Communism and A Bug's Life

When we were discussing the Levy and Lanier writings in class and Levy mentions an ant colony as an example of what collective intelligence is not, my mind immediately started thinking about A Bug's Life. 

In A Bug's Life our hero is Flik, a lovable ant who has new ideas but is ignored by others because he is a klutz and kind of eccentric. Levy says that the ant colony as a whole is intelligent but the individual is dumb. This is the case with the ant colony in A Bug's Life. Flik however is intelligent and he has ideas that will improve the efficiency of the ant's food collection but of course he is ignored. In this way he represents the technology that Levy mentions early on that was the downfall of communism.

Pictured: The downfall of communism

So if Flik is technology then who is communism. Well this ant colony happens to be under the control of a gang of grasshoppers led by a particularly nasty grasshopper named Hopper. The majority of the food the ants collect is given to the grasshoppers. So the ants are the working class and the grasshoppers are the ruling class.

The face of communism

Near the opening of the film the ants are preparing for a collection visit from the grasshoppers. Flik decides to introduce his new invention that is essentially a mechanical harvester but he accidentally knocks the pile of food into a stream just before the grasshoppers arrive. Hopper gives the ants until the end of the season to get twice as much food. Flik is going to be banished by the colony's council but he comes up with the idea to get warrior bugs to fight off the grasshoppers. The council decides to allow this and send him on this fool's errand.

An individual AKA fool

So Flik sets off for the city to find warrior bugs and not soon after he finds a group of circus bugs who he mistakes for warrior bugs. So he brings these bugs back to the colony and they think they are saved. Later Flik realizes his mistake but fortunately he comes up with a plan that utilizes the ants' resources in fighting off the grasshoppers. Long story short the plan falls through and Flik is forced to confront Hopper.

I'm guessing Flik had never seen or heard what a warrior looked like

Here are some quotes that are pretty vital to what I'm trying to say. The first comes from Hopper's speech to the grasshoppers when three of them question why they go back and what can one puny ant can do. The second comes after the fake bird has crashed and Flik confronts Hopper.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hopper: You let one ant stand up to us, then they all might stand up! Those puny little ants outnumber us a hundred to one and if they ever figure that out there goes our way of life! It's not about food, it's about keeping those ants in line. That's why we're going back! Does anybody else wanna stay? 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hopper: Let this be a lesson to all you ants! Ideas are very dangerous things! You are mindless, soil-shoving losers, put on this Earth to serve us!
Flik: You're wrong, Hopper. Ants are not meant to serve grasshoppers. I've seen these ants do great things, and year after year they somehow manage to pick food for themselves *and* you. So-so who is the weaker species? Ants don't serve grasshoppers! It's *you* who need *us*! We're a lot stronger than you say we are... And you know it, don't you? 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The movie ends with Hopper getting eaten by a bird and the ants are free of the grasshopper's oppression. The ants also learn about individuality and begin to embrace each others differences, especially Flik's because he's the most different of them all. Levy talks about how the ant colony is the opposite of the collective knowledge. In this case the ants take Flik's ideas and inventions and they all use them and make harvesting more efficient. So they all live happily ever after.

The End

I think all the pieces for a great analysis are there but I might not of put them together in the best way.  
I'm open to suggestions on how I can make this post better and make my analysis more finely tuned.
Oh yeah both quotes are taken from one of my favorite websites IMDb.com.

The MAT Gives Back

ATTENTION EVERYONE 
The bar that I work at, the McKinney Avenue Tavern, is having a charity event called The MAT Gives Back on Wednesday, September 15. All of the sales made on that day will go to a charity called Kidd's Kids. Kidd's Kids takes about 50 terminally ill children and their entire immediate families on a 5 day trip to Disney World. I have not been asked to work on that day yet, but I will most likely go down and hang out at the MAT after I finish my classes on Wednesday. It'd be nice to see some people from UTD there and anyone is welcome to join me. The MAT is located at 2822 McKinney Avenue, Dallas TX. It is on the corner of McKinney and Allen. The MAT is open from 11AM to 2AM.

For more information about:
The MAT Gives Back: http://thematonline.com/wordpress/the-mat-gives-back/
The MAT: http://thematonline.com/wordpress/
Kidd's Kids: http://www.kiddskids.com/

Openbook: Is Facebook as private as we think?

Since we had no readings for class this week I was unsure of what to blog about. So I decided to blog about Openbook and the problems with Facebook's privacy policy.

If you don't already know Openbook is a website that allows you to search terms and phrases and it will pull up any recent Facebook status updates that contain those words. Openbook was created by Will Moffat, Peter Burns and James Home, three website developers based in San Fransisco and Facebook users who are concerned about the privacy of Facebook.

According to FAQ on the Openbook website they are not hacking Facebook, just using Facebook's APIs :

"We are using Facebook's documented APIs. It's a completely public API that any programmer can use. Application Programmer Interface - is a way to access data on a site. Openbook simply takes this raw data provided by the Facebook API and presents it in a human-readable form. For example compare "beach" on the Facebook API and then on youropenbook.org"

The site also contains a privacy proposal to Facebook that makes it easier for users to view and understand their privacy settings. They also suggest that new profiles created are set to private by default.

In "The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook", Matt McKeon discusses the changes in Facebook's privacy settings and he has created a visual that shows the changes in the default privacy setting over time. 

Source: http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/

Source: http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/

Source: http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/

Source: http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/

Source: http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/

Source: http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/

Another interesting article is an article by Kurt Opsahl called "Facebook's Eroding Privacy Policy: A Timeline" In it he takes excerpts from Facebook's privacy policies over the years in order to highlight how Facebook has slowly taken our privacy away. He ends his article with the following statement:

"Viewed together, the successive policies tell a clear story. Facebook originally earned its core base of users by offering them simple and powerful controls over their personal information. As Facebook grew larger and became more important, it could have chosen to maintain or improve those controls. Instead, it's slowly but surely helped itself — and its advertising and business partners — to more and more of its users' information, while limiting the users' options to control their own information."

In my opinion Facebook should alert all of their users when they make a change to any policy. The following is an excerpt from Facebook's current privacy policy in the section on changes:

"If we make changes to this Privacy Policy we will notify you by publication here and on the Facebook Site Governance Page. You can make sure that you receive notice directly by becoming a fan of the Facebook Site Governance Page."

It's great that they have a way to inform us of changes and they clearly state that in their policy, but how many people do you honestly believe read the entire policy. There are currently 1,632,731 people who "like" the Facebook Site Governance Page. Facebook has over 500 million users worldwide. That is a lot of people who are left in the dark about policy changes.

Finally let me demonstrate through screenshots how Openbook works.

Here is my Facebook wall with a recent post by me.

I go to Openbook and take a couple of keywords from my most recent status update which in this case will be"Chinese buffet."

I simply click the search button and BAM! there is my post with my name and picture along with anybody else who has been talking about Chinese buffet.

So hopefully this will make you consider about what you are posting on Facebook.

iTunes 10, Ping, and You

Apple has just released a new version of iTunes and along with it a social network element called Ping. The new version of iTunes contains many design changes. One of the first things that I noticed was that if you had fewer than 5 songs on an album that it would not show the album artwork to the left as usual. As an album art lover this bothered me.

This is easily fixable though by going to View and selecting Always Show Artwork.

That is my only problem so far. Other than that, there are design changes that I will just have to get used to.

So what about Ping? Why should you care? Well that's what I'm here to tell you.

My first critique would have to be the name. First of all there is a third-party site named Ping.fm that allows you to keep track of all your social networks and to update all of them at once. Secondly it's a very unoriginal name. Apple is supposed to be the on the cutting edge of every industry they dip their hands into and the top minds at Apple came up with Ping. I had a similar reaction when Microsoft released it's own search engine Bing. I suppose what both companies were going for was a name that was simple and popped out of your mouth. But instead it's kind of annoying and a little embarrassing to say.

Ping allows you to follow your favorite artists and friends with the goal of seeing what they are listening to and downloading. Basically Ping allows you to see what your friends have been up to on iTunes in a social network format. If they review an album or buy a song it is shown in there recent activity. From there you can read their review, listen to a preview of the song they bought or download the song that they just bought. You can also comment and like recent activity similar to Facebook.

Normally I would tell what I like about Ping but unfortunately there is no feature that makes me love it. Instead I will just point out its flaws.

First of all there is a lack of artists to follow. Of course as time goes on there will be more so this isn't a huge problem. But it's kind of an oversight by Apple. If they wanted Ping to be a smash hit they should have contacted as many artists as possible of all different genres and gotten them to create Ping accounts. The artists are the big draw to Ping. Ping is supposed to allow you to get the latest news from your favorite artists and download their music all in one place. There are already social network sites such as Facebook and Twitter that allow you to keep up with your favorite artists and since not that many artists are on Ping yet, those sites are the obvious choice on where to go to get your updates.

Speaking of updates there are no status updates on Ping. Artists can update but the users cannot. Instead Ping will tell your followers what you have downloaded and reviewed and any other recent activity. Followers can then comment on the activity. Clearly Ping is meant for music purposes only, which may actually hinder its popularity. In my opinion if Ping were to implement the normal social network standards such as status updates then there would be more of a draw. You could see what your friends are listening to and what they are downloading. A lot of people download their music from filesharing sites so for those people they are not going to have a lot of activity on Ping.

If I had to choose between Facebook and Ping, I would definitely choose Facebook. Facebook provides all of the same features as Ping and so much more. You can already follow an artist's fan page and you can share your music with friends by the use of the Music tab that can be added to your profile. Using a website called iLike it shows the artists that you like and songs and videos from those artist.

I think Ping has potential and if it widens it's spectrum to more than just music then it has a chance to thrive. iTunes is a media player. If Ping shows the other forms of media a user likes such as movies, TV shows, and Podcasts, then they will provide a social network service that appeals to a larger number of people. Because as of now it's kind of bland.

Introductory Post

Hi my name is Kyle Brnicky and welcome to my blog. I haven't thought of a clever name for it yet but I will. So here is a little something about me.

I was born in Munster, Indiana on July 9, 1992 and lived in Merrillville, Indiana until I was about 3. My father was originally from Indiana but moved to Texas when he was 19 and met my Mom. They had my older sister in Texas and later moved to Indiana and had me.

I spent all my primary education at Blanco ISD in Blanco, TX. During high school I took summer courses at Austin Community College and during my senior year I took a dual credit English course. I am decent at math but don't really enjoy it and teachers have told me that I am a good writer but I hate to write essays but I do enjoy writing for fun although I hardly ever do that.

I love movies and pop culture. After I watch a movie I usually go onto Wikipedia or IMDb and read about the movies production and if I am unfamiliar with a certain actor I will look at their filmography and see if I've seen them in anything else. I retain a lot of celebrity names so among my friends I was the go to guy when it came to identifying and actor in a movie. I like all genres of film with the exception of horror movies.

My plans for the future is to transfer to UNT after my freshman year and major in Radio/Film/Television and hopefully get a job in radio or film production once I graduate college.

As of today I am employed at a bar in Uptown called the McKinney Avenue Tavern as a busboy. My first day is tomorrow and I am very excited to start my new job and finally I won't be broke.

I think that covers the most basic information about me. If you ever needed to know anything else you can always look me up on Facebook.