My Website

"Resource Edu" is going to be a website that college students can visit to discover and post many unknown resources that their college offers to them but they may not know about. Many resources are included in our tuition and we have absolutely no idea unless somebody tells us personally, so this is an opportunity to share those resources that we are all paying for. Things like subscriptions to certain websites or local secrets at restaurants, whatever it may be. Students can search their school and select a topic within their school and from there they can read or post resources as well as rate and comment on the ones already posted.

A list
- About us
- Search bar
- List of colleges
     - Food
     - Creative
     - Sports
     - Academics
     - Career
     - Comment box
- Help page
     - Submission page
     - FAQs

Websites to emulate:
ratemyprofessor.com
ratemyteachers.com
unigo.com
reviews.collegetimes.us/
resellerratings.com/

The Facebook Show

“The Facebook Show” Summary

The OTM show about Facebook starts out by describing “Facebookistan”, an idea of Facebook represented as a nation, and comparing it to China. Facebook has a larger (online) population than the U.S and economically holds more power than many actual nations. Similar to China, Facebook requires you to reveal private information, although on a completely different level. Facebook requires users to use their actual names on the website in exchange for using the service, and other than that any other info you enter in to facebook remains private unless you choose otherwise. However, that changed in 2009 when this “private” information became public.

On the subject of privacy, an Austrian man came on to speak about how he got Facebook to provide him with all of the information they have on him. As he explained, he received over 1,000 printed pages and there was still a lot of information he said was not even there. He went on to say that Facebook collects information you wouldn’t even think of, like the exact coordinates of the computer you last logged on from. This information gathered by this man and the awareness it raised led to a few changes in Facebook as well as the Internet as a whole in Europe. For one, Facebook changed the way it recognizes photos when trying to match the face in a photo with a previous one. Also, shadow profiles (external pages that Facebook gathers information through) cannot use the private data that is stored. And, most importantly, Facebook has now made it possible for all users to download their own content and private information. In Europe, new laws were created indirectly stemming from this case to demand websites be more transparent and allow users to have more control.

The show also attempted to put into perspective the size and importance of Facebook, as well as the value of the “like” button. They describe facebook as a utility- something you need to get along, and say that whatever new social media service is launched will have no competition to facebook. Social networking as a whole is something people feel as though they absolutely need to get by, similar to cell phones now, and there is no foreseeable demise for Facebook as the dominant service. The “like” button is a large contributor to this, as 93% of users click that button as least once per month. The pod cast uses Coca-Cola as an example, saying that they have received over 38 million likes and they receive about 90% of the comments within an hour of posting something. They still cannot put a monetary value on the like button, but they can put it into perspective. Facebook is worth over 100 billion dollars and the like button keeps people on the site for long enough for ads to contribute a lot of money to that.

Lastly, a woman came on the show to discuss how the man who raped her when she was a young teen sent her a friend request. She messaged to speak to him, but instead he wanted to speak on the phone so there could be no record of it. She said that he verified what had happened even though he seemed to be in denial about exactly how it occurred. Either way, she said that she is grateful for Facebook because it allowed her to process the information and move on with her life.

Responses

I feel as though I have found a great balance in using social media. I have a Facebook profile to stay connected with my friends and family as I feel it is a great tool to stay in contact and share fun information and links. However, I do feel as though as Facebook continues to grow in size and power that people need to stop being so careless with what they post. I am generally very careful with what I post because I know future employers can see it, even though I feel like I don’t have anything to hide. I see a lot of people posting obscene or frankly illegal things on their Facebook and that just is not smart. The podcast makes it obvious that a lot of our personal information that we are unaware of exists on the Internet, so everybody needs to be extra careful about what they make available. Personally I do not plan to change the way I participate in social media because I use it very carefully as is.

I typically don’t like to just “join the crowd,” and hop on the latest social media craze with the rest of the world, so I was one of the last of my friends to join Facebook. You come to realize that it’s a way of the world now and it really has become the norm; if you want to stay connected, it is something you have to familiarize yourself with. I have since created a Twitter and a Tumblr, two things that I still do not completely enjoy, solely for business purposes. With the world revolving so much around the Internet and social media, it is crucial (especially for me doing graphic design) to connect and share your information and sample work through social media.

As we progress into the future, social media is only going to become more prominent. Many news and sports stories stem from people’s “tweets”, TV broadcasts and radio shows now take comments through Facebook and Twitter more so than over the phone it seems, and so many businesses and companies use social media to learn about their prospective, or current, employees. As time goes on, these are only going to become stronger and as technology advances, so will social media. People would be wise to learn all they can about it now as I think it is going to become a near-necessity in the foreseeable future.

Apropros Appropriation

During the Pictures Generation, the art of appropriate really came into fruition. These “Picture Artists” created a way to reproduce art rather than produce something from scratch, something that had not before been conceptualized. During this time frame, the artists typically took photographs and altered them to create new works of art to call their own. In addition to Richard Prince, other Picture Artists included Robert Longo, David Salle, Jack Goldstein and Cindy Sherman. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pictures_Generation)

In the article, the case of Mr. Prince is the most predominantly talked about. Although I haven’t seen his works first hand, some of them are described as collages of photographs taken from a book about Rastafarians without permission. To me, this sounds like something that would be acceptable for a homework assignment or anything of personal use, not to make $2.5 million off of. Now, fair use allows someone to use the work of another without acquiring permission from the original artist, but using a photograph in its entirety to form a collage does not fit that bill. Although the art is brand new, the components are not altered at all and the original artist had done most of the work for that project. An argument made by the photographer, Patrick Coriou, is as follows:

“..[the paintings] are, literally, ‘put together,’ like provisional magazine lay-outs. Some images, scanned from originals, are printed directly onto the base canvas; others are ‘dragged on,’”
(http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/november-08-2008--richard-prince)

            A case where I think the artist abided by the law and was successful in appropriating the original work is that of Jeff Koons. Koons created an original piece of work by appropriating several images of females’ legs to put into his artwork. By rotating, resizing, and cropping the photographs and taking only the legs, he was able to successfully alter the pictures enough to a point where it had been made his own. In my opinion, Koons did enough to not infringe on any copyright laws or steal the original work to profit off of.

            Appropriation is necessary for the advancement and growth of creativity and new-age art. I have done a lot of graphic work throughout my life and I can say most of it would have been impossible without a certain level of appropriation. I think using a pre-existing image as a base or reference in artwork does not insult the original artwork in any way, especially if it had been altered enough to the point where you can’t even tell what the original image was. Using stock images to add some light to a photo or place a small object in an illustration does not break the law and is a necessary part of the growth of creativity. If I found my work being appropriated, assuming it was altered enough, I would be perfectly fine with it. Knowing my work is perceived as good enough to be reproduced would make me feel very highly about my abilities.

Appropriation

Original Image:

 

Appropriated Image: