Monthly Archives: March 2010

A week without a computer.

After going without a computer for a week I’ve come to the conclusion that while it is fairly easy to stay away the hassle arrives when you come back. Over Spring Break I was down in Georgia with the crew team and it seemed smart to go without a computer for a week because there was going to be no Wifi anyways. Since I kept busy during the entire week and there was no shortage of people to hang out with I never found myself yearning to use the internet and thought hey going without a computer is actually really easy. Granted, I did check my email and Facebook occasionally on my blackberry.

It was only after I got back on campus that the week away from the web took its toll. Suddenly all the things I went without started to pile on top of each other and now I am left playing catch up. Life goes on without the internet, but sometimes we all forget that the internet goes on without us too. Blogs continue to get updates, news continues to run, and internet traffic goes on as usual. As I went back to my normal internet routine I realized that I would have to back track if I wanted to consume all that I had missed out on during the previous week. Whereas all that stuff is manageable over a week, the combined buildup makes it seem overwhelming. Some of it I can let go, I mean I can move forward without checking the dozens of new pages updated on Perez Hilton. However, I still need to go back and catch up on all of the TV that I’ve missed over the week, which altogether is a disgusting amount, if I want to stay up to date, which obviously I do. Not to mention the fact that classes have started up again and now it would be impossible to go without the internet in some capacity or another. Our everyday lives we are completely dependent on technology and here’s a little advice from my week without it: to save yourself the stress of the aftermath, try not to go extended amounts of time without it cold turkey, if you find that you are wasting way too much time simply moderate yourself, it’s the only solution because somewhere down the line a task that requires technology will come up.

Convergence Culture

I personally am a supporter of convergence, user interaction, and reading spoilers. In this day and age media convergence simply opens up many new levels of for the spectator to consume, so why not enjoy it. After all what Jenkins said is true, for the 20 million people that watch survivor  only about 50,000 of them are on the online message boards, and even fewer of them are active. Most importantly the amount of user interaction depends on you the user, so I don’t understand why people criticise those who choose to look for and post spoilers online. At the end of the day if you are against it, then don’t read them, we can all turn off our computers to watch an hour of television.

While it is also annoying that new media has adopted a cross media platform type of storytelling, this too can be circumvented. In fact, this is made possible by convergence. For example, if you missed the whole Matrix phenomenon and want to catch up, you can do so much more quickly today then you could have when the films first came out. Now, you don’t have to buy the video games, read the comics, and etc. to fill in the gaps of the matrix story. Today, all you have to do is go to your local search engine to find the missing plot points of the films. Convergence culture, may not be for everybody but I think the point is that it makes it so much more worthwhile for those uberfans that want to be that much more involved in their favorite shows/films.

Response to “Remix”

Lawrence Lessig brings up a lot of ideas about intellectual ownership in his book Remix and I’d say I would have to agree with most of them. I mean after the information is out there who technically ‘owns’ the intellectual information? After all it is a little ridiculous how you don’t have to ask for permission to cite a quote but have to worry about copyright issues when using media clips for bigger projects. The whole reason someone is able to borrow a quote, is because they are using it in their own different context, for an entirely different purpose than it was originally meant for. The same is done with media projects like a mash up song; one might use a part of a song from a particular artist but you are usually using it in conjunction with other clips to create a new piece of music and not trying to take credit or profit from the original.

I guess the whole problem stems down to the issue of financial profit. After all you can borrow all you want from pieces of literary intellectual work for a piece of new written work because odds are you won’t be able to sell you work to make any money. However, if you do the same with media property, profit margins go down for corporations. Like Lessig, I agree that this is an outcome that is a consequence of a lack of policy to accommodate users in this new age of media. I mean at one point, the VCR was thought of as a pirating device. Now that is not the case, just as DVRs and mp3 players are no longer thought of as pirating devices, but devices that make the sharing and usage of media more convenient. While we might not see a compromise to this copyright issue anytime soon, I think that a gradual improvement will be made towards a more open policy for sharing information. Availability and usability of media technology is only going to get easier for society as time goes on, so it is natural that practices will change and evolve with the development of these new technologies.

Something to think about…

Earlier this week, during an econ exam I read an article that said that this year’s winter Olympics was the most tweeted about Olympics in history. But the statement in itself is a little deceiving after all what does that even mean? First of all Twitter has only been around for a year or so. So, doesn’t that make this year’s Olympics the most tweeted about simply out of default, since this is the only Olympics in which people have had the option to use Twitter.

With that in mind, what is the use of saying that something was the most tweeted about or such and such had a record amount of hits online. After all these so call records are fleeting; they are bound to be broken with the simple passage of time as more and more people pick up the new technology everyday. For example, someone might set a record for being able to hold their breath for 5 minutes and there is no guarantee that someone will break that record. However, I guarantee that the next time the Olympics role around, those games will be the most tweeted about in history, simply because by then more people will be on Twitter. So given the relevancy of the previous statement, does that mean that records like these hold no sense of accomplishment? I guess it all depends on who you talk to, but anyways it’s just something to think about.

Chat Roulette!

Well, I must admit something a little embarrassing first. So I had skimmed over professor Mittell’s post about chat roulette without watching the video and had made a mental note to go back later, I must have forgotten the name of the application. Earlier today I was doing research for a Chinese essay and stumbled upon an article about chat roulette, in Chinese, which lead me to search for chat roulette, which lead me to discover it in all of its glory. Needless to say I was flabbergasted by the invention and its combination of genius and complete ridiculousness destined for failure. I then got really excited about sharing my discovery and went to mother blog to share it with everyone. Needless to say I was both epically disappointed and embarrassed that everyone had already heard about it, including myself.

Anyways, my point is, if I unknowingly stumbled on chat roulette how many other people have done the same, especially given the amount of press that it has been getting recently. After watching that charming video I have also come to the conclusion that chat roulette is actually a pretty cool idea, you know given the fact that the perverts and pedophiles don’t take it over. It’s pretty much like an interactive twitter times ten, and with that said; I think that it would be a pretty entertaining thing to try. While it is still too early to tell I can definitely see chat roulette becoming the new web phenomenon, especially given the overall curiosity and bored-ness of the general public.

How true is our online persona?

Boyd’s article Why Youth ♥Social Network Sites” brings up a good point when saying that who we are online is not really who we are in real life. Specifically Boyd means that our online personas are much more carefully constructed, exaggerated, and sometimes even fabricated.

While we have pretty much moved on from Myspace to Facebook I can still recall the days of Myspace. Back then the “Myspace picture” was pretty much the quintessential example of how one’s online persona is a false representation of the real thing. It was a widely recognized concept that one’s Myspace picture was not a clear representation of how you really looked. With Myspace you controlled all of the images that appeared on your site and people saw you how you wanted them to see you. This is great in terms of the online community but I think that it is easy to get caught up in the exaggeration. Sometimes people forget that while we have a life online, we live in reality and at the end of the day you still look the way you do and act the way you act.

I think that Facebook is a progressive step towards getting closer to the truth. Friends are able to tag unflattering pictures of you, and follow your comments on the news feed to get a better understanding of who you really are. I guess I understand the appeal of having complete control over your image and persona, but we should also be aware of how easy it is to create an entirely different identity altogether.