The company has cornered the market for indexing our very lives into a neat and UI friendly search engine. “Google’s Grand Plan to Make Your Brain Irrelevant” discusses Google’s buying spree, as it attempts to absorb every bit of useful infrastructure build on its omnipresence. The company claims that it does this in order “to build an enormous digital brain that operates as much like the human mind as possible”. Google’s pet project, Google RankBrain, already handles 15% of all google searches as an organic AI that adapts and learns. This “digital brain” will be able to “learn ‘organically’ — that is without human involvement”.

The aggressive push for acquiring new technologies and absorbing every innovator into the Google fold seems a little hostile to the average Google consumer. To us it seems as though Skynet is rising and that soon we’ll all be forced join John and Sarah Connor in rebellion. But before we fire up the time machine and send the Governator back to destroy the evil Google, let me share a little experience. I’ve been to Silicon Valley and indeed spent a few days in the deep dark Google offices. Google has created, for itself, a university after university where you actually get paid to learn and create.

The kind of minds assembled at Google aren’t mad scientists bent on bringing the world to their digital knees. They’re inquisitive and hyperactive minds bent on finding the most efficient solutions to problems we don’t even know about. The kind of conversations going on at Google would make your jaw drop and your mind race. Google has recognized a problem
that most of us only now realize is a problem, the flow of information. For the longest time, the public’s only source of information are from the very institutes that model themselves to be the keepers of the peace. We haven’t had a chance to split the veil and consolidate our collective knowledge…ever. What Google is doing is unprecedented, new and even scary. Especially because Google must build itself in a closed ceiling system, trying to navigate through tricky legislation; special interests who really would want to turn our lives into a privacy dystopia; conservative governments that would rather have its citizens read heavily curated and edited information; and indeed the very public they’re trying to help.

Already “for many of us, Google already functions as an important part of what WIRED columnist Clive Thompson has called our outboard brain. The more Google ‘knows,’ the less we have to remember. We just Google it.” The article seems to be under the impression that
Google’s upgrades will be used to turn our own minds irrelevant. However, it doesn’t recognize that for most of us our minds were a little irrelevant. Just measure the speed with which I can find the answers to most questions than someone who grew up in the good old days of the public library would. Without being able to Google things, I would spend more time memorizing than I do learning and understanding. Google is a scary idea, especially because so many things are already in the wrong hands but when Google says they’re not trying to be evil, I’m inclined to believe them. In fact I have to believe them because without Google I myself may fall into the evils that are conceived by ignorance. With access to so much media, so many publications, articles, forums and perspectives from all over the world I’m able to be a more aware human being. I’m able to navigate through life with a few less fears and few more facts.

Beware of uttering your views on the Internet because the slightest sounds might set off and avalanche of abuse. According to Danielle Citron’s “Hate Crimes in Cyberspace”, the Internet is anything but a haven for free speech. Controversial posts or an angry ex can snowball a negative comment to a expansive team of flamers who will burn your life down until it’s nothing but ash. Anonymous got it exactly right: protect your identity and learn how to become smoke so no one can grab ahold of your life. Citron’s statistics on Internet abuse and its prevalence with certain identity groups only affirm the rampant discrimination that has become clear over the last couple of decades. The Internet has done a lot to reveal problems all over the world and bring people within clicking distance of each other. However, as history has shown countless times over, we’re not a species that plays nicely with each other. It comes from our indelible trait as humans: judgement. Reminiscent of the witch hunting days, there seems to be a number of Internet residents who jump at the idea of defacing someone they believe to be immoral or a hazard to society.

Young adults (18-29), who tend to have more integrated online profiles than any other segment, tend to experience various elements of online harassment. Not surprisingly women and minorities find themselves susceptible to more extreme forms of harassment such as tampering withe their real lives. Men are more greatly affected by more surface level harassment such as negative comments, which are not equally as harmful but can become so. With law enforcement seemingly incapable or unwilling to deal with cyber misconduct there are few non-invasive solutions to sever cases of harassment. The threat starts to feel like it come from everywhere and it may as well be so due to the anonymity of Internet profiles. After reading Citron’s article it seems that there is vast potential for one individual’s harasser to multiply when their comments convince others looking to pick a fight. Online vigilantes are too easily misdirected and convinced of someone’s immorality or danger to others on the Internet. Slut shaming, gay bashing and cyber bullying are not fair forms of judgement but are a part of human interaction regardless. The Internet’s trove of information that only seems to increase and now penetrate to our personal lives have consequences.

Citron believes that the law itself has not adapted its jurisdiction to the Internet and should do so before cyber harassment becomes a commonplace occurrence on the wild wild web. I would tend to agree that there is a wealth of attitudes and comments that help define hate speech. I would also agree that they need to be stopped before comments turn into action and action turns into ruined lives. A good example would be online MMOs that tend to incorporate an admin-algorithm method in order to curb trollers and hate on the video game; censoring swear words whose only function is to articulate hate and using the reporting system to point admin attentions to particular cases. There is no perfect algorithm that would effectively solve such issues but we can reach a heuristic solution through a combination of efforts. This would include using a wordflilter to block surface level hate via swearing; mandating every website with peer to peer messaging to dedicate funding towards user report reconciliation and admin staff; having legislature that covers jurisdiction over cyber hate; and equipping traditional law enforcement to dedicate man power to reports of cyber harassment that have potential of penetrating to people’s actual lives. A preventative measure that is always the most effective cumulative solution is education: teaching Internet safety, etiquette and consequences from a young age. Without proper provisions and safeguards, the imperfection of humanity could cause the Internet to be a place of rampant suspicion, fear mongering and witch hunts out of disagreements: much like the world we live in today.

Our discussion on podcasts found me reliving both sides of the fence. It was only in the recent years that I had started to explore the value of podcasts and the place they’d eventually have in my life. Radio seemed on its way out the door because there were just newer and shinier things to occupy our attention. Add to the fact that rapid advances in technology seemed to drive an effect of splitting our attention and being too big to contain, my generation just wasn’t occupied by the radio. The radio was only ever relevant in my early years when we’d get into the car and nothing else was available to play. We had our moments but when YouTube has cats puking rainbows and whatever other junk we filled our imaginations with, radio just never entered the conversation. I just didn’t grow up in the age of radio so podcasts weren’t a form of entertainment that I was looking for.

It wasn’t until my brother, a tech expert from Silicon Valley, revealed in his usual fashion the secrets of why he was doing better in life than me: Podcasts made it easy for him to pursue very specific interests. Now that there’s almost faultless arrays of connectivity and portable computers, radio’s son had updated itself to be compatible with the 21st Century.

As we know technology is a compounding phenomenon ongoing what is close to a synthetic evolution of machinery. When the town crier turned from his swelling lungs to the megaphone and his great great great grandchild adopted the new radio phenomenon to get the word out; there emerges a trend of both pragmatism and popularity of ‘the modern’ creations. This is true up and especially to our once beloved staple of the household and choice of sounds in the car over the sounds of awkward car conversation. With the complementary developments in extensive and fast network connectivity, pocket sized computers and unprecedented dispersion of media: traditional radio is fizzling out of style and function. It’s attention started to drain when the advent of TVs for the household gained speed. Here in the United States the first presidential TV debate is a famous marker of a gut punch to radio. Thus, out of the newest wave of modern progress the radio evolved like a boring metapod that could only harden our disinterest now that new media was blaring; into a more beautiful (and definitely more useful) Butterfree or app on our phones that democratized the space for broadcasting. However, not everyone has Butterfree in their starting lineup, let alone the starting pokemon.

It’s no wonder that the radio seems to feel more and more like an ancient source of any information or entertainment in technologically developed parts of the world; especially here in the United States down to our English 302 class in Goodell @ UMass. I wasn’t too surprised by the general minority of podcast subscribers because of the precedent its father
left. Radio got hit hard when TV came around and left Podcast not a lot to inherit in terms of auditory subscribers. With the music market being cornered by music streaming apps like spotify and news eloping with TV to pursue voyeurism; podcasts had a tight spot to start honoring thy father. Radio certainly wasn’t one of the cool things to pay attention to for my generation over the mad growth of screening technology. In the 24 hours of each day where 8 hours (hopefully) are taken up by sleep, 10 – 12 hours of work and just a fraction of the hours for free time, we’re all gonna get together at dinner to watch this week’s episode of 24 (ironic) instead of crowding around the radio. Why shouldn’t we? The radio doesn’t and has never offered a customizable and curated playlist of media, it offered scheduled mass appeal that pandered for money.  We didn’t have streaming capabilities like we did today either, so the podcast existed in some corner of an emerging space called the Internet that opened to the tune of screechy dial-up connection. Almost a couple of decades later, podcasts were thrown a liferaft in the form of WiFi for an iPhone in every pair of skinny jeans, and the mobile network oligopoly’s competition for best network coverage.

Podcast’s response was to let it all go and have a round robin of things people are interested in. From the most niche hobbies to the most relevant cultural phenomenons, podcasts have piggy backed on the exponential growth of mobile networking devices. If it’s in your headphones at the gym, coffee shop, hammock in your backyard or on speaker in your car via the bluetooth on your phone; podcasts try to wiggle their way into the free minutes in our lives we devote to our too long a list of interests. Take an app like Pocket Casts that gives me access to thousands of podcast shows on so many different topics, hosted by even more personalities. It works like the Spotify system in that it streams the media you select to save and allows you to listen to it on the go through your phone. Although it functions the same way in which radio does podcasts have the advantage of the Internet and all the freedoms of creation that it has helped sparked. Thus, apps like Pocket Casts are filled with eclectic selections from the deep sea of the interwebs. I myself am subscribed to a weird range of podcasts:

• Freakonomics Radio: For nerdy but fun economic discussions and breakdowns
• Completely Optional Knowledge: For things to bring up when the awkward silence rears its ugly head
• Modern Love: For my curiosity about what ‘love’ looks like when described from random people around the world
• TED Talk’s Radio Hour: For innovative solutions and discussions about major issues
• SourceFed Podcasts: Where a bunch of funny people talk about anything and nothing, it’s like friends without actually having any! (And couldn’t we all use some of that?)

I could name a few more but the point is, I was actually never an early subscriber to podcasts. In fact I threw it in there with Radio as being irrelevant and possibly outdated. But when I dipped my toes I realised, media fluidity is real and entertainment can be derived in a lot of different forms for a lot of different reasons. I can’t watch a certain YouTube channel while I’m driving but I can listen to their podcasts and still keep my chances of crashing at 50-50 (on a good day).

Podcasts work. Like Golum, our precious phones dare not leave our side and through smart UI design, podcast apps offer customizable selections of podcast feeds to cater to most interests. The podcasting community has built a diverse library of simple media that survives based on the quality of content and engagement with the listeners. Maybe I’ve been converted…yeah actually I’ve definitely been converted, pick up a podcast already!!!

As someone who has been an avid YouTube user during and after my withdrawal from the wonders of TV, I’ve made some key distinctions in what attracts me to the user-generated content as opposed to the professionally produced. I’ve found that although YouTube can and often does have content with high production value, the entire platform pushes a sense of intimacy that TV can never aspire to.

When I watch a show on TV, it’s scripted, it’s vetted a hundred times over and depending on what I’m watching it’s either diluted by mass appeal or it’s tame enough to be aired on cable. On top of that I have to sit through advertising for every 5 minutes of programming so that the executives can get their Porsches waxed on the daily. What’s worse is that unless someone is watching the show with me, I have to wait to talk about it to someone IF one of my friends happens to be watching the same shows. If YouTube is criticized for its populist format, I’d argue that TV is the dystopian outcome of such a flaw. If I’m not watching Homeland aired every week and I’m watching a more obscure show, my only hope of reaching a conversation about it is that I meet another fan of said obscure show at some point in my life.

No, I thoroughly believe that YouTube has an edge with the interactive element of commenting and
conversing with other users, liking videos and rating in an open system. Not to mention that the content that users generally create push for active community participation and address realtime topics. Whereas a TV season is a scripted series of events that dramatize a few aspects of life played by handpicked models/actors. They’re scripted based purely on mass appeal and entertainment and the closed door policy in the TV industry ensures that the same crap is churned into our screens at home. YouTube’s channel system allows truly appealing characters to air their specific views, opinions and ideas at the behest of real appeal from their audiences. Their income is based on the quality of content that they provide and not a deal with producers that will pay them even if the show flops.

Add to these things the interconnected and multicultural atmosphere the platform creates and the ease of access through mobile streaming, YouTube has made itself more and more pervasive in the few years it has been active. The spectrum of content on YouTube can keep me entertained for hours, nonstop…for free.