Microsoft attacks Google as a Monopoly

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2011/03/microsofts-antitrust-argument-and-after/36237/
Recently Microsoft has decided to turn the tables and attack Google as a monopoly. The reason for this comes after the European Union Commission blame Microsoft for the same reasons. I guess no one in the corporate world likes to lose and they tend to point the finger at those who can become a future threat to their corporate world. Microsoft recently is losing their competition against corporations such as Apple and Google in terms of advancement.

Google WiFi Going to Kansas City and other ideas

Recently, we discussed in class how Google introduced WiFi to the area of San Francisco. Nothing is free in this country and the only purpose of Google was to promote their advertising marketing for their own profit. How were they going to profit from this? Allowing local businesses to advertise is the whole new market idealism on the internet. Yet, Google is thinking to expand this idea to other areas that are worth it to their company. I don't think Kansas City is a big of a place, but is all about sponsorship. Following Tuesday's class, sponsorship is another way to promote a company's brand to consumers. This is not a new strategy but an old one. Is the whole idea of capitalism. How necessary is this type of marketing? In a world where the United States has become a modern type of empire, we have military places in every continent of the world. However, this is not the only way to promote our imperialistic ideas to the world as acting as the World's Police or the Savior of the World that comes to promote democracy.
     Furthermore, this new modernize world wants something different: capitalism. Maybe not the entire idea of capitalism, but a type of mix economy where private corporations give what the consumers want. Many have stopped relying on the government for help, but their reliance has moved towards these companies that give billions to charities. The Bill Gates Foundation is an example of former CEO of Microsoft, Bill Gates, to invest his entire wealth on new science and technology to help developing countries to combat poverty and diseases. In the end, the person who will be profiting from this is going to be Bill Gates. I won't deny this strategy works, it works perfectly well. I received a Microsoft Scholarship not too long ago together with a laptop and $8,000 for my tuition. This scholarship not only made me happy, but I felt like Microsoft was my savior at that moment. I just wanted to be part of Team Microsoft and not Apple. Since then, I bought a new laptop, and guess what? It was a Microsoft Windows laptop. What I'm trying to emphasize is that our government promotes democracy through military and we see private U.S corporations promoting our economic system through all of their charity work and sponsorship.
Obviously since the death of the Soviet communism, the two optional economic system was brought just to one.  As of now, it has worked well for many developing nations. Nevertheless, the government has to come to an agreement to try to separate themselves from the economy (except in the case of China into some extent).
Movements.org is not only a not-for-profit organization that is trying to change the political landscape through new technology in areas where our nation has an interest of being there. Going back to the whole idea of Google expanding their free WiFi to different U.S cities, let's remember that Google already might have plans to expand these ideas to other areas around the world. Even though private corporations tend to help combat certain issues having their own interest in mind, it always becomes an unstoppable cycle. Many people are suffering because of this capitalist system, and private industries try to show the other side of the coin by saying they care, which in certain cases they do help, but not completely.  This is another way to promote capitalist ideas to the world.

March 24 Class

• government uses fear for capitalism
• Fear of being used as a marketing strategy and move people towards self-surveillance. 
• Politicians are listening to what we want, but they change their message toward us and they won't change their policy
• Their policy still remains the predetermined interest
• They still trying to target their message subliminally to the audience. 
• This becomes anti-democratic
•  Government creating fear over people by wiretapping their phones (China is a perfect example)
• China wiretaps the phones and use some type of algorithm in order to maintain fear over their people or prevent any protests against the government. If a certain person says a few words repeatedly that becomes a threat to their government, their phones are completely shut down. 

  Companies that install security systems in a house many times try to create an advertisement that creates fear over people. Such fear then drives people to buy such security systems which gathers data that is collected by these companies.  I do agree with Andrejevic with such ideas because this is more or less a profitable war. From Boeing and Lockheed Martin making billions by creating military jets to private corporations installing surveillance cameras within their range and making millions out of it, we have become a nation where Uncle Sam is actually watching us everywhere. Even Google has the street view software within their webpage. 

March 24 Class

What I tried to post was a list of points are class discussed. We began discussing what to do first whether or not use facebook or record our class. Personally, I was thinking whether or not to post comments in your post and maybe be one of the ways to keep you updated. However, then I realized it will be better to post on my blog what was really happening and what we really thought about today's class and the readings. It took us at least or less than 10 minutes to figure out what to do. Blogging and discussing at the same time was quite difficult. It wasn't harmful since I decided to take notes while discussing then a few minutes after, I posted some ideas of the discussions.

Live!!! March 24 class

Chapter 6 of iSpy

Points:

• Turn the war effort into this profitable war. How? After the 9/11, corporations took an opportunity to sell products that will make people feel secure. All of this became the opposite by selling products that monitor what we do. 
• In order not be afraid, you need to be prepared. 
• Tendency for people in contemporary times to be afraid of the world in general where it pushes people to join ridiculous communities where they have so many rules such as not playing loud music or not to be outside after certain hours during the night. 
• Private companies, many times are in charge of creating such places with an increased of surveillance
• Sometimes, communities like this push us away from reality, on what is really happening outside our communities
• Iraq war is an interactive war to create fear on people in order to ease the minds of the people and get private information
• We don't know the real source of terrorism
• People who are in caves are actually using all of the technology that we're using: cameras, internet, cell phones and what not
• We think they oppose us because our modernness, but is quite the opposite  
• When we end up in such country, terrorism expands and we create more people to attack us

Chapter 7

• Nixon and wiretapping 
• It was a big deal during such times and now almost the same thing happen during the George W. Bush administration
• The Bush Administration was accused of wiretapping, but we actually ignore it 
• Technology is used by politicians to gain more voters 
• If politicians had access to private corporations data from individuals, then they can campaign in a certain area to gain more votes
• Why is technology wrong to be used by politicians? What about us monitoring?
• They are given us (allowing) a certain limited right to monitor certain things, but not everything
• We don't know what politicians are really doing, we know a few things but not everything
• We can do some surveillance over a community, but we don't have control over it

Live!!! March 24 class

WE'RE GOING INSANE NOW!!!! Well, many of us just read Dean's blog realizing that she (you) won't be here. Everyone is here and no absence at all. But 10 minutes after, we're about to start discussing the two chapters for today.

Part 2 iSpy

 This is still part of the discussion of the first two chapters of iSpy. Our class discussion yesterday brought an interesting point from Andrejevic on how interactivity actually doesn’t mean democratization because we are still stuck with the whole notion and promise that technology will address all the basic human needs (pg 9). Interactivity becomes part of a new type of a digital capitalism that leads to free labor. Why is free labor necessary for the new type of capitalism? Well, competition is still a big deal; however, the system of competition will shift from individualism to more to the mass.  The mass or the consumers are the ones that can shape the future of a company. This has always being the case, but now the consumer has the chance to participate more in shaping the marketing system.

Why interaction is not democratization? The false belief of technology being the hope of the future is bogus to some extent; however, the reason for this is because what controls us is not only what technology has become, but who is controlling it: marketers and state institutions.  Today, our privacy is being used for profit by some marketers. If a person logs in to a webpage and wants to know the information about a certain individual, a company might have all the results from where you live to all the things that you like.  I put myself in such line as well, but as one of the almost two billion users who have internet access, we are the ones creating this new age.  The interaction between us (users) and computers is that we are invited to participate in such a digital world where it leads many (without realizing) to be exploited or in other terms as described in class, we are creating our own jails while enjoying it at the same time.

I don’t have anything to hide; therefore, I have nothing to fear if everything is known about me.  But, there’s always that “but,” we need to create a line between our “real” life and our “digital” life.  According to Andrejevic, our embracement to our digital form of life continues to expand. I guess it should be time for many of us to embrace it as well, including myself.   As Americans, our short-term oriented society is only focused on how the past actions will affect our present decisions.  Technology has come to the moment where it has changed our economy and our government.

In terms of government surveillance, I’m not afraid of the government to extend their power in order to maintain this nation safe.  Nevertheless, Benjamin Franklin once said that those who are willing to give up their liberty for security deserve neither and will be able to lose both.  It is not that our digital era doesn’t give us freedom, but every century, the meaning of the word freedom should be interpreted differently.  The freedom of speech? It has well change during the last two decades. Over the last few months, we have seen how the webpage Wikileaks is actually trying to do with such freedom. This has caused the government to react to the point where we start thinking that the threat can come from within the own government.   The Patriot Act is a perfect example on the necessary actions the government is taking for “national security.” 

The author points out how there needs to be a line between the state and marketing.  Such line has being crossed by the government several times for national security reasons. If someone decides to buy a bunch of unknown powder from some unknown store, the government takes action thinking that such person will use it to create bombs.  Marketers have our information and begin to share it with the government in order to look for suspects.  Even though I wrote about having nothing to hide, the U.S Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protects American citizens from unreasonable search and seizures.  Over the last decade, this line has being crossed many times.  Is it time to begin interpreting or change the Supreme Law of the land? 

Part 1 iSpy

             Have we lost control on how information is shared? Into some extent we have become part of a digital and interactive culture that has expanded to the point of even calling our 21^st century the Information Era.  Our 21^st century has changed how information is shared between a regular citizen, the private industry and state institutions.  Privacy becomes extinct for some since it is known that marketers gather so much information about an individual than such person would have expected.  This information is gathered without our consent because we have opened our networks to these marketing companies to do it in a blink of an eye.  Google, the perfect example given in the reading gathers information of a person by locating where an individual is and advertising local stores.

               This has become a problem of the 21^st century. The entire belief of privacy disappears when we start interacting with such network.  This becomes an exception when the state takes action. For example, the Patriot Act gives the government authority to use surveillance in order to gather information about individuals to protect our nation or in other words for national security.  In terms of national security, the more information is gathered, the more protected our country is.  However, to maintain our nation safe, many privacy rights had to be violated.  Cell phone companies giving information to the government about certain individuals.

               The power that persists today over individuals from state institutions and marketers has caused a new change of our lives.  People begin to ignore how necessary their privacy is and begin to share it with everyone.  Social network sites can tell everyone where someone is by just pressing one button.  If I decide to open my browser and log in to my Yahoo page, it can tell me where I’m located and it immediately gives me local news with some advertisements.  My cell phone, if the map app is open it can tell me the exact location.  We’re not changing technology, technology is changing us.  We have become more ignorant over the last decade in terms of privacy.  Nevertheless, the issue of privacy has become something we have lost control of.  Now our lives belong to marketers and the government.