Privacy is a made up term.

There is absolutely no such thing as privacy anymore, in our section of the world at least. It's really pathetic that it has come to this point, but it has. Pieces of information are constantly being collected about you, if you chose the route which is deemed as correct, as in getting an education, a job, a house, a family, a social life, etc. The only way that one would achieve ultimate privacy would be to have no contact with anyone, burn their records, and live in a remote area. [Probably my favorite movie,] this happens in "Into the Wild", which is based on a true story of a man by the name of Christopher McCandless who, upon graduating college, burns his money, social security card and other records, leaves his family and any contacts, and sets out to live in the wild to experience solitude from isolation and complete privacy. It is beautiful yet sad that he had to go through all that to get to that point. Anyway, my point is that privacy cannot be achieved easily, if at all. Even when it came to applying to school and scholarships, the forms seriously asked for every bit of information about me- from the year that my car was made to how many credits my sister took last semester. It's a little ridiculous.

PS: If your name doesn't begin with a 'J' and end with an 'asonSloan', than you may or may not be invading my blog privacy right now..

Hacking: The Ultimate Hobby

I used to think of hacking as something negative, as something you do to invade someone else's personal belongings. Back in the days of when MySpace was still popular (ha), it seemed like quite a common and exciting thing for others to hack into other people's profiles. Reading their messages, rewriting their information. Lame, but that's what I first think of. That or hacking into someone's email account, other other type of account which can be of great importance. I never thought of hacking as something positive and helpful to the technological world. I have absolutely zero knowledge of how anything works under the hood of a computer, phone, etc., so hearing about how others get into these systems and manipulate them to their liking is so impressive to me. The video that we watched in class was all about manipulating the phone system so they did not have to pay for calls, which led to inspire some bright people who founded Apple and started the whole Mac generation. I admire their intelligence in technological systems, and find it so inspiring how they did everything their way and paid attention to no rules. Steve Wozniak spoke about how he did not want to follow the way other systems worked, and wanted to create his own versions of what was already out there. This is such a great idea to follow as an artist, as it is so important to be ahead of the game and being the one to not simply follow other artists, but help the advancement of the art world in having an entirely new approach in it all.
Thank the world for geeks. And those who are constantly thinking forward.

First Photoshop Project

Tea!