Category / Class 10

by Jessica

reading | captives of the cloud, part i

Here’s an excerpt from a paper I wrote about Snapchat, where I site this week’s reading.
(I took the citations out but I think it’s still pretty clear what is quoted)

Late senator Ted Stevens went down in history after referring to the Internet as a “series of tubes”. If it is rendered utterly impossible to view the entire object, it becomes theoretically, and literally, harder to grasp. Back to poor, misinformed Senator Stevens. You can almost start to see where he is coming from. For a while the technology industry depended heavily on the advancement of physical hardware – CPUs, monitors, keyboards, mice, TV screens, laptops and phones all rely on a great deal of physical sophistication to function properly. Even appliances and gadgets that are fit solely for a single purpose require this kind of consideration. So why wouldn’t the inside of these objects work in a similar way? This assumption is not entirely wrong nor is it horribly uncommon. In contrast to hardware however, software indicates that something’s value no longer depends on the measure of its physicality. Google, one of the world’s seven largest cloud storage companies, has recently compared itself to a bank. Luckily, there is enough discrepancy in this metaphor to keep it from becoming a total reality. Yet it still holds true in the sense that cloud storage companies do, like banks, rely wholly on trust. This lack of physicality can be “seen” in how much of the Internet relies on Wi-fi, which is still quantifiable in the sense that you must pay for it, but requires no physical apparatus for it to work. Post-Internet artist and theorist Artie Vierkant responds to this collapse of physical space by introducing the idea of expanding digital files to take on physical forms, or “image-objects”. Sure, all of this theory made for a fascinating press release in whatever gallery space Artie ended up showing in, but its relevance continues in how we approach designing for the future or, in other words, “moving from existing to preferred situations”.

by Fernanda

Reading Response Week 10

How much our convenience cost?

If you think about the Internet as a whole, it made everything much more convenient. All of your files are stored in one place, all of your music as well. Most of the information you need is here too, just waiting for you to click to discover it. No more piles of files or room storage for all that documentation you had to keep and no more Encyclopedias occupying a lot of space in your office.

The development of the cloud made everything even more convenient, more than we could have ever imagined, especially with the amount of technological devices we have nowadays. Storing your files on the cloud made it easy to access anything you needed, anywhere, not only in your home computer. But, how willingly are we, to leave our data up in the cloud, in the hands of a corporation, in the name of convenience?

Well, I would say a lot, putting in other words, all our privacy. With the creation of the Patriot Act, to look out for possible terrorist attacks, our information is freely seen by authorities, with no regards or care for privacy. It’s a power abuse. There are no boundaries, which would stop the government to invade personal lives. And there is no note or question whether you permit that or not, they just do it. The interesting thing is that when talking about the subject with colleagues, friends and family, everyone is, of course, angry and feeling violated. However they know that there is not much that they can do about it, I mean you would be in a fight with the most powerful government in the world. What can they do? Until today, the most I have seen, so far, is people covering their lap top camera with a piece of paper.