1. Summarize both chapters and the most important ideas according to you
The Cult of the Amateur-Chapter 7 (1984)
This chapter is interesting. The search engine, one of the most powerful and useful tools on the Internet, can hurt people. I have never thought before until I read this chapter that search engines (tools that I can’t miss whenever I use the Internet) have disadvantages also. When AOL leaked its search data to the outside and then some people misused it. I know that a search engine collects words that people search, keeps them, and analyzes them to create a much more intelligent search engine. When I read this book, I found out that people use a search engine to search everything (private, shameful, fantasy, whatever…), even search for the direction of their lives. I believe most people do not know that search engine companies will keep those search words and that they may come back to betray them later. I agree with Keen that this relates to the legal ownership of whatever we put through the search in the search engine.
The story of this chapter began when AOL researchers posted by mistake a database of users’ search queries. This was a good opportunity for hackers to disseminate the data to Internet users and abuse this data. The personal data of some AOL users was spread to the Internet and it could have ruined their lives. This is a potential disaster of the digital age.
The author also talks about another crime, identity theft. It is another big problem that can mess up somebody’s life. The first part of this chapter reminds me of network security and security bleach. This chapter warns me about cookies or the system that keeps track of what we search, buy, do, listen to, or watch on the Internet. We might not be aware of what we do on the Internet because we think it is ordinary and useful to use these applications. We might not be aware that we help Google be richer when we put search words in a small text box. Google collects our queries, stores, and analyzes them and our data helps Google build a smarter search engine. We are the creator of priceless data for Google without knowing it.
The author talks about the blurring of the line between private and public when we post anything on a social networking site such as MySpace and Facebook. This is true and has become another problem for new teenagers. Whatever they post on their blog site or on the Internet might destroy their whole lives. As we have seen in the news, companies have fired someone because they posted negative statements about those companies. Some educational institutions may not accept a student if that student has posted something bad on Facebook, and the college or university has seen it. I believe whatever we post on the Internet could be dangerous to our lives more or less. Someone may misuse those data or it may affect our lives later.
Web 3.0 is the next step beyond Web 2.0 which has too much information. Web 3.0 will help us to shape what useful data we want by using complex algorithms and technologies. When the author talks about Page’s “ultimate search engine” as Google’s Holy Grail, it terrifies me. It implies that we will not have our own privacy for whatever we put on the Internet anymore. Whatever we search, like, write, watch, listen, do, will be collected in the database and not belong to us anymore. Companies may understand us better than ourselves. They can offer what we really want by using our previous search data and our profile preference. These are amazing and threatening at the same time. There is no secret or privacy anymore. Actually to me the digital world is dangerous. Everything can be kept, stored, restored back, and tracked back. The sad news is I do not think we can live without the computer, especially the Internet. I feel tortured if I do not check my email at least once a day. It is a necessary thing for our daily lives already. The cell phone and the Internet are as important now as a house, food, medicine, and clothes. How can we live without it? No way.
Always On-Chapter 3 (Controlling the Volume)
This chapter raises an interesting question: “how multitasking, while using language technologies, enhances our ability to orchestrate interpersonal communication.” Baron discusses the communication channels that we have such as, email, telephone, cell phone, and IM (text messaging). How can we control the volume? There are many possible control mechanisms. For example, if we do not want to participate in email, we may pretend that we do not have time to read email and so we do not need to reply the sender. If we do not pick up the phone call, we may use caller ID services, so we know who is calling and do not have to pick up the phone. If we use a modern cell phone such as a PDA phone, we can install some applications to block the caller. When the caller tries to call, the phone signal will always be busy while it shows on our phone screen that this person is calling us. If we do not want to chat online with other people, we can block them. Or we may change our status to display as offline, so we can see other people online, while they do not know that we are online too.
The author discusses multitasking which means the ability (physical and cognitive) to do several things at the same time. For example, watching television and surfing the Internet at the same time, or driving a car, listening to music, and talking to a person who sits next to you. Multitasking may degrade humans’ performance when we have to do several things together such as talking on the phone and answering IM conversations on the computer screen, or listening to the music and reading the book at the same time. It is interesting that the author talks about the study of taxi drivers’ brains in London. The results show that the brains of taxi drivers who are more experienced have a larger area controlling their driving than those who have just started their profession. It is exciting to know that if we practice multitasking, our brains and abilities are improved. So multitasking or multichatting will not be a problem anymore.
When the author discusses the results of the experiment that was conducted on undergrad students, the results are interesting and make me smile. I have experienced the same things. I have found it is difficult to chat in many windows at the same time, but I found it tortures me and wastes my time if I only chat on the screen without doing anything else such as surfing the Internet or reading email. IM, to me, is designed for background work. Except if the person that I chat with can type fast and I would like to chat with that person, it might be okay to do only one thing. However, we can do many things at the same time, especially in front of the computer. I have read the newspaper, watched television, and talked on the phone with my friend at the same time. It is difficult and I might not get all the information but I like to do it. It is also interesting when the author discusses multitasking when you have face-to-face communication. To me, it is not appropriate to be distracted to do other things if you talk with another person, but it is acceptable if you do it in front of the computer. It might be rude to talk on the phone and type on the keyboard to chat with another person at the same time (because a person who we talk with may hear the keyboard), while it may be okay when we cook or eat while talking on the phone.
We are becoming a society of language czars. We can control the volume of our communication. While a teacher stands in front of the classroom, students might SMS to each other in the room. Someone prefers typing text to talking on the phone. There are many communication channels that we can use and choose. The vital thing is how we can utilize these commmunications in an appropriate way.
2. Describe your experiment using a structured abstract of maximally 500 words. The sections in your abstract should be: Objective, Design, Measurements, Results, and Conclusion. Examples of such abstracts can be found in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association and many other journals available via pubmed.
Objective: This study assessed the effect of formal and informal health-related message to participants. Will the difference in message style when using a professional style message, as opposed to a layperson style message, have a positive or negative effect on the participants’ attitude towards the health message?
Design: We designed a questionnaire by providing the same information on health-related messages but in two writing styles: formal and informal. In this study we have two health-related messages and each has two writing styles. We use one style of each message in one questionnaire. Questionnaire 1 is composed of message 1A (formal) and message 2B (informal) and Questionnaire 2 is composed of message 1B (informal), message 2A (formal). To decrease participant bias and avoid an order effect resulting from the participants’ expectations and impressions for the next message after completing the first one, we used counterbalanced design. We provided each participant with one questionnaire and used a convenient sampling method. Participants were asked to complete questionnaires about their background and their attitude towards the messages. The questionnaire had three parts: 1) A participation information sheet introduces which describes the purpose of the study; 2) Questions about the personal data of the participant, such as age, gender, and primary language; and 3) Questions about the participants’ attitude about the messages.
Measurements: In the questionnaire, ratings on a 1 to 5 Likert scale were used to allow for variation in data. For example, to find out to what extent participants believe that this message is written by health professional, the participants could express their feelings from ‘strongly disagree’ (1) to ‘strongly agree’ (5). We collected quantitative data and used the descriptive statistics on the formal and informal messages. We measured five parameters: 1) This message is written by a health professional; 2) This message is useful; 3) This message is interesting; 4) Participant will follow this advice; and 5) This message is true.
Results: We calculated mean and standard deviation to examine whether the average attitudes of users when reading formal health message was different from when they read informal one. The attitude on the survey with formal message was 2.90 out of 5 (SD= 1.20), and 2.51 out of 5 (SD=1.89) with informal message. We did not find statistical significance from the data.
Conclusion: The writing style of the health message had not have an impact on the participants’ attitude. The results indicated that there is no significantly different between the message written in the formal writing style and informal one.