Week # 8: "we are living the 80's--'1984' to be exact"

I'm enjoying the courses that we've taken so far, and am still looking forward to the ones that are yet to come. One of the best things about the course is that it compels me to venture into web 2.0 applications, such as Flikr, that i've been aware of for quite a while, but have been reluctant, for whatever reason(s), to participate in. Sometimes i'm just critical of an application (i find it frivolous or just not user friendly), other times i'm just lazy and don't want to add another name/identity (i have enough problems dealing with my own real world one) and passwords to the ever increasing list i already have.

Then, there's also the Orwellian thoughts that seem to always permeate my mind when dealing with many of these new web applications. The issues that keep getting raised are most often those about privacy/transparency and how much, who decides or defines, when and where is it (in)appropriate, and so on. I recently read about one of these new web applications currently in the works (or may already exists, can't remember exactly) which allows people to tag the names of individuals in the pictures that they post. One can then just move the mouse arrow over the faces of people in the picture and their respective names will pop up. To add to this, the program will have face recognition qualities so that when another person posts a picture that contains the face of a "tagged" person from the first picture, it automatically tags the recognized face with the correct name. With technology like this, of course i am pushed to think thoughts of 1984.