User:Katiesimova/sandbox

Introduction

This page is a workspace for my edits, most of them done as assignments for my university course at Middlesex University. Some are my original edits, such as the Panopticon in modern world and Social capital regarding social media and some are follow-ups to edits of my friends or peers from my course, such as the E-society and job hunting or Web tracking- Hola(VPN), NordVPN, ExpressVPN . If you have any tips or advice do not hesitate to message me!

Panopticon in modern world

Panopticon and panopticon effect might be coming from Foucault's work in 1975 but it is very much present in today’s society as well. While being used in prisons for obvious reasons, it’s usage in different types of buildings might be quite surprising. However, the panopticon effect is used throughout various different spheres for its efficient way of having control over bigger numbers of people. Any mass of people can be controlled by using panopticon effect, not only prisoners. Shopping malls, courthouses, libraries, just to name few that use the fact that people are unable to be sure if someone is watching them or not to prevent theft or commotion.

Talking about the pretended guard and people focusing on modern world the CCTV system cannot be missed. CCTV plays enormous role in today’s life, especially in big cities. CCTV’s in this scenario work as the pretended guard while residents of the area of activity are the pretended inmates. For example, London is the most CCTVed city in Europe and even thought it might not be visible at first glance, it is not possible to be anywhere in London without someone being able to find where exactly you are, how and when did you get there and what exactly you did at certain time. While some might argue that the installation of the CCTV system did not do anything to prevent crime, it definitely affected the potential victims and the offenders as well. As much as the fear of a prison guard being present while the inmate does something illegal prevents them from doing such thing, CCTV makes people behave with the thought of someone else seeing them and judging them for their actions. While it might not stop someone who is determined to behave in violation of the law, it will certainly stop or at least make someone who is uncertain doubt their illegal actions.

Social media is another perfect example of the panopticon effect in real life. While CCTV are more palpable, the way how people police their own behaviour online is more subtle. Social media play the role of guards while their users are the inmates. As much as there is bigger chance of crime not being committed in front of a CCTV camera, the same goes for people not commiting crime or behaving badly online. In the last years, presenting ourselves online in a good light plays enormous role not only in our personal life but even more seriously in professional life. Users of social media nowadays are aware that what they type in stays on the internet forever and there is always way how to find who said what. They police their own behaviour with that in mind. While being prepared for the fact that everything posted online is there forever became part of users life, there is still the fear of being misunderstood. All of this affects not only the social capital of individual but also their mental health.

Social capital regarding social media

Everything changes throughout the time and the social capital is no different. The success and enormous usage of online world in people's everyday life brought many more options on how to boost individuals social capital. While interacting online, people that would not be able to interact in real world were given the opportunity to form relationships and links that would never be created outside of the internet bubble. Social capital is greatly depending of what network we, as individuals, can create, access and maintain and being in a certain group only deepens the social capital possessed. As much as the networks created by a person are important, the ones that are not known to the individual play a big role as well. With the right usage of social media, social capital can grow especially because the number of groups out of reach becomes much smaller. As pointed out in a throughout research made by Friberg, Klebercz and Parviainen the importance of social media regarding any capital, not just social capital, is going to exponentially grow with the social media itself. Being the source of all information social media gives people the tool to enhance their social capital much more easily and quickly than any other form of communication. Communication with people from all over the world is beneficial for the individual not only because it brings access to information and connections from these people but it also makes the individual more attractive and beneficial to maintain connection with the individual for others as well.

While bringing huge amounts of benefits, even the use of social media brings negatives as well. It is true that social media give the individual tool for communication with anyone who is also a user but the depth of the connection is often questionable. In the modern world it might seem like people completely neglected the ‘old-fashioned’ face-to-face communication but it is still the most important way of communication that is. It is true, that the connection online might be established but for many people face-to-face communication still prevails and the connections and network created online can be shallow and unstable compared to the old fashioned ways. But as every generation adapts to its options and needs, the understanding of social capital changes with it. Younger generations are born into the usage of social media being normalized not only in personal sphere but in the profesional as well and that will have impact on how well can people balance the positives and negatives. The human need of belonging somewhere and socializing creates a field for social capital to thrive and even thought there is many negative aspects of socializing online, when done with caution and understanding, social media can improve individuals social capital tremendously.

E-society and job hunting

E-business is one of the first used e-societies there is and that is giving it enormous power in today’s world. The umbrella term e-business is a parent word for any business that uses the internet to realize its commerce and enable the external relations and activities with individuals or other businesses. As it is obvious from the introduction, e-business is a comprehensive part of any business nowadays for the obvious reasons such as the enormous integration of internet and social media in every sector throughout the whole spectrum.

Job hunting while being an active part of number of e-societies can be important especially because of the social capital that goes hand in hand with it. LinkedIn is definitely one of the spaces where [[e-business booms and where the importance of socializing online in the right business circles is extremely important. LinkedIn is a space for both businesses and individuals where they can showcase their work and interact with each other while building a closed e-society of same-minded or similarly business oriented people which can help to kickstart a e-business between not only employers and employees but can lead to collaboration between companies and corporations that can benefit these individuals and companies not only within the online space but in the real business outside the e-business bubble.

LinkedIn is the most used site when it comes to creating and maintaining professional relationships online but it is not the only site and app that provides these services. Similarly to Linkedin there are sites and apps like AngelList, Opportunity or Meetup that work with the same concept.

Web tracking- Hola(VPN), NordVPN, ExpressVPN

Every machine has its specific IP address that is helping the website geographically locate where the device is at a specific time and also helps the devices in communicating with each other. Some websites however have their access limited to certain places or even parts of the world and using the IP address of a device, these websites exactly know when to limit access on the device and when not. While this is certainly a functional way of operating, web and mobile applications like Hola (VPN), NordVPN and ExpressVPN are working against web tracking using the IP address of a device. By redirecting the requests from geo-blocked places to the computers and Internet connections of other users in places that are not being blocked, these web and mobile applications are bypassing the blocking.

Hola(VPN) To this day Hola has over 100 million users which makes it the most used site regarding not only the redirecting requests to geo-blocked sites but also when it comes to securing one's data. Hola can also be used to increase the security, privacy, and anonymity while browsing the open web.

Hola has its fair share of criticism, one of the scandals they were involved being fueled by the 8chan founder Fredrick Brennan after his site was reportedly attacked by Hola network exploitation. Hola’ s founder Ofer Vilenski responded to that in a Business Insider and the website immediately undertook a software update that was supposed to deal with all the problems listed by Brennan. In late 2016 Hola sold the majority of its shares to UK investment company for, what was later revealed, $125 million.