Privacy & Convenience

Privacy and covenience is always the relationship of inverse proportion. To gain more convenience, you have to give up more privacy. For example, social-networking software called Visible Path takes into account the strength of relationships, so it considers the number of e-mails the workers exchanged. It argues that it never check the content of e-mail, but to improve its function, it should consider the content of e-mails. Without caring about the content, it values a very important business e-mail as equally as an e-mail sent by mistake. The content of e-mail is important factors to decide the strength of relationships. Checking the content of e-mails is necessary for the convenience, but it means less privacy.

Another example is Amazon.com's personalization. It gives the recommendation list, and it is based on users' purchase records. It is very useful function, but it means that Amazon.com keeps the record of purchase by every customer who has their accounts. Remaining record of purchase may be uncomfortable for some users. Again, it is the problem of privacy.

There are much more examples, such as Google Earth, Google Desktop Search, etc. They are all convenient, but privacy issue always involves. As Ghahremani mentions, "people have widely different notions of what's invasive". How far users and service providers compromise on privacy is difficult issue.

Experience in ITEC-333

I recommend ITEC-333 class not only because of the class discussion, but also because of hands-on experience. It is very useful to have hands-on experience of many tools especially after I learned how significant influence they have. Creating my own blog and learning its significance at the same time is a good example of it. Other than blog, I experienced many tools such as RSS, network analysis, wiki, social bookmarking,SEO, social news, etc. They are useful and important tools in today's Web world. In addition, most of these tools are for free, so you will get a lot of benefit from learnig these tools.

I won't recommend this class to those who are not interested in social networking and have allergy to computer. It is not very difficult to utilize these tools, but you have to deal with computer anyway. So if you can't endure facing to face with computer screen, you should not take this class. Except such cases, I strongly recommend this class.

Government & IT. Hope or Threat?

Some of the reading for this week mention dual nature of technology. Many people think technology make the world better, but it can be threat. Like McGovern said, "technology is neutral". Since technology has developed rapidly and has huge influence on society, it will be a nightmare if government misuse technology.

It reminds me two stories related to technology and government. The first story is about USA PATRIOT act. It was established after 9/11 and gave the US government the right to access private information. The government can gain the information about what we searched, what we clicked, what we sent by e-mail, etc. Such records remain on Internet service providers or search engines such as Google. It was established to prevent terrorism, but the government can abuse its power, so the privacy issue became a big concern.

The second story is about Google and the Chinese government. Since China is big market and the government demand to eliminate some Web sites, which are adverse to its interest, from the search results, Google accepted the censorship of its search results. Therefore, some Web sites which can be searched by Google in the US cannot be searched by Google in China. The number of Web pages today are enormous and everyone use search engines to find Web pages, so not appearing on search results is almost same as not existing.

If government can control some IT companies, it may be able to control all information. If it abuses its power, it will be horrible.

Online game and its problems

Online game become popular these days. Its connectivity with other players makes it more interesting. However, its connectivity can cause several problems.

First problem is its security. Since it is exposed to outside Web world, it can suffer for computer crimes such as DoS attack. Network problem of Final Fantasy 11 was caused by DDoS attack. Offline games don't have such problems because they work in their individual machines. Like usual Web services, it will be the semi permanent competition between computer criminals and online game companies. Therefore, this problem is hard to solve.

Second problem is Real-Money Trading (RMT). It is the problem that players of online games trade the imaginary currency in games with real money. It is also impossible in offline games because they have no means to interact its data with other software's data. Since online games started to involve real money, RMT can bring more fraud in online games. In addition, other players can be disturbed by those who involve RMT.

Third problem is how to charge the fee. Due to these days price competition, some companies moved from monthly fee system. They started the new system that players will be charged when they purchase in-game currency or some items with free connection. It sounds creative system, but one's wealth can influence how well players can play in this system. It may be inappropriate for original purpose of games.


In addition, although it may be same as offline game, some people are addicted to online games. One guy in Korea died because he keep playing online game for 86 hours in Internet cafe. Similar accident happened in some other countries, so be careful.