asadiqbalkhan

[asadiqbalkhan]

Chinese AI prison

The United States is the worlds leader in discovering the world of Artificial Intelligence, with the technological infrastructure they have placed in Silicon Valley hosting tech goliaths such as Google, Amazon and Facebook. However, when it comes to actualizing the technology and implementing AI, China is light years ahead (Fee, 2018).

The Chinese government has taken initiatives to assure that the environment cultivated is a combination of a massive market, ample capital for investment in the technology sector and passionate entrepreneurs who follow the simple rule of fail fast, fail early and fail often. This drives the Chinese entrepreneurs to quickly search for opportunities and capitalize upon them by creating products and pivot when a shift is required (Fee, 2018).

For example, once the concept of ride sharing was proved in the market by Uber in the US, Chinese startups were quick to catch the scent and escalated the ride sharing game to enabling users to share bicycles, shared mopads to an extent that they even made an application to share mobile chargers. This rapid prototyping to production method has provided Chinese tech companies to tweak their approaches such as Megvii (Face++) which specializes in computer vision (a branch of AI) that created face morphing games (Shu, 2019).

According to Fee (2018), Chinese entrepreneurs and their C level executives (CEO, CTO) have absolute power in the company to execute commands which results in an effective outcome. The Chinese government perceives AI as an opportunity to leapfrog foreign competitors to an extent that the domestic AI sectors innovation is supported with substantial financial and R&D resources. To cultivate the seeds of potential talent in AI, the government takes initiatives to teach the related material which is intensified as the education level progresses to higher degrees (Bieri, 2018).

Bieri (2018) further explains that the Chinese government aims at removing the tarnished image of “made in china” products which is commonly associated with cheap and mass-produced goods with their “made in china 2025” plan. This plan is to establish a profound presence in the international AI resources.

With this drastic amount of influence the Chinese tech companies are putting internationally it is essential that there is a proper governance in place which will allow researchers and the developers to build trustable AI solution programs. However even though the Chinese government has started the process of setting ethical principles, they have received criticism from the international media on the contrary on human rights (Meara, 2019).

Meara (2019) further sheds light on the alleged use of facial recognition        technology the government has implemented to track members of the Uighur people and keep them in bounded conditions. This is a major ethical leap for the Chinese startups to build algorithms that the government exploits in tracking the Uighur people and keeping almost a million people in detention camps. This has raised major questions in the international media on how china has potentially ushered to a new era of automated racial profiling as their systems are precise enough to look for Uighurs based on their appearances and keep records of there out goings.

Is technology enabling China to build an AI based prison? That is the real question.

References

Fee, K. (2019). Why China Can Do AI More Quickly and Effectively Than the US. [online] Wired. Available at: https://www.wired.com/story/why-china-can-do-ai-more-quickly-and-effectively-than-the-us/ [Accessed 30 Nov. 2019].

 Shu, C. (2019). Megvii, the Chinese startup unicorn known for facial recognition tech, files to go public in Hong Kong – TechCrunch. [online] TechCrunch. Available at: https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/26/megvii-the-chinese-startup-unicorn-known-for-facial-recognition-tech-files-to-go-public-in-hong-kong/ [Accessed 30 Nov. 2019].

 Bieri, M. (2019). [online] Ethz.ch. Available at: https://ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/gess/cis/center-for-securities-studies/pdfs/CSSAnalyse220-EN.pdf [Accessed 30 Nov. 2019].

[asadiqbalkhan]

Fan communities & Activism

What is fandom?

Fans have conversed and interacted regarding their utmost love regarding celebrities and movies in self-contained bubbles for various years. Fans have taken initiatives such as faking sick days at the office to secretly jump the fan train to attend conventions such as comic con. Ever since the introduction of web 2.0 and information easily accessible from anywhere anytime in the world, fans have clocked countless hours chatting in online forums. Recently however, “fandoms” have become a hot topic of discussion throughout the mainstream media and masses have initiated a sense of curiosity pondering upon what this phenomenon is and how it can be explained to the average person (Levin, 2012).

    Fans representation in social media platforms

Television shows have been the main staple of entertainment for the masses for decades now and this representation in the media has focused on appealing audience with a one-sided entertainment. This means that when your favorite character in the TV show died, fans were not able to express their expressions on any platform, However with the rise of social media platforms and the disruption of Netflix the television experience has been re-contextualized to include both the creators and fans to communicate with each other (Fog, 2016).  

Recently with HBO’s dominant show airing for over nine years, eight seasons and seventy-three episodes, fans had a lot to express with how Game of Thrones concluded. A petition for showrunners to remake season 8 had reached a million signatures (Connor, 2019).

Fans today can be classified under numerous categories from anime fans, sports fan, celebrities etc. Some of these fans are truly dedicated into following into the footsteps of their passion for whatever class it may be by developing a lifestyle around the anime for example. People role play by wearing the respective characters costume some take it to the next level by playing fandoms of romances with favorite characters like the Avengers or game character. According to Lydia (2017)  the author explains of how she prefers going for original characters with certain kinks, such as furries or bondage, in a detail oriented manner the author further briefs of how fandoms are games that can use characters, scenarios or settings from anything you might know about the character such as Furries are sentient beings which possess animal and human features.

References

Levine, S. (2019). How Do We Explain Fandom?. [online] gnovisjournal. Available at: http://www.gnovisjournal.org/2012/09/26/how-do-we-explain-fandom/ [Accessed 30 Nov. 2019].

Fog (2019). #Faninteraction: Social Media and Representation in Popular Television | The Artifice. [online] The-artifice.com. Available at: https://the-artifice.com/faninteraction-social-media-representation-popular-television/ [Accessed 30 Nov. 2019].

[asadiqbalkhan]

Crowdsourcing & Crowdfunding

What is crowd funding?

The inception of crowdfunding can be taken back to the year 1997 when a British rock band funded their reunion through online donations from their fans and this unique methodology inspired companies such as Artistshare to provide a dedicated platform for such a purpose in the year 2000 (Fundable, 2019). As the years have progressed towards modernization crowdfunding itself became entitled to its own industry and quickly emerged as a young entrepreneur’s seal of approval for their ideas being validated. In 2019 this industry is a steppingstone for startups to gain exposure, financial funding and experience from the goliaths in the relevant industry they are aiming for. However, crowdfunding is not only for the men in suits, individuals use personal crowdfunding on sites like GoFundMe and You Caring to raise money to solve their own personal problems. Recently I donated for one of my favorite bodybuilding legends, Flex Wheeler as a GoFundMe campaign was started to generate funds to help him pay for his medical bills having gone through a leg amputation. This is real and believe it or not crowdfunding is changing or saving lives throughout the world. On the other hand, creatives of all types utilize platforms such as Kickstarter which is used by inventors to raise millions to fund development of the product and take it from the prototype version to development stage (Thorpe, 2018).

What is crowd sourcing?

Crowdsourcing is the process of using an open call contest or a ‘crowd’ of people to execute a specific task. The buzz word “crowdsourcing” was coined in Wired Magazine by author Jeff Howe in 2006 however the process of crowdsourcing is historical and has been in place since the 18th century. 1714 the British government invited tenders for the “Longitude Prize” offering an immense amount of prize GBP 20,000, to the winner who could calculate the longitude of a vessel on a journey. Rolling back to the future and in the world of web 2.0, it’s disappointing that no government would be willing to pay the equivalent of GBP 20,000 of that time now which according to my approximations would be around 170.8billion or more but on the Brightside hey! At least no one’s doing any math’s! Crowdsourced platforms such as Flickr provides an excellent opportunity to individuals or even businesses to acquire images in high definition for various interests. It might not be as fascinating as writing a mathematical algorithm to calculate the direction of a vessel but trust me in the digital age of data, finding non copyright protected material is itself a challenge.

  Can they overtake traditional funding mechanisms for the creative industries?

According to Michaels (2015), crowdfunding projects today bypass all traditional banking intermediaries which means that the entity lies between the borrower and lender exclusively on the online crowdfunding platform. This efficient methodology which is rapidly adopted by the industry today has created an immense gap where once a business owner had to submit a million documents to the bank and apply for the legitimacy for a banks loan. By early 2015 over 1,250 Crowdfunding platforms (CFP) were actively promoting inventors and entrepreneurs to pitch their ideas across various business sectors. According to Massolutions latest annual industry report global crowdfunding has flourished by 167 percent in 2014 and reached $16.2 billion funds from the $6.1billion raised the previous year. These statistics show that CFP not only has the potential but ability to disrupt the traditional funding mechanisms.

 References

The History of Crowdfunding. (n.d.). Retrieved November 29, 2019, from https://www.fundable.com/crowdfunding101/history-of-crowdfunding.

Thorpe, D. (2018, June 26). What Is Crowdfunding? Retrieved November 29, 2019, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/devinthorpe/2018/06/25/what-is-crowdfunding/#67cc861e65c5.

Michaels, R. (2016, June 26). How Crowdfunding Is Challenging the Banking Sector. Retrieved November 29, 2019, from https://internationalbanker.com/banking/how-crowdfunding-is-challenging-the-banking-sector/.

[asadiqbalkhan]

Trolling & Social Media Conflict

What is trolling and its origin?

Trolling in its adolescent form was discovered on the internet platforms such as Usenet, however the earliest case of trolling reported was in 1993 in an online game with basic programming features which enabled players to live out the virtual characters they had created which can be resembled to the current massively-multiplayer online role playing games such as World of World Craft in today’s generation (Cook 2019).

Cook (2019) delves deeper into the online game of that period known as LambdaMOO, in which a particular character known as Mr.Bungle dominated one of the virtual worlds and having prominent power he violated other players characters without their consent by performing graphic acts, one of the well known cases was known as “a rape in cyberspace”. Cook (2019) further explains how the whole community had to empower each other and unite to banish this character from the game.

Modern day trolls are delt with effective punishments from the respective platforms by incurring a ban on them which is quite literally a banishment from the platform.

Who are trolls?

According to March (2017), the act of trolling is conducted by an alarming amount of people as in an online poll conducted over a quarter of Americans admitted to having engaged in trolling at some point. Some researchers classify this behavior exhibited as an antisocial online behavior; however, trolling is far from being an anti-social person. Trolling in the modern day is defined as deceptive and disruptive online behavior which typically involves posting inflammatory and malicious content to deliberately upset a person.

 How is trolling effecting social media?

The affective chain of trolling is materialized by the social network platforms in the modern era such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Youtube and others. According to Gingiss (2018), companies are promoted to respond to everyone on social media, in cases where a company is complimented they want to be acknowledged on the other hand where they have a complaint people want empathy and resolution and where they are curious and ask questions they want to be answered. Trolls however do not dictate their presence on social media platforms for such reasons, they have one goal which is to simply disrupt the channel of communication between a user and the platform by spamming posts and any posts that are based on hate or filled with profanity are what trolls treasure and cherish.

In August a lawsuit was filed for the alleged copyright troll Christopher Brady who will no longer be able to issue false DMCA takedowns to other content creators.  According to Alexander (2019), Brady had to pay a fine of $25,000 in damages as part of the settlement resolved and he is prohibited from masking his identity when using Google products including YouTube. This settlement highlights the very real repercussions of trolling on social media platforms.

 How to handle trolls on social media

 The discord created on social media by Trolls can surely be delt with. Ignorance is bliss and by making use of the mute button is essential to not be involved in a toxic situation where you are infuriated by a Troll. Secondly it might not be cool to tell on your friend in school for beating you up, but with the psychological standards of people its best to report this behavior to the authorities responsible for the platform. Lastly remember when you value your own social norms more than what a keyboard warrior has to say regarding something on a virtual space, no *****s is given in reality.

 References

Cook, C. (2019). Everything you never wanted to know about trolling. [online] Diggit Magazine. Available at: https://www.diggitmagazine.com/articles/trolls-trolling [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].

 March, E. (2019). Trolls understand what hurts people but they simply don't care. [online] ABC News. Available at: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-13/trolls-understand-what-hurts-people-but-they-simply-dont-care/8701424 [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].

 Gingiss, D. (2019). How To Handle Trolls In Social Media. [online] Forbes.com. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/dangingiss/2018/09/24/how-to-handle-trolls-in-social-media/#4a7268811767 [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].

[asadiqbalkhan]

Social gaming aftermaths

Social gaming as one might think of as someone who plays video games socially, the same way people say “I drink or smoke socially” would definitely be an inaccurate definition. I mean how exactly would you be able to do that? Well in 2019 with technology advancing as the same pace as the speed of light developers have found a way!

Figure 1: Screen shot of Call of duty mobile 

Developers of social gaming platforms have architected the game design to include three major factors 1) Multiplayer, 2) Connectivity with Social Platforms and 3) Awareness & Interaction (Logan, 2019). As seen in figure 1 it’s a screen shot of Call of Duty Mobile, the game which has revolutionized the mobile gaming scene as in its first week of launch it accumulated more than 100million downloads (Chapple, 2019). From the figure all three components can be viewed such as the ability to play multiplayer with your friends, connectivity with social media platforms such as Facebook and a dedicated in game chat for the players to converse and come up with strategies for the game or simply utilize it as a socializing platform.

Are gaming communities becoming toxic?

Imagine for an instance, more than a 100 million players playing a game coming from different religions, different cultures and nations. Is it naïve to ponder that people won’t have negative or ruthless statements issued to bring you down? Well in my experience of gaming of more than 10 years calling a “Noob” is fine but having toxic players with usernames such as ALLAHUAKBAR or Jih4diBomber in a video game (that also in one involving weapons to shoot, how ironic) is a simple display of how even on social gaming platforms people exist who find it amusing to taunt a religion by associating it to ‘terrorism’. This my friends are the surface of only what online gaming communities have to bring about to the table in terms of toxicity. Anyhow recently having started playing CODM, I was curious what are the developers of the game doing about this issue of hate speech and players who are generally classified as toxic douchebags. And to my surprise the very following day on my Instagram feed I saw a post by the official page as follows.

References

Chapple, C. (2019). Call of Duty Mobile Breaks Record with 100 Million Downloads in Its First Week. [online] Sensor Tower Blog. Available at: https://sensortower.com/blog/call-of-duty-mobile-first-week [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].

Logan, B. (2019). Social gaming – A usability perspective | Spotless. [online] Spotless. Available at: https://www.spotless.co.uk/insights/social-gaming-usability/ [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].

[asadiqbalkhan]

Hacktivism - Activism & Protest

Traditional human rights concepts seem to capture the essence of the internet activity and when allied with the conventional political movements which when violates human rights and disrespects a certain jurisdiction the activity which is of an utmost unconventional way arises on the internet is how Hacktivism is born (Sorell, 2015).

Being a technologist or a geek in other words, I want to illuminate a side of this particular topic which is often kept under the shadows and not popularized on the mainstream media. To shine upon some of the spectrums of hacktivism a basic understanding of who “hacktivist” are needs to be addressed.  Hacktivist could be a group of people or an individual whose main goal is to bring issues to light and cause social change in a peaceful manner over the internet without causing any physical harm to a human.

One might ponder and relate Hacktivism as an act of illegal activity conducted over the internet, which I believe is debatable. Yes, many of the properties of such an act relies on the internet and achieving anonymity when protesting on the platform utilized by 4.39 billion people (Kemp, 2019).  

Anonymous the infamous hacktivist group launched their “Operation Tunisia” in 2010 which involved recruiting hackers to help take down eight government websites using DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service Atacks) attacks in support of the Arab spring movements in 2010 (Trend Micro, 2015).

It is important to note that these groups of people in the act of Hacktivism, hack servers, networks and systems not to gain any monetary terms rather to send a message. In this era some may classify them as virtual vigilantes or some cowards for keeping an anonymous profile. A more detailed analysis of Hacktivism will be discussed below as seen in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Hacktivism and the future of political participation (Source: )

 There are four boundaries to Hacktivism according to Samuel (2011), the first one being the online vs offline distinction. A physical presence does not qualify as hacktivism as it does not depend on the internet in anyway. The second one being Hacktivism vs Hacking, if hacking is not carried out in the motives of relations with activism it is not classified as hacktivism. Standard online activism such as signing online petitions, form a boundary for what can be considered hacktivism, but it must include a hacking component which can be classified into two categories, conventional activism such as mentioned above or violent activism. It is vital to differentiate cyberhacking/cyberterrorism from hacktivism as ones motives are solely to hack systems to cause harm such as loss of life or severe economic damage to a country and the other wants to send out a message and issue a statement.

In 2016 the hacktivist group anonymous reported to have declared war against president trumps campaign and according to Klein (2016), 78% of the targets belonged to one of the following categories: government agencies, corporations or media empires a trilogy of corrupted establishments according to the group and to support Trump in the election is to create an autocrat leadership in the country. Trumps promises of deportation force or building a wall it upsets millions and millions and billions (in trumps voice) of people residing in the states and the group believed to bring this issue to light, for the horrors of what citizens will face of having to be deported.

 References

Klein, A.G. (2016). How Anonymous hacked Donald Trump. [online] The Conversation. Available at: https://theconversation.com/how-anonymous-hacked-donald-trump-56794 [Accessed 16 Nov. 2019].

Trendmicro.com. (2015). Hacktivism 101: A Brief History and Timeline of Notable Incidents - Security News - Trend Micro USA. [online] Available at: https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/news/cyber-attacks/hacktivism-101-a-brief-history-of-notable-incidents [Accessed 16 Nov. 2019].

‌Kemp Simon. (2019). Digital 2019: Global Internet Use Accelerates - We Are Social. [online] Available at: https://wearesocial.com/blog/2019/01/digital-2019-global-internet-use-accelerates.

Sorell, T. (2015). Human Rights and Hacktivism: The Cases of Wikileaks and Anonymous. Journal of Human Rights Practice, 7(3), pp.391–410.

[asadiqbalkhan]

Political Engagement

To cultivate a basic understanding of what is to be discussed in this blog, let’s start with three questions. What is politics? What politics actually means and what politics is to you? Dictionary definition of politics would be the activities executed by governments, members of law-making organizations or people with influence on the methodologies to be implemented to govern a country. In actuality what politics is the brilliant adoption of a Greek word ‘polis’ which means city. Politics therefore means life of the city and the community and all the decisions that organize the life of a country, region or town.

Politics on the other hand to many is a controversial topic, I’ve seen families completely disassociating their relationships due to an incline in political difference (The hype during election’s in the country is REAL). However many view politics as too boring, complex or a “DANGEROUS” topic of discussion Which when we presented this topic in class to my surprise many of my fellow peers felt that talking about politics or being engaged in it might have repercussions as the government might be listening secretly. Interesting.

Political engagement in the current technological era means being engaged in the political realm by using social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Youtube or even Instagram. The adoption of these platforms provides a channel for the politicians to connect with the voting base of the nation without the hinderance of the local media authorities. President Obamas 2008 election is a prime example of how using social media platforms such as Youtube and Facebook enabled him to develop a huge voting base of under 25 year from 70% of the Americans (Lowe 2015).

The ability to engage in a two-way communication with those who sought for their votes in a government’s election caused a tremendous surge in the use of social and electronic media. In Pakistan 2018 elections it was observed that throughout the election process political parties, individual candidates and ordinary voters indulged and exploited social media to achieve their desired ends. While social media is a tool for strategic communication by the political parties it also serves as a mouthpiece for the ordinary citizen and an alternative to the mainstream media which in common belief is known to showcase biased opinions regarding particular parties. For example, on GEO News if Pakistan Tehrik Insaaf (PTI) is being popularized with positive remarks on ARY News it would be the opposite.

According to Jarral (2018), what the mainstream media refrains to show it makes its way to social platforms, as on 13th July GEO TV’s Talat Hussain took to twitter when his channel refused to broadcast his coverage of Shahbaz Sharif’s (Current PM – at the time) rally. Amid accusations of media content control, restrictions and self-censorship during the elections, social media channelized the protest.

Jarral, K 2018, Pakistan Elections: the role of socia media, viewed on 20th October, 2019, <https://theasiadialogue.com/2018/10/15/pakistan-elections-the-role-of-social-media/>.

Lowe, L 2015, The Politicization of     Social Media, viewed 20th October, 2019,    <https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/politicization-social-media-lynn-lowe>.

[asadiqbalkhan]

Is Tumblr a blog or a social network site?

Tumblr provides a platform to the artistic individuals to explore and share their endeavors online in the form of blogging. The degree of flexibility provided, to enhance the user experience an individual possess by creating a mesmerizing episode of online blog reading by tastefully using the features available to the viewers is what Tumblr is based upon (Menendez 2013).

In 2013 161 million Tumblr blogs and 70 billion posts with one third of the Interbrand Top 100 brands actively managing Tumblr accounts is a sign that the platform is considered to be at the top of the social media food chain (Stringfellow, 2013). Since 2013 in the next 5 years, Tumbr has gained a whopping milestone of 500 million users, and social media experts have since questioned the platforms existence (Ramsden, 2018).

Some call it a microblogging platform whereas some ponder that it’s another social networking site, however from my own experience and understanding of Tumblr being a software engineer and technology enthusiast, Tumblr is a hybrid of both adapting the best of both worlds. The platform provides its users the ability to create their own portfolio and establish a strong virtual presence.

The ability of sending private messages to other fellow tumblers, like or reblog their blog post provides the social networking ingredients to the platform. One might not intentionally create a tumblr account to gain a following of anonymous virtual identities for example in the case of Instagram everyone’s either an insta verified model or an “Influencer” as titled on their profile description.

You join this community to allure likeminded individuals to converse and share ideas with. Upon creating a tumblr account after going through the basic information form fulfillment tumblr requires you to select topics of your interest to cultivate an understanding of your own unique digital footprint on the platform such as photography, food, travel, technology, fitness, politics etc.

References

Menendez, S. (2013). The 7 best uses of Tumblr. [online] Mashable. Available at: https://mashable.com/2013/12/09/tumblr-uses/ [Accessed 28 Sep. 2019].

Stringfellow, A. (2013). The Great Tumblr Debate: Blogging Platform Or Social Network?. [online] Business Trends and Insights. Available at: https://www.americanexpress.com/en-us/business/trends-and-insights/articles/the-great-tumblr-debate-blogging-platform-or-social-network/ [Accessed 29 Sep. 2019].