After reading an article in Yahoo! Tech about innocent people who could not access their Facebook accounts because of an anti-spam algorithm, I thought that such social network is also flawed. This assumption is based on Andrew Noyes’ statement "Our systems classify over 10 billion actions and pieces of every day. Of course, no system is perfect, and we do sometimes make mistakes."
But there is paradoxical will of the Facebook spokesman that Facebook is expected to be a place where people can express their ideas, either pros or cons. How could he say hope for such a thing when in the reality, mechanism of the social network mostly depends on machined system?
It proves that total freedom of expressing ideas is absolutely bounded by power. Here, in the Facebook case, the power is of course held by cyberists, the Facebook mechanics who use computation as their majestic rifle. Cyberspace is an abstract system which is controlled by elites – the cyberists.
In that kind of relationship between the average people and Facebook elites, is mediated through the abstract system. According to Anthony Giddens in The Consequence of Modernity, problems (of cyberspace) come in the form of manufactured uncertainty. It means that the Facebookers have to “produce” active trust to the developer of social network. Facebookers could only feel disappointed since they were not able to discuss with their groups online. Then what else? So, they wait for the Facebook progammers to repair the detriment.
Such kind of disappointment may effect the feeling of insecurity. Since their communication mostly depends on Facebook, therefore as they found they could not access it, they got depressed. Were my data stolen? Did we get hacked? Those questions are so common in this digital era.
To conclude, conventional communication is still the best way to express our freedom. If it is restricted by the higher law, at least it has exact – not abstract system.
No comments:
Post a Comment