This week I’d like to talk a little about some of my favorite tech-centric podcasts to listen to. Since I will be starting my new IT-related job this week I’ve been trying to tap into more content that relates to information technology and security.
In particular, a few of my favorite podcasts that explore the various things to be aware of in our tech-centered lives are: Breach and Hackable?What I enjoy about these podcasts is that they take a look at some of the different ways in which our technology that we use everyday can become compromised and how we, as users, can try and protect against outside threats.
Breach is a new podcast and it specifically explores data breaches and cybersecurity. Have you ever heard terms like: phishing, spear phishing, and whale phishing in the context of computers? Were you ever confused by those terms? Breach does a really good job of breaking down some of that vocabulary and giving you some more insight into how major data breeches can occur and what behaviors you can change to help mitigate some of those risks.
Hackable? is also a really interesting podcast in that focuses on taking various technologies that many consumers use (smart lights, smart door locks, smart home assistants, etc.) and tries to determine how easy or difficult it is for hackers to compromise those devices and get access to user data, record conversations, etc. What I like so much about it is that the host is not a super tech-savvy individual to begin with so if technology is something you find to be overwhelming he does a great job of coming up with analogies that even the least tech-savvy person can understand.
So much of our lives are tangled up within the technology we use and as things become more and more digitized its important for us as users to become more aware of how vulnerable we might be and how we can better protect ourselves.
But what about you, dear readers? Do you have any interesting podcasts, forums, discussion boards that you frequent to become more informed about data and cybersecurity? How do you stay up-to-date on these topics? Are there topics that you enjoy or find helpful in particular?
The webinar explored how social media plays a huge part in the dissemination of fake news and how false information spread online can muddy the waters and make it harder for people to differentiate between inaccurate and accurate news reports.
In particular they debate whether or not the willful spread of misinformation should be classified as illegal, if its protected by the First Amendment, or even if suppressing information that is deemed “fake news” undermines our democracy. Mary Minow talks about this point and discusses whether or not social media (Twitter, Facebook, Google+) are responsible for the speech on their platforms and if they can be legally held responsible for user’s speech.
Joyce Valenza talks about the different ways in which our social media try to assist us in making our own determinations on a particular post or articles credibility by introducing verification check marks, various algorithms that can rank information, etc. She mentions that these algorithms seem to be “pushing down news that people want to discover” (Valenza, 27:52–27:54).
Obviously, putting the our faith into a machine to do our thinking for us is not the end-all be-all solution for the fake news epidemic we appear to find ourselves in. Valenza goes on to talk about some suggestions she has for trying to tackle this very challenging problem. And one of the points she brings up is that instead of trying to cut down on the “bad” information that may be on the Internet and focus more on arming people with the skills of critical reading by looking for confirmation bias, how advertising can affect how media circulates, etc.
I agree with a lot of the points that Valenza makes here; I think that in order to have a better informed public we first have to teach people what to look for when reading an article such as the words journalists use in their articles, what websites may or may not be reputable, if similar stories/articles appear on multiple sites.
Is your head spinning? A little? Yeah, mine too.
Now, before we get too overwhelmed and think, “Wow, this is a lot of work! I just want to go to one place and get my news and call it a day”, let’s take a breath. These kinds of habits aren’t something that can be cultivated overnight. This is something that takes time, and requires us to actively think about the information we’re consuming and how we are consuming it.
I know that I don’t always think about things before I post them. A friend of mine made a point a few weeks ago that we tend to think emotionally online. Its very easy to get stuck in an echo chamber when all your friends post or talk about the same stuff or have similar opinions. We don’t approach something from a logical and skeptical perspective first; we immediately think from an emotional stance and get worked up (excited, angry, sad, etc.) and that’s usually when we share things that, if given a few more minutes of thought, we might feel differently about later.
We’ve all been guilty of these habits. I know I have. And if I’ve learned anything in the last few years its that I am responsible for trying to be better, to think more critically about an article before I share it, or being transparent with my posts if I haven’t researched something further.
In Nicole Cooke’s presentation she expands on this idea that “information can illicit a wide range of emotions both positive and negative” (Cooke, 40:39–40:46) and how this affects our ability to distinguish between real and fake information. She talks about how we have always had satire, propaganda, and fake news in the form of tabloids. This isn’t new information, we’ve always had channels like this, but what has changed now?
Cooke goes on to explain that information overload is definitely more of an issue now and that it may also be because of this that people tend to pick the information that is easiest/agrees with what we already believe. We are less inclined to look at things that drastically diverge from our own verge. She also talks about our current trend of instant gratification and how people may be trying to share things in order to get the most likes or retweets (i.e. attention) from their friends/audience on social media.
So how do we fix the problem?
Cooke mentions some suggestions like thinking broad like across disciplines, transferring skills we might have from other things we are good at towards this. learning how to think vs. what to think, learning how to process information that we are consuming and being critical of it.
There are many different pieces to this puzzle, but I definitely think that the first step comes at a local level. We need to be better at teaching each other how to critically examine the information we are consuming. I think we also need to be able to hold people accountable in some way; I don’t think calling people out online is necessarily the way to hold each other accountable because people tend to get offensive online when we remove the face-to-face communication aspect from the equation.
This was a particular issue that I dealt with when working collaboratively online for school. I did my entire graduate program online and never met face-to-face with any of my peers or professors until I met up with a few people at ALA in 2016. Making some kind of public post to call out someone’s error online before trying to reach out to them on a personal level (perhaps through a direct message or in person, if you can) can actually exacerbate the issue and it can become more of a problem than it needs to be. I think that it might also encourage people to stop following/listening to people that share different perspectives from their own and can reinforce the echo chamber effect.
If you get some time and want to watch the webinar yourself I have linked it up above but I will also embed the video down below. If you have any thoughts about this topic, or even if you have some anecdotes you’d like to share about your struggles with overcoming fake news or some handy ways you’ve discovered to help you weed out false information from verified information please drop us a note in the comments!
Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next Saturday!
Here we are, just weeks away from the final chapter in my graduate program, and I feel nothing but excitement and butterflies deep in my stomach.
During the fall of 2014 I started to think, “Maybe I should go back to school. Get another degree. Change my career.”. After several months of debating with myself and researching various schools I finally decided that I would apply to the San José State University’s iSchool program to get my Masters in Library and Information Science.
I was terrified.
“What if I didn’t do well?”
“What if I did well but by the end I got a job in that field and then decided I hated it??”
and the worst of all,
“What if I don’t get a job in this field at all and have yet another degree that I don’t utilize in my life?”
It’s been a dog’s age since I last posted here! Apologies for the radio silence (the exception being the random update here and there to my pinterest boards), but this academic year has been absolutely INSANE. So let’s do a bit of a recap:
Fall 2016 / Spring 2017
Last fall I was fortunate enough to secure a per diem position at Quinnipiac University’s Arnold Bernhard Library. I had a blast; I learned how to check materials in and out of the library, shelf read (Library of Congress classification), supervised graduate and undergraduate students, and was responsible for locking the library up at the end of the night.
My bosses are wonderful people; always receptive to feedback or suggestions, always available to answer my questions, and all around great people. It was truly a great experience and I was able to get a good taste of life in an academic library which is just what I wanted.
However, my 12 hour/week library job was tacked on to my already 40 hour retail work week and my at least 50+ hour school work week.
I know, I know. I am an absolute madman.
By the end of the semester (and after a death in the family towards the end) I felt fried and completely exhausted. Over the winter break I had to ask myself what I wanted to do. I could have turned in my 2 weeks notice and have some sanity for the spring semester, or I could try and plan for courses that I thought I could manage while having a 52 hour work week.
I opted to stay on until the end of the spring semester. I wanted to give myself as much experience in the role of access services assistant and I really didn’t want to leave my bosses hanging with no per diem access services assistant during the night shift for the spring semester.
Although this semester felt slightly less manic than the fall semester, I still felt like I was sprinting a marathon.
Advice
If you’re like me and you’re an MLIS student and you have 0 experience try to get an internship during the semester (that way you earn credit AND its considered part of your course load!) or look at volunteering over the summer at a local library if you can. That way you don’t have to be in class while working a full-time job in addition to your library gig.
Speaking from my experience, I am happy I was able to work at the institution I applied to and i would love to work there again (preferably in a full-time position) but do yourself a favor and don’t pile up everything on your plate. You never know what kinds of life events could happen while you’re in the middle of the semester and there’s nothing worse dealing with personal stuff while simultaneously working at your job(s) and doing schoolwork.
All it does is make you feel exhausted and you never have time just to yourself. Seriously. I can’t stress enough how important it is to make sure you have a little bit of time to yourself.
Now that another academic year has ended for me, I’m really happy with the experiences I had this year and I can’t wait to be a peer mentor in the fall. I am also noticing that its getting closer and closer to graduation time for me. I am both nervous and excited about it. I can’t believe it’s almost here.
That’s my recap! So much stuff and so little time! I will make an effort to post more frequently over the summer. I want to take a day to go visit my local library’s maker space and maybe I’ll report on it here for you all.
Hello again friends! I can’t believe that we are a day away from the fall semester starting up again at SJSU. I am excited to start the new semester and learn about cybersecurity, and dive a bit deeper into coding by learning PHP and MySQL. I hope the summer has treated you well these past few months, and I hope you have some great classes to attend this semester. Continue reading ““Dodging the Memory Hole” & When Networking Pays Off”→
I hope everyone’s summer break has been treating them well! I am still hard at work trying to get my resume out there to other employers in the LIS industry, and so far I haven’t been able to get out of retail, but I will keep at it. It has been a long time since I last seriously pursued other employment so I expect I will have my share of setbacks along the way. Continue reading “Face-to-Face and Online Networking – How to Get Started”→
View of Hartford area of Connecticut from my plane.
Whew! That was a whirlwind of a conference and I had an absolute blast at my first ever ALA Annual Conferece. I hope some of you stopped by and got a look at my Twitter feed; I tried to keep you all as up to date as possible with what I was doing at the conference and what meetings I was attending. Continue reading “The Journey Home”→
Adventures in Library Science 