21w.784 fall '06 Class blog

MIT Basketball vs. Salve Regina Post-Game Wrap-Up

2006-12-12T09:54:00.000-08:00


Highlights and player interviews from MIT vs. Salve Regina basketball game on 11/4/06.

MIT Basketball @ UMass Boston Post-Game Wrap-Up

2006-12-12T09:53:00.000-08:00


Highlights and player interviews from MIT @ UMass Boston basketball game on 11/11/06.

Becoming too Digital

2006-12-07T11:53:00.000-08:00

Having finished most of my school work for the week, I thought it would be fun to finish watching eXistenZ, a film we started in class a couple of weeks ago.

To sum up, and without giving away too much of the plot, the movie is about a multiplayer game that brings its players into a virtual world where the game and reality become fused and often indistinguishable. The game-pod uploads information by directly porting into bodies of the human players. Once the game begins, the player immediately falls into a deep sleep and begins to experience eXistenZ as a video game persona inside the game.

While a player’s game character may have the same facial features, and can recall various things from his or her actual life, the game character may wear entirely different clothing, have a different accent, or even have certain uncontrollable urges and impulses. The game plot often drives a character to do things that the actual player would not do in real life in order to advance the game. The objective of the game is to ask the right questions and make the right moves in order to survive. However, the game is constantly changing as its players are transferred from one scene to another. As the players navigate through the layers of the game, they begin to lose the ability to perceive reality, and they ultimately lose control of themselves.

While virtual games like eXistenZ do not exist today, the concept of losing oneself in a digital world is very much real to our world. Billions of people go online everyday - hiding behind game characters and screen names, a user can become an entirely different person and live a completely different life. In the movie, a gas station owner who owns very little worldly possessions claims that his life was transformed by virtual gaming. While his work day is tedious and he is relatively unimportant in society, he spends his nights in a virtual world where he is respected and his talents are needed.

While digital features like online chat rooms and games are extremely enticing and even addicting, I believe that they should only serve as a means to entertain and tools for communication. If a user completely immerses him or herself into a virtual world, the person risks losing his or her identity - and the ability to function normally in society.

so i just realized!

2006-11-30T20:36:00.000-08:00

So I was showing my friend the websites tonight, I realized that I need to tell you how to use/navigate the sites!
My project was an exploration on the interfacing of FAMILIES OF PICTURES (comparing and contrasting) for webpages, not on just any interfacing. Therefore, it was intended that one would look mostly at the pages with the families of pictures. Other pages were put in to give context and some sense of realism. But this also means that I did not create entire websites (I did not create an entire Facebook-like or Google-like website), but rather, I segregated out the Photos part of the websites, and simply showed buttons that referenced other parts of the websites.

I will clarify all of this also when I present.
Thanks!
I hope the following helps some!

Also, note! I will be putting a Word Doc. of the guidelines under:

http://web.mit.edu/tli/Public/media

THANKS!!
Tiffany

GUIDELINES FOR USING THE WEBSITES

SEARCH-ENGINE WEBSITE:
• Roll-over the mouse over the pictures.
• Select any of the pictures by clicking on the picture.
• You may Either choose to click on the source URL or image URL

SOCIAL NETWORKING WEBSITE:
• Click on any of the pictures on the album home page.
• This brings you to a page with 3 images.
• Click on the small images to look at other pictures.
• You may click on “tiffali” in the bar near the top to see a profile page. (This page just gives the website context, although it is not a page with a family of pictures.)
• If you clicked on “tiffali” you can click on the “The Dominican Republic!” picture in the “Albums” bar near the bottom of the page to return to the album home page.

PRODUCT-SELLING WEBSITE:
• The first page you see just gives you context so you know what the site is about.
• Click on “Products” to see the page with a family of images.
• Click on one of the first three pen images to see a detail page of one of the products. The other images do not lead to pages, because the first three already demonstrate the idea.
• To return to the page with the family of images, click on “products” again.
• To see other detail pages, click on one of the images under “you might also want”
• To return to the homepage, click “home.”

PORTFOLIO WEBSITE:
• The first page gives you context so that you know that you are entering one project out of a designer’s collection of projects.
• Click on the first image for “a scholar’s residence.”
• Click on any of the images on the left to see a larger image of it on the right.

Barnett Koryan & Alan Ho Final Project Write-up

2006-11-30T08:23:00.000-08:00

Overview

Our media project was to create a series of post game videos which would allow for more people to get to know the MIT varsity basketball team. We interviewed members of the team after games to get their thoughts on the game. We also asked a different question each video that gave more insight about the players outside of basketball.

Video Production

We interviewed the players with a Sony digital camera. The camera was easy to use. It recorded the video onto a hard that was part of the camera. This made it easy to transfer the video to a computer and keep video quality. We used game film which taped for coaches and players to break down and learn. In order to use the game tape which was in VHS format had to be transferred to DVD. Alan ripped the DVD so we could edit it. In the editing process we used the software, Windows Moviemaker. Windows Moviemaker is similar to Apple’s iMovie. It allows for video with music or sound over it. We can also create video out of still shots.

For our video series, we decided that a standard format for the video was good. It connected our videos together. The beginning and end of all the videos were same. We also created a frame that we could put still pictures and allow space for additional information to be given.

Findings / Problems

Working on this project we ran into a few conflicts. As members of the basketball program, we found it hard to conduct the interview right after games. MIT basketball is a division 3 program that is not use to “media” and interviews. The season has started not as we expected. We have not been playing well to our coach’s standard which becomes our standard though our record says we’re a winning team. After our games since we have not played great in any of them, no one on the team really wanted to be interviewed. And we did not want to interview them in that state. Our videos are meant to portray the basketball team in the best way. Anger and devastation were not images that we wanted to record for all to see.

We also had conflicts with retrieving the game tapes. We had to work around our coaches’ schedule. The coaches had to turn the VHS tape into DVD and this took time. We also found it hard to want to retrieve the tapes because it is hard to watch and cut out clips of a bad game. Many amateur athletes just want forget or at least not have a bad performance be pointed out to them.

The volume of games has been difficult to deal with, especially with delays in getting a usable format of our game film. We have had five games in twelve days with a Thanksgiving holiday where parents were around.

Achievements

We were able to create post game videos for our game scrimmages. They have been seen by many people that have connections to the basketball team. In order to help us expand our audience, and reach out to all our fans, we are currently in the process of embedding our videos on mitathletics.com, our school’s official NCAA website. Additionally, students from the nearby Cambridge school have seen it and gave some feedback. They really liked the videos that we made. The students from the school have talked about the video with the players that visit the school to help tutor. They are looking forward to our first home game that is on December 2nd. So we have accomplished our secret goal of getting more and a wider variety of fans.

Final

2006-11-30T06:01:00.000-08:00

HELLO!
All of my work is this folder online:
(Included in that folder is the 4 website I made and the final paper I wrote in PDf and Word Document.)

http://web.mit.edu/tli/Public/media/

Here are the links individually: (Note: the HTML sites require that you have Flash Player on your computer, which you can download for free online :D)

websites:
http://web.mit.edu/tli/Public/media/1.html
http://web.mit.edu/tli/Public/media/2.html
http://web.mit.edu/tli/Public/media/3.html
http://web.mit.edu/tli/Public/media/4.html

paper:
http://web.mit.edu/tli/Public/media/final.pdf
http://web.mit.edu/tli/Public/media/final.doc
http://web.mit.edu/tli/Public/media/process.pdf

COOL!
Tiffany

Viral Media, the Hive Mind, and Remix Culture

2006-11-29T14:24:00.000-08:00

Link to full paper:
HTML
OpenOffice 2.0
PDF

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjNa7nHFju4

Jim Joe and John

2006-11-29T13:59:00.000-08:00

It's just a game right? No, it's a lifestyle.

Hundreds of thousands of people every year go out to their local Best Buys and Wal-Marts to buy the exact same gaming CD enclosed in the same mass produced packaging. They all put the CD into their computers and click "run", but perhaps this is when their experiences fork from the identical to the individual. Today's flight simulation games are ambiguous as to their target audience. Does one play them to see how much blood can be drawn or how many tanks can be blown up during a mission? Or, does one play to experience and respect the sacrifices and dedication of the military that defends that which is worth defending? When all else fails, is it for the experience playing at a level of detail that blurs the lines between gaming and reality? Only you can make that decision, because to each and every one of you there exists an inherently fundamental line between the real and the surreal. Some games disregard the line; others strive desperately to walk it or push it further. In particular, flight simulation games have emerged in recent years as the genre that makes realism fun. It merely depends on who "you" are and where your idea of “fun” lies in the spectrum of simulation gaming.
Taking into account the breadth of experiences and expectations towards flight simulation, we devised an experiment to see how people's passion and/or relation to a game's subject matter translate into their gaming experience. Air Combat simulation games in particular attract a certain die-hard fan base for seemingly unknown reasons. This genre of game seems to scare away the types of gamers who derive their fun from outlandishly hectic and intense gaming experiences such as trying to blow up futuristic laser tanks with a ridiculous gadget in the midst of an intergalactic space battle. Flying a flight simulation game can't possibly get your blood pumping like that all the time because of the inherent nature of flying. Over half of the typical flight mission is spent flying straight and level. The excitement starts, depending on one’s perception, as a little green dot appears on the radar screen to indicate an ingress enemy fighter. After a minute or two of flying in a straight line, one would see a little black dot appear out of a cloud and shoot a missile at it. Once the target is defeated, all that is left is to proceed to fly straight and level to the next objective.
The main question we aim to explore deals with what type of person it takes to break a sweat over that little green dot on the radar screen. Who finds this sort of ultra-realistic game riveting and why? To find the answers to these questions three people will be asked to play "Lock On", an air combat simulation game in a controlled environment; a random person who has no prior passion for flying or flight simulation games, a civilian who does harbor a passion for the aerospace world, and finally a cadet in MIT's Air Force ROTC detachment 365 who aspires to fly military aircraft as a career after school. Judging by their answers to some key questions as well as their reactions to the game and noting the level of realism that they select to play it at, we will be able to draw some conclusions that hopefully answer our fundamental questions about the ties between a game and its players.
Of course, this isn’t the first time the idea of simulation in media has been explored. “It is genetic miniaturization that is the dimension of simulation. The real is produced from miniaturized cells, matrices, and memory banks, models of control – and it can be reproduced an indefinite number of times from these.” Jean Baudrillard presents a despondent yet poignant view of simulation. He argues that simulation, though it strives to attain the highest level of realness, can never fully represent the real because it is based on a fixed model of behavior, as a result, can only have a limited number of outcomes, no matter its complexity. Unfortunately, our levels of simulation have advanced to a degree that we can foresee many possible outcomes previously unattainable. Letting our society use these simulations to model their real life counterparts essentially annihilates reality as we know it by leaving no room for the unintended or the imaginary . He describes it as being “No longer anything but operational, in fact, it is no longer the real, because no imaginary envelopes it anymore. It is a hyperreal, produced from a radiating synthesis of combinatory models in a hyperspace without atmosphere.”
In many ways, Baudrillard is correct in his description of the role that simulation plays in society. In many cases, our reactions have been reduced to a series of simulations with known outcomes. For example, the simulation of a terrorist attack has been outlined in every way, shape, and form. Through law enforcement, entertainment and government, a system of reactions to terrorist threats has been set up based on every known and anticipated instance of attack. This shouldn’t be a problem as long as every attack falls within our spectrum of knowledge. However, this method of reaction eliminates our ability to react to instances outside the realm of models and simulation. This is when our system could break down and potentially put people in danger. The same applies to flight simulation. Playing a flight simulator to the point of mastery won’t teach a person the feel of the flight stick under a high-speed bank or the glare of the sun off the wing. A pilot having trained only on simulation could potentially be crippled in reactions to unforeseen events, according to Baudrillard. However, Simulacra & Simulation was published in 1981. There was no way for Baudrillard to envision the magnitude in which computers have since grown in power.
Today, some simulations still use systems of models to output reactions, but these systems are so vast and complex, that empirically they have captured almost every known outcome or ramification. Flight simulation itself has been constantly improved over its nearly 100 year lifespan. In present day simulations, the entire nose of the aircraft is rebuilt and every possible simulation taken from countless acts of empirical tests is accounted for. After a certain point, this information reaches critical mass, concurrent with Yochai Benkler’s description of peer production. It seems that at this point, with this level of technology, U.S. governments can be satisfied with their investment in training their pilots first on a simulator. That being said, how does all this information transfer to a video game, moreover, a videogame that will be fun to play?
Delving from Baudrillard, theorists on the other side of the spectrum maintain a feeling of necessity for simulation. Gonzalo Frasca talks of simulation as the ultimate learning tool, often misunderstood as an interactive narrative. With the dawning of the computer and artificial intelligence, simulations were created that could go right on a PC with no extra apparatus or setup. Frasca makes a clear distinction between simulation and narrative, “For an external observer, the outcome of a simulation is a narration. But the simulation itself is something bigger than narrative. It is a dynamic system that yes, contains thousands of potential "stories", but it is larger than the sum of its parts. The simulation itself is not a narrative, it is something different, in the same way that a kaleidoscope should not be understood as a collection of possible images but instead as a device that produces images according to certain mechanics.” One may ask why it does not suffice to show a film depicting a sequence of events . This may be true for teaching simple concepts, but for complex systems and ideas, experimentation is crucial to understanding. Applying this to our experiment, we aim to evaluate the tutorial section of the game, which merely shows how to maneuver the plane and use specific buttons. Is this helpful to the user or does one simply start playing in order to fully grasp the game?
For each subject the experiment was conducted in the same manner. Prior to their arrival, all equipment necessary for the experiment was set up and ready to operate. These preparations included all of the following: one laptop with "Lock On," our flight simulator of choice loaded onto it, one external hard-drive to store all data from the flight simulator, a flight specific joystick controller (pre-calibrated), one "Lock On" game manual, one laptop equipped with built in camera to film subject, a standard chair for the subject to sit in for the duration of the experiment, any number of extra light sources needed to illuminated the subject sufficiently for filming, and finally, one flat and otherwise cleared table used to mount all the equipment. Large and uncluttered rooms were chosen to hold the experiment in to reduce any or all distractions. No other electronic devices were allowed to be in use while the experiment was underway nor were any unassociated personnel allowed in the testing area. The atmosphere was kept as professional and sterile as possible to ensure that the game was the only focus for the subjects. Once ready, the subjects were asked to enter the room and take a seat in front of the computer and game controls. Before being filmed or allowed to play, the purpose of the experiment as aforementioned in the introduction was outlined and the subjects were given a chance to ask any questions. Once their questions and concerns were answered, the preliminary interview was initiated. While being filmed, the subjects were asked the questions based on their affiliation to the Air Force. The ROTC subject was asked a specific set of questions to determine his level of involvement with the organization:
• Do you aspire to be a pilot in the USAF?
• If yes, what type of aircraft would you prefer to pilot?
• How many years have you been a cadet?
• What experience do you have with real aircraft?
• Have you encountered a USAF flight simulator?
• How important is realism to you in this genre of video game?
• Is it more important than having an intense (but unrealistic) gaming experience?
• Do you ever play these games on your own free time?
• What will you be looking for in this particular video game?
• What other games do you play on your free time?

Questions asked to non-cadets:
• Are you sure that you don't harbor any secret desires to become a fighter pilot thus compromising the neutral manner of this study?
• What other video games do you play on outside of media studies surveys?
• Would you elect to play a flight simulator game on your own?
• What would you expect from the game?
• Is realism less or more important than the games ability to exhilarate you?
• Do you usually make connections with the real military services of the United States when playing military simulation games?

Filming was then stopped and the subjects were introduced to the game "Lock On". A training mission for an F-15C Eagle fighter jet was loaded onto the screen. Filming resumed as the subjects were asked to watch, but not play, the training mission. The training mission selected was a didactic and non-interactive experience that demonstrated the procedures and techniques for piloting the F-15 into simulated combat that would be later required in the experiment. During this time the gamer was left alone with the game, no further verbal explanation of "Lock On" or its workings were given. The only source of information regarding the game that the subjects were allowed to consult was the training mission. Filming ceased and it was explained to the subjects that they would now be playing an actual mission using the skills they had just developed in the training mission. They were allowed to adjust any settings of the game that affected the level of realism experienced such as quantity of weapons carried, skill of enemy pilot, weather, ease of radar use, level of systems automation, amount of fuel carried, and level of survivability for their own aircraft.
Filming resumed and the subjects were allowed to play the air combat mission with the settings they chose. Once the subjects lost (no one won) to the enemy or crashed the game was terminated. A series of follow-up questions were then asked to reflect upon the gaming experience, both the cadet and non-cadets were asked the same questions:
• You were allowed to adjust all of the settings; did you make it as realistic as possible?
• Did you read about the controls etc. before even beginning the game?
• When flying, did you follow all of your objectives precisely without detouring or messing around?
• Did you ever find yourself saying, "It’s not like that in real life."?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how close did this game bring you to feeling like a real fighter pilot?

Of the three test subjects, the one with no previous flight simulator experience reacted most negative towards the simulation experience. Based on videogames she did play, she enjoyed the gaming experience that provided instant gratification. As a result, it seemed she could not understand the subtle nuances of a flight simulator being too consumed with boredom of flying straight towards a target. It seemed she needed the narrative aspect of the game to keep her interested, or at the very least this type of free exploration didn’t excite her. Ironically, she thought the game was unrealistic because she ran out of ammo, when in reality combat fighters only have a finite number of missiles (6-8). Though she misunderstood the game, it seemed too realistic for her to really invest herself in the simulation.
Similarly, the ROTC cadet also had trouble engaging with the game, but in his case, it was for an entirely opposite reason. The test subject already had real flight hours along with some hi-tech flight simulation training, and that prior knowledge inhibited him from investing in the simulation. Interestingly, when asked about the training, he found it to be fairly adequate. He then noted that in the Air Force, up to $2 million dollars are spent training each pilot over a period of two years. Though he wasn’t entirely set on having the most realistic experience possible, the level of realism provided by the game couldn’t come close to his prior experience, and as such prohibited him from enjoying it. On the other hand, the subject that only played flight simulators thoroughly enjoyed his experience. He specifically noted that realism is what makes games fun for him. That being said, he had only previously played commercial flight simulators, not combat ones. This provided him with the perfect framework to engage in this game. His previous experience let him appreciate the flight physics and detail, yet his inexperience in combat simulation enabled him to immerse himself in the game without being held-up on inaccuracies. In addition, he was the only test subject that used the interactivity of the game to his advantage, experimenting with the jet’s capabilities in the beginning instead of flying in a straight line. His experimental nature can explain why he wasn’t involved during training because he couldn’t physically interact and learn the controls. All in all, his experience was most enjoyable, mainly because his definition of fun fell right on the line between gaming and realism.
Our experiment yielded quality data that we can use to re-evaluate our theories on flight simulation and simulation in general. It seemed that a clear distinction was made between the training, a narrative procedure, and the game, an interactive one. Concurrent with Frasca, though the game is more or less an amalgamation of narratives, it is, in itself, an entity on to its own. In addition, we found that the most enjoyable experience came from relating a well-explored framework (commercial simulation) to a new application (combat). This provided the user with ample tools to engage the game, yet posed a challenge at the same time, resulting in maximum enjoyment. To evaluate Baudrillard’s theory, it might be useful to follow the ROTC subject through flight school and into the field, interviewing him about how his training related to real flying. In any event, it seems that this massive following of flight simulator fans results from an appreciation of detail. That’s not to say each person knows everything there is to know about physics or airplanes, but one can understand the complexity and nuances that exist in flying. Maybe they feel it gets them closer to the gods; maybe it enables them to do things otherwise impossible. Maybe they just have their heads in the clouds.

Media’s Effects on the Behavior of Content Creators

2006-11-29T13:13:00.000-08:00

Link to Research Paper: http://web.mit.edu/grk/Public/21W784/FinalProjectPaper.doc

Link to Media:
web.mit.edu/grk/Public/21W784/Final Video.wmv
web.mit.edu/grk/Public/21W784/Final Video.mpg

Guy-Richard Kayombya,
Nimish Ramanlal,
Vijay Umapathy

MIT Social Science

2006-11-28T19:15:00.000-08:00

There is an overwhelming opinion that MIT students are entirely are geeks or nerds. Our own experiences at MIT so far would suggest that these views are not always accurate and that in actuality, MIT is an incredibly diverse place with a thriving social life. We thought that it would be interesting to make a short video interviewing a large pool of MIT students cataloguing their thoughts about life at MIT. We would then show the video to students in high school and students at other colleges and get their feedback about how the video changed their opinions about the social life at MIT.

See the whole essay here

Come to class on Thursday to see our video...

The Internet Video Revolution

2006-11-28T18:44:00.000-08:00

Irish playwright Oscar Wilde once mused, “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.” In our society, it is a common dream to experience celebrity, to know what it is like to be recognized, talked about, and emulated. Historically, only a select few have attained celebrity status but thanks to the video sharing website YouTube, everyday people are becoming well-known and part of the common language of our culture. While it seems clear that the online video phenomenon is just beginning, it remains to be seen whether the site YouTube will last. As learned from many fleeting web successes, YouTube’s current status as the eighth most viewed website in the United States does not guarantee its continued success. The longevity of the hot spot will depend on Google’s application of its existing strengths to YouTube and its willingness to continuously revolutionize the site to ensure that it evolves along with copyright law and the culture.

And please go to this link to see my original creation for YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1xGR0wIfj8.

or

Automated Calculation of Word Correlations from Text

2006-11-28T18:02:00.000-08:00

Automated Calculation of Word Correlations from Text
(direct link to Word Document download, 1.4 MB)

I present algorithms to mine data from large texts to estimate the degree of connection between two words by estimating their correlation, a measure of how often the words appear near each other, and how close they appear. The hit counts on Google searches allow a simple measure of correlation using the vast corpus of the Internet. I write a program to more accurately compute correlation of words within a text. Correlation data is used to locate conceptual clusters of words. I speculate on how one could extract semantic relationships from correlation patterns

Final Class Project - MIT Social Life

2006-11-19T12:13:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone!

Nick, Brandon, and I have posted our video online (still not the final version) and asked for feedback from high school and college students. We are hoping that people will talk about their thoughts about MIT and how their opinions changed after they watched our video. If any of you could take a minute and post a couple of thoughts about the video we showed in class, that would be great! Thank you so much and see you all in class Tuesday.

College Confidential
Facebook

Andrew, Brandon, and Nick

Information Display Link

2006-11-15T14:50:00.000-08:00

Here's the link to where my first proposal for an image searching interface is.
It doesn't work yet and it has hardly anything on it, but I'll be working on it very soon to hopefully get it working within the next 30 hours.

NOTE: You must have Flash Player 9 downloaded on your computer to watch it.
(It's already on MIT Athena comps...but it might not be on everyone's PC's.)

http://web.mit.edu/tli/www/media/1.html

Peace!
Tiffany

Editted Project Proposal

2006-11-10T12:47:00.000-08:00

On the Internet there are many websites that display families of pictures. A family of pictures is any set of pictures that were meant to be viewed and grouped together. An example of a \family of pictures is the search results that come up when you search for a word on Google Imagers. Another example of a family of pictures is set of pictures that show up when you click on “jeans” at Gap.com. All kinds of websites call for displaying families of images. Some other examples that display families of pictures are Flickr, Facebook Pictures, photography portfolios, and many more.

Websites have different purposes for displaying families of pictures. Because they each have different purposes in showing pictures, their interfaces are different from website to website. I will be researching how interfacing of picture-displaying websites reflect the intent of websites. There four categories of websites that display families of pictures. These categories are defined by the intent of the producers of the website.

The first type of picture-displaying website is websites that display families of pictures as information\. Users will ask the website for information about a keyword, and the website will return a set of images. An example of this is Google Images.

The second type of website is websites that display pictures for the sake of social networking. Examples of this are Flickr and Facebook Photos.

The third type of picture-displaying website is websites that are trying to market items to the public. Examples of this are Gap.com, BananaRepublic.com, and Buy.com

The last type of picture-displaying website is websites that are trying to market the originator of the website himself. This can be considered a portfolio website. For example, photographers will show their portfolios online to entice the public to hire him, not so that they will necessarily buy the pictures he shows.

I will be researching how the interfacing of each of the websites from different categories compare and contrast to each other. Things I will be examining include how the layout of the page is setup, how pictures are linked to each other and other pages, how much information is displayed, how graphic styles are used in the page, how graphic objects and pictures are placed and sized, how dimensions compare, how buttons are placed, how the name of the website compares to the information, and other elements.

After all the research is done, I will be making and designing my own websites under each of the categories based off of the research I have done.
I will make a website that returns search results when you type in certain words.
Then I will make a website that displays a family of pictures that looks like it was intended for a social network. I will also make a website that look like it is selling products. Finally, I will be making a website for my own portfolio.
When all is said and done, as a class we \can judge based off of my research how successful my own interface designs were.

Sorry for my tardiness...for better or for worse...

2006-11-08T17:04:00.001-08:00

There has been lots of talk about the digital world around us. For better or for worse, our lives are being checkered with digital gizmos that either make things easier or make things more accessible than before. Looking at the progression of human life, it has gone from walking to running to riding on a horse to riding in a car to flying in a plane. It’s intuitively obvious that our lives are quickly approaching the speed of light. If I want to learn everything there is to know about the Great Wall of China, I don’t need to take a boat, I don’t need to fly in a plane, hell I don’t even need a supersonic jet. All I really need is a computer, a mouse, a keyboard, a monitor, but most importantly, a connection. It’s this idea of connection that drives Benkler’s call for commons-based peer production. Similarly, Jenkins’s talk of “convergence culture” deals with widespread access and connection to forms of media working towards the ultimate goal, synergy.

Sure, people have been throwing out lots of terms to describe where society is and most likely where it’s headed. But though this class looks at those issues, it is under the auspice of the idea that we are “becoming digital”. What does that mean, to become digital? Frankly, I think it’s hard to say because we as a society haven’t truly attained this idea. My idea of becoming digital is being able to turn on my computer, put on some headset, goggles and gloves, and walk the Champs-Elysees stopping to check out a store or talk to a fellow virtual tourist. I buy my French baret and then transfer myself to Florence, Italy right in the Boar’s Head Market. There I can shop some of the finest leather items in the world or go to a café to check the score of the World Cup game. Take World of Warcraft, mix it with some technology, and apply it to the real world. Instead of a druid or a gnome, we have ourselves, but think about being able to peruse exact virtual replicas of major cities all over the world! With all the advances in virtual reality, 3D rendering, even smell printers, this is entirely possible. This is what I think of when I hear the phase “becoming digital”. We as a society have clearly made advances, but there is no telling whether or not we will ever get to that totality of virtual existence.

I need to make the distinction that this was not my definition of “becoming digital”. It is merely a representation of how I envision an amalgamation of our technology and culture in synergy to let us explore for ourselves the wide world of the web sans just looking at images. My definition of “becoming digital” lies in the way we interface ourselves both with our belongings as well as with the world around us. It all started with “becoming analog” when instead of talking directly to a person we spoke into a receiver which turned acoustic signals into electrical impulses. They could then travel long distances and be converted back into sound. Plays have transformed into television and movies, radio broadcasts have turned into podcasts. Sooner or later the post office will die, can you believe that? Of course you can, who sends mail these days except magazine and catalogue providers? Yes, becoming digital is the way in which we interface with the world around us. Addiction, open source, commons, WOW, online gambling, etc… are all by-products of this interface. For better or for worse, this will continue until we will no longer ever need to leave the computer…for better or for worse…

E-lection Blog Party

2006-11-08T15:10:00.000-08:00

As I'm starting this essay, the TV is on CNN displaying the latest election results. As I'm posting this, the Democrats have gained control of the House and the fate of the Senate is coming down to one race in Virginia. I'm working on a laptop in front of the TV with tabs open for Blogger, CNN, Google News, and my two favorite political blogs, TalkLeft and crooksandliars.com. As this is all going on, I'm wondering how much technology has changed politics and whether the changes have been for the better.

The CNN studio where all this is taking place has definitely been very digitized. There are the huge TV screens filling the studio following all the latest poll results that have been called in or sent over the internet instantly directly from the polling places. Everyone but the anchors are sitting in front of a computer. All of the graphics are obviously computer generated and very sleek. One of the reporters has a very cool looking large touch screen display that shows which seats belong to which party. One conclusion that can be made with absolute certainty is that graphics and animation on television look so much cooler now than they did before. This new, technology-filled CNN has the ability to get information to us so much faster and more clearly than ever before. CNN, along with all the other news channels and with online news sites, are able to instantly deliver information to the masses. It seems like, with so much greater access, more people would know about what's going on in politics and would be able to make a more educated decision in the voting booth.

Unfortunately, this isn't always the case. Anyone who wants to find this information has easy access to it, but less people are interested in it. Most people never take the time to do any research on the candidates they are voting for. And when these people do hear something about a candidate it's usually just because of some scandal or other shocking move that shows a candidate in one specific context instead of a view of how they usually act in office. Why would you when you have so many other toys to play with? If I'm not happy with how the world around me is working, I'll go find another world that I'm much happier with, like World of Warcraft. With all of this technology, it's extremely easy to tune out reality and live in a virtual world. Although, while this is a very important problem that we have to deal with, the technology itself is not at fault. Technology is an amazing thing and it should be up to the individual to decide how they want to use this technology.

In a room off to the side of the CNN studio, there was a party going on. They called this party the "E-lection Blog Party." Present were many well-known bloggers from blogs such as the aforementioned crooksandliars and TalkLeft. Blogging is another interesting phenomenon that has had an interesting effect on the political scene. Individuals have much more power in spreading information than they ever have had before and these blogs help in bringing more people and opinions to the table as well as more information that is not reported on larger news sources.

Everything around us is changing because of the new technology around us. The entire face of politics is changing and becoming much more influenced by 1s and 0s. As the people become more and more familiar with technology, politics becomes more and more digitized. And as politics becomes digitized, the entire world starts becoming digital.

Digital Compulsions

2006-11-08T14:21:00.000-08:00

I find that I’m addicted to my computer.

It’s a necessity now- instant access to Firefox, Facebook, AIM, and Gmail grip me like no other force in my life. My world would temporarily suck into a toilet if someone so much as accidentally tripped over my power cord- power outages feel like black suffocation… but none of this bothers me. Because I know everyone reading this has access to and understands every application I just named. Everyone around me is just as addicted to the network media that’s swallowed us all- but I don’t have a problem with it.

Like every way of living, the digital economy has its ups and downs. Nobody complains about how quickly we can connect to each other, how incredibly quickened and instantaneously gratifying our lives have become, though everyone hates the always cold and impartial results of binary coding. Our experiences quantized are transmittable, shareable, and more available than ever before, if with all with grains of digitation in their many megabytes. But we ourselves are quantized creatures of quantized experiences- when every single sensation we go through is itself the result of interpreting the binary coding of nerves, why do we make a distinction between the binary within us and the binary in the computer screen?

So many people seem to cry against the “cold machine” that’s taking over, but I don’t think this is the biggest issue. Human interactions have always relied more on the intent and depth of conversations or letters, not the way they happen. Now and in the age before computers, close friends shared times together in the real world; relatives traveled to meet up with family; lovers crossed impossible distances to be with each other. But before we were all connected in this web, all these relations only interacted in the real time, when work and distances were not in the way. If anything, becoming digital has given people more of a chance to meet with the people they choose. E-mail gives us that much more chance to talk with people while we are working, while we are going through the motions we have to. No matter how cold or distant these interactions may seem, they are there as interactions when otherwise they wouldn’t be. And if people find that their relations with others are distanced because they communicate through the network media, that is entirely their own fault. If they can’t find the time out of their busy work life to meet with friends or family, what makes them think getting rid of their instant messenger and e-mail would let them?

No, the only problem I could have with the network information economy I find myself in is that I am dependent upon it. My life is tied psychologically to its instant connections, and my life at MIT would be very different without the Web (I’d have to go to every lecture then, wouldn’t I?). But then, that brings me back to my point that the World Wide Web, Facebook, AOL Instant Messenger, Gmail, and everything else that makes up that vast network out there, the one we can complain about, is indispensable. Think to yourself, “Would I get rid of the Internet?” “Would my relations suddenly improve because I find myself still rarely talking to them in the real world and not in the office, ever?”

Think to yourself, “Would I stop becoming digital?” If you’re reading this, I would say no. You wouldn’t stop Google's email from becoming better, or your favorite web browser improving its interface, or your life from becoming more and more digital. Because somewhere deep inside, you’re just as much a fan of becoming digital as I am.

Becoming Digital

2006-11-08T14:03:00.001-08:00

If I chose to take “Becoming Digital” as my HASS-D this semester, it was for two specific reasons. The first is strongly related to the passion I have for international development. At first, the title of the course conjured up in me this confused idea of third world countries (especially in Africa) transiting from traditional media to modern digital media. I thought the class was going to talk about these developing countries and their new relationships with media. However, I rapidly came to realize that none of my expectations was going to be met. Unfortunately, for me, the class only focused on the western world and the distinctive digitalization process it was facing. However, I realized the possibility of using the concepts presented in the class and attempt to answer some of the questions that I was initially asking myself. What does “Becoming digital” mean for developing countries? What is there to gain or loose? These are the questions; I will try to answer in the rest of my essay.
“Becoming digital” is a process; as such, it involves a sequential progression from a starting state to a final state. The processes for both developed and developing countries share basic similarities. In both cases, the start and final states are quasi-similar. Media goes from a traditional form (oral, written) to a modern digitalized form (Internet). However, there exist fundamental differences. One fine example is the duration of the process: while the process started a couple of centuries ago in the developed world, it is more recent in the developing world and coincides with the beginning of colonialism and imperialism. Moreover, the process in developing countries skipped some important steps (i.e. )in order to reach its current state that is somehow comparable to the progress in the developed world(ubiquity of digitalized media). However, the progression in the third world countries was so fast that people, technology did not have the time to adapt to the new media settings. People have access to all the benefits of networked and digitalized media can provide, but they don’t take advantage of them because they do not know how to use them, or they don’t have the money to use them. For instance, in Kenya, I could connect to the internet and access all possible contents just like I do here in America but my use of internet was limited to Yahoo Mail because I didn’t know Wikipedia existed and streaming videos from YouTube all day long would be too expensive. People in developing countries today use their internet connection just like people in developed countries used internet ten years ago. Nowadays, the process of “Becoming digital” in both worlds has reached the same state when talking about technology but there is a decade shift when considering the human factor.
The hurried convergence towards a world where digitalized and networked media is ubiquitous presents some threats that are unique to the developing countries. In fact, one of the major dangers hanging over these countries is the lost of cultural identity. Even though the internet is a free space, where all the cultures can be expressed there is no guaranty for an equal representation. Taking into consideration that some cultures have an intrinsic ability to dominate over others, and that this ability heavily depends on the economical and political power of the culture in question there is no doubt that cultures from developing countries will be overly muffled. An explicit example would the millions of English articles in Wikipedia compared to the inexistent Rwandan articles. When a Rwandan student randomly browses wikipedia he doesn’t learn anything about Rwandan culture but instead absorbs random facts about English culture. That is the great threat that developing countries are now facing.

2006-11-08T14:03:00.000-08:00

As a general trend, new media is essentially becoming digital. But what does this mean, and perhaps more importantly, why does it matter?

What we as humans are doing by moving toward new media is viewing what was once old media with higher resolution. Just as we examined the real world as a continuous structure with the naked eye but now realize that it can be broken into exceedingly small particles, we are breaking down photographs, video, text--all things we consider continuous--and re-examining them under a digital media microscope. In this sense, becoming digital is not really moving toward the new, but rather, looking at the old anew. We always had the ability to customize film and distribute it; anyone with the patience and the money could have taken an old movie film reel and pieced it into their own creation. The digital age has brought instead a new way of looking at the old; a way that makes it far easier to customize, to personalize, and to create.

On a physical and chemical level, photographs are digital, but on a level that we cannot easily manipulate. The swaths of shade and color, light and dark are really collections of atoms lined in arrays, reflecting very particular amounts of light at very particular wavelengths. Quite simply, our growth into the digital allows us to create a reality that competes with what is. The resolution is a bit choppy, and the computing power a bit limited, but we are slipping into ways of creating that rival the intricacies that define our reality. We have not created a new media, we have done more than that. We have created a new way of representing and creating reality, something we have always done through media in the first place.

In our last reading, we discovered Manovich's perspective on the "New Media" and how it can be differentiated from old media. Each of the issues he presents can also be applied to our becoming digital: Things are indeed becoming represented by numerical atoms, so to speak and are packaged into modules; this is the "physical" part of digital..but it isnt the only part. The most critical aspect of becoming digital is the affect it is having on us as humans. With this increased ability to create and share, there is a lot more creativity going around, the big companies are listening to the little people, there are completely new ways to interpret and convey the same old meaning. The "new media" that is emerging from becoming digital is bringing about a completely new societal construct. People are no longer limited by the amount of money they have, the time-zone they live in, or their technical abilities. The Digital age gives the average user the power to construct, define, and share reality, digitally.

Becoming digital may bring a lot of things to the table, but the most important thing it does for us is allow us to easily share our reality at a resolution unheard of in the past.

The Revolution WILL Be Televised

2006-11-08T14:00:00.000-08:00

Some would argue that “becoming digital” is a bad trend in our society. Old, analog, media is being replaced by digital facsimiles that don’t convey the same amount of information. But really, becoming digital is not about the change in technology itself. It’s about the enablement of new forms of media and new forms of interaction that the technology has brought. Much of what we have today could have been accomplished with analog technology, but the digital world has brought endless possibilities directly to the consumers.

People interact and experience media in a new way in the digital age. There are no longer a select few media producers; everyone is a participant in the modern media culture. The success of YouTube has led to instant amateur stars. American Idol propelled an otherwise-unknown singer named William Hung to the public’s eye when he performed a laughable rendition of “She Bangs”. The viewers are also the content producers, replacing the centralized production system of the twentieth century. “Becoming digital” is about the new way in which every person is an equal participant and contributor to the media world.

Global knowledge is another artifact of the digital age. Where information previously took weeks, days, or hours to travel around the world, messages can now pass entirely around the world in less than 300 milliseconds. This leads to knowledge being spread around the world and being read by millions of people before anyone even has a chance to question its veracity. Jenkins’ discussion of the “Survivor Sucks” message board shows how new, potentially wrong, information circulates around a “knowledge community”.

One poignant example of global knowledge distorting the truth is the event that ended Howard Dean’s presidential chances. At a rally for supporters, a noise-canceling microphone caught Governor Dean screaming. Because the microphone didn’t pick up the sound of the crowd, those who watched the video saw Dean as crazy. Before anyone had a chance to correct the story, the video had traveled around the world and Dean lost his support.

Digital vs. analog is not about raw technology. It is about new ways to use technology, ways that have changed our mediascape forever. The most important thing that the digital age has brought us is citizen involvement – everyone is equal. This new form of popularity and fame is both a good and a bad thing. It has resulted in many surprises, both for the old media companies and for the new media creators of today.

Becoming Digital

2006-11-08T13:55:00.000-08:00

The class name "Becoming Digital" for 21W.784 is going to have to change sometime soon. It won't be long before the people taking the class will have no idea what it means to not be digital. Perhaps it will have to be changed to "Becoming more digital". My father used to sit me down and tell me about the days when a computer took up a whole room. Years later computers got smaller, but they weren't exactly doing a whole lot more. If all our Macbooks and Dell PC's could do was type word documents and play one video game called Oregon Trail, I would argue that we hadn't yet earned the right to say that we've become digital. A digital society means so much more than just a wide distribution of cheap computers. It means the access to networked communities not bounded by geography and having the ability to share ideas and media at your fingertips. This has all happened, and has happened quite recently.
This sort of society-altering technology exists and has been warmly embraced by a few in America. Not everybody has a World of Warcraft community to go home to every night. However, most people do have an E-mail inbox to sort through or a facebook account to manage. Even my grandmother uses the internet on a daily basis. In this respect I feel that all of America (and most other developed nations) have become digital. It is just a matter of the extent to which individuals take it.
The idea of digital media being used for niche groups and special interests comes up time and time again in this class. The more I think about it, the more this seems true and pertinent to myself as a media user. The internet is my primary connection to the digital word. Without thinking about it I am constantly customizing my internet usage to fit my own lifestyle. Nobody tells you what websites to visit or what music and programs to download (legally of course). The internet has become so vast that there are no longer limitations to what you choose to learn from it. It's like an ultimate encyclopedia. If I want to know the resistance in the light-bulb filament on a Yamaha YZF-R1 motorcycle turn signal I know I can find it somewhere on the internet if I look hard enough. And here is the best part about the internet and becoming digital, even if that information about the turn signal isn't anywhere to be found on the internet, I can put it there. In fact, I find out about the lightbulb resistance later on I may even feel obligated to make available to others on the internet. This mentality is and has been key in the development of our digital world.
We didn't become digital when the computer was conceived or when the internet was introduced, we became digital when we realized the potential of these devices and decided to make them our own.

Becoming Digital

2006-11-08T13:53:00.000-08:00

Until the last few decades, developments in media technology and computational technology remained separate, as computer developers created faster ways of processing and storing information and media creators moved from painting portraits to taking photographs and then capturing moving images. With the recent exponential growth in computational power and storage capacity, today’s definition of “data” has significantly evolved from its humble punch-card beginnings to encompass the majority of media to which society is exposed on a daily basis.

In the Digital Age in which we live, media is affected by computer technology in that static pieces of content are stored discretely in machine language (at its core, zeroes and ones), which ultimately means that media can be dynamically manipulated and distributed unlike ever before. Manovich refers to new media as “automated” and “modular”, both traits that correlate directly to the object-oriented structures of computer programs. In the database architecture upon which digital data storage is based, a set of information consists of encapsulating objects that contain dynamic data about their “state” and also perform functions or “subroutines” on other data objects. Similarly, digital media is stored as a data object (e.g. a sound or video file) that is “tagged” with information about the artists or companies involved in its production. However, unlike canvas paintings or even photographic copies of these paintings, new media is subject to computer algorithms, as all forms of media (audio, video, text, and photograph) are all reduced to binary code. These allow for a whole new variety of user content: content that stems off of existing work from existing artists. We find ourselves in an age where any general user can download programs that edit text, photographs, audio, and video, using computer algorithms to add sound effects, cut out voices, or even intermingle clips of multiple forms of media. A great example of new media is the rising art form of “machinima” films. These films are created by media users who manipulate console or computer game constructs to create films with plot lines, themes, and individual characters. One such film, “Red vs. Blue”, portrays the struggle of two characters from Halo who want to put down their guns and talk instead of entering the original ‘battle royale’ construct of the Halo game. This is only one example of the transient nature of new media, made possible simply by the numerical representation of media forms as data.

When operating under the general rule that anything that is reduced to computerized data can be manipulated, it is clear that becoming digital means entering a world of dynamic data that is altered either by the personal creativity of users or by computer algorithms, sometimes transitioning from one media form to another. The modularity and dynamic nature of computerized data are now properties of a new media, allowing for the development of peer-produced content and providing the user with not merely a painting and a canvas, but a paint brush, or graphics editing application, with which to modify and redistribute content to his or her heart’s desire into an infinite databank – the internet.

Becoming Digital

2006-11-08T13:32:00.000-08:00

Six degrees of separation – purportedly, that is all that separates a farmer in mainland China from a business executive in New York City. In view of the emerging networked sphere, the six degrees of separation hypothesis warrants amendment; within the networked world, a three degrees of separation hypothesis might prove more adequate. Networking and digital advances have reduced the degrees of separation that separate people from people and people from ideas. However, becoming digital also comes with a price; humanity pays by sacrificing degrees of freedom, degrees of sensation, and degrees of thought. Never before have people been closer to other people, but yet further away. Never before has such an abundance of information been so readily available, yet new knowledge and innovation so far out of sight.

Perhaps the foremost problem with "becoming digital" is an intrinsic one that derives from the meaning of the phrase itself. Digitization connotes (if not simply by definition) the quantization of phenomena. That is, the wide, continuous range of human perception and sensation is discretized to a string of zeros and ones. For example, when people communicate via email and instant messenger over the internet, they often use emoticons. Emoticons, however, are a pity attempt to express human emotion. In effect, they discretize personality and sensory images into twenty to thirty cases. So why have email and instant messenger become so popular when the depth of interaction they provide is far inferior to that of the face-to-face conversation? The answer is ease of use and multitasking – having an instant message conversation does not preclude a busy student from working on a project at the same time. In a self-perpetuating cycle, "becoming digital" makes life faster paced and more busy; this, in turn, promotes the further use of "digital goodies" that supposedly save time.

The internet is a medium that is characterized by quickness: people gain rapid access to news stories, and peer communication is expedited. Gone are the days of written journals in which people would take the time to weave words into a finished masterpiece. Online journals such as Xanga contained daily accounts that were shoddy counterparts to their written predecessors. Things only got worse when the Xanga phenomenon was replaced by the MySpace phenomenon in which people expressed their individuality even less. Facebook, for example, reduces college students to a single, dichromatic, blue and white page; users are severely limited by the few degrees of freedom. While this limitation of freedom is imposed upon the user, the complete immersion into the digital world also causes people to voluntarily give up freedoms. When people know that machines, such as video surveillance cameras, are always watching them, they tend to limit or "self-censor" their expression.

In addition to fewer freedoms and sensations, accompanying the rise of the digital world is the decline in degrees of thought. Daydreaming and daily reflectance often beget innovation. However, in the digital sphere such entities are virtually nonexistent. Furthermore, the quantized nature of digitization promotes thinking within certain predefined schema. However, a prerequisite for ingenuity is breaking out of the routine schema that pervade society and hinder progress.

Some might argue that as we become more digitally advanced, we will receive the benefits of the digital world and be able to simulate the sensations and freedoms that accompany the real world. However, we must remember that no matter how high the resolution of a digital image, the pixels always become apparent when it is projected onto a sufficiently large screen.

A Leaf in My Shoe

2006-11-08T12:45:00.000-08:00

As I sat around my room today thinking on what to how to write about our much beloved term “Becoming Digital,” I became curious to the fact of how many things in my room were not produced through digital means. The first thing that caught my eye was a notice about MIT housing that I had gotten in the mail. Nope, I couldn’t include the paper. It was not only a product of a document that had been fed through a digital printer, but the paper itself had probably been cut by a machine governed by a program and sensors that made only the most precise 8½” by 11” cuts. Next, I tried looking at my desk. Wood equals natural, right? Not in this case. The pieces were probably also cut in a manufacturing plant under similar conditions and coated in a sealant that I’m sure was not hand-mixed. After becoming a little discouraged at the possibility of not finding a way to escape the span of modern technology even in my own room, I glanced at the floor. A single gold, red, and brown leaf was caught in between the laces on my shoe from walking through a courtyard. This leaf I realized was the only thing in my small home that was truly natural. What could this mean? Have I truly lost touch with nature? Have I thrown down the gauntlet on being an organic being and seek to become immersed in a state of pure technology? It doesn’t mean this at all.

It has become commonplace for the belief that technology is slowly overtaking us, replacing our means of transportation, communication, education, and trade; in one sense, this is true. Technology does seem to be amplifying our standard of living by improving these qualities. However, am I less human because of it? Physically, no, I’m still me, an oxygen-breathing being that gets his energy from the food he eats instead of the socket in the wall. Psychologically, this is harder to prove, but the end result is still the same.

When becoming accustomed to new technology, people tend to regard it as an option to everyday problems as it intended for. For example, a person in the 1970’s needs to get a message to a co-worker on the other side of the state and needs a response in the next week. He has several options, including (a) drive across the state to deliver the message face-to-face while wasting time and money to operate a vehicle, (b) write a letter (1980’s = snail mail) and hope that the USPS is efficient enough to get a message and reply in time, or (c) call the co-worker on the telephone with little effort or cost and get a response within the length of the call. Obviously, option (c) will probably be chosen because it the most efficient solution to the problem. People today are no different. The advent of digital technology has for the most part improved the efficiency at which our problems can be solved so we tend to cling to them. E-mails are sent out in seconds; cell phones are mostly universal; and the combination of scanners, copiers, and printers renders almost every image or piece of text available for anyone. The question that remains is, “Are people dependent on digital technology?” No, not unless we force ourselves to be. Creating otherwise-impossible deadlines for projects that require digital tech is just part of the human progression of efficiency. If we can do it faster for little cost, why not do it?

Am I digital? No. I am an organic being. Until cellular make-up can be decomposed into binary code and implemented as such, this statement is true. Ideas I produce may be saved, stored, or altered on a computer. My actions may be acted out by the pressing of buttons that create electronic signals, but they are still based on natural thought. At the end of the day, I am more like that leaf than the machine on which I type.

The Beneficial Results of Becoming Digital

2006-11-08T12:26:00.000-08:00

We live in a world revolving around a fully dynamic network of information known as the internet. The act of becoming digital, as our society currently is, seems to have been given a negative connotation in regards to its effects on our reality. For some reason there is this misconception that evolving technology, specifically the internet, is a tool that is depleting individuality and creativity amongst its users. Among other things, the thought of a truly digital age is directly associated with a disconnection from reality; but why? I argue the exact opposite. Individuality, creativity, and our sense of reality are all greatly enhanced by means of becoming digital, associated with the utilization of technological advancements.

The roots of individuality stem from knowledge and understanding, which is processed by the brain, resulting in the formation of opinions that create subjective thought. As the network of information from which we draw knowledge is increased, a greater sense of individuality will likely evolve. Therefore, by means of the internet and its monumental source of information, it is easier than ever before to form individual preferences, opinions, and so forth, in regards to any number of interests. The internet breathes individuality. In becoming digital, we have not given up our right to form opinions. We have actually enhanced that right through the ability to now be more adequately informed on the issues from which our original opinions stem.

A second concern that people seem to have with technology is that it supposedly constricts creativity. This is not true. Creativity is a fundamental characteristic of the human mind. It is always present, and always constant; it merely shifts forms. Creativity is simply the unique manipulation and interpretation of the world around us, rather digital or not. Creating a beautiful piece of abstract art in Photoshop is done through the same fundamental characteristic of creativity that is used in painting a watercolor. Some would argue that this is not true, saying that in the case of Photoshop you are simply using a program to create a product that is greatly restricted by the code that makes up the program itself. However, in the case of painting a watercolor are you not also constricted by the physical properties of a brush, paint, and so forth? There are always limiting factors, they just shift forms. Photoshop was designed as a photograph editor. Utilizing the abilities of the program in order to make abstract art from scratch is very creative. Though a watercolor painting and a Photoshop creation are very different in many aspects, the area of the brain utilized in making them is the same, and the end products are fundamentally alike. Furthermore, the internet fosters the means by which we can discover new and interesting ways to enhance our creative minds, through its network of resources pertaining to information on anything and everything of human interest.

The final point I would like to make is coming back to the misconception that as culture becomes increasingly digital, and advancements in technology become top priority, we lose touch with reality. Once again, I see it as quite the opposite. Technological advancements foster interest and deepening understanding of reality by means of scientific breakthroughs. The internet is a catalyst for these advancements, as a convenient source of an infinite wealth of knowledge on any field of interest. In the realm of technological advancements, some people say that we are focusing too much on mass media entertainment (through iPods, gaming consoles, etc.), and not enough on important issues such as medical ailments. However, people need to realize that the same technology being researched to go into the next iPod or Playstation is also the key to solving many medical mysteries. Faster silicon chips and memory modules, the key components of iPods and Playstations, will result in the ability to produce significantly faster and more effective supercomputers to complete such tasks as analyzing protein folding that could result in a better understanding of the causes of cancer. Its technology; and it’s all connected. Embrace it.

Becoming Digital

2006-11-08T11:45:00.000-08:00

When I think of our digital society the first thing that comes to mind is the internet. The internet digitally connects the whole world. There are many applications that internet is used, yet more and more applications are created everyday. The web successfully converges all current media, new and old, by digitizing it and making media liquid. There is one internet company that survived the dot com bubble burst and is now in the forefront of making digital media easily accessible.

Google is one of the world’s largest internet search engine sites. They have been one of the fastest rising stocks over the past two years since going public. Google has been in recent news. Google is going to buy out YouTube, a popular video sharing site, for 1.65 billion dollars. This news appeared on October 10, 2006. On October 31, 2006, news broke out that will also be buying a small wiki startup company JotSpot. CNN reports that Google has spent over 130 million to acquire fifteen small companies last year. Are the predictions of Epic 2014 or Epic 2015 going to come to fruition?

Epic 2014 was created some time in mid-2004 when Google went public. Epic 2015 was created as a sequel and was made in late 2004 or early 2005. Both Epic videos are similar but the major difference is the outlook of the world when Google or actually “Googlezon” takes over the world. I believe Google is on the track of Epic 2015 with all the company buy outs. Google is cutting into Microsoft’s sector because they bought Upstartle, a company that made an online word-processing program and the new wiki software from JotSpot. Google now is creating a more marketable online alternative to Microsoft Office. They have already made Google Maps from another company they bought, Keyhole.

Even though it cannot be visibly seen as of right now if Google has integrate all the web technologies that they have acquired recently, a product similar to the “Google Grid” can be in the works at Google labs. It seems that Google is going to make our society even more digital. This is a mind blowing, but slightly depressing realization. It is like the commercial about GPS systems on a cell phone. The person is looking for a store and is using the cell phone for directions but when another person takes away the phone the person is completely lost until he gets the phone back. This commercial is hilarious right now but by Google creating an even more digital society, we may actually become completely lost without Google. Right now, I go in circles when I need to find problem set information and Google can’t find exactly what I need. I can’t really imagine if I were more immersed in the internet or a new similar digital personalized media device such as “EPIC”.

“EPIC” or the “Google Grid” can be scary things if they can be made by Google. A central digital place, where people can access edit, publish, search and store their life can become reality. The digital world would be reality and that is when we become digital. Some people may hold out, but eventually they will give in like Facebook or MySpace. Becoming a more digital society may lead to a lack of reality. Someone needs to stop Google before they create the “Grid”.

Using Digital Technology

2006-11-08T11:44:00.000-08:00

Looking around today, it is hard to believe that about 100 years ago, there were not even cars to facilitate travel. The world around us is filled with technology and this technology makes our lives easier. At what point, however, does this abundance of technology begin to take away from our lives? I would argue that there is a potential for technology to overshadow everything else, but that that point has not yet been reached.

Almost everything that I do has been made better by technology. Whether it is school work that benefits from using a word processor and the internet, or figuring out my expenses on a monthly basis where I can use a spreadsheet, technology is very important. Although I am somewhat dependent on the media around me, I do not think that this is a bad thing. Technology has progressed enough that technology is reliable and trustworthy. Another example of digital media in my life is how I learn about the world around me. I watch television at night and check internet news sites throughout the day. It is difficult to imagine a world without radio or television or the internet. Newspapers are nice, but they are slow and it can be a drag to read all of the articles to find ones that are pertinent to my life. Television and the internet present information in a condensed manner and I do not have to deal with large unwieldy pages of a newspaper.

I am okay with my life being so dependent on digital media. I still think that there is no substitute for face to face interactions with other people. If I ever get to the point where I look forward to checking email or surfing the internet more than I look forward to meeting new people, then I think that there will be a problem. For the time being, the ease of email or the facility of the internet is a welcome shortcut to phone calls or meetings or newspapers. Until technology becomes an addiction, it will remain useful. However, once it becomes an addiction, I think that productivity will drastically decline; I am productive now because I can turn off my cell phone and computer and finish a problem set.

So far, technology and digital media have only helped me to become more productive: I have no problem using this technology as much as possible to make my life easier. At some point in the future, technology may overwhelm many people and begin to control their lives. When that happens, (and it probably has happened to some people) I think that these people have to be reminded that the real world has more than 1’s and 0’s could ever express. While technology is very useful, I think that there is a potential for it to become all-encompassing in the future. Because we have not yet reached this point, technology continues to serve as a great tool in most of my daily activities. I look forward to learning more about technology and leveraging it to make my jobs a little bit easier in the future.

Becoming Digital!!!!

2006-11-08T10:53:00.000-08:00

Becoming Digital
Our society is continuously becoming digital. New technologies appear every day; constantly moving us toward a world of total immersion in electronics. Print media is out of style and antiquated; replaced with digital media.
Digital media has the advantage of receiving a constant influx of information. Online news sources are updated throughout the day. People (or web crawling computers) discover the most abstract news articles and sources and bring them together on aggregate sites to make viewing easier for the average user.
It seems like in our modern society, the internet and media in general are shifting towards providing an individual with information and news that is specifically tailored to his interests. Already my Google home page is customized to provide me with the information I deem essential to start my day. The news I want in fields I’m interested in is delivered to me right when I open my browser. Websites have already started tracking personal preferences, returning news or items which you were previously interested in; where will it stop? EPIC 2014 already made the eerie “prediction” that websites can and will start aggregating fake data more to interest its readers than to actually provide information. Legitimate news sources will be beat out by this sensationalist fake reporting.
And, in the future, if we are absorbed by this barrage of media, living our lives constantly immersed in digital words, where is the line drawn? How far can we step back from reality? Would we ever actually let ourselves get to the point of immersion in eXistenz? Actually removed from reality in a digital world that seems so real you start to question your own feelings?
A lot of ideas we have discussed and the examples we have watched demonstrate a general fear for the future of technology; a fear of total immersion. However, I have more faith in the human race. I don’t see humans losing themselves and losing reality in technology. I still and always will see it as an aid, not an escape. So far, the internet has been built up and molded on convenience. Most new features exist to make things faster and easier to access, not to take away a sense of reality. And this won’t change anytime soon.
We are the masters of technology, not the other way around. In most people’s modern lives, human//human interactions make up the bulk of our memories and experiences. Something drastic would have to happen to our society and values to change our goals toward total digital immersion and I don’t believe that something is going to happen.

Hive (based on EPIC 2014)

2006-11-08T09:51:00.000-08:00

2016 The grassroots Free of Information Initiative (FII) starts The Tree, a vision of a worldwide network where any two users can share information with perfect anonymity or with perfect confidence in each other’s identity. The project attracts hackers, software engineers, and security experts from around the world.

2018 The Tree is perfected into Hive, the holy grail of secure communications. The system can hide not only the nature, but the existence of interaction between any two or more users. The Hive is built over the existing architecture of the World Wide Web. It has no central servers - every computer connected to the Hive is part of it.

2022 Seven out of eight personal computers connect to the Hive. The Hive grows and swallows the World Wide Web.

2023 The Sinclair media conglomerate builds it Clarity database, which collects and stores demographic information for each person alive to target media to him or her. Everything from where one lives to how many holes ones socks have is in the database. Media is flooded with ads targeted to a degree never previously imagined.

2026 The FII announces that 87% of known media objects, whether historical or newly released, can be found in the Hive network. The movie and recording industries can only watch as users upload and download media on Hive on a scale before possible. Paying for music and movies, information that can be copied at will, is considered absurd.

2027 The Clarity database is compromised and copied into the open-source Eye project and distributed for free. Any person can look up information on anyone. Privacy advocates cry foul.

2027 Multiple projects, including Eye, Wikipedia, FreeGoogle, combined into the FII-sponsored Truth, a collaborate project to organize and catalogue all knowledge.

2028 This contentious presidential election was the first to have the Hive as its main medium. Every person wants his or her view heard. Supporters of each candidate flood the networks with propaganda, demographically-targeted using Truth. Real issues are ignored as the network is flooded with sensationalism and lies.

2029 The newly-formed Truth shocks the Chinese public with the extent of the country’s human rights abuses. The Chinese government fights to regain “information control” through increasingly draconian measures that, by 2031, lead to China’s complete digital isolation from the world.

2030 The Truth project becomes increasingly filled with false information on a scale that makes maintaining its accuracy impossible. Verity is founded by entrepreneur Kevin Krone amidst the increasing amount of spam, junk, and lies on the Hive. Organizations pay to have Verity send out field agents to verify facts with rigorous standards. Information marked a C in a circle, formerly the copyright symbol, is known to be confirmed, or “Veritified”. Two years later, half of Truth pages are Veritified.

2032 Four anonymous users post documents and photographs onto the Hive network that reveal secret CIA bargains with Turkmenistan to hide wrongdoing from UN inspectors in exchange for economic privileges. Verity confirms the allegations. These whisteblowers are hailed as heroes, despite being branded by the President as “unpatriotic traitors”.

2034 The FII creates Cypher, an open repository of modules and code. Every computer program, open source or legally proprietary, is translated into Sigma, a universal programming language that allows snippets of code to be combined seamlessly into any application imaginable. Writing programs from scratch is a remnant of the past.

2034 A resistance force builds up using the Hive system on Chinese computers. Demonstrations are organized anonymously, appearing suddenly and disappearing with no trace. Censorship is nothing more than a minor annoyance. Slowly, the government of China loses the information war.

2035 AOL/Time Warner invests enormous capital in selling content on the Hive. They protect their digital property with once First Limited Use (FLU), a breakthrough algorithmic advance in Digitial Rights Managements which makes data self-destruct after one use, in addition to preventing copying and ad removal. Other media companies soon follow.

2035 The US government blames the failure of a military operation in Turkmenistan to the enemy army picking up American military secrets shared on the Hive network. However, volunteer experts tracking and analyzing troop movements and fiscal flow point at gross incompetence by the armed forces.

2037 The programming community converges on Cypher to develop “antibiotics,” methods of circumventing FLU. Within months, every DRM’ed media file is disinfected and linked on the Hive network.

2028 Now on their last throes, media conglomerates unite a legal attack on the Hive. The case makes its way to the Supreme Court with the FII as nominal defendant. The case United States of America vs Hive Network is the largest and most complex case in history.

2039 Despite the support of the collective legal knowledge of the American public, Hive is declared illegal by a 7-2 vote. The Court claims the case is not just one of property law – the issue is that Hive is anarchy. It breaks every law because no law can be enforced when every interaction can be made secret. The dissenting opinion disagrees strongly, “Hive is democracy. No invention since the printing press has done so much for free speech.” However, the decision is a moot point. Hive is not a person or corporation that can be sanctioned. Hive is on every computer in existence. Hive is indestructible.

2039 The commercial media market is effectively dead, replaced by media created by groups of enthusiasts who direct movies and write plays for everyone’s enjoyment. The American Government promotes the arts with a patronage system that encourages invention and innovation, and other nations follow suit. Verity is charged with identifying projects with artistic merit worth funding, amidst the sea of garbage put out by well-meaning masses.

2043 China’s communist government collapses under the weight of freedom and truth. Other oppressive regimes fall soon after. Hive connects the world as one democracy.

Circa 2060 Verity is the arbiter of beauty and truth. It manipulates the Hive, slowly subverting reality, and becomes the de-facto world-government. Verity wields not power, but truth. How this transformation occurred is not fully understood.

Here, the record ends. All knowledge after this date may be lost forever.

you can love the digital world, but use it right!

2006-11-08T06:03:00.000-08:00

Numerical Representation. Modularity. Quantification. It is still like magic to me how the digital world takes information from our real world and turns the information into portable, editable, and intangible files. I do not get how the moment I was with my sister was captured into a camera, converted into a series of 0’s and 1’s, and managed to play back on my computer. It is ridiculous to think that when I click on a movie sequence to be black and white, a bunch of mathematical formulas are at work to get rid of the color in my video. It is genius how digital media pixelates and quantifies the real world, because I can hardly tell when the real, continuous world becomes the digital, pixilated world.
However, it is different capturing life onto digital media than creating digital files from digital media. These include drawing things with Photoshop, drawing animations on Flash, or making models in AutoCAD. Digitally created files are less informative about the creator of a media since it is in the nature for digitally produced media to be easily reproducible by anybody. For example, if you ask a group of people to draw a line six inches long in AutoCAD, everyone’s lines will look identical. This line in AutoCAD was meant to be easily reproducible. One simply would need to type “L”, click enter, and type in “@6,0.” However, if you ask a group of people to draw a line six inches long on a piece of paper, everyone’s lines will look very different. Some people will have lines that are not so straight at certain areas, some will have really thick line weights, some will have tapered ends, and so forth. There are infinite ways in which humans could draw that line. The hand-drawn line is not easily reproduced like the AutoCAD line. For this reason, the hand-drawn line is more informative and unique to the creator of the line than is the AutoCAD line. If the line is wavy, one could suppose that maybe the creator was nervous. Or if the line is dark, one could suppose the creator maybe was really trying to emphasize this particular line.
So the question now is, when is it more appropriate to capture real life work digitally and when is it more appropriate to create files digitally? It all depends on if the creator is trying to reveal himself in his work or not. If one is trying to portray a part of himself as an art project, capturing real life work digitally would make sense. His real life work would be undeniably his own, and clearly not reproducible by any other artist. However, if one were trying to convey a design clearly and articulately, making a file digitally would be appropriate, since revealing information about the creator himself is not the focus. The design’s information is the focus. It does not matter so much that people realize the work was done uniquely by the creator. It matters more that people get the information. So the next time you choose a media to create your work, whether you decide to use a photograph for a poster or decide to make a graphic for a poster, ask yourself what you are trying to reveal – outside information or something about yourself?

Digital Immersion

2006-11-07T23:24:00.000-08:00

Digital Immersion

Reality; this is perhaps the vaguest of human abstractions. In truth, none of us truly know that the other exists, or that an objective “reality” exists. Indeed, we cannot prove the existence of anyone but ourselves, and must be content in believing that reality is more than just our imagination. And yet, humanity continually attempts to thwart the thin strands that tie us to our reality through media. As media grows more powerful, the unreal becomes more real, simultaneously causing the real to become unreal as we become disillusioned with boring “reality.”

If we subscribe to Munovich’s thesis, then media is definitively becoming more variable and liquid, able to adapt to both the user and expand to fill whatever medium we wish it to encompass. Of course, the ultimate conclusion of such change is a media juggernaut, able to vary infinitely based on any user stimuli, fully immersing us into a reality that we can create and modify to any degree. Perhaps such a reality would even be more preferable, to some, than the objective reality which we perceive. This reality is woefully difficult for one person to modify to any significant degree.

Since life as we know it is based entirely upon perception, it is not entirely unreasonably to say that media immersion, which already takes up significant amounts of our time, will soon become the dominant aspect of our existence. That is, people will spend more time submerged in artificial realms than the objective reality. This situation could become so extreme that reality is replaced altogether, and people spend their lives in capsules reminiscent of a Matrix-esque imprisonment. Though such an analogy seems horrific, the possible benefits of such an existence are many.

Life in the objective reality follows no true rationale or purpose. The game is unfair: some people start out with more advantages than others, some people die earlier than others solely based on chance, and some people gain much more than others for far less effort. In a created media universe, none of these inequalities would exist unless somebody wanted them to exist. The game world would provide a clear objective, stemming the disillusionment that one feels with objective reality, as well as the removal of all dissatisfactory aspects of the normal world. The game world would provide each individual with what they believe to be the perfect life, which may be the entire purpose of life itself.

And yet, despite the obvious advantages of an artificially created reality, it seems that something fundamental about human nature will cause us to reject such a lifestyle. We may not even know that this reality is truly real, and yet we cling to it, not because it is perfect, but because it is infinitely variable. Though media may one day approach near-infinite levels of versatility, the limit can always be reached, reminding us that we do not have an entire freedom of choice. Thus, media may never become fully immersive, simply because human nature will not allow it. We prefer to live in an imperfect world, one of war, famine, and illness, over a perfect one, simply because imperfection belies free choice, which we must retain in order to remain happy.

Do I Want to Become Digital?

2006-11-07T15:21:00.000-08:00

No one day dreams any more. Constantly wired, people move from place to place connected to their iPods, drive talking on their cell phones, and eat dinner in front of the television. Society is suffering from a ceaseless flow of media brought about by the “ubiquitous computing” in this process of becoming digital. The constant inculcation of mass-produced sounds and images is making original thought increasingly rare. While the ease of access to information brought about by media such as the internet is a great asset to our society, continuous connectivity does not come without a price. As people succumb to the glitz of the new toys provided by the innovation of this new media age, creativity and individuality—the drivers of our society—become secondary priorities.

It is frighteningly easy to become lost in the wide world of media. While an over indulgence in media is nothing new—America’s obsession with the television in the 1950s is an early example—the power of the internet has captured the world in ways no medium has before. In becoming digital, our society has given up its right to form its own opinions. We are spoon fed the news, entertainment, research, and conversation. People venture into the real world less frequently because the reality the internet provides is more convenient and the wealth of information and useless garbage the web provides is hypnotizing. Many members of society spend all of their time surfing the web, contributing to the world only through commenting on topics of interest and in niche groups. As a result, Americans are more disconnected from each other and themselves than ever before.

Creativity, inspiration, and innovation only arise in societies where people work to foster them. Irrigation was not invented by some kid playing on the internet but rather as a result of necessity. If our society moves its focus away from the real world and onto the internet then only inventions involving media will be required. How many more people will work to make the iPod smaller rather than strategize to quell the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the world? As the culture becomes increasingly wrapped up in the allure of the internet, it loses reality. Where is family history in a screen name? How does your relationship with your best friend change when you only communicate through email or pixilated images on iChat? Certainly, the palpability of interaction is diluted in this 2-D world.

As media becomes more and more pervasive, the opportunity for individual thought, a defining human characteristic, diminishes. If our actions define us, we are a society of 0s and 1s. Everything we do can be reduced to a series of switches that are either on or off. By becoming digital, we have quantized humanity. Today you are either a 1 or a 0. There is no middle ground, no beautiful world of grey. What if I don’t want to be a 1 or a 0 but rather ebullient or yellow? This sacrifice seems like quite a price to pay for convenience of information.

Project Proposal for Nick Hong, Andrew Hoy, and Brandon Pung

2006-11-02T01:19:00.000-08:00

Most people think of MIT as a collection of nerds and social outcasts who just happen to be really smart. For our final project, we would like to challenge those stereotypes and see how we can change the perceptions that high school and college students have about MIT.

We’ve created a short 8-minute video about life at MIT and how MIT does not fit the stereotypes that most people have about it, featuring about a dozen interviewees representing a wide range of majors, residences, and years. Every person interviewed was asked the following questions:

- What stereotypes do your friends have about MIT?

- What stereotypes did you have before you arrived here?

- How have these stereotypes changed since you’ve arrived here?

All interviews were recorded and then edited so that the answers to these three questions were grouped together. We note that there was a very negative interview from a graduate student in Burton-Conner that clashed completely with the content of the other interviews; his interview material was not included in the video.

For the second part of the project, we will track the changes in opinion that our target audience has about MIT over the course of 3 to 4 weeks. To take advantage of what Yochai Benkler termed “networked communication”, we plan to post the video on Google Video and YouTube and then encourage as many people to watch and respond to the video as possible by using message boards and emails. The prospective forums include College Confidential, a large discussion site with many thousands of prospective applicants crawling its boards. Determining how well our video does here will be based upon the peer responses to our posts- specifically, we are looking for any perspective changes in prospective applicants. We’ve created a Facebook group for the video as well, specifically to have our friends and networks take a look. Facebook’s format is especially conducive to recording critique and opinions. As more potential forums come to our attention, we may post to more sites, all of which we plan to monitor. We next plan to interview several high school students about their notions about MIT, show them the video, and see what new opinions they have. The more direct responses from these high school students will remove the network media and give us a gauge of reactions to our video taken out of the Internet, to serve as a sort of “control”. This control will give us a clearer idea of what effects our video might have, as the entire project is based upon how well our video will be recieved.

A video like this created a decade ago would have been created only by MIT in an effort to recruit students, very much representative of a “hub-and-spoke architecture”. By distributing the video from our own connections, we plan to test “the multidirectional connections… in the network information economy” in an easily measurable manner that can also help to improve MIT’s image.

project proposal by Nimish, vijay and Guy-Richard

2006-10-31T14:19:00.000-08:00

Mass media was once largely delegated to the responsibility of printed newspapers where an “elite” group of people determined what was newsworthy for the entire population. The written word with attribution constituted the principle medium through which information was disseminated. Now, however, the emerging networked public sphere offers several new mediums through which information is communicated. The purpose of our project is to investigate the differences in the way people behave when communicating through different forms of media. Medium investigated will include video, audio, written, email, instant messenger, and blogs.

In this project, people will be asked questions regarding controversial material. Possible examples include: (1) What do you think of the war on terror? (2) What do you think of the Bush administration? (3) What do you think of gay marriages? The questions will be posed to people in different forms of media. These open-ended questions are unlike multiple choice questions in that the interviewees are able to more freely express their opinion. We will then look to see if there is some correlation between medium and response; that is, do some forms of media lend themselves to responses that are more conservative whereas some forms lend themselves toward thoughts that more radical. The determination of whether a response is “radical” or “conservative” is somewhat subjective in nature. However, a criteria which allows numerical (objective) measures to be assigned to responses will be developed.

How do we make this objective?
What variables need to be controlled?
Whether responses are radical or conservative depend not only on the medium used, but also on the individual’s personal philosophy.
Can the same person be tested on multiple forms of media? Will retesting change their behavior?
The environment in which questions are asked should be controlled.

Differences between forms of media are expected. As Bleeker points out, people must act differently when they live in a world shared with “blogjects.” Thus people are expected to act differently when they know they are being “watched” by some camera or audio recording device. Thus, it makes sense to define the “control” in this investigation to be when people are asked questions with no (visible) form of media apparent.

The video recorder simulates television; the audio recorder simulates radio; the written response on paper (where name is required) simulates the newspaper. These are the conventional forms of media. The instant messenger, blog interface, or anonymous papers are the more contemporary forms of media that accompany the rise of the networked public sphere. For example, when people are asked to respond on a piece of paper and write their name on the top, they are simulating an interface such as Encyclopedic Britannica. When people are asked to respond on a piece of paper without writing their name, they are simulating an interface such as Wikipedia. If the latter results in more radical responses than the former, this would help substantiate Lanier’s claim that Wikipedia caters to the extremes.

The Theory of Everything: Strings or Cubes?

2006-10-31T14:03:00.000-08:00

With the advent of new media, creativity is becoming increasingly derivative. Typically, new media parrots past creations and plays on their themes to create something new and different. Spoken in the parlance of our times, Rip, Mix, and Burn. We have not discussed this topic specifically in class, but the idea fits with the notion of becoming digital. In Free Culture, Lawrence Lessig explains that it is an American tradition to build on past culture to make new media, such as "Steamboat Willie." Today, however, we have new technologies enabling all kinds of new, peer-to-peer and derivative creativity that doesn't require a record label or publisher. Our project is to explore this new space by creating a PBS-style documentary about the Time Cube, a totally bogus “theory of everything.” Borrowing presentation elements from historical documentaries and the like, we will present this new material in a totally incongruous light and create something hilarious. The interviewer will maintain an air of absolute seriousness while his guest rambles on about completely and totally absurd gibberish. We also plan to try and make as many pop/nerd-culture references as possible to further demonstrate how old material can be mixed into new material.

The second part of our project is to post our mockumentary to the Internet five days or a week before the final project deadline and see if we can generate hype for it by posting to various link aggregation sites and blogs. After a few days, we will see if we have garnered any popularity and reflect on how the Internet works as a peer-to-peer knowledge community. Early in the history of the web, it would have been near impossible to publish and distribute media of this kind. With the rise of YouTube and the like, however, we want to try and measure how easy it is publish and market new media over the Internet. This project is basically a test of Benkler's graph theory discussion about how new nodes on the Internet quickly become linked in to the established core of the Web, reminiscent of the rapid and short-lived popularity of the MIT spam war video.

About Time Cubism

Time Cubism is a theory of everything similar to string theory developed by the self-proclaimed Dr. Gene Ray.

"Educators are lying bastards. -1 x -1= +1 is WRONG, it is academic stupidity and is evil. The educated stupid should acknowledge the natural antipodes of+1 x +1 = +1 and -1 x -1 = -1 exist as plus and minus values of opposite creation - depicted by opposite sexes and opposite hemispheres. Entity is death worship - for it cancels opposites."

(http://www.timecube.com/)

Project Outline

10 minute video documenting Time Cubism
Website advertising the documentary with links to YouTube
Submission to Slashdot, Digg, etc.

project proposal of Joe, John and Jim

2006-10-31T13:34:00.000-08:00

John Williams
Joe Diaz

Project Proposal:

Objective: How are the expectations of a video game and finally the gaming experience affected by the players association with the game material outside of the game.

In this investigative study we will be looking at how two MIT Detachment 365 AFROTC cadets approach and play a realistic combat flight- simulation game. This will be compared with how 3-4 people not associated with any air force or other military branch evaluate the game.

Questions we will ask the ROTC cadets:
-Do you aspire to be a pilot in the USAF?
-If yes, what type of aircraft would you prefer to pilot?
-How many years have you been a cadet?
-What experience do you have with real aircraft?
-Have you encountered a USAF flight simulator?
-How important is realism to you in this genre of video game?
-Is it more important than having an intense and riveting (but unrealistic) gaming experience?
-Do you ever play these games on your own free time?
-What will you be looking for in this particular video game?
-What other games do you play on your free time?

Questions to ask non-cadets:
-Are you sure that you don't harbor any secret desires to become a fighter pilot thus compromising the neutral manner of this study?
-What other video games do you play on your free time outside of media studies surveys?
-Would you elect to play a flight simulator game on your own?
-What would you expect from the game? Is realism less or more important than the games ability to exhilarate you?
-Do you usually make connections with the real military services of the United States when playing military simulation games?

Questions after playing the game to consider:
-You were allowed to adjust all of the settings, did you make it as realistic as possible?
-Did you read about the controls etc. before even beginning the game?
-When flying, did you follow all of your objectives precisely without detouring or messing around?
-Did you ever find yourself saying, "it's not like that in real life."?
-On a scale of 1 to 10, how close did this game bring you to feeling like a real fighter pilot?

There will be background interviews held before allowing the selected gamers to even touch the game. These will be filmed. They will then be given the game, an instruction manuel, and instructions to adjust any settings they wish to. They will then be asked to play the game while being filmed. Afterwards, there will be a debriefing interview if you will which will also be filmed. Finally, us the testers will speak on camera about our conclusions.

Materials needed: 2 USAF ROTC cadets, 3-4 non-military associated gamers, camera, computer, game control, game (Falcon 2.6 Allied Force)

2000 Dollars on an Alliance Warrior?

2006-10-26T06:25:00.000-07:00

I know video games are fun. My brother just bought an Xbox 360 a few weeks ago and every time I go home, we’ll play it for a few hours. Even in college, I’ll spend the occasional two hours playing guitar hero with my roommates. Video games are surely a part of my life, but they do not dictate my life.

World of Warcraft and other MMORPGs have become a huge success over the past year. While I don’t own any of these types of games, many people in my house spend their leisure time exploring virtual environments with a virtual character. However, until reading Dibell’s article on play money, I did not realize how time and money intensive these games actually are. For someone to spend 2000 dollars buying a virtual character seems ridiculous and just plain crazy.

We all pay a price for our entertainment. Some of us will buy a plasma TV for 3000 dollars so we can see the Patriots play in HD. Others will invest in video game systems so they can play Halo 2 against online opponents. I myself invested 70 dollars to buy Guitar Hero 2 so I could continue rocking out in the middle of my room. However, the difference is that all these investments are tangible items in the real world. What exactly is the point in investing so much money to buy a virtual “creature” that is not even real? Take Dibbel’s example of a Level 60 Alliance Warrior selling for 2000 dollars on Ebay. Whoever chooses to buy this Alliance Warrior is basically saying, “I would pay 2000 dollars to play World of Warcraft.” Perhaps there are people who are willing to pay such large sums to play a video game, but I for one cannot understand why. If you walked into a Best Buy and saw a video game selling for 2000 dollars, would you even consider it?

Another problem with using real money to buy virtual items is that it blurs the line between what’s real and what’s virtual. If someone is spending large amounts of money to buy virtual items, the game is more than just fun. To an extent, the player is simply living life vicariously through a computer game. He is buying upgrades so he can become the strongest player on Azeroth, but only because he cannot become the strongest individual in his town. Often times, the source of pride or power a player gets from a video game may substitute for the emptiness of their real lifestyle. In these cases, it is more understandable that a player would pay a large sum of money to obtain these types of satisfactions.

Finally, I believe the ability to buy virtual property detracts from the gaming experience as a whole. MMORPGs are supposed to be simulations that, to a degree, mimic real life. Economies fluctuate, alliances form and players interact much like we do in our daily lives. However, in real life, it is impossible to put a price tag on someone’s accomplishment. If a doctor has spent 10 years of training to become a renowned surgeon, I can’t simply pay 2000 dollars to take his place. The same should be held true for MMORPGs because the selling of characters detracts from the realistic qualities of the game. Just like skill must be earned in the real world, such should also hold true in the virtual world.

All this being said, I have still to lay hands on an MMORPG, and perhaps I should indulge myself before making bold statements about them. Maybe I’ll somehow find sanctity from my real world problems by immersing myself in the virtual world. I guess the next time I fail a test I’ll just buy myself a really really smart virtual character to make myself feel better. Maybe all this time I was wrong for thinking that I should be living life in the real world, when I can just buy myself a great life in the virtual one. Then again, where’s the fun in that?

The Futility of Futurism

2006-10-25T22:25:00.000-07:00

In the world of logic, effect is always preceded by cause. An event never happens spontaneously, but rather appears as a result of surrounding circumstances. It is this fundamental assumption that allows our justice system to function: every crime has a cause, and we determine if this cause justifies the crime. Paradoxically, the entire theory of law enforcement is based upon the converse of this theory of justice. Instead of assuming the effect, and attempting to find the cause, police forces assume the cause, and attempt to prevent the effect. Yet, any mathematician would tell us that the converse of a statement is not necessarily true, which throws the entire morality of Precrime into question.

First, let us assume that effect implies cause and cause implies effect. In this scenario, Precrime is not only logically correct, but, indeed, may be more moral than its retroactive counterpart. Let me clarify: a world such as the one described resembles a world where the transition from thought to action is gravity. If a priceless porcelain figure falls from a tall shelf, do we let catch it or let it break and then assign blame where it is due? Obviously, we catch the figure, preventing such a precious object from being lost forever, for the reason that gravity is infallible. Such is the action of Precrime, an agency which prevents an otherwise immutable action from happening. However, what if we assume gravity is not infallible?

This perception lies closer to reality. In the real world, we assume abstract concepts such as “free will” can change the course of even the most linear sequence of events in an instant, not to mention the obvious time paradoxes created by the existence of the Precogs themselves. If one Precog predicts a murder happening, and thus causes Precrime to prevent it, then would not the new future be one in which the murder did not happen, thus causing the Precogs not to predict the murder at all? However, this ensures that the murder will happen; thereby causing a vicious time paradox that causes us to question whether or not a prediction of the future is possible at all, since any such reading would change the future, thus changing the prophecy. This is Heisenberg Uncertainty at its most malicious.

However, the situation is nowhere near remedied if we assume that the physics works. The existence of Precrime naturally precludes some measure of human free will, at least in the short term. This assumption may not be one which we are prepared to make, even if it were true. Could we handle the belief that our actions are even partially predetermined? Would this not undermine our ingrained concepts of human ingenuity and spirit? Indeed, even if Precrime were logically plausible, and human action were as infallible as gravity, we would never acknowledge or explore such a phenomenon. The philosophical repercussions of such a discovery would tear society apart, forcing us to admit that our lord is the cruelest of all abstract powers, destiny.

Why I think things matter?

2006-10-25T16:15:00.000-07:00

Julian Bleecker is a visionary. His piece A manifesto for networked Objects – Cohabitating with pigeons, Arphids, in the Internet of Things, depicts in a very thought provoking manner a fictitious yet very plausible world. This is a world where the connection between humans and Things are redefined; where Things become blogjects or objects that participate in the social web. In this novel view, of the world the current “Internet of Non-Things” is upgraded to an Internet of Things “a network in which socially meaningful exchanges takes place, were culture is made, experience circulated through media sharing—only with objects and human agents.” Ultimately, this communion between human and things will bring a new dimension to both protagonists. On one side, unanimated Things will come to life when plugged into the Internet and participate in the social discourse. On the other side, humans will gain a better understanding of their surrounding world. Bleeker’s example of the blogging pigeon perfectly illustrates this. When flocks of pigeons are equipped with some apparatus to communicate on the Internet wirelessly, GPS devices for tracing where they have been flying, and environmental sensors to log the amount of pollutants in the air they fly through, one can talk about a true species evolution. From their status of public nuisance, they metamorphose into agents in the public sphere engaging discussion on environmental issues. One can also imagine other revolutionary applications of the blogging pigeons for instance, a website would publish in real-time the data sent by the pigeons and vulnerable people would be informed of the quality of the air in their locale and take precautions as required.
Moreover, the Internet of things will introduce objects that can download, upload, distribute, and stream meaningful and meaning-making content. Things and humans will participate side by side to the making of culture. Blogjects will noticeably change social habits, views, and interpretations of the world, as they will provide a new perspective. A telling example is the amount historical footage taken by online surveillance cameras. These cameras have contributed to the making culture.
Furthermore, the integration of objects with informatics capabilities in the networked world, will redefine how humans occupy and move in the physical space. In the “Internet of Things”, object will loose their inertia and gain a certain network mobility. A surveillance camera in front of convenience store that is not online is less likely to affect any human behavior than a battery of networked cameras disseminated in all the parts of a city.
In short, Bleeker’s attractive idea of an “Internet of Things” sounds like science fiction and seems to lack of scientific grounds. However, it is necessarily to remember that “Why things matter” is a manifesto whose pure goal is to present what is there to be done with the possibilities that the Internet has to offer.

When Play Money Becomes Real Money

2006-10-25T15:22:00.000-07:00

I'd like to start off by saying that these two chapters of Play Money were great. I really enjoyed reading them and I will most likely buy the book very soon. I believe Dibbell does a great job exploring the very interesting phenomena that is the popularity of these MMORPGs. Many of the questions asked in the reading are things that I have thought about for a long time and I'm very glad to find a book written about these very questions by someone who has actually investigated the subject. In the process of writing this essay I have actually ordered the book from Amazon.

The sections of the book that we have read focus mainly on the question "What is it about MMORPGs that attract people so much?" Branching off of that question are other questions such as "Why is it that restrictions and scarcity are so necessary in these games?" "Why would someone be willing to pay real money for a digital item?" and "How do people's behaviors in these games fit with existing economic and psychological beliefs?" Each of these questions also branch off into a series of new questions.

Why are restrictions and scarcity so necessary to creating a successful MMO? Why aren't people happy with simply getting everything they want with a keystroke? How could an endless supply of everything ever get boring? The example that Dibbell cites in Play Money is Castranova's "puzzle of puzzles." Why is it that no one would buy a two piece puzzle? It's because a puzzle, much like a video game, isn't about having a finished product. It's about the journey getting there. This seems like common sense, and it is when you're talking about simple games like puzzles. As the games get more and more complicated, that statement becomes less and less true. While current video games are still based on restrictions and rules and there are plenty of people who follow all of these rules so they get the full experience of the journey instead of skipping straight to the completed game, there are also plenty of people that will buy a game and a cheat book and basically skip to the end. This is something I see all the time, but I have not yet been able to understand it. I don't get why someone would pay money for a game and then pay extra money for the book that tells them everything they need to do to get to the end the quickest and with the least effort. It reminds me of walking into a maze with a map complete with a big red line marking the way out. And yet, a large percentage of people who play video games do just that.

I would also argue that these are the same people that pay fifteen dollars a month for the privilege to go out and pay more money to buy a level 60 Human Paladin complete with all epic armor and weapons. I have so far been unable to understand this phenomena. Hopefully, I'll be able to find more insight in that book I just ordered.

A Pigeon Blogged This

2006-10-25T15:16:00.000-07:00

I just missed the deadline to post and Blogger was down for server maintenence until now.

Bleeker’s A Manifesto For Networked Objects was frustrating to digest. From spimes to blogjects to the Internet of Things, the article it reads like an attempt to cram as many buzzwords into a description of an interesting, but not especially remarkable or novel idea.

Bleeker introduces the neologism “blogject,” a portmanteau whose cool-factor is enhanced by using the word “blog,” which has only a superficial connection to his discussion. Blogjects fail to be bloggers both the common definition of the word and his own definition as, “participants in a network of exchange, disseminating thoughts, opinions, ideas – making culture.”

A blogger is a person who shares ideas using the Internet as a venue. People read blogs because they find them to be more personal, insightful, and opinionated subjective than, say, a newspaper. Compare this to Bleeker’s example of the Pigeon that Blogs. The Pigeon mindlessly transmits information on its location and air pollution data – or rather, the GPS device does this, as the pigeon is unaware of its purpose. This is nothing new or remarkable. Radio tracking long predates the Internet and such real-time broadcasting of data could have (and probably was) done eons before the Internet age.

The key is the blogjects are stupid. As the article explains, “blogjects have no truck with the syntax of human thought.” There is no processing, no analysis, no “thoughts, opinions, or ideas.” Blogjects are participants in the exchange of ideas only marginally as the raw data that informs people and thus can be processed into facts, then refined into ideas. Bleeker exaggeration, “The Pigeon that Blogs now attains first-class citizen status,” is absurd. The pigeon possesses “agency” in the sense that it, obtusely and indirectly effects change, if say, a scientists tracks the data for years and notices increases in pollution levels, a molecule in a sea of facts that leads environmentalists to start a campaign, which leads Congress to pass more stringent corporate dumping laws. Here, the scientists, environmentalists, and congressmen effect change, not the pea-brained bird with a transmitter tied to its led.

Here’s another comparison. Random Hall has their laundry machines connected to a server so that one can check the status of a washing machine online. If the washing machine is indeed blogging, as Bleeker would claim, that woe to the blogosphere. Tomorrow, Joi Ito is going to be replaced by a dryer.

Nevertheless, after cutting through article’s sensationalism, it seems that Bleeker’s general idea – connecting physical objects to the Internet – is a good one. Getting raw data from objects is the necessary first step that precedes processing this data, extracting information, and forming ideas, although I believe that processing large amounts of data is a more difficult and interesting change than simply collecting it. Imagine having a constantly updated online database of traffic conditions, tracked with cameras at commonly-congested stretches of road along with image-recognition heuristics for recognizing and accident or foggy weather. Bleeker would be pleased to know that Google Maps has been put to use for environmentalists in tracking deforestation using satellite views. Or, as Bleeker would say, tree stumps are blogging.

Uncle Sam is Watching

2006-10-25T13:54:00.000-07:00

I was just about to devour a healthy serving of ice cream when I found myself staring into the beady eyes of a fly that had found a resting spot on the handle of my spoon. Normally such an incident would not have alarmed me; I simply would have "shooed" the fly away with a simple hand motion. However, today was different. Today I felt the necessity to leap across the room and smash the fly into the wall; not out of vengeance for its having interrupted my ice cream eating experience, but rather because I was half expecting a trail of silver to be smeared on the wall – the remains of a blogject. Bleeker has made me wary of my surroundings – the birds in the sky, the insects in my room, and even the bacteria in the ice cream. The "Internet of Things," as described by Bleeker, is a growing network that will encompass all niches of society. Privacy will become a thing of the past, for escaping the constant scrutiny of the "network of things" means to embrace complete isolation.

Americans, and people of the world in general, now find themselves in age where the concern over terrorism perpetuates fear of government back home. This is evinced by the government’s passage of the Patriot Act. Such policies make it easier for the government to wiretap and eavesdrop on people’s private conversations. Governments spying on their people is nothing new; such activities are reminiscent of the actions carried out by the secret police organizations created in communist, fascist, or other authoritarian regimes of the past. The current world political situation is so exacerbating that now people within countries with strong democratic traditions are starting to embrace these surreptitious activities which undermine privacy. People are now willing to give up their rights in order to ensure more "security." In this current atmosphere, the prospect of an internet of things is quite terrifying.

Attaching GPS and sensors to pigeons and automobiles can turn passive things into blogjects that gather important information. Bringing physical objects into the networked internet under such circumstances has positive benefits with few negative consequences. However, the "Internet of Things" has already progressed beyond these humble beginnings. For example, the Sony Aibo dog can wander around and automatically create blogs of its random musings. Considering this, it doesn’t seem far-fetched that in the future there will be teams of nanobots that can creep through any crevice and publish their musings for the entire world to see. Such blogjects could be used not only by the government, but also by more malicious entities such as the creators of spyware.

The desire for security will cause people to support the existence of blogjects that permeate all aspects of society. There is a general trend of acceptance: people are willing to accept technological advances that diminish privacy rights. For example, no one complains that clothing stores (and perhaps even changing rooms in these stores) are under video surveillance. As Bleeker points out, people have to adapt their behavior when they know they are sharing the world with blogjects. The existence of a ubiquitous network of things would initially lead to a repression of free speech – people would be careful what they say if they were always in the public light. Eventually, free thought might be jeopardized too. Humanity would then find itself living in the world of Minority Report.

There is a place in my world for objects with agency, just not a very large one.

2006-10-25T13:35:00.000-07:00

I was pondering in the shower this morning as I usually do about the assigned "Why Things Matter" article. I was looking at my shampoo bottle and thinking to myself, "No, I do not want a little micro chip in my shampoo bottle that reports to other shampoo bottles how much shampoo I used and when before posting it on the Shampoo Consumption Habits in Massachusetts website." There are bigger problems in the world that could be solved far more directly and cheaply than how Julian Bleeker suggests through blogjects. Aside from looking like he used the Microsoft Word "synonyms" option on every word to make them as big and hard to understand as possible, his essay did have a point, albeit a largely invalid one.
Having pollution sensors on birds or broadcasting micro chips in our car exhaust pipes isn't a half bad idea (although the pigeon-mounted sensors really should have monitored altitude too, but I'll let that slide). The way industrialized countries are contributing negatively to the environment begs for some sort of urgency in understanding and correcting the most imminent of our pollution related problems. I feel that the process of deploying and responding to blogjects and their reports is a lengthly one. A straight forward scientific study and report with the same funding might be a little bit less thorough than allowing the blogjects to do their thing over a period of years, but the time saved might be more important than the accuracy of the findings. The other side of the argument of course is that most people don't browse through scientific reports on their free-time, but they may check out the blogjects on pollution website. Getting the public excited about keeping the earth clean is probably the best way to go about cleaning up the environment. This is why I feel that blogjects will definitely have a place in our future, but this place still doesn't include my future shampoo bottles.
Actually, if I were doing a project on rising levels of shampoo usage on weekends, those blogjects might come in handy. But really, how often is that going to happen? I would argue that putting a blogject on a shampoo bottle is not much different than putting one on migrating whales. It interests only a small group of people, but costs a lot of money to implement (money that could be spent making Chinese production cleaner or feeding starving people in less developed countries). "Critter cams that disseminate a realtime video stream from a Kapok tree in the Amazonian rain forest or an RSS feed and podcast from a school of migrating whales showing all kinds of meaningful environmental data would definitely make it into my news aggregator," says Bleecker. If this actually happened to him right now, I might ask ten years from now how many times he actually took time out of his busy day to admire the migrating whale blogs, I suspect he could count the number of times on his right hand. We get enough junk mail as it is. Chain E-mails are fun to receive when you get your first one, but it's not so fun when you get your 20th. The fun starts to turn into bitterness. While blogjects might take the world by storm for the first few years, there might be a point when there is just too much internet clutter from the sheer amount of specialized and to most people, uninteresting data produced by the object-bloggers. Their great "agency" may start to get on our nerves.
I say we should send a hellish army of blogjects against our world's greatest problems. And if we suddenly suspected that using Head and Shoulders shampoo gives you and everybody around you cancer I'd be the first to turn my shampoo bottle into a soap dispensing, internet blogging, first class internet citizen. So far that hasn't happened yet.

There is no Virtual.

2006-10-25T13:30:00.001-07:00

The Internet is no longer confined to boxes, cables and massive fiber optic pipelines tangling networks all over the globe... those days have ended. Here, on the fringe of the information age, we find that there is an increasing reliance on the connections made via the Internet. cell phones no longer simply send and receive phone calls and text messages; they can connect to the Internet; they began solely as a tool of communication, now they have become so much more. Increasingly, people are starting to use the Internet to store documents, photos, journal entries, thoughts, comments, notes. People are buying, selling, creating, destroying, editing, expressing and connecting with this vast network. On the fringe of this new era, it only makes sense that objects should become a part of the Internet too. "Blogjects" and humans feed real information into the virtual; it makes a real difference in the world to see reality made virtual--or perhaps the other way around.
People walk down the streets with ear bud necklaces laced around their necks, laptops at their hips, and the Internet hovering around them like the ozone from the exhaust pipes of perpetual network traffic. We are slowly, but inevitably converging with our virtual selves--the distinction between the real and virtual is already hazy: 'meeting' people does not have to occur face-to-face; instead we can meet others face-to-facebook, fingers tapping our keyboards well into the night with the person we fought alongside in a critical assault on a vicious monster on some forgotten server. The television, once poison to the minds of young people, blamed for baking couch potatoes, now begs for people to walk to the study: there's is so much more they haven't shown you... and its all online.
Online becomes a misnomer, people shed the wires and bathe in the wireless, untangled from the mangled architecture of web 1.0. We suffer when an access point fails; we lose the connection we have with ourselves, knowing somewhere deep down that in freeing ourselves from the cables we have bound ourselves with the Internet. Somehow, no one suffocates as they inhale the thick electrical fumes of the blogosphere. No one feels silenced by the entropic chaos that keeps the mouth shut and the keyboard open. We've learned to LOL silently in public spaces and filter gigabytes of listed information at a glance. We are really virtually evolving.
Every day, things that don't actually happen make the news, sprayed across the windshield of our monitors as we race toward a seemingly beautiful and unknown future. Large companies that have nothing hold so much about our lives and help up live with others and the nothing that fills the Internet. Laws pass; people go to court about replicas of nothing that have proliferated wildly over the Internet. Nothing matters. Nothing makes all the difference. Nothing has certainly become something. Data is no longer bound to the hard drives, the RAM, the floppies and CDs, the Flash ROM. It has begun to manifest itself in a physical way, unshackled by our ever increasing reliance on it.
What happened to the unreal? There virtually is none.

The Unfounded Future of Blogjects

2006-10-25T13:30:00.000-07:00

Blogjects, at their core, are entities of raw information, and nothing more. Julian Bleecker, in her article, “Why Things Matter”, tries to portray the future of blogjects in a manner that is entirely unsupported. Bleecker speaks of the future of blogjects as “first-class citizens” who “participate in the exchange of ideas,” as a member of our social web. This statement is so blatantly farfetched that I expected the article to elaborate on some clear reasoning as to why this conclusion was drawn. However, I was surprised to find that the only backing for this assumption was given in the form of several poorly chosen examples that fail to truly pertain to Bleecker’s original thesis. Furthermore, some of her later statements went so far as to contradict her original ideas entirely.

Bleecker originally speaks of the future of blogjects in a way that is undeniably characteristic of human thought. By presenting them as “first-class citizens” and emphasizing the use of “thought”, she makes it appear as though these blogjects will be able to make conscious decisions representative of a human. Through this, they would be able to converse with people on a deeper level, as much more than a collection of raw data. She speaks of a transition from passive to assertive behavior. Her first and primary example of this is the Pigeon that Blogs. The Pigeon that Blogs is a perfect example of a blogject being a collector of raw material that is then presented to the world for our own interpretation and discussion…how does this even remotely pertain to Bleecker’s perception of the future of blogjects? Sure, the results of the Pigeon that Blogs can potentially be used as an instrument for change, but that in no way relates to the pigeons blog’s having characteristics of thought. They are still just providers of raw data, left to the open interpretation of the public.

As she further elaborates on the details of how these future blogjects will operate, she makes the statement that “Blogjects have no truck with the syntax of human thought.” This is a bold and direct contradiction of her original statements. As I quote from the beginning of her article in reference to the characteristics of blogjects, “Blogjects become first-class a-list producers of conversations in the same way that human bloggers do.” Yet this is simply not true if you disregard the fundamental aspect of thought!

In closing, I believe that Blogjects can play a highly beneficial role in our society’s acquisition of knowledge. However, I find this to be fundamentally true only for cases in which the blogjects sole purpose is to provide raw data left for open interpretation, as is currently the primary case. The issue of blogjects operating as producers and agents on the same level that humans do is currently so entirely shaky, contradictory, and unfounded that I see little relevance in discussing the specifics of its implementation. Bleecker’s article furthered my assumptions in its inability to present a conclusive argument surrounding the fundamental characteristics of future blogjects.

Spirit > Economics

2006-10-25T13:12:00.000-07:00

After reading through the two chapters of Play Money: Or, How I Quit My Day Job and Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot by Julian Dibbell, the only image that kept reappearing in my mind was this fairly recent Foxtrot comic strip.

In this strip, the character Peter Fox discusses with his sister, Paige, the motives behind people who frequent auction websites to buy online currency with real money in order to become more powerful in a game faster. He explains that people don’t rationalize that they are exchanging currency, but instead, they feel that they are actually buying “time saved” by not having to find the gold, money, or meat during their gameplay. However, the question raised is why people would pay more money to reduce the amount of time that they spend playing the game that they are paying to play anyway? The answer is the challenge of becoming the best at a particular aspect of the game, no matter what the cost. Contrary to Dibbell’s reference to Edward Castranova’s theory that economic forces rule all, the fact of the matter is that players in these MMORPG’s are willing to sacrifice much more than financial wealth in order to achieve the goal pushed forward by the natural human spirit’s desire to succeed.

According to Castranova, “we’re learning… that scarcity itself is an essential variable,” suggesting that in the creation of virtual worlds, scarcity is factored in purposefully in order to create motivation for economic markets to exist. It is true that a sense of scarcity is required to create a market. Without it, there would be no need to trade, barter, buy, or sell because all resources would be available to all participants at any given time, diminishing the forces of supply and demand. However, it is arguable that economics are the underlying foundation of the desire to play these games in the first place. Simply put, it is not the properties of wealth that create human motive, but rather, it is the opposite. Much like the question of whether the chicken or the egg came first (Don’t argue. We all have our theories.), many question whether economic properties were an inevitable truth that hung above human conception until our minds became developed enough to embrace the system. This cannot be true. Human motivations such as, competition, greed, and power grew to inspire the principles of the wealth system we have today.

How can this property be applied and proven in the world of MMORPG’s? We merely have to examine the sacrifice, or losses, that are given in order to progress in these virtual worlds. The most relevant one to consider is the pure economic loss. Most of these games require monthly fees to participate at all, but in addition to this cost, many players spend additional cash on items that get them to their intended goals faster. The compounded cost makes a convincing case to the theory that due to the amount of loss, it becomes unreasonable to consider that overall economic gain in the real world is the underlying force that drives users to play these games.

To further drive this point, other forms of sacrifice can also be mentioned. One such instance is personal health. It is becoming increasingly popular for news reports to focus upon the detrimental effects that these games have on the human body. Many users have such strong wills to complete virtual quests or tasks that days can be spent in front of a screen with very little nourishment or rest, effectively killing the body. Another aspect to consider is face-to-face social contact. While many players claim the fact that they are not antisocial due to the frequent contact between user interfaces, they lose focus in the natural facial recogniscent senses.

The claims that economic forces create human motivation are not false. It is irrefutable that economics can inspire a cause for people to make goals. However, it is necessary to understand that these goals are the foundation of all motivation. When this concept is grasped, it can be understood that the menial tasks involved in the game world are driven by something much deeper: mankind’s will to succeed.

Making Money: Fun or Work

2006-10-25T12:26:00.000-07:00

After reading the two chapters from the book, Play Money, I feel like making money using MMORPGs is easy. The question I have is it really worth it? These games are made for users to have fun and be entertained. When turning a game into a business, would playing these games be fun or work. Play Money addresses these questions with some expert opinion from psychologists, but there is still no distinct answer.

The nature of the human mind is hard to generalize even in small subcultures. Some people such as Troy Stolle, an example used in Play Money, can do repetitive processes just to better their virtual character in order to make more virtual money. Is this really fun? I have done this a little bit for video games and it is fun for some time, but it gets tiresome after three or four hours passes. To me this actually becomes work without much reward. Money can be made in video gaming not just in MMORPGs but the time investment compared to the payout does not seem worthwhile.

I feel like the main difference between fun and work is how the competitive spirit of a person is affected. Winning is always fun and losing is never as much fun as winning. Competition can occur between multiple people, a person versus a simulation or a person versus themselves. I can see how MMORPG games fun even if they are repetitive, since I do just about the same thing in real life by playing varsity basketball. Going to basketball practice everyday and often doing the same arduous drills gets repetitive but there is competition implicit in the drills. I am trying to better both myself and my teammates. Once making money in a game it no longer is a game unless there is still a lot of competition is involved. Making money as a side affect of a game keeps it fun and may make it even more entertaining.

I have not played an MMORPG, but I have played RPG games where one can gain items but running around, fighting and doing tasks. A business like Blacksnow Interactive that plays these games for income, takes the fun out of the game for their employees. How does one tell the difference between their leisure time and work? I would assume employees of this company are very much obsessed with MMORPGs and video games in general. So would Lee Caldwell, a partner in Blacksnow Interactive, play a different type video game or another MMORPG that he is not as good at for relaxation or fun?

Basketball players that make money and are the best of the best still have fun in the game. They have this ultimate goal of winning a championship every year. They have the opportunity to prove each year that they have the best team after all the repetitive practicing. Other video games have championships over their own in which many gamers compete, but in many of these MMORPGs there is no ultimate goal. Making money by playing the game and selling items is not worth it since it takes away from the fun you get from the game. When as a gamer you get to the best of the best and all that is left to do is try to find rare items to sell, you should move on to another game and have fun getting better at that game.

Designers Are Us!

2006-10-25T10:23:00.000-07:00

Bloggers are designers. Blogjects are not.

In Bleecker’s manifesto, he really romanticizes and celebrates the new rising of the “blogject.” He actually got me excited about blogjects too. It is fascinating to see this new class of information transmitters, blogjects, begin to shape and change our physical world. I would argue that blogjects are even more reliable than humans. Take the Pigeon that Blogs for example. If one were to look at the Pigeon’s blog, one would find that the pigeon has been blogging steadily every x minutes. Because of this, one could appropriately assume that if ever one needed to find out the weather in the future, one would be able to find a blog that was posted within x minutes ago. A person however, is too spontaneous to be a reliable source for updated information. A person could blog every day, and then decide to not blog for one week. People do not have that internal code that goes: “If x-t=0, then take temperature of surroundings and blog.”

However, although humans are spontaneous, spontaneity is also a celebration of humans’ ability to choose. Bloggers choose to blog and blogjects just do it. Not only that, Bloggers choose how they are going to display information, while blogjects just do it. Bleecker says blogjects can effect change. If you were inside your room, which would affect you more?

The Spontaneous Blog of Human Subject Blogger:
“YOOOO!! It’s freaking cold out here! It’s awesome! Me, Jon, Sally, and Eric are gonna start a snowball fight! WOOOTT!! Come out and join us….NOW!”

The Consistent Blog of Pigeon Blogject:
“ Location: Cambridge
Temperature: 26.675 Degrees Fahrenheit.”

The Pigeon Blogject would probably only make you stay in your room, while the Human Subject Blogger could potentially draw you out into the cold weather. It was the human who was able to design his blog to match the intent of his blog. He was able to choose to use CAPS, “!!!’s”, and give an inviting tone. The pigeon’s blog was just a regurgitation of information – no design involved.

Why is design important? A better question is, how is design not important? Design dictates how humans perceive, receive, and interact with information. The way the blogger designed his blog, the cold outside actually seems appealing and positive. The blogject’s blog could not have been designed with any intent, except to perhaps inform people with information.

Good design can be powerful. If the human subject blogger designed his blog so that he mentioned a few popular kids that were coming to the snowball fight, a lot more kids that are fans of the popular kids would come out too. On to other aspects of design, some humans have also designed lots of information to look like very little information, to make information seem more manageable – a movement called “simplicity.” A good example of this is the iPod. Good design has made the iPod into a touch circle and a dot, when in reality, there are thousands of invisible lines of running code that say “If this is clicked, then do that,” and so on. Because the touch circle and dot have made the iPod seem like such a simple information device to use, it has been madly successful; I give Macintosh props. Listening to thousands of minutes of music has never been so convenient in the entire history of humanity. Go, Apple!

However, my point is not to solicit for Macintosh or to say blogjects are not good. My point is to say that as humans, as potential designers, we can be powerful information transmitters, even more so that those non-spontaneous blogjects. If blogjects can effect change in our physical world, bloggers (us!) can effect super-change in our physical world by learning how to design well the information we transmit.

Web 2.0

2006-10-25T07:05:00.000-07:00

The internet has evolved. A network that once began as merely a series of links between computers has now grown into an “Internet of Things” in which both users and computer programs manipulate and distribute information dynamically. This new stage in the development of the internet, one in which participation of both human and non-human users is highlighted, has been termed “Web 2.0”.

In this new form of the internet, we discover a new breed of information entities, Blogjects, which dynamically upload information about themselves to the internet. Consider the example of the Pigeon that Blogs, a project in which a flock of pigeons outfitted with GPS and spectroscopic devices transmitted their position and information about their environment to the internet. Like a human internet user, the Pigeon device, an inanimate object, is dynamically generating information that can lead to meaningful conclusions about how pollution or other environmental factors influence pigeon migration patterns.

This is a prime example of the internet modeling reality through data structures, an idea brought forth by Web 2.0. The term “data structures” refers particularly to the ides of Object Oriented Programming (OOP), a computer science concept in which “objects”, or meaningful units of code, encapsulate a set of data and functions to access or manipulate that data. The shipping industry as it exists today is a prime example of how OOP is used to model real world objects. Most packages are using radio frequency ID (RFID) tags or bar codes to allow for accurate tracking information. As far as the company is concerned, the information about the size, destination, and location of the package are all that is important, and thus this set of three values defines this object. This is the limited extent to which a real object is represented in the “Internet of Things”.

But to what extent will Web 2.0 lead to humans being “objectified”? Consider Amazon.com’s suggestion algorithms that take information about the items users have browsed and generate a fingerprint of that user’s shopping interests. Again, the website has determined the minimum amount of information necessary to define the user and actively manipulates the user’s web experience to suit the interests it believes the user has. However, in doing this, the website has focused the user on a certain set of products, gradually making real the assumptions made by the original suggestion algorithm. As the website becomes more dynamic, the user must become more static, or “objectified”. An extreme extrapolation of this concept appears in the film “2015”, in which people are classified to the extent of having their personal information and interests summed up in a few words on an identification card.

The evolution of the internet into a participation-based architecture of information has resulted in a far more dynamic representation of static objects and a higher level of classification of individuals, bringing into question the idea of a more intelligent, more “human” internet resulting in the objectification of its human users. If the Amazon.com model were to be extrapolated and used by every website that users visit, and if users gradually adapted to meet the profiles suggested by the dynamic websites, the fictional musings of “2015” could become a disturbing reality.

Has Bleecker talked to California's governor?

2006-10-25T02:17:00.000-07:00

Julian Bleecker talks of a world where information can be readily accessed from entities on the internet known as “blogjects”. These blogjects communicate a small portion of the world to each other and as a result will interact with one another and with humans. This could result in rumors, inaccurate data, mass hysteria, etc… but essentially, I think that Bleecker begins talking about this system of nodes as its own, self-functioning world. Just think, a blogject about gold mines could report that a mine has blown up, as a result, a different blogject on the price of goods could pick that up and change the price of gold before people even get word of it. It’s a pretty crazy idea, right? Maybe not, it sure does make me think of the movie Terminator. In Terminator, humans created this unbelievable defense system that could link with all of its machines and weapons. If it recognized conflict in an area, using the internet it could route combat vehicles and supplies to that particular area, all while humans sit back and watch the show. Machines were making and controlling other machines, as a result, when the system came online, it revolted and started attacking humans. Am I saying Terminator was prophetic? Maybe, but for now it is merely an example of this idea of a self-sustaining world of information that can adapt to itself.

Bleecker seems to make some “far out” claims, but in some cases and to a certain extent, this sort of thing is already happening over the internet. Take me for an example. I am a senior and I am looking for a job. Sure, I want to find a project that is both interesting and rewarding, but at the end of the day I want to make money. My mother always told me “never to put all my eggs in one basket”, so I decided to register with monstertrak.com and see if it could help me get a job. There, I can upload my resume and use it to apply to hundreds of companies, and believe me I have reached the triple digit mark. That’s not interesting. What is interesting is the fact that I can use my resume to apply to many different companies, but monstertrak dissects my resume and doesn’t let me apply to companies that I am not qualified for. To think, an internet site is telling me who I can and can’t apply to. Even so, I have still applied to many companies that I had never heard of before, I merely read their description and if it sounded like I wouldn’t want to kill myself doing that work I applied. Right now I probably have somewhere around 150 of my resumes floating around the internet. Companies can login to monstertrak as well, but they don’t have to go through each and every resume like before. Monstertrak has already ensured that the applicants to their company meet a basic set of requirements. Now, the company exec enters a search word, let’s say “lithography”, he will get a slew of resumes containing that word, including mine, even though I may not have as much experience as the guy who put “photonics laboratory”, I have the buzz words.

That is what our internet has become, buzz words. Barely any one looks at an entire article nowadays. They simply google the word they are interested in and find every instance of that word. Computer programs should have no problem doing the very same thing, but we as the creators must be careful. At some point, on some level, giving this power to computers will in the end cause us to relinquish our control. Entire stock markets could be crashed from a single glitch, who knows what else could follow. I’ll tell you one thing though…I’ll be back…

Blogjects: 1984 All Over Again

2006-10-25T00:55:00.000-07:00

It is incredible to imagine that there could someday be everyday objects that tell us more about the world than we could have ever before imagined. In Why Things Matter, Julian Bleecker talks about a world where information flows from things called blogjects. These blogjects would be able to post to the internet information about their surroundings and the interactions that the objects had with other blogjects. The information flowing from these many, varied inputs could then be used by humans. I think that having blogjects examining every detail of my life would quickly become overwhelming.

Blogjects seem to be a very useful tool for getting automatic information from the world around us. I agree that there is a great potential to get information for scientific research. On the other hand, the world would quickly become Orwellian because every action could be captured on camera, and the effects of our actions could be recorded. Our own blogjects would tell the whole world what we had done. I cannot think of a situation where this exposure into my life would be a good thing. In fact, I would be downright terrified to live in a glass world where nothing was private.

Even though blogjects seem to be very useful for sharing information, that information needs to be regulated in order to protect privacy. I think that blogjects can be useful to a certain degree. If birds are fitted with electronics to measure toxins in the air, that really cannot do much harm. If cameras lining the streets of major cities are linked to the internet that could possibly become a problem. According to Bleecker, however, this would only be the start. Blogjects would interact with people and other blogjects. They would basically do the exact same things that human bloggers do. The blogjects could ultimately compile their individual perspectives in such a way as to cause actions to be taken.

The idea that blogjects could eventually cause actions to be undertaken is slightly scary. It is easy for human bloggers with the ability to reason and explain thoughts clearly to change the opinions of others. Is it possible that blogjects could someday have a similar effect? If they do, that would mean that blogjects would collaborate and swing public opinion. This is a far cry from several simple objects reporting raw data for human interpretation. If blogjects were ever to progress that far, computer programs would have enough power to autonomously sway public opinion and the actions of the masses.

While blogjects can be very useful for automated science and information gathering, I think that it is going too far to allow blogjects to have an assertive voice on the web. It is ill-advised to give blogjects the power to project opinions. The only way that opinions should be formed with blogjects is through humans responsible for interpreting the raw data from these blogjects. If blogjects are allowed to share what they “experience” without any oversight, people will lose a large degree of privacy. Blogjects, although they have a limited role in society, should not be expanded to interact autonomously with the internet and human users.

The Ant Invasion

2006-10-25T00:44:00.000-07:00

I hate ants. Currently, they are attempting to take my kitchen, my bathroom, and my bedroom by force. They are everywhere. When I open my chemistry book, little red ants stream from the pages. My cabinets have been stained red by all of the ant carcasses. I brush the ants off my toothbrush each morning and night. They took over my peanut butter and jelly sandwich but I ate it. What is one ant anyway? Besides, this is personal. These ants are more than ants. They are a worthy opponent. Individually, they are insignificant, but en masse they have added an extra dimension of aggravation my existence. Strangely, I am addicted to Facebook. Before I open my chemistry book I have to log on to check the current status of my friends. Facebook is in the background as I eat or go to bed. When I see others checking their Facebook, I can feel the need to visit my own. A single Facebook account would hold no value but the network of accounts that exists makes Facebook a force to be reckoned with. Much like the formidable red ants, Facebook holds its power in its numbers. The allure of Facebook is not easily pinpointed but the ease with which one can create and share in the collective human experience is certainly one of its attractions.

While this connectivity is appealing, social networking comes at a price. Facebook alerted me when my best friend broke up with her boyfriend before she had told me herself. Personal information that was previously somewhat guarded is now available to anyone who cares to look. The impersonal nature of this communication creates disconnect in an increasingly disjointed society. While I love Facebook for the easy perusing of lives it makes available, I must remind myself that what I am experiencing is superficial. The cost of mass access in the case of Facebook is a loss of the deeper connections with which the web of society used to be constructed.

Now, these ants, like Facebook, control me. As I give into their power as a whole, I lose my own autonomy. I do not recognize any of the ants individually, but rather their effect as a whole. My life is no longer my own, but it is shared by the ants and the networks as we tend toward symbiosis. I have found that I cannot fight this process. I no longer grimace as I flick the red dots off my toothbrush. To learn that my friend is in town through Facebook rather than the telephone is no longer jarring. The family of eight residing in my text book greets me warmly every time I leaf through to find a problem. My friends’ profiles have come to replace their emails and phone calls. My popcorn is there for the ants if they want it. My story has been offered to the network. I can only hope it does not swallow me as I swallowed the ants that seemed so insignificant in my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

The Internet of Things in Practice

2006-10-24T19:24:00.000-07:00

I once heard Bruce Sterling speak about the Internet of Things, and he sounded completely not credible. When I heard him pronounce with glee, “I call it, a spime!” I could only look down at my lap and close my eyes. Julian Bleeker in his article, however, presents less of a sci-fi perspective and a more practical interpretation of what smarter objects could do for us. Despite being more down to earth, Bleeker still fails to paint a concrete picture of how Things with agency would operate.

The best way to evolve technology and propogate changes in the way people use technology is not to make big changes. Nothing can be declared as “the way of the future” without being somewhat backwards compatable. I do not see the Internet of Things as some fancy new protocol designed to replace anything. Imagine purchasing a set of cheap stickers that you can slap on to any object and tag with its identity. You might have a variety of stickers to choose from, so you can record more information about your Thing. This idea is not outlandish, and it is immediately practical, useful, and desireable. If these objects blog, you can now Google your long underwear or old camp stove rather than look for it. These blogjets could tell you when they are lost. Taking this a step further, if this idea catches on, maybe manufacturers for electronics or power tools might report their status or need for repair. What if your iPod could blog the songs you listened to? Wait a minute, this idea already exists and has been implemented. Unfortunately iPods aren't wireless, but using amaroK, a media player for Linux, one can build an online collection of listening statistics, including what you play on your iPod.

These are actual concrete examples of systems that could be implemented. These ideas are important enough and useful enough that we should not be worried about the semantics of “agency.” Agency seems to boil down to a philosophical question of causality: who is responsible for the information, the Thing or its maker? Let us not be too stuffy about this and other questions such as, will the introduction of spimes spur a new, recycling and reusing relationshipt with our stuff? Right now and in the next few years, that's not practical. Right now, I want to tag my stuff.

Where are we going?

2006-10-19T20:09:00.000-07:00

Great changes have affected Media through out history. From the invention of writing to the creation of the Internet, the face of media has been in a constant evolution. Important steps marked this evolution. The invention of printing by Gutenberg in 1500 opened a new era in transmission of written knowledge. The spread of the radio in the 1920s made possible the broadcast of news, music, dramas, comedies, variety shows, and many other forms of entertainment to a large number of people. The invention of television in the 1950s introduced moving images on top of the sound that the radio already provided. More recently, the internet has added a new dimension to media: interactivity.
Without any doubts, innovations that were brought to Media have shaped our modern societies. In a period of changes like the one we are facing today, in order to answer a question like “where are we going?” we have to start by asking the question “where is media taking us?”
In his piece, Jurgen Harbermass introduces the concept of public sphere that defines an engaged space, which activates changes in our societies. For instance, an actively involved politician is part of that public sphere. This is concept is pivotal to our analysis given that the influence of media on our societies passes through the public sphere. The traditional structure of mass media leads to a relatively controlled public sphere. Of course, the level of control greatly depends on the type of institution i.e governments or big corporations that exercises the control. In all cases, the debate in the public sphere is biased towards those who control the way of mass communication. Furthermore, the technical architecture that supports traditional media is one-way, organized around a centralized hub with unidirectional edges going from the center to outskirts. This type of architecture paves the way to a generalized passivity. People fail to be active in a public sphere, because they can only take in information but cannot react to it.
The internet as a new mean of mass communication appears to be a good solution to the above-mentioned problem. Its decentralized structure insures that nothing can control it. The information is freely shared among the network. Members of the network are all peers and there is no more hierarchy. In this sense, the public sphere is positively stimulated and the society ameliorated because a thriving nation is a nation where everyone is involved.
All in all, the rise and the spread of the internet as the main mean of communication lets us longer for a brighter future for our societies and gives a positive answer but partial answer to the crucial question where is the 21st century taking have in store for us.

The Death of the Public Sphere?

2006-10-19T07:47:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the late post. I came down with a slight virus yesterday evening and stayed in bed for the night and forgot about posting my essay.

The Death of the Public Sphere?

As we know it, the public sphere is a doomed enterprise. Its very existence hinges upon the usage of mass media, which already fades as a priority in the eyes of the people. It has been replaced by a nodal structure, one which channels the energies of the civic into narrow spaces rather than letting them simmer in a larger plane. Instead of a focused, unilateral, yet at times dispassionate, nationwide discussion, we have constant, chaotic dialogues raging on countless disparate topics. Although some topics may attract more attention than others, such attention is monopolized by diehard enthusiasts whose numbers pale in comparison with the size of the public sphere of yore.

As with the destruction of many old ideas, the cracking of the sphere began with the invention of the internet. The innovation created a stark contrast with information of the past and present: whereas we were once funneled information in packaged goods created by major news networks such as CNN and NBC, we are now free to create our own news through the blogosphere. The result is a focus of interests. Rather than being forced to discuss a mundane topic which holds no personal importance, an individual can now comment on a subject of fierce ideological identification. Not only does the sphere diversify into a system of nodes, but human interest sparks, accentuating and polarizing the diversification.

Of course, this new arrangement may not be entirely incompatible with the notion of the public sphere, at least in the short run. As of this moment, mass media still controls enough of our attention to focus widespread interest on a particular topic, such as the nuclear crisis or Iraq War. The blogosphere, however, already partially subverts such interest. Highly opinionated blog entries that resonate with specific groups of people attract those sorts of people far more effectively than mass media, which attempts to stay inoffensive to all. As the number of voices on the internet grow, it become virtually certain that everyone will find some personality they would rather listen to than a mainstream media source, simply because they agree with what that personality has to say. Logically, if this process were to continue without bound (as it is doing now), it would mean each media consumer would prefer the internet over the newspaper and television, causing these latter sources to die out and effectively eliminating the public sphere, replacing it with the aforementioned nodal network.

Since this process, as of yet, may still be reversible (though not without significant effort), we must ask ourselves: is this what we truly want? Would we rather discuss passionately what we believe in with like-minded people or debate issues in a slightly subdued manner in public forum? Would we rather be composed of diversified but strong-willed interest groups lobbying for influence on the world stage, or of a unilateral yet lukewarm coalition force advantaged by massive numbers? Whatever we will decide, we must decide soon, or the choice will be made for us by human nature itself.

The Collective

2006-10-18T15:45:00.000-07:00

Henry Jenkins’s essay “Spoiling Survivor” discusses the ability of the Internet to create “knowledge communities” in which many people from across the world can contribute to a single common set of information. The Internet provides the perfect opportunity to expand every participant’s knowledge, but Jenkins analyzes some of the social dynamics in a message board called “Survivor Sucks” that result in an uneven distribution of wealth.

The “Survivor Sucks” message board, despite its name, is home to fans of the Survivor television show. These fans have made a game out of learning all they can about the show, and they take pride in finding information out – spoilers – before an episode even airs. Forum members have even gone so far as to use imaging satellites to take photographs of possible filming locations and perform background checks on possible contestants. Because obtaining such information requires specific skills and connections, very few forum members have access to first-hand knowledge of the spoilers. This leads to the formation of a “gated knowledge community”, in which a few members obtain information and vet it before releasing it to the rest of the community. Ostensibly, this is because they don’t want to release information that might be too private, but it’s easy to see that human nature might also play a role.

Egotism in human nature often leads to problems with “knowledge communities” online when members begin to hide information from other members. In this way, information is not as distributed as it might be. This happened to the Survivor Sucks community when a new member, ChillOne, came onto the scene after claiming to have stayed at a hotel near the filming of Survivor: Amazon. His appearance in the Survivor Sucks community revealed very little information but promised that there was much more he knew. Traditional offline social dynamics suddenly disturbed the seemingly utopian community. The previous guardians of information were now overshadowed by someone who claimed to know orders of magnitude more information about the contest. Suddenly, the community’s very existence was unnecessary: their previous collaboration was unnecessary when someone could blow open the whole case. The whole purpose of the community changed; where they had previously tried to find out information about Survivor, now they solely tried to prove or disprove ChillOne’s information.

Knowledge communities succeed on the Internet when the members are each able to contribute approximately equal amounts of information. This is why the core Linux kernel, for instance, is developed by a relatively small number of coders. A minimum amount of knowledge and skills serve as a barried to entry to the knowledge community. People lacking the requisite skills aren’t accepted in the community and have trouble understanding what is happening.

Wikipedia is another example of a knowledge community. Wikipedia has succeeded because articles can evolve through individually small but collectively important contributions. Wikipedia is, perhaps, a knowledge community to end all knowledge communities. They aim to collect all information about anything important in the world, past or present. Because their knowledge spans such a diverse field, it is essentially impossible for one user to come in with a somewhat complete set of knowledge in the way ChillOne did. Thus, Wikipedia stands to succeed where Survivor Sucks failed.

The Public Wheel

2006-10-18T15:14:00.000-07:00

The last time I sat in front of the big screen, there were hundreds of channels waiting for me to flick by, covering every topic from cooking to sports- of course, the guys around me stopped on ESPN, so we watched Monday night football. After the game, while we were flipping through channels, a CNN photo displaying all of New Orleans completely submerged riveted us.

That entire week, the television set grabbed the attention of the entire country, as it had done so many times in the past. Photos of the attacks on September 11^th, the floods of Indonesia, Princess Diana’s funeral, even Janet Jackson’s “mistake”, reached everywhere moments after they happened. But I never noticed any of that in my online forays. While searching for something on Yahoo, my eyes rarely stray to the headlines posted beneath the search bar- I’ve never been informed by Internet of anything concerning the masses before the newspaper or television. Mass media’s ability to address millions at once still holds a very central place in the public sphere, one that the Internet or any other form of peer network will be hard pressed to replace.

It’s certainly true that the Internet and its many peer-to-peer connections have taken a larger role in the public sphere. All the niche interests find homes in its tangled web in a way television will never match, and, as Benkler put it, the spokes of the wheel lead back to the hub in ways that make the Internet much more reactive and conforming to public opinion. The Internet’s role as a connective network brings together all the peer groups in ways that television can’t, letting anyone speak to anyone about any issue.

However, forms of mass media still and will continue to hold the center spot in the public domain, simply because as the hub it connects to all the spokes. Information presented through the radio or television spreads like a forest fire through networks, pervading the public sphere with the hot topic of discussion. Until peer networks can spread news as quickly and pervasively, mass media will always continue to exist at the public sphere’s nucleus.

Of course, that’s not to say that the Internet can be discounted in importance. Often, topics first presented by television become the substance of Internet debates, where peer network mediums rule as communicators of individual opinions. In the end, though, mass media will continue to serve as that hub to the millions of spokes. In an extension of that metaphor, the Internet and other networks might be seen as the rubber at the end of all those spokes, taking in and connecting all the spokes of media users to each other. However, no bicycle wheel is complete without its hub, and the public sphere as it exists today would not be complete or even functional without the hub of mass media.

The political playing field has been leveled and we have the Internet to thank

2006-10-18T14:02:00.000-07:00

Could a more responsive and interactive form of media such as the internet really alter the political outcome of America? I happen to think it can. We live in a world where politicians treat politics as some sort of strategical power game instead of a device to uphold what is best for America it seems. The pollution from the tailpipes of our cars is killing us through wars and natural disasters, so why can't better legislation be passed to efficiently mitigate the problem? Unfortunately the companies that are staying afloat by holding on to the likes of the Dodge Ram and GMC Yukon were the ones who gave a boost to the the politicians who are standing in the way of progress for emissions and fuel efficiency.
If these politicians were truly savvy, they would realize that the internet holds a dear spot in the hearts of modern American media users and that it is not outrageously expensive to use it as a pillar of platform conveyance for their campaign. Take one look at this country's national debt or its crumbling Social Security plan and consider how bad the younger generations will have it in the future. Does it really make sense that 80 year olds are demanding and then getting the newest and most expensive health services and products and that the younger generation gets footed with the bill for it? Well, it would if they got all of the same benefits when they become senior citizens.
Somewhere along the line politicians allowed the current situation to happen, the situation where young people pay for social security but will never get to benefit from it. The politicians allowed this to happen for what it is in my opinion a selfish but perhaps necessary reason; old people vote while young people tend not to. Just imagine how much more attentive politicians would be to younger people if they all voted and imagine if these young people were excited to vote through the internet.
Yochai Benkler criticizes the one-sided dynamics of mass media. I feel that his ideas about news shows and newspapers being too un-diversified in opinion and too reluctant to showcase less sexy, yet important stories is spot on. The depth of internet content isn't restrained to the "lowest common denominator" nor does it all have to fit on a single page or into a half an hour TV slot. Because mass media does have to be centralized to accommodate all of these things while also worrying about the reputation and popularity of the news carrier, it will never be able to go into detail about both sides of a story or the complicated macro and micro implications of certain stories. The ability for the voting public to be able to easily juxtapose contrasting views about relevant political stories and then to analyze them in great detail if they wish is critical to a fair voting process. Fox news a classic example of a very biased news program that aims its sights at what Benkler calls the lowest common denominator. When the political mud-flinging starts it is unfair that Fox news, the public's vehicle of insight into the political workings of our government, backs one candidate or party more than the other. This is the reason why people vote for the wrong reasons, it is because the wrong reasons are fed to them over biased news networks. The internet tends to level the playing fields as was recently proven with the Mark Foley sex/E-mail scandal. The internet allows people to decide for themselves the important reasons to vote a certain way instead of having to wait for a centralized and often governmentally associated network to tell them.
The internet gives the public the means to make vastly more informed political decisions if they choose to exploit it to its full potential. Hopefully this will result in the getting the most competent leaders making decisions that affect us all fairly. All of the special interest groups that have learned to magnetize political decisions away from what is right and good for America had better watch out. The internet is here and the truths about our government, the economy, and our international endeavors are available for all to see. -John

The great political power of the internet

2006-10-18T13:39:00.000-07:00

We are extremely lucky to be living in a time where anyone with internet access can easily say whatever they want to say and be able to broadcast their thoughts to the world. Just as Benkler said, the power of unidirectional communication is slowly deteriorating in favor of public conversation on an enormous scale. Individuals are now able to create and distribute media for extremely low cost. What gets seen by the most people now depends on the quality of the media instead of just who has the most money. This also makes it much easier to find extensive information and entertainment that focuses on subjects with a much smaller following. People are now able to find things that are very appealing to niche markets that they could never have found before.

An example Benkler discusses is politics. The internet allows people who are very interested in politics to learn everything they want to about any different aspect of politics. The internet allows for so much more information to be released and people who are looking for that information can be extremely prepared when it comes time to vote at the next elections. This is an extremely valuable resource that could change the face of politics forever.

Unfortunately, it won't. Only about 40% of the population of the United States actually vote for president and very few of those people care enough about politics to look up any of the information the internet has on political issues and politicians. It's become fairly evident that the politicians themselves don't even care enough to look up this information. The amount of information available about politics has little effect on political elections. What matters is the information that is given directly to the voters. The huge news stories are what affects politics and the internet right now doesn't have the ability to spread these stories very well.

This is where mass media comes in. People hear about these big scandals in commercials on tv, newspapers and radio. Mass media is the most effective way to capture people's attention right now. There is nothing on the internet right now that has the same power that television news programs have. This is one of the strengths of the unidirectional distribution. Mass media will keep going strong while it still has this advantage, but it might not have it forever. You can bet there are many websites out there that are looking for the best way to attract a critical mass of people who log on to the internet. That day may soon be approaching.

Life in a Bubble

2006-10-18T13:34:00.000-07:00

The threat of niche media channels is that people will tune into channels that let them hear what they want to hear. Beyond self-selecting into a specific demographic, media users will form small bubbles – groups of common interest and point of view. As Benkler’s devil’s advocate puts it, “Individuals will view the world through millions of personally customized windows.” Nature lovers will read about nature, gamers will read about video games, and so on. This generic sitcom will die and will be replaced by shows targeting to small, specific groups of people. The cynic in me tells me that housewives will only watch cooking shows, nerds will only watch shows about nerds, gays will only watch shows with a gay lead character.

The most frightening implication of the fragmentation of the mass media is that, as Benkler phrased the argument, “there will be no more public sphere.” Democrats will teach news from the left and Republicans news from the right – or more precisely, people will seek out opinions that match their own existing biases as exactly as possible, taking the path of least intellectual resistance. There will be no asking a friend, “Did you hear about so-and-so on the news last night?”, because what is on my news may be nothing like what is on my news.

I deeply hope that people will not be so narrow-minded as to put on blinders to all events outside a small horizon. The networks that were supposed to connect us all threaten to trap each of us in his or her little box. Of course, it is only natural to tend to gravitate towards topics of interest. I enjoy reading the “news” on Slashdot much more than I would from a generic news source, not only because the discussion, but because the site is technology-oriented (with motto “News For Nerds. Stuff that Matters”), and so delivers news I find more relevant and interesting. This doesn’t mean that I ignore events of global and political consequence in favor of reading a game review. Nevertheless, no matter how much I’d want to exit my box, I wouldn’t read art because I find them incredibly boring.

The sad truth is that few people want diverse, intellectually stimulating content. People want to be told what they already believe and know. Mass media told people what they wanted to hear through bland and inoffensive material that catered to the proverbial least common denominator. Now, the Internet revolution will one-up mass media by telling each person precisely what he or she wants to hear. Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 predicted this:

“Don't step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, … all the minor minor minorities with their ears to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca.”

But is it a crime to give people what they want? What is it for a media conglomerate to tell a teenager that MTV is cultural rubbish and instead force him to watch a documentary on Bach? The viewer is happy, and the company gets ad revenue. Why rock the boat? The minority of people who want to think and be challenged and expand their interests will form their own niche. The short film EPIC predicted that the new generation of literati niche would news that was “deeper, broader, and more nuanced than anything before” while the rest of the world wallows in their own ignorance with content that is “a collection of trivia,” narrow and sensational.

The Convergence of Media

2006-10-18T13:18:00.000-07:00

America’s culture is sort of based on convergence. The convergence of some aspects were more resisted than others, but still integrating cultures, people, and media is historically the American way. The convergence of media is evitable. As a young person with a laptop it is almost impossible for me not to use multiple Medias. In Henry Jenkins’ book, Convergence Culture, he describes what a teenager does probably on a daily basis. I find it funny since it is a great description what I am doing as I write this essay.

Jenkin’s writes, “media convergence impacts the way we consume media. A teenager doing homework may juggle four or five windows, scan the web, listen to and download MP3 files, chat with friends, word-process a paper, and respond to e-mail, shifting rapidly among tasks.” While writing this essay on my laptop, I am checking my email often, using Google for any terms I need to research, talking to some friends on AIM, downloading and listening to music by Easy Star All-Stars. The music by Easy Star All-Stars is also a convergence of cultures. They have made two albums, Dub Side of the Moon and Radiodread, both of which are reggae versions of the original albums made by rock groups, Pink Floyd and Radiohead.

There is a new craze in the sports world. It is fantasy sports. Fantasy sports are a convergence of all types of media. Many people including my friends and I who participate in this new phenomenon, use the internet while the games are going on to keep track of our real time fantasy points and scores of head to head match ups. This is the way I spend most of my Sunday and Monday nights during football season.

This convergence of media in a form of a game has become more exciting over the past couple of years because the athletes are becoming more involved. Some athletes actually openly care about their fantasy points and let their fans know. There is also more “expert” analysis information in different media devices. Newspapers, magazines, sports news television stations, and internet sites have preseason rankings and give weekly or monthly updates. ESPN is one of the leaders in pushing this multimedia usage. They now keep a record for every player in all major sports of percentage of leagues that has a team that owns that player and the player’s average draft position. So not only experts are communicating to the fantasy team owners, but owners nationwide get to communicate via this “survey”.

Though fantasy sports is only convergence of media that I use regularly , there are many other ways media is joined in today’s world to have the public more drawn into shows or sites. The internet has infiltrated much of other media audiences, such as television shows can now be quickly downloaded without effort and a slight cost. Movies and television use the media such as myspace.com to promote and give insider information about their product. Television and movie production studios have not yet gotten to the level of convergence of media that fantasy has, but eventually I believe this will occur.

The New Paradigm for Media

2006-10-18T13:02:00.000-07:00

With the proliferation of the Internet and cheap access to a broadband connection, use of the Internet as a form of mass media has become a reality. This mass media, however, is somewhat different from the old paradigm and comes with its own set of rules.
In the past, large corporations fed information to a passive audience, telling them what was believed to be important and essentially dictating public discourse. With the introduction of the Internet, this is not always the case anymore. people have access to a nearly infinite store of free or cheap information, and have the ability to express themselves or what is going on around them as they see fit. This could not happen in the past. As discussed in class, this creates special interest "niche" groups: small collections of people that have more expertise in a particular field than the average person, and consume information catered to that interest.
At first glance, this seems like a threat to the stability of the old mass media architecture. If people want to consume information particular to their interest, they will no longer turn to the companies that have tried to please the most people; they will instead turn to their Internet communities. Not necessarily so. The mass media provides a backbone of validity that the chaotic structure of the Internet does not have. Information presented on the news has been carefully validated and checked for inconsistencies, because the survival of a mass media network hinges on this. The peer produced network on the Internet relies less on this and more on the fast, self correcting nature of its structure. An Internet community will likely have information out sooner than a mass media network, but that information does not have the backing from the validation process and may or may not be correct.
These two models are different and should be treated as such. It seems though, that the new peer produced system has not yet fully developed. This is clear when watching CNN. Since the explosion of blogs on the Internet, CNN has begun to report on the blogosphere, making note of what bloggers think about the issues. Also, in a recent article from class, it's obvious that the mass media still looks at the networked communities through the eyes of the old system. As CNN described it, the blogs "scooped" traditional media with the Foley scandal. I would venture to say that a blog cannot "scoop" traditional media because they operate on completely different principles. Yes, the blog may have had the information more quickly, but blogs bring the information to their audience in a different way than say NBC. Generally, this information tends to be laced in opinion and caters to a more specific audience, which may have a bias in one direction or another; more of a measure of what people think about what is going on than what people think is going on.
In the end, the rules of play are different but compatible. A cursory look at popular interactive new sites like digg shows that oftentimes, the information present in these peer-produced groups is really editorial of the validated fact that comes from the larger mass media network. It seems to me that the future lies in mass media collecting the information, and the peer produced media packaging it for the consumer in a less passive way.

The Public Foam

2006-10-18T12:55:00.000-07:00

Are we at the brink of a radical shift in societal structure? In the twentieth century, what Habermas coined the bourgeois public sphere was replaced by a new body– a public sphere characterized by mass media. Today we witness the onset of new opportunities afforded by the internet and increased networking. I predict that the emergence of what Benkler calls the "networked public sphere" will be indicative of evolution, rather than revolution. In essence, the highly orderly public sphere typified by mass media will be transformed into semi-ordered foam; this new order will retain many qualities of the old.

Benkler describes the public sphere dominated by mass media in terms of the centralized and somewhat authoritarian hub and spoke model. Here information moves in primarily one direction: from the center to the rim. Given the nature of the hub and spoke model, it makes sense to describe the recipients of news as the "public sphere." The word "sphere" conveys the correct topological context in which Benkler views mass media in the hub and spoke model. The uniformity and symmetry of a sphere implies in some sense a uniform and homogenous community. By its very nature, mass media is orientated towards this type of society. The sphere’s shape also connotes a highly centralized structure. Because the internet and networking provide a forum in which almost any individual can express matters of public concern, there is no longer such a structure. At the same time, human nature prevents the complete dissolution of the hub and spoke model. The result is a foam-like structure that is still somewhat uniform in nature, but lacks an intrinsic direction for information flow. What we have is an amalgam of what Benkler calls the decentralized "networked public sphere" and the centralized "mass media public sphere."

The innate human desire for a sense of security provided by centralization and authority will prevent the decentralized grid structure of an idealized "network public sphere" from completely supplanting the hub and spoke model. For this reason, I do not believe that the twenty first century will witness the collapse of professionally produced forms of media such as television, newspapers (at least the online versions), and films in the traditional sense. In the future it is very possible that amateurs will find themselves able to work easily with such forms of media; however, there will always be a desire for the "professional" or "authoritative" voice. This desire is often implicitly expressed in the way that people attain information. For example, although a person might read blogs frequently, the information from such a source is always considered with skepticism. The reader looks for a "reputable" (or rather authoritative) source such as BBC that can confirm what has been read. The desire for centralization can be seen in the way society currently organizes information. Examples include sites such as Google, Digg, and other aggregators. People seek the existence of an "all-knowing" oracle; such an existence provides a sense of security.

Networking greatly increases the number of available sources of content. With more available sources, there will be sources of highly interesting information that target smaller groups of people. Hence, everyone will no longer receive the same information and news; instead, people find a "niche" that interests them. This does not mean that society will be completely stratified. In fact, increased globalization makes it more difficult for someone to seclude himself or herself in a niche. Afterall, a motivating factor for reading news is to be able to converse with other people in the community; thus, there must exist some overarching news that concerns all of society. News that would be relevant to an entire country includes presidential elections, war, and issues in world politics such as nuclear weapons in Iran and North Korea. The emerging "public foam" embraces the various qualities of the evolving public sphere. There is a sense of homogeny, but yet a sense of freedom to choose what constitutes important content; there is a sense of decentralization, but yet a sense of structure.

Will Peer Content Production Really Eclipse Traditional TV Broadcasting?

2006-10-18T12:29:00.000-07:00

Henry Jenkin’s book, Convergence Culture, persistently analyzes the clashing of media between traditional “hub and spoke” television distribution and the peer content production arising from the internet. He draws on a bestselling book by Nicholas Negroponte known as Being Digital (published in 1990) that predicts “the collapse of broadcast networks in favor of an era of narrowcasting and niche media on demand.” Jenkins builds on this by saying that in the 1990’s the view of an upcoming digital revolution revolved around a mindset that new media would overthrow old media; specifically that the Internet would eclipse broadcasting. He goes on to say that this replacement would “enable consumers to more easily access media content that was personally meaningful to them.” Yet, what factors into the degree to which media content is meaningful to someone?
On May 24, 2006 there were 42.94 million viewers tuning in to the season finale of American Idol. Throughout the season, millions of votes had been cast weekly by an enormous fan-base. American Idol is a broadcast television show, yet its popularity among consumers is incredible. This directly contradicts the viewpoint held by Negroponte and the general mindset of the 20th century towards shifts in media. The internet is growing and becoming increasingly popular by the day, yet traditional broadcasting is hardly suffering. The reasoning for this is that the older forms of media are not being destroyed, they are simply evolving. People tend to more often find personal meaning in media which encourages participation from the masses, as the internet does so well. Therefore, by integrating a form of participation into traditional television broadcasting, it gives it a twist that allows it to morph into a type of media that suggests internet-like properties.
Why has peer content production become so successful? What drives people to engage in mass-media production, such as Wikipedia? The prevalent underlying motive is the ideology that they, the individual spokes amongst the many, have a voice that can influence the hub. This is no different than the current case with American Idol; thus making it clear to see why both media items, though very different in style, are unique in nature. This same central theme is observed in web forums, blogs, and the core essences of the internet itself.
This does not go to say that the physical television set is here to stay. Hardware is an entirely different matter, which should not be related to the aforementioned media content. As I quote from Jenkins, “…history teaches us that old media never die--and they don’t even necessarily fade away. What dies are simply the tools we use to access media content.”
Traditional television broadcasting is not being eclipsed, but rather expanded and morphed to allow for user participation that gives it the properties necessary to mesh well with peer content production. Our society does not revolve around a complete overthrowing of old media by the uprising of newer forms of media; this is only true of physical hardware. The media itself simply molds to fit into ever-changing societal demands.

New Shape of the Sphere

2006-10-18T12:26:00.000-07:00

Imagine for a moment that you have the extraordinary ability to look at a person and know how they learned any given fact that they have kept in his or her collection of knowledge. Now, give yourself the powers to fly and survive in a vacuum, zoom out to space, and look at the globe. Finally, surpass the speed of light, travel back in time (Superman-style) to 18th century England, the 1920’s, the late 1950’s, and come back to present day. When comparing the origins of where people learned what they know, you would actually be analyzing the vague concept of what is known as a “public sphere.” These spheres, heavily theorized about by Jürgen Habermas, represent the changes in the infrastructure of the transfer of information between individuals throughout time beginning during the onset of the Enlightenment period. For the most part, this sphere has retained its shape. However, in our current age, we are finding that the structure is changing with the shift in the dominant form of mass media distribution.

(Refer to the crudely drawn depiction.) The cloud-like formations of ideas hover above the ground available for all to receive, and as time continues onward, these clouds increase in number representing the availability of varied ideas.

It is the trend that ideas will be passed in the form of mass media that is dominant at the time. In 18th century England, the Enlightenment period was inspired by ideas that were passed along in coffee houses and intellectual pamphlets; during the 1920’s, the radio was the source for most news and entertainment; and with the advent of the television in the 50’s, most information had been passed along the ultra high frequencies over the years. However, the public sphere had become restructured after this time because the motivations behind using the television, or dominant mass medium, had changed. It was no longer just a vessel for transporting processed information to the masses. TV had become a commercial industry, degrading the simple transfer of ideas that had been found in the past. Jürgen Habermas devised this concept implying that mass media was becoming a “commodity… rather than a tool for public discourse.”

Today, more than ever, the internet is beginning to overtake the preferences of the population and causing for all forms of other media to submit and become assimilated into its collective (like the Borg). Even television itself has been converted, clipped, transmitted, buffered, and streamed in order to conform to the luxury of the computer. This creates a situation of almost instant gratification. No longer does one have to wait for the news at 10 when he or she can go over to news.google.com and get an instant update on the North Korean nuclear testing.

However, what does this mean for our public sphere? Contrary to Habermas’ predictions, we are finding that this degradation in the concept of the public sphere is not mending itself and is actually running in the opposite direction. Instead of getting a news feed for the masses, people can now personalize what they want to read, hear, or see. This results in a knowledge base that is very focused in one topic but rather clueless in all others. You may be asking yourself, “How will we progress if the entire population becomes a group of disconnected, self-serving individuals without the capacity to know enough about the world to accomplish anything?” The new dominant mass medium has already solved this problem through the magic of collective thinking. To replace the public sphere, people have become separated – physically. However, communication has not decreased, and in fact the world is becoming more connected to itself than ever before through the collection of wires and frequencies known as the Internet. As a result, the former sphere has become an interwoven chain of nearly infinite links that traverses the globe, but what kind of name can we give to something of this netted shape? Oh wait, it already has one. The world wide web.

Verifiability

2006-10-18T12:05:00.000-07:00

Even with the widespread integration of the Internet into daily lives, modern American society is still strongly rooted in the 20th century definition of mass media. Because television, radio, and newspapers were the top sources of information and news during the 1900s, “the economic structure was typified by high-cost hubs and cheap, ubiquitous, reception-only systems at the ends” (Benkler 179). This system has carried over into the age of the Internet.
Our society, even with the Internet, still relies on the media giants to provide true and verifiable news to the American people. Although the Foley scandal (a situation in which an unknown and mysterious blogger exposed a corrupt politician as a child molester) is an excellent example of the ability of people to manage their own news, the mass media corporations still provide the best coherent source of information.
Sites such as Google News are just aggregate sites, and they rely on real news sites to provide the information. When I open my Google home page, the top Google news reports always cite giant print or television media companies. Americans don't want to trust a random individual with a website; they want to trust a giant corporation with a reputation for truthful reporting.
But instead of being a source of news, what the Internet does change about mass media is the distribution of opinions. Ideas can be shared freely over the Internet. Benkler draws a parallel between this and small community meetings back when town meetings were feasible to discuss public opinion. He says that people can use the new forms of media for their communicative benefits – not to get information, but to share ideas. You can read about alternative courses of actions and propose your own. Not in thousands of years has an average citizen been able to interact so freely in open discussion with so many of their peers.
New digital media has so many benefits – widespread distribution, freedom from government control, and it draws from such a huge body of information. People are free to easily and cheaply distribute their opinions and their ideas to the masses over their blogs and message boards with no censorship from newspapers unwilling to publish editorials with radical opinions. But yet as the same time, it is plagued with the never ending drawback of verifiability. Without the solid backing of a reputable company behind news, the masses won't believe it. Not until the media picked up the story (and verified the story) of Foley's sex scandal was it believe by Americans. Mass media corporations will not fade as long as Americans really want the truth and not sensationalized blogging.

Would you do it too?

2006-10-18T12:04:00.000-07:00

Convergence Culture, by Henry Jenkins, speaks of an entire world of services, goods and people being reduced to a single click of the mouse or call of a cell phone. As a result, he explains, the network of consumers will shape the future of the marketplace instead of responding to its present state. He argues, “The old model, which many wisely dismissed, was that consumers vote with their pocket books. The new model is that we are collectively changing the nature of the marketplace and in so doing, we are pressuring companies to change the products they are creating and the ways they relate to their consumers.” It certainly makes sense to the consumer. Why should a person have to sift through aisles of crap in a retail store when they could just go online and build their own outfit? Everyone likes the idea of a large company with all of these executives and resources bowing to the all-knowing consumer with his all-mighty dollar. Jenkins essentially claims that if everyone is educated, informed, but most importantly CONNECTED, everyone can make suggestions and as a result those who were previously empowered will now be forced to acquiesce to the mob.

Now I am going to address the big, pink elephant in the middle of the room:

What are we after? Is it the perfect consumer good? Is it the perfect customer service? No, it’s POWER. Jenkins talks of this global network and references Howard Rheingold, a journalist and digital activist. Rheingold talks of smart mobs, “Smart mobs consist of people who are able to act in concert even if they don’t know each other. The people who make up smart mobs cooperate in ways never before possible because they carry devices that possess both communication and computing capabilities.... Groups of people using these tools will gain new forms of social power.” Another term for this type of association is an “adhocracy”, an organization characterized by a lack of hierarchy. In this case, a vast number of people who can solve individualized and specialized problems work when their services are needed most. As a result, the leader is determined by the instance of the problem. Jenkins mentions the Global Frequency network, a comic book series, in which there is a central network that calls people from around the world to solve certain problems. Jenkins refers to it as rejecting the old notion of superheroes and creating a “twenty-first century equivalent of a volunteer fire department.” Now relate this notion to the information world and what do we get? Wikipedia!!! Clearly this idea has flourished in the technology age for the pursuit of information. However, is it possible this mentality can work for the marketplace as well?

The answer to this question is not a simple “yes” or “no”, but rather “sort-of”. In order to have complete influence over the world around us, the consumer, we need to be both educated and proactive. The problem with this evaluation of our society is that we have no to little more influence than we ever had, we just think we do. Executives are still in the highest floors of the tallest towers saying, “Mwa ha ha, all we have to do is show Paris Hilton holding a cell phone and then everyone will want one, and when we finally give them one, they will feel like they made us do it. It’s too easy!” Unfortunately for us, though technology has given us broader access, it has poisoned us with a lazier “trust everyone else” mentality. Why test drive a car when I can look at a review of it? Well, what would you do if everyone on Myspace.com and Facebook.com started jumping off bridges and saying it was amazing!? Would you do it too?

Has media eaten your GENIUS?

2006-10-18T08:13:00.000-07:00

Emerson defined a “genius” to be someone who created his own original ideas. This meant that you did not have to be any Einstein or Mozart to be considered a genius. You just had to be unique and original – simple! However, now there is also an issue in this Modern Age, or shall I say Post-Modern Age, where there are millions of individuals running around trying to be more original and different than anyone else in the past or present. This running around is found especially in persons in creative fields, such as artists, musicians, and designers, such as myself.
The main issue I want to talk about in being genius is, how do you do it? How do you come up with something no one else has come up with before? The way I see it, there are two approaches. There is what I call the “Hide and Pop Method”. This type of genius hides himself from the world, to make sure nothing from the world taints him and his original works. Then when he thinks he has fully developed his work, he pops out into the world and shows off what he has done. The second approach to becoming genius is what I call the “Look and Pop Method.” This type of genius constantly is studying what people have done in the past and what people are currently working on. While carefully analyzing all the data points, he creates his own work and compares it to everyone else he knows to make sure it is different. Hey Genius, which method do you use?
There are pros and cons to each method. For the Hide and Pop Method, you know that when you pop out of your bubble, your work is really all of your own creative juices at work. You know that you did not steal ideas from anyone. However, there is always the possibility that someone else out of the other millions of “original” people running around, someone else might happen to also think of the same thing (or maybe already did!) For example, the second building I ever designed was based off an idea that each floor of the building acted like a “tray.” I thought I was genius and original, until I found out three hours later that the Harvard Graduate School of Design building was also designed with a “tray” idea a bajillion years before I was born. I felt pretty un-genius after I found that out.
The Look and Pop Method is great because it is a nice feeling to know that you have looked up all of the data points. All you need to do is try to find a spot on the chart where nobody else has landed. The awful thing about the Look and Pop Method is that mass media and mass information may eat up your genius! After studying everyone else’s works, your own ideas may be so influenced or warped by others that you no longer can come up with anything of your own. If you keep studying architects’ past works and studying how they solved every type of design issue, your work will probably be a reflection of all those people you studied if you do not spend any time hiding away by yourself.
So what do you do, Genius? You cannot spend all your time hiding and you cannot spend all your time looking. I now propose the “Look, Hide, Look, Hide, Look, Hide, and then Pop” Method. Look and study what other people have done and are doing. If you are into video editing, watch all kinds of movies and commercials. If you are into painting, Google search for Monet, Renoir, and Frida Khaulo. If you are into web design, go online and search how different companies and students have made their own websites. But BE CAREFUL! Don’t let all that media eat your genius. After you have finished looking, you should go hide and start practicing and experimenting with your own ideas. When you have developed your own “originality,” go back and fill your brain-vacuum with more knowledge. Then go hide again to check up on your own works. Repeat the process one more time, and then pop! Show the world who you are! “Hello, World! My name is Tiffany Li.”

“Hello, World! My name is Tiffany Li. Right now I am looking and I will be hiding sometime soon. In ten years I will be twenty-nine years old and I will pop.”

A New Age of Mass Media Distribution

2006-10-18T07:02:00.000-07:00

For years, mass media has consisted of a unidirectional “hub and spoke” model in which a centralized source distributes content to a large audience. In this model, the centralized source decides what information is relevant and accurate, or worthy of being distributed to the masses. However, with the revolution of the internet and peer content production, we may notice several large-scale changes in the structure and function of mass media distribution.

To outline the characteristics of a peer produced mass media network, we must examine existing peer-produced institutions such as Wikipedia. In this system, encyclopedia entries are created by a single user and then freely edited by other users until the entry reaches an equilibrium point at which the general public agrees with information in the entry. In this respect, “truthful” information is determined by the masses over time rather than given to it from a centralized source. Unlike traditional encyclopedias that follow the current mass media model, Wikipedia’s content is determined by its viewers rather than by a single entity. With the introduction of the internet, there is potential for all forms of mass media to approach this user-defined model over an extended period of time.

Many aspects of the current mass media system are becoming increasingly user-controlled. For example, there used to be a time when the price of watching a television show was enduring a series of advertisements. Now, thanks to TiVo’s live recording technology and iTunes’ new availability of television shows for commercial-free download, users can find ways to opt out of watching commercials. Currently, people do not have to watch the news on television; many receive “RSS feeds”, specialized streams of data over the internet that aggregate pertinent news information and present it to the user. With the advent of the internet, it is theoretically possible that, like Wikipedia, the masses can determine the content. Consider for example the current issue of the Foley messages. The first source of information on the letters was an anonymous blog on the internet, followed by a report on CNN.com about Foley’s alleged sending of sexually explicit letters to minors. However, the veracity of the claims against Foley is questionable. In a user-defined internet-based mass media network, millions of users across the world would provide input and insight into whether or not his crimes truly were committed, and ultimately (in theory) truth would prevail. As mass media moves toward a user-defined limit, the criteria of relevance to the masses and factuality are determined not by a single entity or provider of media, but by a networked audience that continually refines news until it approaches a state of truth and importance to its audience.

One must also keep in mind the limitations of this form of mass media. As in Wikipedia, when controversial issues arise (such as terrorism, scandals, etc.), a user defined report does not reach an equilibrium point; rather, it is edited and changed so often by biased parties that the end result is, simply put, noise.

Ultimately, it is unsure whether or not the internet will usher in a new age of mass media distribution, or whether this revolutionized form will be user-defined. But with the growing trend of user-defined aggregation and refining of information prevalent in currently popular sources of information on the internet, and with the growth in the internet’s bandwidth (with consequent growth in the amount of information available instantly to users), it is quite realistic to envision a mass media revolution in our near future.

Changing Media

2006-10-18T00:38:00.000-07:00

Recent studies have shown that more people vote for American Idol contestants than voted in the last presidential election. What in our culture has fostered this loyalty to a television show? Henry Jenkins addresses this phenomenon and the advertising ramifications of such loyalty in his book Convergence Culture. Jenkins references studies that have shown how viewers who watch a show every week are much more likely to remember the things advertised during the show. This means that more advertisers are willing to pay to advertise on shows like American Idol where so many people keep watching week after week. This leads to a major question: what does American Idol do to keep viewers coming back every week?

Personally, I do not watch American Idol. I have seen parts of several episodes, and I have never voted for a singer. I can understand why American Idol appeals to so many people. In today’s day and age, people want to be involved and vote. However, they also like the convenience of voting from their couches. American Idol is perfect for these people because the show uses votes to decide who wins and yet still makes it incredibly easy for viewers to vote. Media today encourages mass participation. American Idol is just one of the many ways that television is adapting to allow viewers to become more involved as television competes with the internet.

Television has to compete with the internet because many media users enjoy the ability to see many different perspectives quickly. The internet also allows adventurous media users to post their own thoughts and stories. Television does not usually allow for this possibility. American Idol is so successful because it does indeed allow “users” to participate and vote if they want to. This idea will probably be continued in the future to encourage more people to continue to interact with and watch television.

One recent movie, Snakes on a Plane, used internet advertising to help get younger people to the theaters. This movie was innovative because previous movies did not focus on internet advertising as much as this one. The end result was that more internet users went to see the movie in theaters than might have otherwise. With internet based movie rentals such as Netflix and Blockbuster, fewer people are actually going to the theater to watch movies; they can simply wait for the “free” rentals from Netflix or Blockbuster. This type of advertising over the internet will probably play a larger role in future movies because a large percentage of the moviegoers also use the internet as a major source of information and news.

The internet is becoming more popular. As this happens, television shows will have to adapt. Already, shows like American Idol are letting viewers vote. Other network shows post the latest shows online for download. New movie releases also will have to be advertised to online markets to maximize exposure. As the world becomes more oriented around interactive media such as the internet, traditional media such as radio and television are going to have to make large changes to keep their market share.

Politics Found

2006-10-17T22:08:00.000-07:00

American politics today are in a state of emergency. Political discourse has become so polarized that discussing politics in any meaningful way with someone of differing viewpoints is considered downright offensive. The Internet has been hailed by many, such as Lawrence Lessig, as being a wonderful tool that removes the face to face discomfort of debate and frees politics from this constraint. Yochai Benkler, in his book The Wealth of Networks, takes a less utopian view. He analyzes several arguments praising the Internet as a panacea and dissmissing it as nothing new at all, or worse, a cause for further isolation of opinions. Benkler clears the dust for us and reveals the Internet to be something much simpler, a tool for expanding and enhancing the public sphere.

The notion of the “public sphere” should be explained. According the Benkler, the public sphere is a “set of practices members of a society use to communicate about matters they understand to be of public concern and that potentially require collective action or recognition” (177). Basically, what public policies people are talking about and how they are talking. Right now, our sphere looks like a cracked egg. There is an amazing gap between parties where no discourse takes place. This smashed sphere is institutionalized by commercial mass media whose interests lie in capturing eyeballs by catering to the lowest common denominator, not repairing discourse in America.

Enter the Internet. Benkler does a complete analysis of its graph and linkage properties, and to summarize, the Internet breaks down into tiered clusters of linkage based on interest. When something of sufficient interest happens within a small community, it can quickly become linked to by a larger community, and so raise the issue into the general public sphere, or not, if it is unworthy. The public sphere is like a catalyst for state action. The Internet multiplies the surface area of that catalyst so more information can be processed.

The Internet does not, however, suddenly depolarize people. Hot-headed argument, termed a “flame war,” runs rampant in all corners of the Internet. Vandalism occurs frequently on Wikipedia, such as on the evolution article. The Internet does not necessarily engender reasoned communication between individuals, but it does dramatically increase the flow of ideas.

So if the Internet is only a nifty tool for freeing the public sphere from corporate agenda and expanding it, how can politics be saved? There is some backlash from the extensive use of focus groups, pollsters, and consultants in politics. According to Joe Klein, author of Politics Lost, the American people thirst for leadership and authenticity in politics. They are disilusioned with the political process, and as such, new ideas for fixing the system have been percolating across the Internet. Instant runoff voting (IRV), also known as ranked choice voting, has risen and become popular. San Francisco now uses it for city elections. The National Popular Vote Bill has passed California legislature. The Diebold scandal and allegations that the 2004 election was stolen have inspired the Open Voting Consortium to design open, secure, foolproof, and trustworthy voting mechanisms. The author has even participated in this discussion by making a personal blog post and discussing the topic on Facebook. The Internet can help politics, but it is not the Internet itself that will save politics. New policies and cultural norms will save politics, and the Internet will help disseminate and implement these ideas.

Cliques on the Internet

2006-10-17T21:16:00.000-07:00

Kurt Vonnegut once quipped, “True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.” To be led by one’s high school peers is a universally horrifying sentiment mainly as a result of lasting impressions made through social observations during those formative years. The high school experience is characterized by cliques, often exclusive sub-groups, that form out of the population as a whole. Separately these cliques thrive but when forced to interact with each other there is often delay in communication and misunderstanding as a result of differences in perspective. Exchanging and receiving ideas exclusively from a minute portion of the population makes it easy to forget about the opinions of the rest of society. With the growing influence of the internet as a medium for communication and the internet’s proclivity for gathering small groups of people with ‘niche’ interests it appears that our society could be headed toward being comprised of the socially-disjointed groups that make life in high school so intolerable.

In his book, The Wealth of Networks, Yochai Benkler discusses the historical role of media. Most notably, he shows that in pre-internet times, information was spread from a centralized source to the masses—the “hub and spoke” mode of distribution. Functioning this way, it was advantageous for the suppliers of media to target the “lowest-common-denominator” audience. The pressure from advertisers to maintain the greatest number of viewers fostered an era of vanilla-flavored information “because it is easier to lose an audience by offending its members than by being only mildly interesting” (20). Benkler stresses that these banalities were not “failures of imagination, thoughtfulness, or professionalism on the part of media organizations. “These [we]re simply characteristics of a mass-mediated public sphere” (23). In short, the often generic feeling of media was merely the result of the suppliers needing to show profit. And despite its compromise of quality, the media of the twentieth century communicated information to the masses effectively.

In contrast to the compromise made by many consumers favoring accessibility over quality during the mass-media age, the internet allows each user to find specifically what it is that he is seeking. This has revolutionized the way in which information is distributed. Thanks to advances that bring newspapers, television, and radio stations online, citizens are now customizing what they want to be reading, watching, and listening to rather than settling for one-size-fits-all programming. The advantages of these ‘niche’ groups include an increase in quality since productions are no longer geared toward the “lowest-common-denominator.”

Unfortunately, this customization fosters segregation. After discovering a group of like-minded people with similar interests it is difficult to return to interacting with other parts of society. There is no question that dealings are easier amongst people with similar morals, interests, and activities but it is through interaction with others whose ideas conflict with our own that we solidify our own opinions. It is also through these encounters that a society is defined. There is a strong temptation to remain within one’s comfort zone where ideas and news flow freely but in order for society to advance, all ideas must be heard. With the absence of contact between members of these different groups we run the risk of creating an environment similar to that of a perpetual high school in which communication is stilted and often non-existent.

Interesting connection to class discussion

2006-10-17T17:21:00.000-07:00

Here's the URL to a rather interesting tie between mass media and smaller niche groups; the service, by NowPublic, lets the average web surfer pick out interesting material and post it to the site, where it is reviewed by their reporters. see the site for more detail:

http://www.nowpublic.com/highlight

Media Project

2006-10-05T08:44:00.000-07:00

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3383445068494035069&hl=en

John's working video

2006-10-05T07:27:00.000-07:00

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1424997836945169070

The Rusty Rickshaw

2006-10-05T00:41:00.000-07:00

Sorry about this being so late, I originally posted it around 4:30 PM, but for some reason it didn't go on the site. I just now checked back to listen to some other projects and I realized mine wasnt there

powered by ODEO

And, if that doesn't work, use this: http://media.odeo.com/files/7/1/0/907710.mp3

Reid Solves a Rubik's Cube

2006-10-04T22:05:00.000-07:00

Due to severe technical difficulties, I have fallen back to using my webcam to record me solving my Rubik's cube. I was really excited about this assignment, and I'll be on the ball technically next time so I can actually record some cool stuff.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3403867549157266484

P.S. Could you guys not use Flash exclusively in your posts? Macromedia has not deemed it necessary to release 64 bit versions of their proprietary Shockwave/Flash plugin, so I can't see Flash while running my real 64-bit browser without switching to a 32-bit binary. YouTube and Google let you download the actual video, so link that.

Birth of the Blog

2006-10-04T17:34:00.000-07:00

powered by ODEO

And a link to the article mentioned in the podcast:
9/11: Birth of the Blog

EDIT:
If you've tried to listen to the podcast I'm sure you've found out that I'm having some technical difficulties with Odeo. Fortunately, the mp3 works so I'll post that here while I try to fix that problem:
http://media.odeo.com/files/9/0/1/906901.mp3

The Real MIT

2006-10-04T14:52:00.000-07:00

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-149273302392429121

Social Experiment - Thanksgiving Day

2006-10-04T14:31:00.000-07:00

Alternatively, you can go here or here.

MIT Bball in Taiwan

2006-10-04T14:14:00.000-07:00


MIT versus Japenese team. And the dunk contest featuring DOUUUUUU

3.091 Exam

2006-10-04T14:07:00.000-07:00

Dear Mrs. Coleman and fellow classmates. My podcast was a "before and after" thing with a 3.091 exam. It is 5pm now and I just got back from my classes that I had right after my exam so I was only now able to finish the "after" part of the podcast. I'm loading it up now (it says it will take another 15 minutes or so for the file to be compressed etc.) so it won't be long until it's ready. Sorry for being a few minutes late, but it's getting there. -John

NERD

2006-10-04T13:54:00.000-07:00

Beginner's Guide to Foodtongue

2006-10-04T13:52:00.000-07:00


Two conversations spoken in Food Tongue subtitled in English.

Sleep

2006-10-04T13:14:00.000-07:00

Experience the Call Of Duty

2006-10-04T12:38:00.000-07:00

Watch my friend and I doing what we do best when procrastinating.

Tiffany's second blog-posting try!

2006-10-04T10:32:00.000-07:00

About Podcasting

2006-10-04T10:26:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure how to put my video on here! AHHH!
But here's the link to my video:
http://video.google.com/videouploadfinished?docid=4566490438147874962&filename=wsb64__MjF3Ljc4NF9wcm9qZWN0MQ.mov

I'm going to try to figure out how to post it properly, but I just wanted to stick in the URL just in case.

! tiffany !

gniksamkcab - backmasking

2006-10-04T06:00:00.000-07:00

Another Brick in the Wall

2006-10-03T23:52:00.000-07:00

Campus Gymnastics

2006-10-03T23:27:00.000-07:00

My roommate is a gymnast. These are some of the really cool things that he can do around campus...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=768383434162987886

Friday Night

2006-10-03T21:43:00.000-07:00

The Fighting Spirit of Film

2006-10-03T21:32:00.000-07:00

A blend of some of film's greatest (in my opinion) depiction of man's fighting spirit. While these clips come from three very different scenarios, they share many similarities...enjoy.

powered by ODEO

An Informative Look At MMORPG's

2006-10-03T17:40:00.000-07:00

An informative glance at a newly evolving facet of computer gaming, MMORPG's, by means of a virtual tour and discussion on what this genre is all about.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6883752366571506494&hl=en

Baby Got ...

2006-10-03T13:20:00.000-07:00

Freedom Trail by Alan Ho

2006-10-01T13:38:00.000-07:00

A video tour of Boston's storied Freedom Trail - a 2.5 mile red brick line that links sixteen historic sites from our nation's revolutionary beginnings. Filmed and produced by Alan Ho on September 30, 2006. Music by Trevor Rabin.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5563318160382312427&hl=en

2044

2006-09-28T01:20:00.000-07:00

I stand before you, gentlemen and ladies, to examine the events that led to our present day. The world has changed more in the last fifty years than it has in all its Promethean origins. There are no wars, famine, or civil strife. Our illusion of perfection, punctuated by spotless, equitable cityscapes and monolithic, inoffensive skylines, seems complete, seamlessly integrated into our new worldview. We must remember that this is just an illusion, as well as the price we pay for such “perfection.”

There was a time, before many of you were born, when new products were conceived by groups of individuals. The economy thrived on these ideas, embracing the archaic ideals of “originality” and “individuality.” In essence, the creator owned his or her creation, distributing it as he or she wished. The ultimate irony of this system lies in the conception of the internet, which lead to the death of this school of thought. With the web came commonality. Suddenly, we could network the greatest minds of a time period, bringing them from their disparate locations to work on a single problem. Among the first to embrace this phenomenon were Wikipedia and Linux, forerunners to the Halls of Knowledge and Control. Open source soon became ubiquitous, easily outstripping the private sector with cheaper and better products. We started mimicking this practice in politics, industry, and entertainment. The philosophy of many minds over one became ingrained in our culture.

Finally, we took this idea to its extreme: if several minds are better than one, then all minds are better than several. This was the essence of Open Source, Open Mind, a technology that itself was peer edited. The program took opinions directly from the minds of its users, broadcasting them to a central database which would then compile the best possible amalgamate of a project from this data. Political and social strife ended as Open Mind created millions of fair and equitable plans and technologies, ensuring that the greatest benefit was presented to the collective. In this day and age, ownership has become obsolete. All people contribute to the Open Mind, and all its creations belong to the cooperative. We willingly give total control to this system, lauding the benefits while remaining blind to the dire consequences.

Although Open Mind originally created a flurry of innovations, the flood of ideas waned to a trickle as humanity began to express less and less sentiments for change. Soon, any new proposed project merely whittled down as people expressed so many conflicting viewpoints that Open Mind had no choice but to create one inoffensive to all. Thus, our present society is not one of enlightenment and virtue, but of stagnation and political correctness. The notion of artistic vision has been murdered, destroyed by the diversity of human spirit that, ironically, made open source popular. As I walk through the streets of our fair Utopia, I see none of the fierce hatred or sadness that permeated olden times, but neither do I see passionate exuberance or creativity. We, as a race, are content with our present situation, but as individuals, as man, we falter in it. You see, while freedom from strife is a luxury which Open Mind affords us, what it denies us is something far more fundamental and necessary: invention.

Wikipedia- An example of the fallacies of open-sharing

2006-09-28T01:11:00.001-07:00

Up until last month, I have shamefully used Wikipedia as my principal source of information for everything from tissue subculture to tennis rankings. I, like many of my peers, had great faith in the open-sharing format and truly believed editors and reviewers would rapidly weed out any fallacies in the published information. Much to my disappointment, this was not the case.

As I was finishing an internship at Novartis this summer, my final project entailed creating a poster to summarize my work. To find some background information, I performed a Google search and clicked on the first link I saw- a Wikipedia article. Never thinking to double check the accuracy of the article, I included the information in my poster. The next day when I presented my summer work, the judges immediately looked at the poster and pointed out that the Wikipedia information I had included was an outdated and false opinion. I was shocked: could my trusted Wikipedia have actually provided me with false information?

As I think about it more, the greatest advantage of Wikipedia, the ability of anyone to add/ edit anything, is also its’ biggest drawback. As far as I know, the article I read about Darwin’s theory of evolution could have been written by a proponent of the Church of Scientology, or Tom Cruise himself. The problem with open-sharing is that many times it allows opinion to override fact. Posting information has become just as much about politicizing an opinion as it is about providing an accurate account. And when this politicization gets out of control, people like John Seigenthaler have their names slandered and jobs put into jeopardy.

As I learned from my Novartis poster, most contributions to Wikipedia are poorly researched, if they are researched at all. Often times, the accuracy of an article will depend solely on one website from which the contributor obtained the information. As a result, a substantial amount of information on Wikipedia is highly biased, has many gaps, or is just plain wrong. Furthermore, texts for articles in Wikipedia are often directly copied from other websites. And due to the open format of Wikipedia, no copyright holder can do anything about this.

The Wiki generation has created noise and chaos, not knowledge. Previous Encyclopedias contained precise information that was well researched by trusted sources. Wikipedia, on the other hand, contains a large amount of errors and superfluous facts. While I agree that Wikipedia is a good source for general knowledge, it should never be trusted as a primary source for information and should be recognized by its users as an unreliable and untrustworthy reference.

Wikipedia- An example of the fallacies of open-sharing

2006-09-28T01:11:00.000-07:00