livejournal revived
Fast ----> forward. Nearly a year since I last posted here and life continues to evolve as I continue to adapt. I have been living in Erfurt, Germany as an exchange student and attending this very old liberal arts-esq university since late March of this year. In retrospect, the decision to come here was so random. In January 2007 I was planning on either taking a couple upper division Spanish classes and then studying in Spain again or Argentina, even taking one more semester of French and then heading off to somewhere in France. But after writing a paper on the German economy, which led me to reading some texts by Nietzsche, and then some plays by Brecht, as well as some articles about the origins of the existence/non-existence of Europeanization, somehow I got hooked on Germany. And so last summer and fall I started in on intensive German language and literature and film classes and here I am one year later.
The German education system experience is so different from the American system. We only meet for class once a week so there's never time to waste but with 7 days to get your homework done, it actually works out quite well. Right now I am taking eight classes in three departments: 4 classes in German as a second language (at an intermediate level), 1 class in English as a second language (yes it's a bit of a cop out but the class is about British culture so I'm actually learning new words in English) and then 3 classes in the Stadtwissenschaften faculty, which is like the study of law, sociology and politics/policy combined. The latter has been the most influential to my experience here, it's like a post-modern approach to government in today's society and most recently I have even joined a Masters class that one of my professors teaches called Government 2.0 in the grad school of public policy here.
So anyway, my attention was reverted back to livejournal recently when I started editing a case study on the first real Cyber War. (I got a job working as an editor of graduate student's case studies for the school of public policy basically because English is my first language and I have decent writing skills and basic knowledge of Europe today.) This particular case was about this cyber hacking battle that went down between Estonia and Russia last year when the Estonian government removed a monument to the Soviets. It became a huge deal to Russian patriots who were mobilized through social networking websites (namely the Russian facebook), and so Russians united to protest the removal via e-mails to parliamentarians, real life picketing at the Estonian Embassy in Russia, and hacking into pro-Estonian websites/blogs. There were counter attacks from the Estonians and at any rate, most of Estonia's government and media websites were shut down and several Russian ones too. Interestingly American hosted livejournal.com became the main source for fact gathering by media organizations and individuals since it wasn't shut down and people were posting pictures, personal accounts, and even linking videos. When I'm done editing this case, and it's published I'll post a link to the data base so anyone can read it. Right now I can't any more away because it's not copyrighted, yet.
But at any rate, it's just absolutely fascinating to me how the same forum that I used to profess my self absorbed teenage mutterings on could become such a multi-functional tool for society. I don't have a PHD, or a MA, or even a BA yet, but I don't need these things to think about how important the internet has already become in this generation and I am left wondering what type of things this forum may facilitate in the future, and what are/will be the implications of these on society? It's so so interesting...
The German education system experience is so different from the American system. We only meet for class once a week so there's never time to waste but with 7 days to get your homework done, it actually works out quite well. Right now I am taking eight classes in three departments: 4 classes in German as a second language (at an intermediate level), 1 class in English as a second language (yes it's a bit of a cop out but the class is about British culture so I'm actually learning new words in English) and then 3 classes in the Stadtwissenschaften faculty, which is like the study of law, sociology and politics/policy combined. The latter has been the most influential to my experience here, it's like a post-modern approach to government in today's society and most recently I have even joined a Masters class that one of my professors teaches called Government 2.0 in the grad school of public policy here.
So anyway, my attention was reverted back to livejournal recently when I started editing a case study on the first real Cyber War. (I got a job working as an editor of graduate student's case studies for the school of public policy basically because English is my first language and I have decent writing skills and basic knowledge of Europe today.) This particular case was about this cyber hacking battle that went down between Estonia and Russia last year when the Estonian government removed a monument to the Soviets. It became a huge deal to Russian patriots who were mobilized through social networking websites (namely the Russian facebook), and so Russians united to protest the removal via e-mails to parliamentarians, real life picketing at the Estonian Embassy in Russia, and hacking into pro-Estonian websites/blogs. There were counter attacks from the Estonians and at any rate, most of Estonia's government and media websites were shut down and several Russian ones too. Interestingly American hosted livejournal.com became the main source for fact gathering by media organizations and individuals since it wasn't shut down and people were posting pictures, personal accounts, and even linking videos. When I'm done editing this case, and it's published I'll post a link to the data base so anyone can read it. Right now I can't any more away because it's not copyrighted, yet.
But at any rate, it's just absolutely fascinating to me how the same forum that I used to profess my self absorbed teenage mutterings on could become such a multi-functional tool for society. I don't have a PHD, or a MA, or even a BA yet, but I don't need these things to think about how important the internet has already become in this generation and I am left wondering what type of things this forum may facilitate in the future, and what are/will be the implications of these on society? It's so so interesting...