Want to know me? Add me to Facebook.

I reflected on the articles “Time’s Person of the Year: You” and “Facebook dumbing friendships down?” This is what I came up with.                                                                                                                      

Myself like many other have a Facebook profile where I share information about myself to my friends. I consider myself different from many other Facebook users since I don’t write very much on it because I don’t think it’s very personal. Since we are connected to so many medias today I think people enjoy being apart of something this big as the Facebook community. When you write something everyone you know or may not know can see it and will take a slight interest in your life. People enjoy standing in the spotlight and feel that everyone is watching your every move.

This may harm the concept on friendship since you may hang out less with friends in real life because then you can only meet a few people. Online you can meet them all at the same time and they all listen to what you say. Now you care more about getting more friends on Facebook so everyone will think more of you then making more friends in the real world. Since you now share so much online that when you meet your friends you have less to talk about since you probably already know everything.

I may have exaggerated some things I said but there’s a bit truth in all of it. So will social interaction disappear to an even greater scale, stay the same or decrease? I think it will stay the same and that people have found a good harmony between social interaction and online interaction.

You may copy this

Good Copy Bad Copy is a documentary about file sharing and sampling. The part that interested me the most was the sampling part. I think it’s crazy that “stealing” one second of sound from a song then changing that sound into something else is illegal. Everybody draws inspiration from others all the time and make it on to their own. I don’t think that should be illegal because that is creating aswell. It’s like in school when students gather information from different sources for a project. They take some information and then expresses it in their own words. It’s almost the same thing but that isn’t considered cheating since it’s my own words. To the bigger question, how do people even notice these things? I thought about that for a while and asked myself how someone can hear that a song has one second of stolen sound in it that is mixed. 

To the file sharing question I can start by saying that I am not against it. I thought there were a few good ideas in the documentary for alternate solutions to the problem. I have an idea myself and it goes like this. Why don’t the record companies use the same idea as Spotify is built on and offer the music for free but also offer extra content for payment. This content could be the same as Spotify already has like better sound quality or maybe extra songs such as live versions. It could also be “the making of” material and the music videos.

In theory I actually do like the copyright law but it’s too powerful and overwhelming that it prevents the very thing that it’s meant to protect which is creativity.

Nerds FTW

After watching “Triumph of the nerds” I as a fan of the nerds salute them by saying, Nerds FTW (FTW = For The Win). Although by saying I am a fan of the nerds doesn’t mean I agree with all that they do. For example I agree with Steve Jobs when he says that Microsoft has no taste. But after watching this documentary my respect for Bill Gates and Microsoft have grown a little.

I enjoyed watching this documentary and found it interesting how all these nerds could build such an empire. The documentary really showed the backside of the revolution and made it somewhat on a more personal level. Seeing these people and companies competing against each other shows the dark side of the PC birth, stealing ideas and exploiting each other to the fullest. You can also see how the Microsoft became so popular by taking their old DOS interface and putting a GUI in front of it and by doing so it became popular with both new users and the old users. Microsoft played the field in a smart way and even though they may not have any taste they do have a great business plan.

The documentary really sums up the revolutionary era of the computer and gives an informative yet easy overview of what went down. I applaud the nerds for making me such a great toy so that I today can write this blog and do so many great things in a very simple way, thank you!