Benkler

1. I agree with both Kacie and Heather. Kacie, to say that the most interesting development of information on the web is autonomy, and Heather because I, as well, think that we are sort of "under a magnifying glass" when we are online. Although I agree with both, I think autonomy is a much more massive PLUS that it outweighs everything you’re doing being watched and scrutinized. Benkler states it so well when he writes “individuals can do more for themselves independently of the permission or cooperation of others”. That, to me, is the overall best improvement of our society and it just so happens that the privilege of doing things on your own and without another’s permission or opinion cam through the invention and evolution of the internet. We can do anything on the web nowadays. We can upload pictures of anything, record video of our own opinions, edit web pages, and even write blogs like this one with the thoughts of ourselves and (when all goes right) nobody can take that away from us. We decide. That is a HUGE development that the entire world can take advantage of, and in turn, creating more of a democracy and the one thing we stand for, being a freedom-based country.

2. The social network sphere is rapidly growing and producing ways to transmit information in a variety of ways on the internet. One that I find most interesting isn’t facebook, or other social networking sites; it’s Google. Things like Google and Yahoo have hundreds of ways to send out your own and search for other’s information. An example of this in the best form is Yahoo Answers. Anyone can post a question on Yahoo and anyone can answer it. This means contact and conversation from another human. That contributes to social networking. After writing that efforts available via the web have led to the emergence of coordinate effects, Benkler states “One needs only to run a Google search on any subject of interest to see how the […] response to one’s query is produced by the coordinate effects and the uncoordinated actions of a wide and diverse range of individuals and organizations acting on a wide range of motivations […]".

3. One example of social networking that I’ve personally experienced was for a class I took last year. The class was online. The lectures were online, the notes were online, and we got points for participating online. It was done through eLearning on the UNI website. We would be graded on whether we left comments in the section that was deemed the “discussion board” and we would learn everything by watching lectures on our own computer screen. We even took the tests online. They were timed sessions so it was like you were in class. I’m not surprised that we have classes online, but some people go to universities that aren’t even in the state that they live in and get an entire degree online. That amazes me.