As I checked my Facebook profile today I was reminded of what Shirky said about how people can use the internet to gather people into a specific group or cause like with the case of the missing sidekick. I saw a real world example of this in a picture that two of my friends were tagged in.

Needless to say even from a thumbnail it was easy to tell that there was something up with the photo. 

After clicking on the picture I came to see that this wasn’t a joke but a serious case of a missing girl in the community. The comment below the picture also called for people to tag themselves in the picture to spread the message, and make it their profile picture as well. As opposed to joining a group like 1,000,000 for against prop 8, amongst others, this is an example of an interactive campaign for something on Facebook. Cases like this one are seemingly normal these days, for example the recent disappearance of actor Andrew Koening has been very active in the news recently and when people were still looking for his whereabouts friends and family took to twitter. I recalled seeing messages asking for help in finding his whereabouts last week. However, seeing this picture on Facebook really cemented the new use of the internet as a tool because I felt that this time I was part of the audience.

Personally podcasts are not my forte. A mix of radio and blogs, podcasts are for those who have an hour-plus to dedicate to listening to the opinions of one or a few people. Podcasts are an uninterrupted continuous stream of sound, unlike radio there are no commercials, but it is also prerecorded so you are unable to call in to respond. Similar to blogs, you are only able to affect the content of podcasts by leaving comments, in a forum, message board, etc.

In my opinion the average person listens to radio shows when it is convenient, i.e. when they are in the car, at the gym, or the occasional obligatory listen to their friend’s radio show. In the age of iPods where radio is pretty much fading into the background, who must ask: are podcasts really necessary? I mean who is going to take the time to download a podcast before they hit the gym when they can just listen to their own music or the radio. Podcasts lack a level of accessibility that is essential in today’s fast paced world of snap decisions, so for a podcast to be especially popular I feel like it needs to add something that other mediums lack and as far as I can tell it doesn’t.

Who knows maybe I will change my mind in the future but for now I am not a fan of podcasts. For those of you that like podcasts, check out this one about pop culture issues http://www.keithandthegirl.com/, it’s actually really popular, like multiple people have tattoos of the podcast’s logo. I don’t get it, personally if I have an hour and even when I don’t I’d choose television over podcasts anyday.

The most relevant point that Shirky brings up is how new media has opened up the channel of communication. Whereas previously information flowed only one way, i.e. TV, film, print, the internet has allowed those that consume that information to respond. Unlike radio, in which listeners have to call in at the right time to voice their thoughts, there are little constrictions to voicing your opinion on the internet.

The internet has opened up a whole new level of choice for the consumer of information. You can choose what you want to digest and when you want to digest it. You can also choose the level of participation. The internet throws out all conventional notions of organization. As Shirky points out, there is a lack of management of the internet and one can contribute as much or as little as they want to it without consequence or reward. The internet is also one of the few places where one can communicate with someone famous, with the possibility of them communicating back.

The internet can also turn its users into pseudo inquisitive journalists for day. In the example of the stolen sidekick and Wikipedia, Shirky points out that users are now using the internet as an open medium, where they can publish information, thus making them journalists in a way. Shirky also points out how simple it is for a user to gather a large group of people and direct them towards a specific cause. As shown with the stolen sidekick example, the internet can be a powerful media tool that, if used in the right way, can solve all of your problems.

I have always known that you can change a lot about an image through Photoshop and last week’s tutorial only cemented that theory. However Photoshop has also had negative effects on the community as well.  It has made people a little paranoid when it comes to looking at pictures. For example, the summer before freshman year I took a family trip around Europe. So after the trip I of course uploaded pictures onto Facebook. There were pictures of me at the Eiffel Tower on a nice sunny day and I had noticed that one of my friends had commented on the picture, it simply read: Photoshop. After reading the comment I was actually really offended that my friend thought that I was the type of person who would take a picture of myself, set it to the backdrop of the Eiffel Tower, and put it on Facebook. I’m sorry but I like to think that I have better things to do with my time. The whole ordeal made me think, has Photoshop changed the way we look at images? Do we need to make sure that all of our photos are slightly flawed so that there isn’t any suspicion that they’re fake?

I agree with Toren about Ong’s article  “OMG Why Writing Sux.” It focuses way too much energy on criticizing the written word and his points are pretty outlandish. McCloud’s Understanding Comics on the other hand, carries a completely different tone. McCloud’s book is the first solid positive piece of literature we have read so far about media. Ong thought that the invention of media was slowly degrading our senses, and McLuhan thought that the invention of media was throwing our senses out of balance. McCloud presents another theory of how you can use media as an extension of general awareness by transposing yourself into the context.

McCloud’s book really opened my eyes about how we view images and how the combination of pictures and words can affect our senses. Comics, are a medium that combine sequential images with text. It is this mix of two mediums that makes it a truly unique form of expression. I find that even though you only utilize one sense, sight, when reading a comic, it feels as if you are also using sound as well. When reading a sound like ‘Pow’ in a comic is seems as though you are hearing it, and the fact that you are able to illustrate sound this way is really interesting. Comics are also unique in the fact that they are not confined by the same boundaries of form thatother written works are. For example, when you are reading a piece of written work, there are certain forms that you must abide by, you read from left to right, top to bottom, and beginning to end. In contrast, McCloud illustrates in his book that a story in a comic can be presented in a variety of ways.  For example, a reader can read the text in a different order, depending on how it is juxtaposed on a page. Plot can be present horizontally and vertically on the page or it can even span across the top portion of a two page spread. Similarly comics can do things with images that film cannot. In a single image a comic can express the passage of time, whereas in a film the shot has to change as time changes.These aspects of comics are particularly interesting but because they are pretty unique to the medium I think that it would be unlikely to extend them to other media.

It seems like our generation is pretty much obsessed with what other people are doing. Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter have made us very voyeuristic. For those that love texts from last night but don’t have the time to devote to checking the site all the time, I’ve heard it can be very addicting, try http://postsecret.blogspot.com/.

PostSecret is an online community, similar to texts from last night where people can express there embarrassing moments and inner thoughts anonymously. The tag line  for the blog  literally calls for people to come share their secrets with the world. One thing that is interesting about the blog is that it is an interactive community. Strangers write secrets on postcards and mail them in and PostSecret posts themonce a week, on Sundays. Without the interaction of the community the blog would not be able to function. The site has become pretty popular over the years, who knew that people have so much that they need to get off their chests. The secrets on the post cards range from the whimsical, to the serious, to the down right disturbing. So if you find yourself bored, or wanting to procrastinate just a while longer, check the blog out.

As far as I can remember I was always watching TV. I think  that stemmed from the fact that both my parents were working growing up and watching TV was an easy thing to do with the babysitter. Well, before I knew it I was hooked. It started slow, I grew up in Utah and the only channels the babysitter had were the local ones. I watched a lot of PBS as a child and I think I learned English watching Arthur and Wishbone, I can’t really remember. Anyway, the day I discovered cable there was really no going back.

In a deranged experiment gone wrong my parents cancelled/blocked cable when I was in eighth grade. Luckily they brought it back a year later because they couldn’t handle it either. Anyways, during that time I had no choice but to rely on the internet. It was hard because this was before streaming video was everywhere and you couldn’t really find episodes online. However I still had to know what was happening on the shows that I followed so I looked up the scripts online and read episode synopsizes to get by.

Pretty soon, the internet and streaming video changed and everything was soon online. My addiction to television was pretty much the gateway drug into my need for the internet. Since there is pretty much no cable on campus, well there is but it is much more convenient to watch TV in your dorm, the majority of my time online is spent watching TV. I also follow a couple of Asian dramas (blame my mother), which are actually really addicting, as well as a couple of British shows. Obviously without the internet I would not be able to watch them.  Similarly the internet allows people who don’t subscribe to premium channels like HBO or Showtime to still view their programming. My bookmarks include a variety of sites that upload TV shows within the hour and I have backups in case some are down. For example a good one is http://www.ch131.com/, it has everything current.

The rise of gossip blogs has also had a profound impact on my time. Through my love of television I have also become a pop culture junkie. Checking all the gossip sites and reading spoilers on entertainment blogs is as fun as getting lost in a Wikipedia link chain. I also must check yahoo movies everyday for the newest movie trailers, it’s like watching  a mini-movie.

Social networking sites have also allowed me to keep in contact with all the people in my life. Realistically we all have a couple of those people that we don’t really like, yet we are interested in what they are up to, and Facebook lets everyone embrace their inner stalker.  The internet is great simply because of all the information that you can find on it. There is little you can’t look up, buy, or watch these days and that is why I don’t think I could live without it.  

However great our new media is today I do have a couple of criticisms. If it ever disapears we are all kinda screwed  because everything, from pictures to music is digital these days. While it is more convenient I do miss the times when buying a physical CD and  looking through a freshly developed stack of photos was prefered over itunes and facebook albums.

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