Evolution and Trends in Digital Media

Blog Assign 2

2006-11-30T17:16:00.000-08:00

How have you used information/communication technologies over the course of the past 2.5 days -- since snow began falling on Sunday. How has the ubiquity of the Internet changed your behavior? In other words, in some pre-Internet storm/event ... how did you communicate? How did you learn about the storm/event?

That is a very good question. I checked email, and weather reports, and made my driving desisions accordingly. Now I have learned that was a mistake. They were always wrong! Could I have done without? Sure. Now I think I will know how it will be, but I still don't. So I think I can plan, when really, we still have no clue. It was supposed to snow yesterday but all I got was RAIN. Sigh.

pre-Internet? Um.... I was in middle school, I asked my mom. Then I went play in the snow. I don't know how she found out. TV? Radio? Called the school?

Blog Assign 1

2006-11-30T17:10:00.000-08:00

Think of some piece of technology that you have recently purchased or a piece of software or feature of an existing piece of technology that you have recently started using.
Think about why you made this decision - what factors caused the "adoption."
Now - talk about your experience ... and then think about the theories we've talked about in class. Which theories help explain your behavior?
I just started using IE7. Why? Because I figure the less software on my machine the better. I've always used IE, I like IE, I haven't found anything that IE can't do. And lots of sites don't work on firefox and the others.

Now, why IE7. Well I figure if I'm going to have to answer people's questions on IE7, I should have at least tried to use it, right? So I downloaded the beta version and installed it. To my surprise, it didn't crash. It installed happily, and came up.

The only annoying part of the install is it defaults my search bar to windows live. I happily changed that to google, and was very impressed with MS since it was an option! Anyway, so now running my IE7 successfuly. I have happily gotten used to tabbed browsing and find that for many things I still like a new IE window. But its nice to have the option.

The only thing I think they made a HUGE mistake with in terms of adoption is that they took away the menu bar. Error messages say go to tools -> options -> but there is no tool menu, no file menu. Now its easy to put back of course, but I know I will have to MANUALLY put it back on many of my users machines. Sigh. Why take it away? Isn't it kinda important?

Now that its not beta, I'm still using it without problem. I guess it wasnt different enough to bother me or have a large learning curve, its supposed to be safer, and will be the new thing people will start using. Thats fine with me, I get tabs.

Reading 7

2006-11-19T22:56:00.000-08:00

Chapter 12

I agree with him that copywrite is a very good thing, but tends to get abused to easily. Even though many works should be in the public domain, it is getting harder and harder to get access to them anyway. If I want a hard copy I'm happy to pay for the cost of that, but reading them online should be easy and low cost.

A Czech author Chapek, used to be in the public domain, but the government decided to remove it and put it back in the private domain.

I think the idea of expanding the converstation after reading material is a great idea. Something like what newsvine does for news could be done for books.

Chapter 9 Trolls, Spin, and the Boundaries of Trust

This chapter basically says that we need to use common sense when reading things online. We shouldnt just assume everything is true. You know why, because normal people make up the internet. Would you trust everything some stranger told you on the street? Would you trust your uncles latest rambling without verifying anything? Probably not. But you would trust a professor or other valid sourse that you trust.

Great. So his suggestions on how to know what to trust or not on the internet is to find out who they are, then we can know weather to trust them or not. But then admits that would destroy the most beneficial part of the internet (IMHO) that people can anonymously learn, study, and discuss things that would not be accepted by their social groups. In many parts of the world this is democracy, peace, human rights.

I'd rather not give this up for validity. I can make up my own mind what to trust, I dont want the goverment or buisness regulating what I can read. Then its the same as print, which I dont find enough.

Under communism, in the Czech Republic you had this sort of censorship and watchfulness. Your neighbor wrote down everytime you went to buy bread and reported it to the police. Everything was tracked. The press was completely censored, TV, and books were such propaganda they were not worth reading. I remember growing up I told my mom if she read any book in Czech she didn't actually read it. What she thought was Huck Finn was nothing like the actual book. She read the title, but they censored it so much, we couldnt even see any similarities except the name. I asked her to read the books she read in Czech, in English. Every time she does, she exclaims, that was nothing like what I read before!

Who wants the internet to become like this? I would much rather deal with the trolls, the opinions I dislike, then to have no disussion at all. I don't want to tracking. People should learn to think for themselves. The country that is doing a lot of "thinking" for its own people is China. I hope we never get to this level.

Here are three interesting articles about Censorship and Press in China.

Perry Keller, “Privilege and Punishment: Press Governance in China.” (2003) 21 Cardozo Arts & Ent.L.J. 87.

Benjamin L. Liebman, “Watchdog or Demagogue? The Media in the Chinese Legal System” (2005) 105 Colum.L.Rev. 1

OpenNet Initiative, Internet Filtering in China in 2004-2005: A Country Study,
http://www.opennetinitiative.net/studies/china

The best web hoax I can remember is lonely girl.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonelygirl15

Interesting Quotes from the Chapter

“You should judge my credibility by how my statements correspond with the facts, logic, and the law—not by who I am.”

"But if we are going to have serious online discussions, I think all parties should, with few exceptions, either be willing to verify who they are, or risk having their contributions be questioned and, in some cases, ignored."

"Not everyone has a right to speak on everyone else’s site or be part of everyone else’s
conversation."

"It’s as if the Internet is not only selfcorrecting about matters of fact but also morally self-correcting: A bad turn is corrected by several good ones.”

"But for now, people need to take information on the Internet with the proverbial grain of salt."

Reading 6

2006-11-13T19:11:00.000-08:00

Everyone: "The Tragedy of the Commons" by Garret Hardin from Science Magazine (1968).

How does the theory of the commons relate to the Internet, community, or politics? What are your experiences with electronic government or eDemocracy; how would you rate them? Is this evolution good or bad, and why?

When I saw this title it made me think of a story from my economics class about sheep in England. Then I read the article. It WAS about sheep in England, well sortof. I felt smart =)

The theory applies to the Internet in that its a shared resource that people have little incentive to share and keep open. People use bandwith as they please, but at least when they use bandwith it doesn't disapear. But then neither did the grass if you didnt use too much. If the internet is simply used without any research and additions to it, it will grow old and die. The only reason its still working as a common resource is that we are putting so much energy and work into it. Imagine if the few countries who do so much for it, stopped. It would hurt everyone else.

I don't even want to think about and electronic government. Isn't the government we the people?? It can be useful sometimes... but, I think we shouldn't loose the people.

Reading 5

2006-11-02T15:47:00.000-08:00

Online Communities

What type of communitiy have you experienced online? Mostly my own. I usually only talk to friends from "real life" online instead of meeting new people there. Sometimes they will add a few friends into the mix that I've never met, but they are still friends of real friends, so not just some stranger.

In high school I used to chat with all sorts of wierd people online that I had never met. I've since learned my lesson. No more gaming for me.

How have they differed from off-line communities? Not much, for me they are mainly the same people. Off-line is way more enjoyable of a way to spend with friends.

What characteristics of the Internet affect growth, power, and effectiveness of online communities? First, the people need to have something in common. Like knitting. There is some common bond to bring the people together. Second, it has to be moderated to keep the "bad" folk out that would ruin it for the rest. Finally, people have to be able to foster a community through chat/bb/messaging ect. If those are in place, I think you'll very easily have a happy little online community.

Reading 4

2006-10-27T17:34:00.000-07:00

Ecologizing Mobile Media, By Howard Rheingold

"All technological change is a Faustian bargain. For every advantage a new technology offers, there is always a corresponding disadvantage." Why is it that the corresponding disadvantage always seems bigger than the advantage?

When people lived in tents they had a hard time. And the strong ones usually won. Ok, so weapons even things out, but then came cannons, and poison, and nukes. There's a part where techonolgy has made the world a worse place to live in. Yeah it sucks being out in the woods when you run into a cougar at 2 am and he stares at you menacingly from the hill ready to jump on you (gotta love the Olympic peninsula) and you wish you had a portable cannon, but then, walking through the woods in the moonlite without having to worry about all the nuclear war programs on the earth is worth the cougar. I have a chance with the cougar, I hope.

Or with medicine, yup its great to have a vaccine against mumps. But, with that I now have to worry about them creating some disease that wipes out all people of one race. Great. Is the vaccine worth it?

What about with computers? Yeah, the knowldege, convinience, connections are great. But what really is the cost? I'm not sure we know yet.

As for Flattner....

The flat thing makes no sense to me. Doesnt he realize it takes almost as long to fly to DC as it does to London from Seattle? Why? Cause the roundness of the earth makes connecting everythign a lot faster. Why flat?? I like the level idea way better. Thats what the Indian guy told him, earth is leveling. To me that analogy makes way more sense. We are not going back in time to a flat world...

Besides the title, and his horrible use of metaphors, the concept was ok. I agree with him that our education system sucks. I can't understand the huge sense of entitlement. Why do we think that without hard work we will continue to prosper? I don't get it. Only about 7 of the almost 200 people in my class went on to universities. The rest were amazed that life was hard for them. We are so not prepared.

Reading 3

2006-10-20T16:06:00.000-07:00

"Discuss the effects of applying computing power to communication. What might Bush forecast today, if he were looking to 2050?"

Everyone: "As We May Think," by Vannevar Bush from The Atlantic Monthly, July 1945.

Bush correctly points out that inventions are limited by many other factors than if they are good inventions. They need to be feasable to create at that time, need to have the money and the facilities to produce them, and they need to be inderstood by those who have the money to create them. So this is why we have so many terrible inventions made...

Inventions and technology have always increased our ability to communicate over distances and communicate in other ways then directly. As computing power increases communication aided by technology will also increase. They now have this cool thing where on your cell phone you can see the status of the people in your address book. Kinda like IM/Addressbook/Phone. Things like that are great. But they do take away the time we actually spend in person with people.

I think all techonology that helps keep people connected is a good thing. I just worry that the negative impact it leaves is bigger than the positive. Even though people can all easily find a community online and have someone to talk to, I think it would be better for them to learn how to communicate and have an actual community. If technology increases in communication, I am afraid it will make communication so short and easy, we will loose a lot in the proccess.

What Bush might forcast, I have no idea. I would have to have some idea of what might happen. He seemed to take technology that existed and improve it, and say thats what we will have in the future. I think though that technology will change so drastically that we don't have the concepts or the words to describe what will happen.

Reading 2

2006-10-16T14:20:00.000-07:00

Informing ourselves to death. An interesting thought. I thought it was so cool when Socrates and thinkers of his day could learn about everything. They were studying math, science, history, philosophy, astronomy, and creating so much for these fields. Now to even get a basic understanding in all fields is pretty much impossible.

I think the author misses one point. Many many many people in the world have the exact same type of belief system that existed in the middle ages. And what difference does it make if 10,000 angels can dance on a pin head because God made it that way, and the chair was made out of a herring because God made it possible?

I think that the author of the document is correct in pointing out that information does nothing for us, unless we reflect on it. It won't take away starvation in Kenya, but if everyone in Kenya started reading philosophy (which I think is the cure to everything) they would get wisdom. With wisdom, comes peace and understanding. They would then stop accepting our debilitating handouts, fix their economy we keep breaking, stop fighting each other, and eat. Wisdom is what hasn't increased since the middle ages. Knowledge has. We need to figure out how to turn that knowledge into wisdom.

What he fails to point out is technology gives us the chance to find wisdom. Before we got agriculture and community, we were too busy fighting for out lives to have time to reflect. Now we have all we need to become better people. The problem? It's not just information technology brings. It's also distraction, addicting distraction, that keeps us from processing the information into anything useful. Its not the computers, but the games!!

It was a great article. I wish everyone who works with computers would have a chance to read it.

Reading 1

2006-10-10T14:57:00.000-07:00

Media Technology and Society -Brian Winston

So while I was reading, besides, that it was hard to see what the article was actually trying to tell me... society affects technology. Who doesn't know that? I'm not sure the circle diagrams told me much. I think if he explains the diagrams more in the book, I'll get a lot more out of it.

Noam Chomsky is a great political and human rights activist. I enjoy reading his works, on politics. But as a linguist? He said he never taught a child a language (so he didn't know how people actually aquire their first language, even though he has three children) and he never learned a forign language himself. How can he be a linguist? Don't you need to practice something before you can figure out the theory? Anyway, hes theories on linguistics always seem a bit odd to me.

"As a society we are schizophrenic about machines." How is being wary of new technology, knowing its inevitible, and trying to fit it into our current social patterns schirzophrenic? That seems like a perfectly logical reaction. How would he want us to react?

LLC's are new, weren't they made in 1977? Not in the last century?

Why is he quoting Louis Carroll?? Couldn't he just say, not full suppression, or use another word altogether? Clio's graments, Popper? What is he trying to do, show he's culturally educated? Ok, so maybe I shouldn't be writing my blog after reading, http://realitysteve.com/2006/10/bachelor-recap-10206.html and having a huge headache and cold =)