Readings - Module 3

Gregory Ferenstein, techcrunch.com | October 2012

"Here is an unintended dark side to a search engine that only provides the information we want to see: it cocoons us in an echo chamber of political information that confirms our pre-existing opinions."

Adi Kamdar and Dave Maass, Electronic Frontier Foundation | March 2013

"The research confirms what we’ve expected all along: Our privacy continues to constrict in an era of big data. Information we put out there for one purpose can now easily be collated and acted upon for wildly different purposes."

Research study cited in this article:

Kosinski, M., Stillwell, D., & Graepel, T. (2013). Private traits and attributes are predictable from digital records of human behavior. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Quentin Hardy, NY Times Bits Blog | June 2012

"Even without knowing your name, increasingly, everything about you is out there. Whether and how you guard your privacy in an online world we are building up every day has become increasingly urgent."

Corbin Hiar, PBS MediaShift | July 2010

"The articles she wrote -- all of which were selected from an algorithmically generated list -- included 'How to Wear a Sweater Vest' and 'How to Massage a Dog That Is Emotionally Stressed,' even though she would never willingly don a sweater vest and has never owned a dog. // 'I was completely aware that I was writing crap,' she said. 'I was like, 'I hope to God people don't read my advice on how to make gin at home because they'll probably poison themselves.'"

What's a content farm?