fmahvi620 has 3 post(s)

The similarity between Von Kempelen’s machine and Amazon’s new platform is that there’s a human power behind it. Von Kempelen’s machine didn’t perform magic by playing chess on its own, his assistant was inside the machine making the moves. Amazon’s platform also has a human power behind it, it’s by the humans, Turks. Amazon’s Mechanical Turk was developed due to the failure of the artificial intelligence. Technology is great, it helps with everyday life move faster,though I believe it often creates more problems than solving it, but at most the technology does help. It doesn’t run on its own neither it was created on its own, there’s a millions of hours of human brain power behind it; to creat it, run it and fix it.

The connection between Automaton chess player and Amazon’s platform, Ayets was making, I believe, is that no matter how much technology advances, it will always need some sort of human work behind it. It may be possible in the future to have/create technology that will no longer need human brain power, but as of now, it can’t be possible and frankly speaking, I don’t think I want to live in that time where the world is run by machines and not humans.

Subcultures are basically branches of one main culture with addition of different adaptions according to different environment and lifestyles and etc. I believe that capitalism and subcultures can’t really exist without one and the other, capitalism needs subcultures to grow bigger and powerful and subcultures need capitalism to put their existence out there.

For example, there’s this artist from South Asia, whose songs reaches the soul and I’m madly in love with his music. Before he became so popular, I was able to get a concert ticket for an affordable price, sit in the front, get to meet, chat and take pictures with him. Now, that half of the world knows him, and music is known worldwide, I’ll be lucky to find a concert ticket for $400 for a seat somewhere in the middle. I still love his music but I was much happier when he he wasn’t so popular and I was able to enjoy his live concerts to the fullest. It’s all great for the artist, and the sponsors but not so great for people like me who loves the live concert experience.

Hi my name is Mahwish Khalid. Our group reading in class this week was Excerpt from Trebor Scholz’s Digital Labor. In our group the girls and I agreed to the conclusion that we came up with is, that we are the workers who help make Facebook millions of dollars for free by collecting our data. Millions of people around the world use Facebook to connect to family and friends, and also for entertainment. Regardless, how private we make our profiles, sharing and tagging, it’s all open to Facebook and they have all the right to sell our data to the third party, it has to be in the agreement that we click ‘agree’ to without reading the entire agreement.

Facebook keeps track of our sharing, liking, status updates, pictures, check ins, and etc. and makes profit by selling it to the third party, that’s why things, places and compiles we like don’t magically appear on the pages we visit on our digital devices. Though, Facebook is free and for leisure, but we end up advertising for companies and products for free and Facebook makes tons of money from it. We are free workers of Facebook and we do it knowingly.

Best,

Mahwish