UPenn Excursion 2/8/12
The Daily You – book selling and discussion with author, Dr. Joseph Turow
NPR Link: http://whyy.org/cms/radiotimes/2012/01/13/data-mining-online-tracking-joe-turow-on-the-daily-you/
As Dr. Turow said this evening, “it’s all about how you define reality; as relevant information or human rights.” Out of context this comment may seem strange or ambiguous, but on the contrary its meaning is quite related to the study of communication and how easily it can be misunderstood.
At 5:30p, Justin Dowdall, Kandace Kohr, Bryan Yanez and myself all boarded a regional rail train to University City, UPenn’s campus to listen to some informal commentary by author of The Daily You, Dr. Joseph Turow. His work is highly analytical and speculative of how online advertisers work to generate data, pin-point perfect consumers and ultimately question the limitations of privacy polices on the Internet. Dr. Turow argues that there is much controversy and perhaps budding “social discrimination” when it comes down to segregating online users by there assumed tastes and interests, marketing only certain brands and products the moment they log-on. I was lucky enough to have a question prepared this evening for the theorist which basically asked about the morality of advertisers and ultimately if this digital “social discrimination” will cause a civil rights movement. His response was largely based on educated assumptions and loose statistics, which, in his defense, is more than acceptable since the Internet itself, let alone online advertising, is fairly new, untamed and so widespread.
In conclusion, this event was wonderful (and so was the Starbucks break post-lecture!) and highly informative. I look forward to more off-Temple excursions and invite everyone to come! If you, ANY OF YOU, have ideas or plans that you want to share with the CSC community, please post on our Facebook page at your leisure. These are great opportunities to see the city, experience new ideas and people and have a great time broadening our horizons. Additionally, feel free to post reviews of events you have been to. We encourage diversity in perspective and lessons learned.
You all have something to say, so let’s hear it!
-Darragh Friedman, CSC Vice President
Paul Barolsky, Upcoming Lecture…
“Paul Barolsky’s upcoming lecture, on Thurs March 29 (Anderson 007) at 5 pm on “Ovid and the Metamorphosis of European Art.” Paul insists it is a talk, not a lecture, by which he say he means, delivered not read. He is very engaging and personable, and dislikes scholarly pretense, and I know he will be hoping for a lot of interaction with the audience. So this is just a heads-up: you might want to bone up on his approach in his 9 books.”