Gleick and Boyd

      The statistics on Google in Gleick's article are pretty interesting. In barely a decade Google has made itself a global brand bigger than Coca-Cola or GE. Google is where we go for answers. It is known as the World Brain. It is the oracle of redirection. And I really appreciated how the article mentioned how Google founders Larry and Sergey did everything their own way. It is so crazy to see how far Google has come, now with their newest application being Google+. People said it would take over Facebook, but Facebook is still the most prevalent social-networking platform. I know I have recently been using Google more frequently for my group projects; we've been using Google document and Google presentation so we could all collectively and collaboratively work on the same project at different times. Google is continuously coming up with all these new features, so who knows what the future will hold for Google. Both Gleick and Boyd's articles talk about branding online identities. “Privacy is not something that can be counted, divided, or traded. It is not a substance or collection of data points. It’s just a word that we clumsily use to stand in for a wide array of values and practices that influence how we manage our reputations in various contexts. There is no formula for assessing it: I can’t give Google three of my privacy points in exchange for 10 percent better service” (Gleick).

     Boyd described social media as a new wrench to this age-old problem. “Blogs, social network sites, and Twitter took the identity battle to an entirely new scale. Not only are handles important as unique identifiers, they're constantly referenced in all sorts of ways in social media” (Boyd). I too agree that blogging created an ecosystem where people became known for their blog identities; for example, Perez Hilton is known as that guy with the pink hair who blogs about celebrity gossip, and Lauren Conrad is that girl from Laguna Beach who blogs fashion, arts and crafts, recipes, and make-up. It is so crazy how much we are branded and associated by our online identities. 

Sincerely,

Clara Min