Class Journal Week 4
Contents
- 1 David Ramirez's Responses
- 2 John Nimmers-Minor's Responses
- 3 Naomi Tesfaiohannes's Responses
- 4 Iliana Crespin's Responses
- 5 Aby Mesfin's Response
- 5.1 What are the advantages of using a database, like Microsoft Access, instead of a spreadsheet program, like Microsoft Excel, when managing your data?
- 5.2 The blog post mentions a "fraught relationship about data, privacy, and how private companies operate in public spaces."
- 5.3 Based on what you have seen of the FDA database, do you feel that you have a better understanding of how the data mentioned in section 5.1 of What is Code?—Spotify music, Fitbit exercise tracking, Twitter tweets, IRS tax returns, etc.—might look when stored on a computer?
- 6 Christina Dominguez's Response
- 6.1 1. What are the advantages of using a database, like Microsoft Access, instead of a spreadsheet program, like Microsoft Excel, when managing your data?
- 6.2 2. The blog post mentions a "fraught relationship about data, privacy, and how private companies operate in public spaces."
- 6.3 3. Based on what you have seen of the FDA database, do you feel that you have a better understanding of how the data mentioned in section 5.1 of What is Code?—Spotify music, Fitbit exercise tracking, Twitter tweets, IRS tax returns, etc.—might look when stored on a computer?
David Ramirez's Responses
User:Dramir36 template:Dramir36 Skinny Genes
- Week 1
- Week 2
- Week 3
- Week 4
- Week 5
- Week 6
- Week 7
- Week 8
- Week 9
- Week 10
- Week 11
- Week 12/13
- Week 14
- Week 15
1. What are the advantages of using a database, like Microsoft Access, instead of a spreadsheet program, like Microsoft Excel, when managing your data?
2. The blog post mentions a "fraught relationship about data, privacy, and how private companies operate in public spaces."
- What is this fraught relationship?
- How do you feel about it? I.e., where do you stand on the trade-off between the "ease of use" you receive as a user and giving up your private data to companies who will use it to turn a profit?
- What are the social justice issues involved?
3. Based on what you have seen of the FDA database, do you feel that you have a better understanding of how the data mentioned in section 5.1 of What is Code?—Spotify music, Fitbit exercise tracking, Twitter tweets, IRS tax returns, etc.—might look when stored on a computer?
John Nimmers-Minor's Responses
Biological Databases
Jnimmers
Assignment Table
1. What are the advantages of using a database, like Microsoft Access, instead of a spreadsheet program, like Microsoft Excel, when managing your data?
A. Databases are adventagous because they can allow you to find data based on IDs of the data that you're looking for. Besides this, they are much more powerful and can hold substaintially more data in a structured format than a spreadsheet can, making them more appropriate for the massive amounts of data needed for companies like Spotify or Amazon.
2. The blog post mentions a "fraught relationship about data, privacy, and how private companies operate in public spaces."
- What is this fraught relationship?
A. The fraught, or strained/undesirable, relationship presented in the blog post was between libraries, specifically university libraries, (and in this case, LMU) and the professional network company, LinkedIn.
- How do you feel about it? I.e., where do you stand on the trade-off between the "ease of use" you receive as a user and giving up your private data to companies who will use it to turn a profit?
A. I feel that being forced to give up personal/learning data in order to access a database is in a very grey area of social jusitce and ethics because it is unknown what the user data is used for. This opens up possibilities of misuse of said data, even if that wasn't the original intention of the company. Having your data "hostage" as the author wrote is worrying, specifically because libraries are confidential entities, and so I stand with the author, however, it is a very tricky and complex problem to handle.
- What are the social justice issues involved?
A. Privacy of data and equity are two issues involved in this particular case.
3. Based on what you have seen of the FDA database, do you feel that you have a better understanding of how the data mentioned in section 5.1 of What is Code?—Spotify music, Fitbit exercise tracking, Twitter tweets, IRS tax returns, etc.—might look when stored on a computer?
Naomi Tesfaiohannes's Responses
Ntesfaio (talk) 12:40, 23 September 2019 (PDT)
Ntesfaio Final Individual Reflection
1. What are the advantages of using a database, like Microsoft Access, instead of a spreadsheet program, like Microsoft Excel, when managing your data?
I believe it comes down to organization of a great amount of informational. Databases hold a lot of information and can intersect them with different databases (Facebook and Spotify, Twitter, etc.). This allows for a clear expression of the information that needs to be presented.
2. The blog post mentions a "fraught relationship about data, privacy, and how private companies operate in public spaces."
*What is this fraught relationship?
LinkedIn began combining user accounts meaning that the user would not have to remember their login from both LinkedIn Service and LinkedIn Learning. By saving the person's information, the platforms are able to personalize recommendations using data that was searched or inputed into the services. The fraught relationship is with public library users having to authenticate themselves using a LinkedIn profile, allowing for these people to be searched online. Users are giving their data over to LinkedIn which can be accessed by the greater public.
*How do you feel about it? I.e., where do you stand on the trade-off between the "ease of use" you receive as a user and giving up your private data to companies who will use it to turn a profit?
I believe with how much information is put into online services, such as LinkedIn having a person's name, email, sometimes phone number, we are exposing ourselves to the public and it can be a danger to our privacy. Especially when dealing with public profiles, anyone will my name can simply look me up. Although it is great in the sense of getting your information out to a potential job recruiter, expressing your qualifications, etc. it is important to be aware of the privacy rules that you are agreeing to when signing up for these services.
*What are the social justice issues involved?
The main social justice issue is the right of privacy and how much information is being given out to the public. This can be an issue for one's safety as a stranger who has access to their page can interact with personal information. The best way to regulate this is perhaps by limiting the details of one's information, maybe include an email address instead of a phone number or a P.O. box with LMU rather than a house address. Small changes like this can help protect one's information.
3. Based on what you have seen of the FDA database, do you feel that you have a better understanding of how the data mentioned in section 5.1 of What is Code?—Spotify music, Fitbit exercise tracking, Twitter tweets, IRS tax returns, etc.—might look when stored on a computer?
I do believe I have a better understanding, however not a full understanding. I would assume the layout for each of these databases are different and would then have different subsections as well. The schema provided by the FDA gives a good representation of the relationship of each part of the FDA subsections (Submissions, Submission Property Products, Applications, Application Docs, etc.). The data information that each platform has (Spotify, Fitbit, etc. ) may be different but are also submerged together as these platforms show links to one another. This must also mean that a user's data is being shared within the platforms which leads back to the social justice issue that is being addressed in the blog post, privacy and user content.
Iliana Crespin's Responses
- What are the advantages of using a database, like Microsoft Access, instead of a spreadsheet program, like Microsoft Excel, when managing your data?
- The blog post mentions a "fraught relationship about data, privacy, and how private companies operate in public spaces."
- What is this fraught relationship?
- How do you feel about it? I.e., where do you stand on the trade-off between the "ease of use" you receive as a user and giving up your private data to companies who will use it to turn a profit?
- What are the social justice issues involved?
- Based on what you have seen of the FDA database, do you feel that you have a better understanding of how the data mentioned in section 5.1 of What is Code?—Spotify music, Fitbit exercise tracking, Twitter tweets, IRS tax returns, etc.—might look when stored on a computer?
Aby Mesfin's Response
What are the advantages of using a database, like Microsoft Access, instead of a spreadsheet program, like Microsoft Excel, when managing your data?
Databases are better at managing large amounts of data that is subject to changes and meant to be stored for a long period of time. The variety of tools used in Microsoft Access offers users more flexibility and control over how they can manipulate the data as well.
The blog post mentions a "fraught relationship about data, privacy, and how private companies operate in public spaces."
What is this fraught relationship?
The fraught relationship that the author refers to is the exchange that occurs between users and private companies of the user’s private information for accessibility of certain networks. Legally, the author argues that these companies should not have access to identifiable user data.
How do you feel about it? I.e., where do you stand on the trade-off between the "ease of use" you receive as a user and giving up your private data to companies who will use it to turn a profit
Personally, I am slightly unclear as to how much of the user's personal data these private companies have access to. As a user, I don’t really know what other pieces of major information that I offer these companies when I use their networks other than my name and email address, and so I don’t really view this as a major concern for me in my day to day life. This view, however, is predominantly because I have not seen nor heard of the major repercussions of this trade off between users and private companies.
What are the social justice issues involved?
Given that major private companies can have access to personal and confidential information about users, the trade off that the author mentions can devolve into a major violation of individuals' right to privacy if these companies use the power bestowed upon them irresponsibly. This issue is particularly prevalent given that most users don't bother to read the Terms and Conditions of the networks that they use, and so can be completely oblivious to what they have given up.
