Wikipedia (Group 6)

A friend told me that wiki means "what I know is..." this sounds better than the other explanation :) Although I am not a heavy user of Wikipedia, the idea of Wiki is now getting so popular that it is almost impossible not to notice it. Now I have to use wiki at work - work logs, internal notices, schedules, etc. And I also created a wiki for my group project for this class. Wiki is a wonderful tool for collaboration, only on condition that everyone pays attention, be responsible, and change their habbit a little bit. Wikipedia also depends on the sense of responsibility of its contributors. In this sense, it is very similar to the nature of the accumulation of human knowledge. But in the wiki era, the accumulation and knowledge sharing is more open and free. Personally, I do see the Wikipedia (or the whole Web 2.0) as a great achievement of man kind.

Open Source (Group 5)

The Open Source movement is a really interesting topic. Thanks to it, I am able to use a lot of useful and cheap and compact pieces of software. In my opinion, there are two topics directly related to the Open Source movement: 1)digital divide, 2) monopoly. The prices of software in the United States might be OK for many domestic consumers, but when you think of the developing countries, it is a completely different matter. Why piracy is so prevalent in developing countries? Why using pirated software is almost normal in some countries? It is not that they don't want to buy them, they just cannot afford them. And they do need them... The big software companies in the United States do produce excellent products, but not for everyone. If there is a digital divide, the companies are enlarging it with high prices and non-discrimating prices. Programmers who support the Open Source movement really give a chance to many people in the world and also prevent monopoly.

Professional journalism vs amateur blogging (Group Four)

Since I basically knew nothing about journalism, this topic is fairly new to me and I've thought about such an issue. I think it really matters who are doing the news blogging. As a classmate pointed out, most of the bloggers are recording their daily lives. These blogging activities are far from journalism. The examples and case studies given by the group are really good, but it seemed to me that many of them still happened in the professional journalism field. A lot of the people are not really "amateur" in this sense. To really understand what is going on in the blog world, a lot more studies should be done, a lot more questions should be asked.

DMCA (Group Three)

This topic involves too many debates and issues. As a result, the ten-munute presentation was actually harder for me than some other half-hour presentations. Our group had to choose very carefully what to include in this presentation and what not to. For me, I had to prepare a long time because I had to learn to speak very fast to as to cover all the things that seemed important to my part. It's a pity that some of the issues were not covered in the presentation and the last three parts were just a big rush. And we didn't even have a chance to let the class to discuss. I think the Fandom topic discussed by Rebecca is really new and interesting to me. Here I also see the openness of the American academia - such a topic would never (at least for now) appear in an academic journal in my country. But anyway, we do have more urgent and important things to solve.

Net Neutrality (Group Two)

Group Two did an excellent job presenting and discussing this topic in class. Net neutrality is something that I hadn't heard about at all before class. It is really hard to decide which side should one stand for. I feel like we, as average people, are still outsiders in this battle between Network companies and ISPs. The term "Net Neutrality" gives people an impression of equality and freedom. It calls for a free market on the Internet. But according to the ISPs and other opponents, it is not - it conceals the potential charges on the consumers. Which one is more reasonable? We really need to look into the interest and drives of both sides. After listening to Group Two's interpretation and analysis, I think the worries from Google etc are not unreasonable: if the ISP becomes monology, there is such a danger that they charge fees from the Internet companies. Actually, now, I basically have no choice but to use charter's cable services. But there are other ways to prevent them from happening other than just calling for the technological equality, which will not do any good to the existing digial divide. Free market? We still have to watch on the ISPs. I just don't trust them so much.

USA Patriot Act (group one)

The USA Patriot Act has been a real headache for us international students. It might be fine with students from developed countries and areas, but definitely had a negative effect on students from the developing countries like my country. I still remember the year when a lot of good students were refused to enter the US after the 911 affair. It's understandable that a country should do so to fight with the terrorists, but is this the ultimate method? Actually, I think in other countries this kind of act probably will not draw so much attention and debates, but in this country, freedom is no fundamental that people have to think about what it really means.