In PLP we have been discussing a lot about technology. To be specific, how technology has chaged the way we live through out history. We have also discussed how technology can act as a disruption. For this project we had to pick a technology or a concept mentioned in the novel we recently read called Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. The technology I chose to research was called Slashdot.
Made in Paper 53
Slashdot was founded in 1997. It is a social news website that was created by Hope Collage students, Jeff Bates and Rob Malda. Slashdot is a place where people share news stories, and can discuss events with other users. The stories featured on the website are about science, technology and politics. Each story posted becomes a discussion among other users. As I was scrolling through the Slashdot website, a story that I discovered was ‘South Korea Plans to Ban Crypto Currency Trading’. I even went through and had a look at the discussion below. There were 71 comments of users debating and talking about the article.
Here is a screenshot of what the website looks like:
As I mentioned earlier, we had to pick a technology from Little Brother. Slashdot was mentioned in the book. Little Brother is all about technology, and how it can act as a disruption. Here is when it was mentioned in the book, “A lot of websites chronicle the fight for cyberliberties, but few go at it with the verve of Slashdot, “News for Nerds, Stuff That Matters”(ch.1). As I said earlier, the website is for sharing news stories. Slashdot is similar to the Xnet, a huge part of Little Brother where users communicate anonymously. Slashdot is similar in the way, it is a public website where anyone can share their opinions and communicate online.
This website (Slashdot) is a big part of the outside world. Pretty much all top news stories are shared, and all have a long discussions between users, giving their opinions and thoughts. Some examples of top events that have been shared are, the Strike in Iraq, 2005 London bombing and 9/11. This whole website allows people to discuss major problems in the world and connect them with each other.
Over time Slashdot has become more and more popular. It was a hot spot on the internet for news information and computer geeks. In 2012, Slashdot had around 3.7million users per month and received 5300 comments per day. In fact in 2001 Slashdot was launched in Japan. It was spreading so fast and you could basically find any information on the site on the news. Many could say that Slashdot could act as a disruption with its creation throughout history. Think about it, it is a website where you share opinions on huge topics. It could be used as a disruption, since it is all anonymous and anyone can write anything on the website.
There are so many types of different websites on the internet that all have similar purposes, sharing information, giving opinions ect. Slashdot is just one of the many websites out there.