Week 13 - The Time Space Bubble

I can’t remember if it was in this blog or another, but I’ve said in the past that the phone in your pocket is only as good as everything else it lets you do. We don’t just want to make calls, we want a phone the takes pictures, plays music, acts as a GPS, can scan QR codes, process word documents, check emails, read the newspaper, tweet, update Facebook *deep breath* and text. Ultimately, this means everyone is living in their own little time-space bubble. A physical object is made digital by connecting us online. So for brief periods, whether it’s 30 seconds as we text, 10 minutes as we Facebook, or an hour as we play a game online, we’re living in a bubble defined by online time.

With physical objects now being connected, they cross onto to the realm of being able to communicate. Are we using a device to communicate, or is the device itself communicating?

But before looking specifically at inanimate objects going online, the relationship between people and “things” needs to be addressed. This has been analysed through the “Actor Network Theory”; a social theory, which analyses the relationship between both material and semiotic entities. Not only does Actor Network Theory analyse the objects that interact, it analyses the actual communication (i.e. the intangible) and it’s relationship with the tangible. This is a complex theory, much to in-depth to detail here, but is definitely worth looking at.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5pTKqKaElA

I wanted to embed that video, but Blogger and YouTube won't let me at the moment :(

Week 12 - UFC 92 App Anarchy

In the red corner, from Cupertino, California, weighing in at $65.23 million, the iOS Incinerator, Apple!

And in the blue corner, originally from Menlow Park, now residing in Mountain View, California, weighing in at $29.32 billion, the Open Source Obliterator, Google!

So let me start off by saying I don’t have a smartphone. I did, but not anymore. I had an iPhone for nearly 2 years, then it died and I was forced to use some ancient Nokia for about 3 months till my contract ran out. I decided to renew my contract, but go for high-end Android phone. A Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc. I hated it. I used it for 3 months and wanted to break the thing because of how sluggish an unreliable it was. Effectively I was without a functioning smartphone for nearly 6 months, which changed the way I use my phone. So now all I want is a phone that can message and make calls. Remember that’s what a phone is? As a result, I bought a Nokia X3-02 last week.

However, in the debate of Apple v. Google, iOS v. Android, I am on the side of……Apple. Why? Because of the level of control Ted was discussing in the lecture. Apple control the hardware, the system and the software on the system. The result is, in my opinion, a fully functioning system, with hardware and software synchronised to work perfectly with each other.

I believe the problem with Google’s idea of everything being open is that it leaves the door open to sub-standard development. In an ideal world, the open freedom of a system like Android attracts independent developers who are yet to be employed by a company. Kind of like a musician yet to be signed to a label. Unfortunately though, the app market (both Android and Apple) attract wanna-be developers. Apple’s setup filters out the garbage, whereas the Android system doesn’t.

An article on ZDnet.com identifies 3 key flaws in both the Apple and Android setups. Apple’s are software inflexibility, productivity limitations and fewer hardware choices. To me these were a stretch, Software inflexibility is it’s strength, the productivity limitations it discusses are inaccurate and it’s screen is the highest resolution one on the market. The android limitations it mentions however are much more accurate.

Ecosystem chaos – an open source OS, allowing hardware and software manufacturers to do anything they want with it, with minimal-to-no regulation.

Wildly inconsistent experiences – Identical versions of an Android OS running on two different manufacturers phones will do completely different things, resulting in the reliability of a particular version of Android having completely different public opinions.

Leadership vacuum – A lack of top down control from Google means there is no centralised framework or standard to build upon. Ultimately it gives hardware and software vendors free reign to manipulate Android however they please.

I could quite literally go on for 8 pages about the Apple v. Android debate. But I won’t. It’s a topic I know a fair bit about and have strong opinions on. 

Week 11 - #vivalarevalutione

“A network of peripheries – what was a permanent periphery can now become a new centre”. I loved that quote in the lecture. The idea that any node in a network can become a hub. A network of hubs. Or a network with no hub, and only decentralised control. This is essentially how SNS’s thrive. Of course any successful SNS has a centralised hub, but it is only necessary to support the network, not spread information.

This week we’re looking at the protests in Egypt and Tunisia. Back in January, Wael Ghonim reached out to Egyptian youths through Facebook, to encourage them to participate. For his efforts, he was thrown in jail to 12 days.

The ability to mass organize an event such as a protest in a Middle Eastern country, shows the true power of social networks ability to reach people. A few years back we had parents calling talkback radio shows and writing in to morning shows about how they’re worried their kids are going to post details of their party on Facebook, and an entire suburb will show up. Social networks have become so powerful now, it’s reached a point where Governments are worried about social revolution spreading on Facebook.

All through this semester we’ve been talking about social revolution in the digital world. And that is what this all is at the core of it, social revolution, which is nothing new. There’s just a new way of going about it.

Week 9 - PEBKAC

Civic hacktivism, Wikileaks, online protests; they’re all founded in the same principle of freedom of speech, which has been around for decades. It’s just teaching an old dog new tricks. Or rather, new dogs, learning the old dogs tricks and reinventing them.

“ʻThe Internetʼ is the new trick. This amazing device – full of youth, verve, and energy” – Anonymous, 2003.

Asking whether sites like Wikileaks is wrong, is not a new debate. It’s an old debate, reinvigorated. Speaking out against Governments or revealing the truth behind what the mass media tells us has been going on for years, the digital age and the Internet have just given news means of doing so, and effectively made it easier to reach the “uninformed masses”. Therefore I believe the debate lies in the effectiveness of it.

There is a big difference between one lone user calling himself a civic hacktivist by having a rant on his blog, and a site like Wikileaks.

About 7 years ago a group emerged known as “Anonymous”. They were a group of people, essentially functioning as single entity, focused on hacktivism. The group is primarily composed of members from forums and image boards, however they have no single location or base. There is no leader, anyone can join and work towards the same collective goal as the rest of the group.  They became famous however, through “Project Chanology”; their protest against Scientology.

Week 8 – And now we go to 12 year old Timmy Smith, reporting from his bedroom. Timmy are you there?

Most of what we see these days from online blogs, is the modern day equivalent of the tabloid rag magazines. People just making stuff up based on random facts and/or images they’ve seen. Couple the uninformative, rumour-based blogs of your aver Joe, with the overload of “information” being Tweeted, who knows where true journalism has gone.

Richard Wilkins fell for “citizen journalism” a couple of years back. Michael Jackson and Farah Fawcett died on the same day. That morning, someone blogged, a single sentence, saying that Jeff Goldblum had died in New Zealand falling off a cliff. This was a baseless, unverified blog by someone, which the “real” news decided to jump on.

Even today I watch the news and see how opinionated and biased the news has become. I’ve always seen morning shows and current affairs programs as opinionated, financially-fueled nonsense. But the actual news programs on mainstream channels is riddled with sarcasm and political influence.

So if citizen journalism is rubbish, and media journalism is biased, where do we hear the truth from? I think through our own discourse, we discover the truth for ourselves. With the abundance of news media outlets out there, most people can discover the truth for themselves, filtering out the political bias, unverified information and nonsense for themselves.

Week 7 - They were cool before everyone knew about them

Chris Anderson’s reading, “The Long Tail”, discusses the smaller niche markets, which are gaining in popularity due to the ease of digital distribution. Thanks to the digital age, media can be rapidly transmitted and redistributed in the blink of an eye. This got me thinking about transmedia, and the way content can be distributed to newer markets.

I’d like to talk about a slightly different take on transmedia. Typically, transmedia is a new medium for an existing story. Like making a movie out of a book, or a video game based on a movie. But it does come in other forms. As I write this, I’m listening to the dubstep remix of Lost Woods from the Legend of Zelda game, Ocarina of Time. The message tone on my phone is the exclamation noise from the Metal Gear Solid series, and my ringtone is either the 24 ringtone or the Metal Gear Solid codec. Every time my phone goes off, someone nearby chuckles to themselves because they know what it is. To me, this is a new take on transmedia. And in regards to the dubstep remix, an expansion on the long tail reaching a new market.

But getting back to Anderson’s discussion of the long tail, digital media has been the hero of this. We can now redistribute and discuss content at the click of a button. Anderson states that “popularity no longer has a monopoly on profitability”. What I think he means by this, is that getting your content into the mass media scope is no longer the only way to “get your product out there”. Thanks to digital media, word-of-mouth is now global. 

Week 6 – From Broadcast to Multicast

“The monolithic empires of mass media are dissolving into an array of cottage industries. . . . Media barons of today will be grasping to hold onto their centralized empires tomorrow. . . . The combined forces of technology and human nature will ultimately take a stronger hand in plurality than any laws Congress can invent.”  - Nicolas Negroponte, “Being Digital”, 1990

A few blogs back I talked about how the mobile phone you have is only is good as the access it gives you. The ability to get online with it, to synchronise your day with friends on the fly. This is what is at the heart of media convergence. We all want what we have to do something more.

The media industry, essentially does the same thing with the way it portrays content to the public. It’s not enough that the news is reported on TV, it has to be available for “like” on Facebook. The content of a newspaper article, is the same as it was 10 years ago, but now people are not satisfied unless they are given the option to discover more about it online. The reason for this, which Deuze discusses, is the increased media consumption by the public, and the need for participatory media consumption. The audience (or user) now want to feel like they are part of the media. The advancements in technology lead to the audience having a greater ability to give feedback. So the media industry had to keep up and go online. This ultimately resulted in media convergence.

It’s interesting to note that as I’m writing this blog, I’ve suddenly realised that I don’t know which is a more appropriate term; “audience” or “user”. In regards to television and radio (and possibly print media too), the word “audience” seems to fit, as they are broadcast media. But when the audience goes online, are they still an audience? The word “user” once only applied to computer users. But now the audience gives back, actively. So when does the audience officially become a user? I’m starting to think the word “audience” is not obsolete in the scope of media, and that now we are all users of media, rather than an audience of it.

I feel like I’m in Tron…

Week 5 - Did you say Mary Popp-- NO! I said Sherry Bobbins.

A few years back I was a member of an online forum, which was pretty much just a general discussion forum. I had my 15 minutes of fame on that board by being a half-decent photoshopper, creating custom posters and signatures. I found out that people were stealing my creations and claiming them as my own on other forums. To combat this, I did two things; first, I watermarked my work with my tag (“six-one”); second, I created a DeviantArt profile and uploaded my work there first.

The point I’m making here is that someone else saw value in something I created, and due to the ease of copy and paste, stole my ideas and creations to claim them as their own. Lessig says that we live in a world that celebrates property, and there is a new “weird” form of property, legally known as “intellectual property”. This is quite literally, the legal protection of the ideas that come out of our head. As soon as you put pen to paper, click a button or voice you’re idea, it’s yours forever…so long as you can prove it.

Lessig also discusses the decline of “free cultures”. “Free cultures are cultures that leave a great deal open for others to build upon; unfree, or permission, cultures leave much less. Ours was a free culture. It is becoming much less so.” The point Lessig is making here, is that today it is so easy for creators to steal someone else’s idea, and make it their own. Film makers haven’t had an original idea in years. We keep seeing old movie’s get rehashed and old series get pointless sequels.

But hey, maybe there are some original ideas still right? James Cameron’s 2009 epic “Avatar” was original wasn’t it? Poul Anderson would disagree.