The Brave New World

Cikgu Shidah, Milano Evans, 100 Apology Tweet and Rebecca Black – these are real people presented to you, they emerged and made a pass into your life. Internet life is fun and beneficial, but like real life they are risks involved and big brothers frantically watches you in ways creepier than you can never imagine.

I can’t help thinking about those people who instilled such high hopes doing broadcasting in the yesteryears, to break into the television world was such a tight and closed loop of beautifulpeople and rich man, you know the 1990s images of The Bold and Beautiful. Things definitely changed, people which had zero broadcasting backgrounds ( perhaps, without the ‘package’) however successfully broad casted their creative ideas, thoughts and showmanship with higher viewership- remember Cikgu Shidah and her rendition of Shakiras’ waka-waka?

Then we had come to the ‘Rebecca Black Effect’ that light heartedly proven to be a successful failure. Such failures were so epic that people celebrate them for whatever idiocy or despicability it embeds. Yet, her millions of view is a testament that people approves (if not really wanted) such things. People never felt vindicated by bleeding their eyes out of the television programming did to the masses once in their prime monopolistic moment – all they need to do in this internet era is press stop and move onto other videos, yeah, they can drop a comments too.

Few days back, the appearance of Milano Evans ( not her real name) puts a stroke of laughter in our life seeing a 14 year old girl blogged admitting she is not virgin anymore ( seriously, in a place like Malaysia). Luckily our community had long been/never been a Taliban mindset, her nose had been spared. Milano Evans put up a resistance of her admittance. Response ranges from supporting her staunch feminism and rights to control the usage of her reproductive organs to the way she liked it, to those who regarded her outspokenness is quite foolish when other girls would have lost their virginity but remained hush hush and some quarters had prayed to God so that she will be “shown the light”. Oh yeah, the baulk of commentators were swearing to do unworldly harms towards her. Me? I remained at the sidewalk as observer to this unraveling ruckus.

Then, there is the 100 tweet of apology story. It happened here. An activist, who tweets about a company HR policy being unfair towards his pregnant friend which were then working ewith that particular company. The company, BluInc Media, publisher of Malaysian Female magazine reached a settlement for him to write a hundred tweet apologizing to avoid defamation suit. He successfully reached 100 tweets within 3 days and gathered much support from the followers. With that, we ponder on what kind of law and order internet shall have? Can it become a beacon of truth which spreads fact which are sensitive for certain organization, such as his employer if they did do some unjust. Or would internet become an anarchist nation, with varying rules for each states? Who could rule and moderate internet? Why it should be moderated? Define Internet abuse? Does internet abuse exist? An endless circle of cat and rat games that extent to religion with fellow Muslim asking - when someone tweet they are in a mosque, does that constitute to ‘riak’? (doing of things for publicity)

Life on show, like its nobody business

As an architecture student, I firmly believe that value of properties would be indirectly set by the amount of foursquare check-ins. The more check-ins, the higher market value a property shall gain. This makes sense as they are reliable piece of data, highly accurate and happily contributed by the participant itself. Imagine you and me; we were a partner intended to open a café, we would very much seeking strategic location that could cater to as many potential customers as possible. We could just skimmed the data of where the people love to hang out. Forget the handing out of questionnaire in public spaces, just a waste of tree.

Or perhaps that café would only serve lunch. Then, I would skim the foursquare check-ins, I shall specifically look at which place the crowd would be during lunch time. Bam! There I have it, a spot for restaurant perfect for lunch seeking monsters.

This can be applied to anything specific. A gay bar, a hair saloon or a caviar selling al-fresco diner; these are target specific requirements. Where Gays usually hangs out? Where do caviar lover gather? To detect where are they heading to is impossible ( if breaking privacy law) unless, when they willingly check-in through mobile apps like foursquare –doing it willingly telling everyone where they are without breaking into somebody privy life ( did I just took the word from Mark Zuckerberg? )

But how do we know those people are Homosexual? High Income? Or vanity obsessed? Well, the dynamics of data collection through mobile apps is not rocket science or hypnotic magic. Gay people may openly admit their sexual orientation through social networks, even if they don’t, the pages they liked, the celebrities they followed and websites they visited, music they listens and movies they watched – these all combined can determine your gayness in some way.

You may ask does Google dedicate its staff to stalk 24/7 and determine gay people. No. These are what we called ‘algorithms’. When gay people, for instance (no discrimination intended), often visits particular websites which if many of them do, at a sustained rate, it creates a pattern. Other examples; book lovers would often watch movies that were adapted from books and drops by Google to read those reviews; while petrol heads watch automobile related reviews on YouTube – all of these searches are registered for each computer thus it provides a pattern, when Google knows you read too much books of a particular author or obsessed with cars of specific make, their advertisements were tuned according to your searches. Again, simple non-rocket science thing.

High Income people, how could you find them online? We used to judge them by the cars that they owned, but generally people are getting lesser on the road. There is a mobile apps which updates your Facebook profile with credit card purchase. Once you swiped the plastics the data is instantly uploaded and appears for your friends to envy: “John/Jane Doe had purchased a Zara Type X Jeans @ Pavilion KL at RMxxx.xx “, these are regarded as something fun for people who allowed them (for me its snobbish and showing off), yet, for Google it’s a valuable data. They encourage you to do so, these data of purchases you made through credit card will determine not only your affluence, but your purchase habit (and your low IQ and enthuastic show-offing). Google can sell these data to other jeans maker like Guess, or brands alike that you are willing to spend a bomb on jeans pants alone.

Relationship status, Credit card purchases and daily ranting, all can appear for public consumption anytime, anywhere. With all these, comes the issue of privacy. In a brave new world where people had happily exposes personal things akin to being in a birthday suit strolling along nude beach. We share too much on the net that it had no ceiling to all these. Of course, Internet is about volatility you change whenever you want when we enter different phases of life where you no longer want to be ‘nude’. But your old life of being carefree ‘nude’ still lingers in the internet realm. That’s when nasyid singer past life photos can leak and reveal their shocking past, which people dig this.

But, above all these paranoia of internet privacy, concerns of internet reputation and freedom of speech. Google, Facebook and Apple loves what we do on the internet right now. Sharing of information when you regard your life is akin to an hour of telefilm. The three tech giants skimmed through your internet behavior and status updates and iPhone SMS inbox to study you like you are a lab rat. When you think its nobody business to tell people what you eat, wear or whom you’re with – the three giants made your data as their business.

A week of foursquare check-ins is sufficient for them to create a pattern of your behavior and predict almost accurately where you would be next. Employer skimmed through profiles to screen possible workers, so they wouldn’t employ a chap like the one would defame its own HR department. The internet is a scary place to be in, if you know how things works inside them.