Part of the reason I don't keep a personal blog or a twitter-feed is that I find it difficult to rapidly formulate and share content - which is pretty much a must for those media. When we finished class last week and were asked to come up with a blog post about what we had gone over that night, I was thinking to myself "Now?" We had just heard all this information, had no time to go ponder any of it or mull it over, no time to do any research on the topics we discussed at all, yet I listened as most of my the class hurriedly banged out hundreds of words and were leaving the room ten minutes after getting the assignment. I don't consider myself to be dinosaur-slow, but I am just not comfortable publishing thoughts that have only been in my head for 60 minutes.

Anyhow. I would first like to touch on the Supreme Court decision we spoke about last week, Citizens United v. Federal Elections Comission. Clearly, this decision alters the fabric of our democracy as we know it. However, I don't understand why people are so shocked by this. It seems it's been a long time coming, and this decision serves only as the final blow. This Slate article dubs the process "turning a corporation into a real live boy." Seeing how surprised and dismayed the people were over this decision reminds me of just how skeptical I am of the American political system in the year 2010. I have read in many places that the scariest part of this is that so many U.S. corporations are owned for foreign entities. I suppose this is a little concerning, but in my opinion, this process is inevitable. This is the age of globalization, and for anyone who believed that it would be possible to have so much foreign investment in the American economy without having foreign influence on the American political system, I would say you haven't been paying much attention for the past 20 years. Hopefully this decision woke you up.

Next I would like to discuss one of the issues we touched on in class last Thursday. Honestly, I am still sort of fuzzy on what exactly 'cloud computing' is, or rather, how exactly it works. What I do understand is that it involves massive concentration of data on servers that are owned by private companies. This article from cnet.com accurately summarizes the issues and concerns associated with cloud computing, and the writer points out several times that trust, or the lack thereof, is the name of the game regarding clouds. It's pretty simple: if you want to use these services, you have to be willing to make the sacrifices associated with data concentration. There will always be the chance that a massive breach will occur.

As far as some of the student presentations made last week... I personally don't think I would ever use a site like Foursquare. I see little use for it. However, I do like the idea of polldaddy and will probably try to use it in my work in the future.

I saw an edisode of Frontline this week called "Digital Nation" which I plan to bring up in class tonight and touch on heavily in my next blog post. It was particularly germane to the content of this course so I think it will make for interesting discussion.