# Reading Responses (Set 1)

## Friday Jan. 29th- How the web works

Knowing behind the scenes on how the web works is complicated because frankly the concept of web design is abstract. We as users mainly experience the convenience of the web and the opportunities that let us connect with others. However, the web has many different components that ensure the client and server are protected from unwanted guests intervening. Brody explained that to make sure this doesn’t happen, the web uses cryptography, Diffie-Hellman, Symmetric Key Encryption and many more. Both articles portray the importance of protection and to ensure the safest system which requires a lot of approval processes that are incorporated into the web. Brody described the extra precaution I listed prior as something that isn’t “revelead to anyone who isn’t authorized to decrypt messages,” (Brody, para. 16) and ensuring that “client and server can now communicate securely” (Brody, last to 17th para.) all purposely put into place for protection. Yet, why do I feel like there are so many cases of virus or people’s data being stolen on websites that look legit? This made me realize even though so many precautions are put into place, we can never be too careful.
The question that I had in mind was how can I evaluate how “safe” the websites are and clients and servers we are using if this topic is very foreign to me? The process of authentication and certificates are all there for protection but how can I ensure what I’m doing is safe? We need more than authentication, “we need a Public Key Infrastructure to make sure that entities are who they say they are” (Brody, last to 16th para.) and certificates “needs to be signed by a trusted Certificate Authority” (Brody, last to 11th para.) ensuring the site is trusted and is real. Now, I wonder with the frequent scandal with websites like Facebook not being able to protect the users’ private information and TikTok taking our data, if behind the scenes of web designing is also improving and adapting to today’s emerging demand on data privacy.

## Friday, February 5th- Fake News

We were told to never believe everything we hear. We need to have a personal responsibility and be the “sole proprietorship of our knowledge” (boyd, 2017, para. 10) to filter out the information we intake. The pieces that usually gain a lot of engagement are opinion pieces rather than news stories (Silverman, 2016, last to 9th para.) because the content is outrageous attracting a lot of readers. Stories like these get many doubters to repost to debunk this news which makes the stories become more profitable (boyd, 2017, last to 8th para.). Then the question is do people create fake news for the commission? The more clicks, the more money?

Even though we were taught to “integrate the new knowledge into our understanding,” we put our guards up and “double down on their beliefs” (boyd, 2017, last to 7th para.) when the information contradicts them. However, how am I supposed to question the news I read when I don’t know what to believe anymore? I know I can use the “crap detection” guidelines to verify what websites are credible but that is just the starting point. Some articles that seem like they are telling the truth to me might not be the truth to others because they might be considered a “liberal media” (boyd, 2017, para. 6th). This whole concept of finding the right news seems complicated since no one is agreeing on what news is “correct”. The media manipulation life cycle doesn’t help this case since people recontextualize news to manipulate the public so they can make the other person the “bad guy”. Fake news spread like wildfire especially with the power of social media now. Unfortunately, this kind of news doesn’t simply go away since the false accusation on Biden admitting to organized voter fraud is still circulating the Internet with “... more than 8,000 interactions” as of December 8th proving that this kind of measure has a lasting effect on people’s consumption of the news (Dreyfuss, 2020, last para.). Now, I wonder if the concept of fake news is as extreme as it is now pre-2016 presidential election.

## February 9th- Learning

Since I was young, I was told to never cram for exams because I wouldn’t be able to retain all the information. Cramming for exams is overwhelming and memorizing all the information is not an effective way to learn. There’s a reason why teachers used to always emphasize to students to never cram and to plan ahead. Not only students but the majority of the people believe that repetition is key to memorizing; the more you repeat to yourself, the better you remember. However, this theory is debunked by a psychologist Endel Tulving at the University of Toronto that “mere repetition did not enhance learning” and “that repetition by itself does not lead to a good long-term memory” (Brown, Roediger, McDaniel, 2014. p. 14).

There are many scientifically proven ways to study better to help retain information for exams, such as spacing, chunking, and elaboration. This study states that elaboration has “no limit to what you can learn” if you can attach a meaning or connect it to what you know then you can learn and remember anything (Brown, Roediger, McDaniel, 2014, p. 5). I was like the student in the reading where he “reviewed the highlighted notes and his highlighted text material several times” but ended up with a D on the exam (Brown, Roediger, McDaniel, 2014, p. 16). However, I realized I never truly understood the material of the class and if I had to “convert the main points of the text into a series of questions and then later tried to answer them,” (Brown, Roediger, McDaniel, 2014, p. 16), I couldn’t because I just memorized the material. Nonetheless, for a lot of students getting a good grade is their ultimate goal so how do you persuade them to start learning rather than memorizing information to get a good grade on the exam? Also, if students are geared to memorizing the information, how do people expect students to verify where they get their sources using the “crap detection” which takes extra effort and time when kids don’t even actually learn the material?

## February 16th- Cooperation

If everyone cooperated, life would be a lot easier. People cooperate more depending on their personal preferences- if it benefits them more, they are going to put in more effort. If everyone was selfless, always cooperated, and contributed to the common goods, then the world would have less issues. However, the majority of the people simply do the good thing or “are more generous when they feel they are being watched” (Nowak, 2012, p. 39) where sometimes people’s cooperation isn’t coming from good intentions. It’s unfortunate that people put their self-interest before the greater goods and “seek personal power” when in reality “cooperation would be mutually beneficial for both parties” which is the collective action problem (Wikipedia, 2021). People sometimes let their ego and expectations get in the way of achieving something greater together. Similarly, people can learn and receive feedback from each other in the comments section under the videos but people leave hateful, negative comments because it doesn’t match with their belief. Like the blog post Xeni Jardin wrote about her cancer-treatment story, as much as people were supportive, there were still “a slew of hateful and misogynist tweets'' trying to “sabotage the event” (Reagle, 2019). Behind the screens, it’s easy to not cooperate and state how you feel without having the consequences right in front of you but this reminds me of how in-person, the opposite happens.

From my point of view, instead of people not cooperating and seeing what can come out of working together, people tend to free-ride and slack off (Wikipedia, 2021). In classrooms and at work, people expect others to put in the effort to achieve the goal and only get the benefit without the contribution. Comparably, for group projects in school, the concept of social loafing happens which is similar to the basis of collective action problems stated by David Hume (Wikipedia, 2021) where a student starts to put in less effort because someone else will do the work. This makes me wonder why cooperating is so hard but at the same time people don’t cooperate because they expect others to?

## March 5th- Contribution & Gender
It’s 2021- the fact that we are still discussing gender inequality in the workforce and universities is disappointing. As a female college student, I have felt the pressure and the intimidation of male colleagues’ presence affecting my performance. Jeong and Becker (2019) have stated that only 26% of women are represented in “professional computing professions” in 2016 because the tech industry is a majority men which put women in an uncomfortable and daunting position of trying to fit into the industry. Also, the stereotypes they have for women in this industry make it harder for them to excel in their work and is harder for women to enter the same social connection that men can because there is no senior women leadership in the industry to mentor. According to Reagle (2013), only 27% of women were in the computing-professions in 2007 which shows that the percentages have been gradually decreasing since with no significant changes. Nonetheless, I found it very interesting yet unfortunate that women today are very passionate about equal rights, breaking boundaries, and proving to the world that they can do what men can do and even more; however, people in the tech-industry are characterized as “geeks” which traditionally describes masculine white men. Also, people who are in the computing-professions are considered “key pressers”- people who can’t “talk about anything beyond computers” (Reagle, 2013). For women in these professions, they feel that this identity doesn’t align with their own identity and “are alienated from and resistant to a culture” (Reagle, 2013). Women are also stuck in a position where they can’t identify with the tech-people because they are “either too geeky in relation to the non-technical woman or not geeky enough in relation to male IT experts” (Reagle, 2013). With the rise of social activism, I thought women in this field will be proud to identify themselves as a woman in tech but society makes it hard for women to be proud of their accomplishment due to the expectations they have. No matter how successful and powerful a woman is, there is always something that society will pick on and criticize.