The Highest Priority

Tonight I attended the wedding reception of one of a good friend from high school. I love the excitement that accompanies wedding receptions as a new family begins. It puts life into perspective. When it comes down to it what in this life has the greatest potential for bringing happiness or misery to our lives? I believe its our families. In a world that downplays family relationships and encourages individuals to seek happiness in self-centered ways, it is important to protect and defend these family relationships. From my point of view, a family is the most fulfilling thing this life has to offer. It deserves the highest priority in our lives.

Facebook Beacon: How far is too far?

Last week, online privacy concerns were raised to a new level as the tainted underpinnings of Facebook's Beacon advertising system were exposed. Now as Facebook tries to save face, the important question that everyone online needs to ask is how far is too far? The public is now beginning to see that when you are online, it is quite possible that the whole world might be able to see what you are doing at a given moment. Publishing your latest movie rental or recipe might not seem like a huge deal, but given enough data points and you can turn a lot of harmless information into something quite harmful. For instance, knowing that an anonymous online user speaks Japanese does nothing to help you identify that specific person. But combine that with the information that the user's hometown is some small, mostly Caucasian town in the middle of America and you can probably figure out who that supposedly "anonymous" user is. I'm pretty sure that Facebook did not have bad intentions, but other people will. Facebook is not a small company, how many other people on the web are following your every move? Do you care? In general, we are willing to sacrifice a little privacy for better service in our behalf. But it begs the question, for you how far is too far?

Oceans Away?

Last Friday an estimated 200 million people tuned in to watch a regular season basketball game between the Houston Rockets and Milwaukee Bucks. That's twice the number of people that watched the Superbowl this year. Who were all these viewers? The game took place in Houston but most of the viewers were found on the other side of the world in China. Friday night was the first meeting of Yao and Yi. When you think of China, the first thing that comes to mind isn't basketball. But Yao Ming and Yi Jianlin are breaking the mold and bringing basketball to the attention of mainland China. It is one example of how connecting the world together has changed the way we live.

In the past oceans and mountains, languages and customs made the world seem enormous. But fiber optic cables and satellites have brought us to the realization that "it's a small world after all." The internet is an amazing thing, my site statistics shows recent visitors to this blog from India, Canada, Chile, England, France, Italy, Vietnam, Russia, the Netherlands, Australia, Romania, Germany, Israel and Greece. It's never been so easy for ideas to be dispersed throughout the earth. Some people, citing examples like last Friday's basketball game, think that this means "Americanizing the whole world. They say that before we know it everyone will be chomping down Big Macs and singing along with Garth Brooks. I don't think so. Although the cultures of the world will continue to intertwine, they will continue to have their own distinct flavor.

Even here in America we appreciate and assimilate the good of other cultures into our own. Drive down University Avenue in St. Paul, Minnesota and there are probably four Vietnamese restaurants selling "pho" (beef noodle soup) on every street corner. For years, destitute Hmong refugees in Thailand have hand stitched "pa ndau" (Hmong flower cloth) to send to their relatives in America, where the intricate handiwork is then sold to admiring American collectors. Due largely to the internet, we have unprecedented opportunities to be exposed to unique new forms of art, music and food. Countries all over the world will be able to embrace light and truth, regardless of where it comes from.

The internet has also provided a way for cultures to retain their distinct flavor. Wikipedia has articles in over two hundred languages, evidence that the internet is no longer just an American thing. It is providing a new forum for individuals to communicate in their own language and share information vital to their cultural identity. It is also helping to change the way the world does business. As more and more countries begin to establish their place in the global economy, individuals are able to be successful while remaining in their own countries. These changes suggest that although Beijing and Boston may be only an email away, they can still be an ocean apart culturally.

Why be afraid of the direction the world is moving? We shouldn't feel that our cultural identity is in danger. I am just excited to see what the world has to offer.

Lock the doors to Facebook

The other night my friend's car was broken into. His iPod, camera and check book were all stolen. All the windows were intact, he had simply forgotten to lock his doors. Before he even realized what had hit him, he had also lost nearly 600 dollars from his bank account. Carelessness can cost. No one would deliberately leave their car doors unlocked overnight in the middle of the city. Nor would anyone leave their credit card just laying out on the front porch. Or stash their personal diary away at the local public library for anyone who was curious. But many people do similar things everyday on the internet without giving it a second thought. Sometimes we need to be careful to lock the door behind us.

For instance, that same friend moved in with me a few months back. He had never heard of Facebook, so I put in a plug for it, saying something to the effect that Facebook was the social network where you could feel safe about your information. Four months later, by checking out his Facebook profile you can find out his age, hometown, birthday, cell phone number, email address, religion, apartment complex, current place of employment and even that his car was recently broken into. This doesn't even include the information you could glean from the hundreds of pictures and posts on his wall. And all that information is available for anyone at our university to peruse or abuse. Even information that seems inconsequential can be dangerous if put in the hands of someone with malicious intent. You never know who is looking at your profile.

Two years ago, students at MIT conducted a fascinating study on privacy concerns and Facebook. Two things stood out to me. 1. How easy it was for them to find a way to retrieve large amounts of information . 2. How much information people allowed to be publicly available. This study was conducted before Facebook was open to all comers and before the Facebook API was released. Both of these changes bring additional risks to those using Facebook. There is also growing concern with regards to law enforcement, school administration, and employers using information against Facebook users. And you never know which online predators are creeping around your profile. All of this suggests to me that Facebook might not be as safe as I suggested to my friend that it was. Facebook is just one example of the potential dangers we face with Web 2.0.

Ultimately in a system designed for sharing information there is bound to be some leaks, regardless of the precautions taken to guard the system. Although I do believe that companies have a moral responsibility to do more to warn and protect their users, when it comes down to it, users really need to be more defensive of their information. We can learn two lessons from my unlucky friend. First, lock the doors. Choose an intelligent password. Be careful to log out when using public computers. Don't share private information in public ways. Second, don't leave valuables where they may be vulnerable. If my friend hadn't left possessions worth hundreds of dollars in his car then not locking the door wouldn't have mattered much. If information about yourself could be harmful in the wrong hands, then the only way to make sure it doesn't get there is by not publishing it online in the first place. So next time, make sure to lock the doors and bring in anything you don't want to lose.