact Disc in 1979 and the Universal Serial Bus in 1996, even though critics pointed out that the floppy disk may have been a more rel

Week 1- Important Milestones of Computer/IT Technology

Grace Hopper and UNIVAC (1950s) Grace Hopper was a computer scientist who developed the  A-0 system in 1951 and 1952 for the Univac which was an early compiler which functions liked a loader/linker. The impact of her work reduced the amount of learning  a user needed to use and write a computer. The UNIVAC used magnetic tape rather than punch cards thus speeding up the amount of calculations it could process. From predicting the unexpected landslide of victory of the presidential race of Dwight Eisenhower vs Adlai Stevenson. Univac heralded the age of mass produced computers. Iphone and impact of Apps (2007~) When the Iphone was revealed in 2007, it was a revolutionary device because the integration of the touchscreen and the Appstore opened up the opportunity to develop apps not confined to interfacing a device using Qwerty buttons. The big capacitive touch screen meant that beyond making calls, listening to music, looking at images and videos, the iphone was a device where you play g

Week 7 - Are the Ten commanmends of Internet Communication still legit ?

Rule 9 - Don't abuse your power   In Virginia Shea's published rules of internet etiquette, she aims to educate the public on the guidelines in the cyberspace, making it more welcoming and equitable.  The Paradox of Intolerance Freedom of speech is a important tenet to Democracy. However when an individual's rights to free speech triumphs over the rights of others in the case of radicalization and promoting dangerous ideas.  Some form of governance or moderator is required to protect the "greater good". The paradox comes when heavy handed policing in the name of the greater good moves society away from Democracy into Authoritarianism.   In the context of Internet communication or Netiquette,  we examine examples where the abuse of power not only runs against the other nine commandments but restrict empathy online. Abuse of Power by Mods In online aggregator platforms such as Reddit, there was a notable case where a power Mod u/gallowboob who would steal and rehas