The Study of Virtual World - Literature review Example

no. Introduction In general terms, knowledge can be defined as the acquisition of information, facts and expertisein a given subject or discipline, through experience, association or education. Knowledge can be owned and coded via writing alphabets differently, using numerical equivalents or using an entirely unknown language to form passwords. People code knowledge to ensure that their secrets do not end up in the hands of people who might damage or abuse their personal information. Woolley (pp.109) states that, at present, global economy is being driven by knowledge and many players in this field are in a rush to own knowledge economically. This has been fueled by governments giving patents to web companies to privatize knowledge, thereby, giving them the mandate to own knowledge. Frequent innovations on how to own knowledge often lead to people being limited to certain knowledge content, while being restricted from accessing alternative knowledge. This often leads to knowledge monopoly by the big companies such as Google and face book. Analysts predict that if this trend continues, the public will lose access to crucial information, thus undermining their democratic right to access information. Democracy in this sense implying the public’s right to access information, freedom of expression and speech, while not undermining press freedom. As a result, people will then start fighting over knowledge ownership and this will in turn affect everyday life, as this will lead to inflation of material containing knowledge. Consequently, the social, economic, and political lives of the society will be affected all in the name of knowledge ownership. Knowledge privatization in context In his work, “The Filter Bubble”, Pariser (pp.219) gives an account of how knowledge personalization has affected information distribution on the internet. The filter bubble refers to the privatization of information on the internet, which shapes the content a person sees, as well as what content he/she does not see. The use of algorithms to discriminatingly choose what to show users is what kills online democracy according to Pariser. For instance, Google started customizing each user’s search results, such that, it can predict what one wants to search when they click on it. This is accomplished depending on a user’s search history. Pariser (pp.230) gives an example of how he asked two friends to Google search “BP”. The search yielded 180 million results for one friend, while the other person got 139 million. Similarly, one got more information on investment issues concerning BP in the search results, while the other’s search results yielded more information on the BP oil spill. The explanation for this occurrence is that, such companies as Google, compile a profile of someone, using the personal information such a person gives them, to predict such a person’s interests and preferences. Manovich (pp.275) terms this as “broadcasting of one’s every life” in his attempt to explain the privatization of knowledge. Through this theory, Manovich argues that social sites compete to have the highest number of users visit them, so that such companies can make maximum profit. After these users have given out information about themselves, they are given the mandate to customize their online existence by controlling what they want to see. When this is done, the company then starts advertising the products they think might interest a user when they click on their search button. Consequently, a buyer often buys what has been recommended to them, other than search until they find what they need in actual fact. The market economy, therefore, benefits directly from knowledge personalization, as people buy more and more customized products. Another example is face book which takes into account user personal interests and prioritizes the information it gives them accordingly. Pariser (pp.244) argues that user democratic right to acquire information is denied in such sites as face book. He gives the example of someone who is a conservative and who only clicks on the links of other conservatives. Such a person, he argues, though he/she may have liberal friends, might never see the updates of the latter. This is because face book lets a person see the updates of those people it deems closest to them, judging by earlier interactions. This kind of information filters leave us in a make-believe world, where everything is the way we want. People thus become oblivious of the issues and dangers of the real world (Pariser, pp.244). People, therefore, form their own cocoons of knowledge and live in a society where everyone they interact with shares their thoughts and beliefs. By giving such sites as face book your personal details; it renders one vulnerable to exploitation by advertisers who use this information without your consent. This is a violation of one’s democratic rights, since it limits the democratic trade of ideas. Marks (pp.68) terms the privatization of knowledge without the user’s content as a form of “invisible media”. Here, the user has no idea that their personal data has been used to create a profile that filters what content they see. Most state and corporate web sites have very poor in formation disclosure, a practice Marks terms as “enfolding”. Commercial web sites place “cookies” on users’ hard drives so as to survey the patterns of information usage (Marks, pp.82). This is the same way in which viruses enter computers and make known the relationship between computers and users. These viruses can decode a user’s entire password and start controlling the operations of the system, hence disabling the user from using their system. Hackers have also decoded these passwords and impersonated the real users and sometimes engaged in illegal activities. As a result of feeding us with the information they consider relevant to us, we are denied other news that could spark a person’s imagination and lead them to critique their views. The result of this will be close mindedness, and the deliberative death of democracy, with information we gathered in the past being the basis for future news. According to Pariser (pp.143), in a democratic society, citizens see things from one another’s standpoint. Personalization has undermined the original purpose of the internet, which was to provide an open stage for people to exchange ideas. He says that the technology designed to enable people control their lives is the very technology that takes away this control, because the user gets less information than they deserve. Lovink (pp.185) wonders how a user can become a web architect and not a mere subject of web operators. The web, according to Pariser (pp.178), should be like an assortment of cultures and information, with no one to help a user find it. This way, a person using the internet is able to access varied information and choose which alternative to use, while also learning new things. Lovink (pp.169) argues that over the internet, democracy is being preached, but not being exercised. Tactical media according to (Lovink, pp.173) will lead us to a world where ideas are traded freely all over the world without any filters. However, the freedom of ideas and information has been curtailed in these social sites. Manovich (pp. 330) says that by 2008, there was a shift from majority user accessing information formulated by a small number of professionals, to user accessing information produced by other amateur users. Many companies according to Manovich have come up with the Do It Yourself (DIY) concept as a marketing strategy, where users customize their preferences. The web has gone to an extreme where personal opinions can no longer be separated from facts, especially in blogs. Reading too many of these blogs may lead a person to believe the blogs are actually factual and thus end up deceived. Here, the freedom of expression is exercised but can also be abused at times, not to mention that if a blog is considered offensive; it is deleted without the blogger’s consent. This freedom of the press to censor information is what kills online democracy and ends up determining the way a given society operates. As Pariser (pp. 18), explains, media structure determines how a society is structured. Many companies as stated by Woolley (pp.218) use virtual memory as a means of recovering data more quickly and efficiently. This means that through virtual memory, when a user clicks on a link, even before they are through typing, information on a related subject has already popped up. Based on her theory of commons and enclosures, Kidd (pp. 56) states that most companies have privatized cyber space for their own selfish gains. They have achieved this by controlling the flow of information through fees, advertisements and subscriptions. These advertisements and subscriptions are major sources of government income, with cable systems in the United States accounting to about 36.5 percent of total government revenue. This is probably why even politicians rely on the internet to conduct campaigns and popularize themselves. Most web sites are owned by a bourgeoisie minority who buy these sites from their original founders. The user usually has no idea that the ownership of such a site has changed hands and he/she continues to operate normally. On the acquisition of these sites, the bourgeoisies then personalize any information flowing through their sites. Consequently, users are exploited to the maximum, and this allows the civil society to control the economic, social, political, and environmental sectors of the society (Pariser, pp.122). This trend has angered many activists who fight against the ownership and privatization of knowledge. Many cyber activists argue that information is free and should, therefore, be shared and distributed freely, thus leading to the democratization of knowledge. They argue that access to information is a basic human right and should be upheld by all stakeholders in the media industry. The Independent Media Centre in Seattle is one of the corporations that are against the privatization of knowledge and advocate for equal access of information to all. Google’s privatization of knowledge through e-books is an excellent idea, but what happens if one day Google decides not to distribute this information with the public. With paper companies decreasing in number, print copies of books are on a steady decline and soon all information will be accessed via e-books. What if a company decides since it has the power, to delete some of the contents in these e-books? That would amount to privatization of knowledge and the denial of information access to the public. It is worrying that a single company could privatize universal knowledge. For instance, Microsoft has been pulling away from digitization thus leaving Google and Amazon as the only sources of e-knowledge. The latter, of course, has a much smaller library compared to Google; therefore, Google will be the only source and filter of world knowledge. Conclusion The privatization of knowledge as seen from the foregoing, is detrimental to basic democratic rights, in as far as knowledge acquisition is concerned. Accordingly, Eli Pariser proposes some corrective measures to ensure the free distribution of knowledge worldwide. He urges companies to be more straightforward about their filtering schemes by showing users when and where filters are operational. Users should also be educated on how these filters work and how they can be managed on their personal profiles. These companies should also strive to show more content on the home pages of their users that promote citizenship and critical global issues, which are outside the user’s normal areas of interest. On the side of governments, Pariser advices them to push companies into giving web users power over their private information. This essentially means that a user should be able to know who uses his/her personal information, for what purpose, how secure it is, and if the information is incorrect, the user should be in a position to correct it. Finally, users are advised to clear cookies from their systems, thereby hindering anyone from tracking their search history and creating a personal data based on these cookies. As Pariser proposes, an agency should be set up to ensure that in the quest to own knowledge, companies do not personalize this knowledge, and end up destroying democracy completely. Works cited Benjamin Woolley. Virtual worlds: a journey in hype and hyperreality. New York: Benjamin Woolley. (1993). Eli, Pariser. The Filter Bubble: What The Internet Is Hiding From You. New York: Penguin Books. (2011) Geert, Lovink. Zero Comments; Kernels of Critical Internet Culture. New York: Routledge. (2007) Kidd, Dorothy. A New Communications Commons. New York: Routledge. (2002) Laura Marks. New Media: theories and practices of digitextuality. New York: Routledge. (2003) Lev, Manovich. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (2001) Read More