Project 1 Reflection

Looking back over my project I realize that composing an “ideal” self-portrait through online social media proves to be a difficult task when trying to describe specific characteristics.  The nature of many sources of online networking and social media is to express multiple sensations and relate to varying audiences and through individual viewers, mean many specific things to these individuals.  When applying my sources of online media to my project I couldn’t help but see multiple connections I made with each of them to the point where the specific purpose of these sources seemed insignificant compared to the multitude of other meanings they held for me.  In realizing this, I understand that the “self-portrait” purpose of this project definitely requires the target audience to be the individual creating the self-portrait.  If I look at my self-portrait and still see how the social media that is supposed to be describing specific categories also describes n enormous multitude of other characteristics, how is an outside individual supposed to feel all these exact things?  My view of the whole project is that every person that looks in on the self-portrait I created actually sees a variation of their own and in no way will they ever be the same and that is the nature of online social connections.  Online there is no guideline or structure explaining how one is supposed to process information.  It’s just there and it’s up to the user to decide what that data means to them, making the point again from my last post that we are still far from creating a machine that can mirror the human consciousness.  I see this as another reason why the online public sphere is so attractive, no matter what there will always be something that an individual can make a connection with and it will only be clicks away.

Networks and Algorithms

Being a computer science major, I deal with algorithms more than most.  We rely on these to predict behavior and outcomes of hardware and software alike.  Algorithms are the true step towards developing a more complexly connected and therefore smarter and powerful computer system.  The system of online social networking seems much closer to this than I believe most people think when specifically looking at human interaction.  Connectivity and the ways we connect to other people is a key characteristic of human life.  Ideas are generated and constantly being changed due to the instant access to our peer’s ideas due to tools such as the internet.  In creating mass media sharing platforms such as Facebook, we have in fact created a sort of algorithm for the sharing of ideas and the connection of human communities.  And what is a computer but a combination of complex and simple algorithms designed to connect different systems?  What these network platforms actually are doing is taking the complex characteristics of the human mind and developing these thoughts through a simpler system that is designed to connect to other humans and share data.  Of course this is still far from saying we have begun turning ourselves and society into hardware, but as we rely more on online social connections we see more and more similarities between us and the machines we use to network.