# Reading Responses (Set 1)

## Reading Responses

### Jan 26 Tuesday - Attention

Whether we like it or not, the concept of superconnectedness in this digital age is here to stay. While Chayko lists its many benefits of convenience, entertainment, and access to information to name a few, the author also lucidly lists its hazards of stress, health, dependency and addiction. Unsurprisingly, superconnectedness often evokes different opinons from different people. For example, access to information may cause one to feel stresses at the cost of caring about others (p. 187), but to another, they may feel empowered to be able to connect with whoever they need instantly (p. 179). Needless to say, the availability of the internet and digital media is allowing us to be more plugged in than ever before, and fulfilling our need for connection.

In our digital age, perhaps the question to ask isn't so much so whether the ubiquity of tech and consequently our superconnectedness, is a good or a bad thing in considering its benefits and hazards. Rather, the better question to ask might sound like this: should our need to feel connected and plugged in as humans come at the cost of our mental and emotional wellbeing? One cannot deny the mental impacts of superconnectedness as Chayko mentions, and rising concerns of not just reluctance but also difficulty in disconnecting in children and teens are troubling. In my opinion, to use this continuous superconnectedness to our advantage, is to be able to live a "balanced, blended approach" (p194) where we interact in various environments both online and off. Albeit difficult, striking a balance is a strive that we should never fall back on in an effort to achieve a healthy life.

### January 29 Friday - How HTTPS Secures Connections
Who knew that there was so much going on behind the scenes to make **Hypertext Transfer Protocol** become **Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure**? There's probably a general consensus within the lay people that connections do need to be made secure due to sensitive information like passwords and credit card information, and this article by Brody lets us in on how exactly that happens. A lot of math, namely cryptography, is used to make the encryption possible. Specifically, the two types of crypto paradigms are Public Key Cryptography and Symmetric Key Cryptography. The former commonly uses the Diffie-Hellman key exchange to form the secure connection, and subsequently requires a Public Key Infrastructure for user authentication purposes through the use of certificates. The latter uses a symmetric key crypto system for users to communicate securely using their agreed upon cipher suite.

The use of certificates for user authentication purposes piques my interest as someone who doesn't necessarily have extensive knowledge on this digital signature use. Given the security alert image of the popup in the article, I wonder how many people click yes to proceed anyway, not knowing the meaning behind that? Or do they actually take time to find out what that popup might mean for the security of the connection? I would think that a lot of people, myself included, probably belong to that first group that would have easily looked past that popup. Additionally, it seemed slightly counterintuitive that even with this extensive system behind the establishment of secure connections, the element of trust in the system still needs to be there for it to work overall. The verification process, while robust, requires a lot of back and forth with the CA, and I wonder if there is any way to also remove this human element to make this a more efficient process.

### February 5 Friday - Did Media Literacy Backfire?

Given the rise of fake news, there is no doubt about the indispensable quality of media literacy. However, the quest presents itself with its own set of challenges which hasn't really played out in our best interests as a society. In the United States, Boyd argues that the heart of the problem lies in a culture of doubt and critique, experience over expertise, and personal responsibility that has paved the way for a more polarity, distrust, and self-segregation (2017). It was a sober reminder that addressing these deeper cultural divides has to go farther than simple band-aid fixes like pushing Facebook to curb the spread of fake news or even labeling fake news themselves.

In the entirety of this compelling read, what moved me the most was how Boyd acknowledged the ways in which even as proponent for media literacy, she had missed the mark, and recognizes her privilege which has been given to her through her education and her career. In doing so, she shows us the first steps in bridging these divides, and what it means to live in a society of people who carry varying perspectives. With the understanding that the kind of values we carry shape the way we interpret the evidence in front of us, it is imperative that our quest for media literacy goes beyond triangulation, labeling, or information intermediaries. Even mitigation efforts to curb fake news have simply evolved to become just a step in the media manipulation life cycle, especially surrounding political climates. Today, we see the destructive power of fake news more evidently than before, ultimately resulting in a violent insurrection at the US Capitol. We can and should do better, and Boyd's timeless appeal is one that speaks to the core of our humanity, to take a step beyond media literacy to bridge these cultural divides.

### February 16 Tuesday - Comment: The Bottom Half of the Web

A quick Urban Dictionary search for the bottom half of the internet reads, "cesspool for people being anonymously vile." Living on the bottom of the web, comment is communication that is reactive, short, and asynchronous. Perhaps comment fails on the web because our social capacity as humans and Dunbar's number of 150 contacts is overwhelmed by the scale of online communities. As a result of this scale, gossip exists as a way to evaluate and share opinions about each other in an effort to forge alliances, often in a Machiavellian way. How then can we respond to unruliness that exists on the bottom half of the web? We can ignore, disable, fortify, or relocate comments in search of intimate serendipity. However, these responses to comment still fail to find its way through all the spam and manipulation and given rise by the growing number of users.

Despite all of its drawbacks, there still is inherent value in comment in the online communities. As a medium for people to authentically express themselves, comment protects against homogeneity and emotionality, which are factors that make up failures of crowd intelligence. Where people are freely expressing, there organically will be a diversity of opinion, which can prevent echo chambers. Afterall, to be a user of the web today necessitates that we are able to coexist on platforms with varying perspectives. Sure, there is a lot of dreck down there, but comment both improves *as well as* manipulates. When we ignore or disable comment, we lose the dreck, but we also risk homogeneity. This isn't to say that we shouldn't tune out the unruly, but it is to say that we should not stop listening to the public just because unruliness exists. Should we heed crowd advice and ignore what's on the bottom half of the web? Let's carefully reconsider.

### February 26 Friday - Exam Review Questions
#### Multiple Choice
1) Which one of these examples might be accurate to represent interleaved learning?
a) praticing volume calculations for 30 minutes each day, 1 week before the exam
b) practicing volume calculations of different cube sizes
c) practicing volume calculations of a cube, sphere, cylinder
d) practicing volume calculations the whole day the night before the exam

2) According to the lecture, digital certificates serve the purpose of ____ in web security.
a) user authentification
b) sharing secrets securely
c) message encryption
d) key exchange

#### Short Answer
1) How are the deep web and the dark web similar or different?
2) Jack has been thinking of and looking up vacation spots in Hawaii, but ultimately decides that he should wait another year before going on another vacation. Subsequently, he realizes that he's getting lots of target ads for vacations in Hawaii in the websites he visits. Explain how this might be happening.

#### Answers:

**C represents interleaved learning** because it is alternating focus on two or more related concepts or skills, rather than focusing on one concept at a time until it is mastered. **A** represents spaced learning, **B** represents varied learning, **D** represents cramming.

**A, certificates serve the purpose of user authentification** in web security. Certificates domain names with their public key, so that if someone else presents a public key, the signature on the certificate would note match. Ciphers help to encrypt messages, public keys allow you to share secrets securely, and certificates exist to help you make sure that the sender/receiver are who they really say the are.

The deep web is anything that does not show up with a simple google search. It is beyond surface level, not easily accessible, and behind paywalls or sign-in credentials. For example, our Canvas website is part of the deep web, because we have to log in to be able to access it. Within the deep web, the dark web is a subset that is an intentionally hidden part of the internet that we don't have access to unless we have installed the onion version on our web browsers to preserve anonymity. By its nature, illegal activity can be conducted through the dark web, but is not always the case.

Jack is receiving target ads through third-party cookies. Third-party cookies, generated by a domain that is different from the one you are visiting, come from pages that you don't intentionally visited through embedded content in the HTML. This might come in the form of embedded images or ads in the website you are visiting. The third party cookies are generated from the embedded images or ads that exist on the website Jack visited, then stores information about the kind of content he is interacting with. Subsequently, any website Jack visits that loads the third-party server's code will be able to access the information collected by that third-party cookie to offer targeted ads.