Oct 13

Week 6 – What are the effects of NFTs on the Internet? Are they good or bad?

An NFT is basically a new type of digital asset. An Example of that is basically if an author was to sell the writings to his story as an NFT, if he was to do so he could never alter this story but the person who owns it now who has an NFT can change the narrative. I believe that this is a bad thing because it messes up the artwork that people fell in love with. For example the infamous video of “Charlie Bit My finger” was removed from YouTube because it was sold for $760,999 by the family so they had to remove the original video. I believe that that has taken a piece of my childhood especially for my generation. It is also very overvalued for a video that was made in 3 minutes to have sold for thousands of dollars. For example one NFT sold for 69 Million dollars “Everydays: The First 5,000 Days” by Beeple, a 41-year-old illustrator from Wisconsin, was a collage of 5,000 images”. One thing people love about NFT’s is in the article “What Are NFTs And Are They Here To Stay? “June 30, 2021, Tyler Gallagher, it states “The difference is it’s cryptographically authenticated, meaning the author or creator is verified within an immutable and unchangeable digital record. That is one of the main reasons why people love NFTs is because it is unique, it is not like a regular JPEG file. You can copy off the internet.

One benefit I can say about NFTs is that “NFTs remove the burden of having to hire third-party authenticators to verify whether a collectible is truly genuine. This helps create less of a hassle to verify your artwork through different parties. In my opinion I would say they aren’t good because NFTs aren’t a known thing to the public so many may get confused or scammed. Some NFTs might not be owned by the seller you are trying to buy it from and many don’t have legal documentation. Whether business for NFTs is unknown at the moment since we don’t know what the demand will look like in the future I do know that there will be many more coins in the future to come.

Oct 12

Why do people create content online? What drives them to post, tag, and follow?

There is a vast multitude of reasons for someone to create content online. One inherent and consistent fact of doing this is that it is done for people online to see and view. Every other reason for or aspect of online content creation is malleable. One might create content online as an expression of themselves, to find community with like-minded individuals, to bring entertainment to others to spread a certain message,  and countless other reasons. Another massive aspect of online content creation is that all of the reasons mentioned above and more can be monetized online, leading to a possible job.

However, even if you’re not monetizing your content online, what drives people to post, tag and follow on every social media sites is the serotonin and dopamine rush that comes with watching follower, subscriber, and like counts rise. Social media is a large source of validation for younger people who are lonelier than ever.  The corporations behind these sites are away of their influence and design their algorithms in ways that keep people addicted to social media statistics.

Oct 12

A Week Without Google/Facebook – Blog 2

My initial reaction to seeing this assignment was that it would be relatively easy to go one week without using Google/Facebook. I haven’t had a Facebook account in years and I thought I could consciously go a week without googling something. But what broke this initial expectation was the realization that the grasp of Facebook and Google as rival corporations stretch far further throughout several different massive industries including technological, communicative, and media industries. 

In truth, I would be unable to complete this challenge properly. While it was easy to not use Facebook, I had to remember not to use Instagram either, which is owned by Facebook. Instagram is not my social media platform of choice but instead one I open sparingly to see specific, sparingly posted content or see friends. My short usage of this app made it easy to ignore for a week, but I did feel a sense of anticipation for seeing the content I had missed during this challenge. 

What really made this challenge impossible was the fact that my main email account that I use for all my important emails is a Gmail account. Going one week without using that email account was an idea I dreaded, considering all the information I would miss out on and late emails that would need to be sent. While my Lehman email would suffice for keeping up with my classes, everything else goes through that Gmail account and the idea of not using it for a week makes me very nervous. 

Alongside the email is YouTube, which I use daily as my main form of entertainment. Where many people watch Netflix or Cable daily, I watch content from my favorite creators on YouTube. Google purchased YouTube in 2006 for 1.65 billion dollars, meaning I had to go a week without YouTube which is an idea that is anything but relaxing. When switching to Netflix or Funimation to find something new to watch, when I couldn’t choose something I would switch to YouTube out of habit.

Had Facebook been the only company involved in this experiment, I most likely would have been able to complete without much hassle (unless Facebook made some acquisitions that I’m not aware of). But with Google services like Gmail and YouTube being such major presences in my daily life means i failed this challenge. Just attempting it made me anxious and that illustrates the extent to which these major corporations play a role in your life, and how they profit off of you.

Oct 12

NFTs

Without having read the content I’d say that NFT’s have a negative effect on the Internet. Intrinsically I think they are neither. However, this is affected by society and as a result becomes good or bad in relation to the user of the token. After having read the article “What Are NFT’s And Are They Here To Stay” by Tyler Gallagher, my opinion of NFTs and their effects on the internet has completely changed. NFTs are very usable and have a vast amount of possible applications. I have found the best feature to be the fact that it essentially removes “the burden of having to hire third-party authenticators to verify whether a collectible is truly genuine”. This in turn can lower the cost of NFTs while making the process faster as it would be directly from product to customer. However, in their entirety NFTs aren’t currently good as they’re not fulfilling their intended role. A role which was in “enabling artists to exercise control over their work, to more easily sell it, to more strongly protect against others appropriating it without permission” as stated by Anil Dash in his article “NFTs Weren’t Supposed to End Like This.

Oct 12

What are the effects of NFTs on the Internet? Are they good or bad?

Technology is progressing at a fast pace. It comes as no surprise to me that artwork can now be digitalized using NFT. NFTs, in my opinion, have both advantages and disadvantages and can be utilized for both good and negative purposes. It is dependent on the intended application of the NFT. NFT appears to be the new way that people are purchasing and selling art; it could be viewed as a fad, but it could also be viewed as a novel and imaginative way to sell and make art. Many people, like Bitcoin, did not believe in it and predicted that it would fade away quickly, but it is now increasing at a rapid rate every day.If used properly, I believe NFT can have the same impact as Bitcoin. It is said in the article that “NFTs can be utilized as artworks whose authenticity can be verified without a centralized authority. That alone is a novel innovation that I think lends the asset class real legitimacy.” NFTs can also be used for collectible investments, virtual reality objects, in-game purchases, and collectable investments. The disadvantages of NFTs are the frauds perpetrated by people, such as not knowing who the genuine seller is, purchasing from a phony online auction site, purchasing NFTs that transfer ownership but are not fully yours, and so on. As I previously indicated, NFTs can be a novel and imaginative way for people to sell artwork, or they can be a passing craze that won’t endure long. It all relies on how NFTs are received by the general people.

Oct 11

Crowd Sourcing – a useful marketing strategy

Crowd sourcing is best defined as a process that consist of collecting information, data, and opinions from various large groups of individuals in the internet, the people involved can be paid or unpaid depending on the circumstances at hand. The groups of people that are involved with crowd sourcing are typically used to help companies with services that involve voting or small tasks that when the conclusions are gathered together may give companies the answers they have been looking for. A great example would be lays, as mentioned in class the potato chip company Lays gave consumers the opportunity to also become producers by creating their own creative flavor in which if chosen by a high number of voters would be officially made by lays and sold on the shelves, what did this do ? this in fact gave Lays the opportunity to connect with their consumers while also giving them new flavor ideas to keep the company relevant in the potato chip market. the beauty of this is in fact that this was all done online, this reminds me of a statement made by author Constance Gustke in the article “crowd sourcing to get ideas & perhaps save money”; The statement says ” some of the best business ideas are inspired by others” . In this case, Lays chose to allow their consumers to express ideas on a new flavor for the potato chip brand which in the end proved to be a successful experiment since it saved the company time AND money. Crowd sourcing is changing the labor on the internet by allowing consumers to also become producers by doing what consumers do on a regular for free regardless and that is by using an electronic device to access the internet.

Oct 08

NFTs

The effects of NFTs on the internet have been a mixture of both good and bad. For starters, you may be wondering “what are NFTs?” Well, in simple terms, NFTs are non-fungible tokens, tokens that are digital and one of a kind. Sources of audio, video, and picture, sometimes drawings and music that have been designed to give you ownership of your work while also ensuring that they will not be copied. Anil Dash, author of NFT’s Weren’t Supposed to End Like This, says, “ The only thing we wanted to do was ensure that artists could make some money and have control over their work…But these changes left creators at the mercy of companies far more powerful, far more ruthless, and far less accountable.” The existence of NFTs while changing issues of distribution and selling for artists, have put those same artists in difficult situations consisting of copyright and obtaining control over their work and merchandise. However, NFTs have also helped those artists and influencers make a larger income, form and maintain connections, and market themselves. Prior to this advancement many artists were posting their work online, which gained them recognition, but not profit. Apps like Pinterest and Tumblr were used by art and art lovers to post, repost, save, and send those same pieces of artwork to their friends and family, raising productivity, incoming users, and income for the creators of those said apps, but not for the producers and creators of the art. Aside from art, there are many other things that NFTs change. For instance, virtual reality, video games, and even collectible investments(print books, trading cards, and stamps). Such advancements have and will continue to change the internet, technology, and the people that use them. What Are NFTs And Are They Here To Stay, by Tyler Gallagher states, “In theory, there’s little stopping people from one day owning digital documentation wallets containing driver’s licenses, immunization records and even birth certificates minted by sovereign states.” NFTs will produce many advancements in all things physical. From education and art to business and the media, NFTs are encouraging many aspects of our everyday lives to evolve, adapt, and reconstruct. To reiterate, the impacts of NFTs are a combination of good and bad. While consumers and manufacturers have seen success and progression they have also seen setbacks and regression. Whether NFTs will aid or hinder a person, business, or product will depend on the subject and the elements at hand.

Oct 07

NFTs: Good or Bad for the Internet

An NFT, also known as a non-fungible token, is a unique and non-interchangeable unit of data stored on a digital ledger. NFTs can be used to designate easily-reproducible items such as photos, videos, audio, and other types of digital records as unique items and use blockchain technology to establish a verified and public proof of ownership. NFTs have both negative and positive effects on the Internet. For instance, in the article “NFTs Weren’t Supposed to End Like This,” the main purpose behind creating the technology was to “enable artists to exercise control over their work, to more easily sell it, to more strongly protect against others appropriating it without permission.” This is undoubtedly a positive, especially for artists who face exploitation. Nevertheless, there are negative results towards this type of technology and community to the Internet. One that stood out to me was the aspect that “when someone buys an NFT, they’re not buying the actual digital artwork; they’re buying a link to it.” This is honestly shocking because that means they still depend on the “old-fashioned pre-blockchain Internet,” where artwork would disappear if someone forgot to renew a domain name. This creates confusion for someone who truly believes he has complete ownership of this digital art piece. Furthermore, NFTs have been godsent for a digital artist who got received little respect. In the article “The Untold Story of the NFT Boom.” In this article, a takeaway that stood out to me was how the pandemic heightened this cryptoart crave. Parrott states, “It’s kind of a perfect storm of conditions right now with everyone stuck in their house on the internet and having that desire to collect art still.” Overall, I believe NFTs have a place on the Internet and will only get bigger. Nonetheless, they must improve the technology to make it more usable without old functions. Further, one needs to be careful who is involved in the community as exploitation and hacking might create an issue.

Oct 06

How is Crowdsourcing changing methods of labor on the Internet?

Crowdsourcing is the process of collecting work, information, or opinions from a big number of individuals who submit their data using the Internet, social media, or mobile apps. Crowdsourcing allows businesses to save time and expenses while gaining access to people with a variety of skills and perspectives from all around the world. Some individuals are paid for their produced content while others are not. Crowdsourcing is changing the methods of labor on the internet. An article that discusses these effects of crowdsourcing and crowdfunding is “The Rise of Crowdsourcing” by Jeff Howe. Howe explains crowdfunding when he states, “companies have been looking overseas… for cheap labor. But now it doesn’t matter where the laborers are… as long as they are connected to the network.” These technological advances are breaking down the cost that in previous years separated professionals and amateurs. Due to crowdsourcing, the methods of labor are changing because companies can get labor for a lot less than paying a traditional employee. An example of this is when Howe mentions a deal for the sale of photographs for a museum but the deal was called off because they found crowdsourced photographs for $1 from iStockPhoto. There’s benefits to crowdsourcing because you can receive labor a lot cheaper but is negatively impacting business and professionals who are losing revenue. Another example that touches on this cost breakdown is the article, “The Blurring Line Between Amateur and Professional”. He mentions in previous years professionals produced content and were paid and amateurs paid for it and consumed it. Previously technology limited amateurs to get paid because there was limited access. Timothy B. Lee mentions how due to crowdsourcing there isn’t a limit of people and there’s knowledgeable individuals who wouldn’t mind writing for the New York Times for free. 

Oct 06

Crowdsourcing and User Generation

With the direction that the internet is going, crowdsourcing is starting to become more prevalent. As far as customer input and what they would like to see going forward. Not only does it keep business more progressive but it also keeps them engaged with the product. Crowdsourcing is asking the input of a mass audience for a business or project, whether it is paid or unpaid, which is mainly used for the internet. For example, “in 2014, McDonalds decided to give their customers free reign and submit ideas for the types of burgers they’d like to see in store. They could create their perfect burgers online and the rest of the country could vote for the best ones.Once the winners were crowned, McDonalds released the burgers weekly, along with the picture and short bio of the creator.” One would summarize that customer input is revolutionary but others don’t think so, particularly those that author Megan McArdle of the The Blurring Line Between Amateur and Professional. “Media companies begin asking whether they really need to pay for content when so many people are willing to produce it for free. Insiders warn of the grave dangers that await us if society doesn’t restore the insiders to their previous, privileged position in society.” A retort to that might be that those whose job it is to come up with creative ideas for food businesses or toy businesses to keep customer engagement ‘what’s wrong with the people’s input’. Which is a fair point since if not for the people, how would business succeed.