In the essay “The Publication of Your Personal Profile”, the author, Megan Ramirez, talks about the potential risk of using social networks like Facebook and MySpace where the users’ personal information as well as privacy have become exposed to public eyes. In other words, basically everyone can have access to your personal profile by creating a Facebook account, regardless of her identity. That person could be your employer, a family member, a friend, or in the worst case, a total stranger. Quoting the author’s own words here, the users of social networking websites “are allowing their private lives to be published.” (Ramirez).
As the author pointed out, the fact that most Facebook users’ profiles are restricted, which means only accessible to friends, does not help with protecting the personal information since Facebook users tend to accept friend requests from people they don’t know. The same reason also explains the statement previously made: basically everyone can access others’ personal profiles by creating a Facebook account. Here the author used a quotation from the book “To Catch a Predator” to explain and support the point that most people easily accept requests from strangers: “An appealing picture, a friendly query, a similarity of interests, or someone who just seems ‘cool’ is often more than enough for kids to make exceptions and let someone into their site that they don’t, in fact, know” (Hansen 135)
According to the author, among the many risks of having your personal information under the public scrutiny is that the same personal information can also be reviewed by your potential employers. In other words, the personal details found on your Facebook can be determining factors of whether or not you will get the job you want. For instance, as the author explained, if you put pictures of you engaging in illegal actions, your potential employer might reject you after seeing those improper pictures. Using a paraphrase gained from an interview with Carrie Ramsey, a staff member who works in the human resources department, the author shows that even though most employers do not view the social networking pages of their potential employees, they still might decline a potential employee if they saw inappropriate pictures on his pages. From the interview with Ramsey, the author writes that “She (Ms. Ramsey) has never looked at a potential employee’s personal web page because she wants to focus solely on the skills and experiences of the potential employee. She does say, however, that if she had seen that potential employee engaging in illegal activities on a personal page, she would not decide to hire him or her” (Ramsey)
As a result, the author eventually concludes that people’s social networking profiles “are written representations of themselves” and that “people should decide how they wish to be portrayed and create their profiles accordingly”. (Ramirez)
In other words, users of social networking sites can be more protected from the risk of being publicly scrutinized if they do not put damaging or incriminating information on their profiles.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Assignment 5
Even though the Communist Party eventually won the Chinese Civil War that lasted from 1926 to 1950, different versions of the Civil War’s history have been written by both the Nationalist and the Communist Parties. In the China Mainland, where the Communist Regime is the government, the tales of the Civil War are mainly made up of all the glories and victories of the Communist Commanders. Likewise, in Taiwan where the Nationalist takes the rein of power, the stories of the Civil War somehow become a series of heroic and victorious tales that nevertheless ends in a glorious defeat and retreat. The true account of the Civil War, however, remains obscure, and while the two sides of the Taiwanese Strait are still holding firmly on their own versions of the history, not many people have actually considered to find out the truth back to that chaotic era.
Born in Taiwan and spent my early childhood with a Nationalist grandfather who once commanded in the Chinese Civil War, I undoubtedly was informed of the Nationalist version of the history. I held it to be absolute and unquestionable (Of course, I did not know it could be questioned) until I visited China Mainland on a business trip with my family. We stayed in the Chinese Capital, Beijing, for approximately half a year, and in the mean time I learnt a great deal of “the other side” of the story or, to put it more correctly, the winner’s interpretation of history
In the Communist version of the Chinese Civil War, the Nationalist Party as well its soldiers was a gathering of selfish and corrupted people. According to the Communist, the high officials of the Nationalist Government were only seeking for their own benefits and thus took away the civilians’ profits and harvests. Also, the Nationalist soldiers were mainly looting people along the way throughout the Civil War. As a result, the goal of the Communist Party was a holy one: to liberate the people from endless suffering under the Nationalist Regime. The Communist soldiers acted bravely on the people’s side and taught the poor, the rural people, and those who lived in the remote areas essential knowledge such as writing and reading. They also helped to build irrigation, harvest, and most important of all, redistribute wealth for the impoverished farmers and workers. In short, the Communist was portrayed to be the very symbol of justice while the Nationalist was the source of all that evil and unjust.
The same history, in the Nationalist version, forms a sharp contrast with the Communist one, even though it took place in the same space and time with the same people involved. In this version, the Communist Party was a hodgepodge of criminals, robbers, thieves, and some power-thirsty hypocrites. In the name of fighting against Capitalism as well as building a perfect Marxist paradise of the poor, the Communist made empty promises and exploited the wealth of the civilians for their own profits. They conducted a multitude of looting, enslaving, and unfair trials before and after they came to power, while the Nationalist, despite their eventual loss, fought bravely against the Communist and had the people’s support. Unfortunately, as the story goes, the Communist was backed by the Soviet Union and the Nationalist was weakened by the previous war against the invading Japanese forces, so the Civil War ended in the Nationalist’s final defeat and retreat. The retreat to Taiwan, interestingly, was termed “migration”, and it was still a glorious event in which the selfless Nationalist soldiers helped the civilians from boarding the leaving ships to rebuild their households in Taiwan.
Facing an apparently contradicted “fact” of a history half a century ago, I have nothing but to say that maybe both accounts of the Civil War are true and false. Both the Communist and the Nationalist have omitted the dishonored aspects of their pasts while adding more dramatic effects to the glorified parts of the very same history. The result, as we see, is a distorted account of truth that will hardly be uncovered again.
Born in Taiwan and spent my early childhood with a Nationalist grandfather who once commanded in the Chinese Civil War, I undoubtedly was informed of the Nationalist version of the history. I held it to be absolute and unquestionable (Of course, I did not know it could be questioned) until I visited China Mainland on a business trip with my family. We stayed in the Chinese Capital, Beijing, for approximately half a year, and in the mean time I learnt a great deal of “the other side” of the story or, to put it more correctly, the winner’s interpretation of history
In the Communist version of the Chinese Civil War, the Nationalist Party as well its soldiers was a gathering of selfish and corrupted people. According to the Communist, the high officials of the Nationalist Government were only seeking for their own benefits and thus took away the civilians’ profits and harvests. Also, the Nationalist soldiers were mainly looting people along the way throughout the Civil War. As a result, the goal of the Communist Party was a holy one: to liberate the people from endless suffering under the Nationalist Regime. The Communist soldiers acted bravely on the people’s side and taught the poor, the rural people, and those who lived in the remote areas essential knowledge such as writing and reading. They also helped to build irrigation, harvest, and most important of all, redistribute wealth for the impoverished farmers and workers. In short, the Communist was portrayed to be the very symbol of justice while the Nationalist was the source of all that evil and unjust.
The same history, in the Nationalist version, forms a sharp contrast with the Communist one, even though it took place in the same space and time with the same people involved. In this version, the Communist Party was a hodgepodge of criminals, robbers, thieves, and some power-thirsty hypocrites. In the name of fighting against Capitalism as well as building a perfect Marxist paradise of the poor, the Communist made empty promises and exploited the wealth of the civilians for their own profits. They conducted a multitude of looting, enslaving, and unfair trials before and after they came to power, while the Nationalist, despite their eventual loss, fought bravely against the Communist and had the people’s support. Unfortunately, as the story goes, the Communist was backed by the Soviet Union and the Nationalist was weakened by the previous war against the invading Japanese forces, so the Civil War ended in the Nationalist’s final defeat and retreat. The retreat to Taiwan, interestingly, was termed “migration”, and it was still a glorious event in which the selfless Nationalist soldiers helped the civilians from boarding the leaving ships to rebuild their households in Taiwan.
Facing an apparently contradicted “fact” of a history half a century ago, I have nothing but to say that maybe both accounts of the Civil War are true and false. Both the Communist and the Nationalist have omitted the dishonored aspects of their pasts while adding more dramatic effects to the glorified parts of the very same history. The result, as we see, is a distorted account of truth that will hardly be uncovered again.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
