Week 5: Lecture

This lecture began with a discussion on Social Media and Web 2.0 and then become more somber as a slide titled Identity Play was shown. This slide seemed to strike a chord with most of the students who knew just how true it was. You could be anyone online. The following video helps to prove that point.


I’m sure most of the students doing this course use MSN and networking sites to chat to friends and stay in touch with them but some also use it to meet new people which is dangerous as the video shows. MSN offers people the chance to be someone they are not. This could be as harmless as being less shy online then you would be face to face or maybe it’s a little more then that. People need to remember that as fun and interesting as the Internet can be it can also be very harmful and unsafe.

Another interesting topic that was mentioned was who owns the stuff you put online? Is it you or the website that you have that information on? This topic was looked at when considering Facebook. Facebooks owns what you put onto their site whether that’s your photos, status updates or anything else. Even after you leave the site you have not actually left it. It uses a cache to store your information for an unknown period of time. Scary huh? You think once you go your stuff goes with you but in this case it doesn’t. It is still there for Facebook and others to see and use.

This lecture was the most interesting so far because it made me think about my privacy and whether I actually want people to have access to my pictures and others things that I have on Facebook. I don’t agree with Facebook’s policy on this but that doesn’t mean I will delete my account and stop joining networking sites. I guess its up to you to decide whether you’re okay with that. They allow you to make an account for free so that you can stay in touch with friends and family and share your photos and in return you give up your privacy and personal photos. Is it really worth it? I’m still deciding.