Impersonating Thieves

We have all fallen victim to our fingers slipping and punching the wrong keys on the keyboard, and press enter before we even notice.

The crazy thing about that is there are people who create websites knowing that people will find it accidently when they are searching for another site.

I never really thought much about it, because I usually just find Web sites through Google and then you check it out a little more before you click usually. However, there are occasions when I think I know a site and just start typing the URL, and I have been taken to incorrect sites when doing that.

I am finding that this could be problematic for the future of journalism, because people can make newspaper pages that are incredibly similar to the actual official site and just hope that people will screw it up somehow.

Thieves, and Web site impersonators are making our society more skeptical, because who is to trust.  It’s absolutely ridiculous to think that people could just be searching for some news online, and end up on a random site that looks exactly like the official one.

Legitimate or not is the question.

I never really check the URL of the pages that I am on I just look at the actual page and the content on it, but now it seems that I have to skeptical too.

The library wasted my precious time

I wandered in circles, around huge bookcases.

I forgot how to find books in the library.

One my classes forced me to use a medical journal in the library for a research paper, which meant that I physically had to find a source. The only problem with that was that I can’t even remember the last time I had to search for an actual book in meatspace.

The whole idea of losing a skill because you never use it definitely became a reality for me when I found myself lost in the library staring at huge medical journals, and not knowing which one had the information I needed.

The web makes everything so easy, because you just type the topic into Google then several pages pop up with the exact information that you were looking for.

I don’t even understand why my teacher made me use a physical source, because practically any information I could ever need or want is on the web. I guarantee that whatever information I used out of that medical journal I could have found on the web without getting lost and intimidated by enormous size of the journal.

When it comes to resources, it is always easier, faster and less scary to use the internet.

In my eyes cyberspace is friendlier when it comes to source searching than meatspace.  

 

I lost the race

They won’t stop chasing me.

I keep on trying to run away from Math and the web, but I underestimated their speed and they eventually caught up to me.

Finding the derivative of a natural logarithm is equally as confusing and foreign to me as HTML. I figured being a journalist I would just write, and that’s it.

I was wrong.

Journalists are being required more and more to interact with the web as part of their job, and that is a very daunting fact. Math is hard, but HTML is a completely new language. I thought that speaking English and being able to hold my own in Spanish were more than enough to fill my language quota, but once again I was wrong.

Now, I have to learn this technological language that is incredibly intimidating. I tried to look at HTML with an open mind but the minute it popped up onto the screen and I saw all these symbols and random letters that seemed to have no purpose, I came to the conclusion that I don’t speak HTML.

I feel like a kid again at home where my mom only spoke Spanish to me so I would learn it, but instead I am sitting at home staring at my screen carefully reading the assignment instructions so I can learn HTML or at least get an A on the assignment.

Web skills and math won, because I have no other option than to give in and learn.

elementary skills lost forever

He caught me.

Jakob Nielsen revealed my online secret, and apparently everyone else’s. I don’t read anything all the way through, or word for word on the Internet. I usually end up reading the Headline then make the critical decision of whether to continue to a different site or to quickly skim the page for any interesting details.

The fear of failing another online reading pop quiz in class is the driving force behind me skimming the readings for any details that I think could be a question. So it makes me wonder about the people who aren’t in school and don’t have to worry about tests.

Most of the people I know “read” the news online, and if newspapers were to cease to exist, I worry that it will take reading as we now  know it with it. In turn that could be mean that skimming will become the new form of reading.

The idea of people no longer reading information or material all the way through makes me appreciate newspapers, and textbooks more. When I did the newspaper assignment where we had to read it from front to back did enforce the idea that when you have a hard copy of something you are more inclined to read it word for word. The Internet makes things to easy, because if you don’t want to finish reading it you are just a click away.

Skimming could very possibly become the new form of reading.

Teacher Perez

Being forced to blog changed everything.

Originally, my views were similar to Keen’s in the sense that I saw blogging as diluting the truth, because the people behind the blogs are not always experts on the subject they are writing about. This class has opened me up to the idea that blogs are not such evil creatures.

The reading “What journalists can learn from blogger” helped me realize the upside of having bloggeers around to teach. Blogs allow people to create a relationship with their readers, and I think it makes them more tangible rather than this source shouting information down to them. Bloggers allow a way for thereto be direct interaction, and I like the fact that I get to know the people whose blogs I am reading and that I can give them my feedback.

Everytime I go to perezhilton.com I get a new little box telling about Jessica Simpson’s or Lindsay Lohan’s relationship status. Journalists can learn from Perez in the way that keeping a constant stream of updated information will keep the audience around.

I think that the single most important thing for traditional media to do is to embrace the power of the Internet, and realize that the news is a conversation and not a lecture. If traditional media changed the paper to being more interactive and giving people the opportunity to provide input, I think it would spark interest in readers.

Perezhilton.com could be a postive example for traditional media.

dream crusher

Never removed, always findable, and forever there.

Facebook and myspace could stand between me and my dream job, if I am not cautious about what I allow to be posted on my pages.

I will be searching for a job in this disastrous economy in a little over a year, so I need every bit to be in my favor when I am looking. I literally cannot afford to have compromising pictures, and negative content online about me, because of the potential consequences it could have on my future.

I was shocked to realize that the content that is posted or published on the internet is never fully removed or private, because anything can be archived. The reading about the San Francisco Chronicle and how they tried to get rid of the Goth story online, opened my eyes, because it can still be found on an Italian gaming site.

I always thought that if something was printed then that is worse than it being online, but now I find myself racking through all my facebook pictures making sure they won’t be perceived negatively.

Nothing is safe, everything can be archived, and dreams can be crushed.

3 desktops, 4 laptops, and I still didn’t care

Techies, computer nerds, the technology inclined, those people are all the same to me.

Smart!

I have never understood the world of computers, and to think that my dad’s job revolves around them, and my brother is a computer science major. I always wondered why I wasn’t, I figured the technology savvy gene skipped me.

But the truth is, I never really cared.

Sitting in class today hearing about the “have nots,” I wondered how many of those people just don’t care? I was in their place, I understand, and looking back now I question why it took me until college to start giving in.

Since my house has two techies we have over three desktops, and four laptops throughout the time I was in high school. Hearing that statistic it makes me sound like I would have had to be somewhat knowledgeable about computers.

Wrong! I was clueless, and I wanted to stay a “have not,” I liked it, it was comfortable.

Plus if I ever needed anything done, I had two very reliable resources within feet of my bedroom, but that changed in college. Chico State forced me to give up my “have not” ways. Now, I am a changed person, I have evolved into a “have.”

Computers talk

He was yelling at his computer.

My brother has gone crazy was my initial reaction when I saw him leaning over the keyboard speaking to the screen, but luckily I saw the microphone and it clicked that he was playing a game.

I thought it was weird to see how people could live this alternate life online, and be whoever they created. Then I realized it gives people a sense of acceptance to have others who they can relate to, and be able to interact with them online.

My brother probably wouldn’t tell his friends that he spends hours at a time online playing with people he has never met. So by playing the game and being a part of the online gaming community it makes it easier to know he is not the only one.

Even though I caught him sitting at his computer alone, I now realize he wasn’t. He was playing with fellow members of the community he has become a part of.

Before that ecounter with him, and taking this class I would have said communites are the places we live, or the churches we attend. Now I realize a community is a much broader term, because I think it has turned into a place of acceptance, and the ablility to interact with people who have the same interest. Where I live and the Church I attend, both incorporate those ideals, but now I see it doesn’t have to be just those traditional community types.

Goodbye presidential elections

ATM or Debit is no longer an option anywhere.

This continent would face the possiblity of Anarchy if internet failure hit now, because the backbone of leadership and communication revolves around the internet and without that it would be nearly impossible to run the country from a leader’s standpoint.

The military networks for communication, application and monitoring defense strategies would be if not eliminated then pushed back several decades.

Monetary institutions would crumble, because the electronic money transfers that occur at the end of each day for every major corporation would not happen. Visa, ebay, Paypall, mastercard, and many other companies that are driven by the transferring of money would suffer insurmountably because of the loss of revenue leading to the collapse of the economy.

At the very least the easy access to information would be annihilated taking every Americans need for instant gratification with it. The mass communication that people have become so accustomed to would cease to exist.

This continent would be in the most unstable state conceivable, which is a state of Anarchy.

Running back becomes Nose Guard

My Professor said that Wikipedia is not a credible source, so then and there I vowed to never use it.

Still being in my anti-Wikipedia phase, two of my good guy friends used it in my presence, so of course I told them how unreliable it is, instantly they jumped down my throat claiming that it has less errors than the encyclopedia.

Their intensity made me quickly retreat. Are there really less errors? So being the curious and nosey journalism student that I am, I researched it. I found that Wikipedia has 162 errors and the Britannica has 123 errors, according to CNET News.

From that day forward I was a changed woman the measly 39 error difference was not enough to keep me away. I was no longer a running back carrying the ball my professor passed me about the lack of credibility. I suddenly became the nose guard on the Defensive line of Wikipedia,  if anyone wanted to get through and say that Wikipedia wasn’t credible they have to go through me, with the exception of my professors.

Allowing someone to filter information that I so readily defend is giving them a small piece of my freedom. I was raised to think for myself, and I refuse to let someone tell me what I can read or know for the rest of my life. If that were the case I would be better off sitting at home on my comfy couch watching television all day, and obtain the useless information there rather than letting my parents dump money into  a place where the ability to gain knowledge is going to be sifted through.