I don't know why I stopped posting.

It's time to get back into blogging.
I know I don't have an audience at all right now, but I still relish the idea that someone will take an interest and actually read this one day.

I woke up this morning in an awful mood. Getting kinda pissed about the way Humber is handling its Frosh/Orientation events. This year, the Humber Student Federation (HSF) decided that it would be a good idea to limit numbers and make everyone buy tickets to the Frosh events in advance. So instead of waiting 30 mins to get into an event that's a bit crowded, now I've waited a total of 5 hours in line, only to be told that there were no tickets available for the first two events. Now I could buy a 50$ connection card and get in, but i dunno. It also gets you into pub nights... I'll have to think about it.

I just got out of class, and I am in the best mood. I got to see my pal Mayowa for the first time in months, and we've been talking about composing some music together. Keep your eyes on the horizon for some unique stuff.

Stay posted for more on this. Hopefully we'll be productive tomorrow.


-WC-

The "Death" of the Web - Post # 13 - Week 12 Pt 2

Applications are reactive to the web’s success. They don’t generate their own model. An app that utilizes the internet utilizes the web. It cannot stand alone. An app is like the stock of a rifle. It makes using the gun easier, but without the gun, a stock is worse than useless.

The article also made some odd statements about the nature of certain websites. The most important part of the word ‘website’ is the ‘web’ part, but the authors appear to have forgotten this. According to Wolff, at the peak of its success, “Facebook became a parallel world to the Web”. Just because a particular site dominates the population of internet users doesn’t somehow transform it into another entity. If you believe this, you would have to accept that if enough people got together on a huge boat, that boat would suddenly become a new country. It’s just a boat in the vast ocean, and the people on it are just a portion of a greater whole.

Google represents a sort of Roman Empire online. Since Google owns such a vast portion of the web, there are others who try to reinvent the web in order to pull the carpet out from beneath Google’s feet. This article promotes the idea that apps are here to do just that, but apps support the web instead of replacing it. In essence, apps have solidified the position of the web in everyday life.

Recently, I’ve noticed mounting evidence that companies are beginning to get the message – give the customer what they want, with limited effort on their part, but with ample options and variety. Some systems that use this well: iTunes, with its vast library, but quick service; amazon.com, which features a huge repertoire of items, with a million instant checkout counters; and Craigslist, which manages a large assortment of goods with a geographical emphasis. The sites that run with the customer in mind are the sites that get used. The thing is, customers don’t want to pay for what they don’t have to pay. Thus, piracy and open-source software has an advantage over other sites and apps. What balances this is the increased reliability of sites and apps that are paid for. At least, it’s in the corporate interest if users believe their experience is superior to the experience you could get for free. Whether or not this is true is up to the user to decide.

Not the Pointy Rocks Thing Again... The "Death" of the Web - Post 12 - Week 12 Pt1

Only things that are alive can ever die.

I’ll be talking about this article. If you actually take the time to read it, I am honestly impressed, but I must make a suggestion: read the comments section too. There are several excellent comments near the top of the stack, that definitely complement the article. Note that I said ‘complement’ and not ‘compliment’. The best comments are the ones that tear apart the claims of the authors of this article, Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff.

Why do technology writers rely so heavily on grand, sensational analogies in their work? I thought I had made it clear back in my Pointy Rocks post (which the authors clearly didn’t read) that the Web is not a living organism. It is an exceptionally pointy rock, not the adoptive child of the entire world. The web isn’t dead because the web was never alive. The web is certainly changing, but to announce its death is as ridiculous as claiming your can of Sprite just asked to use the washroom. It just doesn’t happen.

The authors got a lot of things half right. Chris Anderson made the statement that since youth have more time than money, they are more apt to use elements of the web that take more effort, but have the advantage of being free. For example, fire sharing is prevalent among youth, because they are willing to put forth the effort necessary to download torrents of pirated movies. More aged users have more money and less time to spend than youth. Because of this, they would rather just pay to get exactly what they want quickly. Both young and old want the same final product, but the methods to get the item changes with the resources available. Anderson got up to here right, but when he tries to relate the above information to the popularity of apps, his arguments fall short.

Anderson states that people pay for the quality of service (QoS) and convenience of apps. According to him, the best quality of an application is that it brings to the user exactly what they want with limited effort on their part. If this were true, we would never have moved away from desktop applications. We would be using Google.exe or the Mac equivalent if applications were king. Instead we use applications to access the web, which in turn provides users with a vast selection of services. There is ample selection and variety. It is much more convenient to open one application and browse using it than it is to open a specific app for the specific action you want to perform. Why use 5 apps when you can open one and get all the same information? It doesn’t make sense.

According to this article, HTML5 is an attempt to make the Web more app-like. Developers want to make websites run smoothly and easily. In its youth, only those with technical knowledge could aptly use the web. Since then, the web has become more accessible and easier to use without advanced knowledge of network systems. The authors of the article mistook the ease of use of applications for the next step of development. Apps are so easy to use because they present such a limited amount of stuff. There’s no other word to use than stuff. The typical browser has to show so many different types of media, that it is just not feasible to make it perfectly streamlined. When web controls improve, apps will be entirely unnecessary.

This post is about piracy – Post # 11 – Week 11

I’m on a roll tonight. I just finished post # 10, and now that I’m feeling better, it’s time to go back to what this blog is really about: analyzing literary works that are concerned with communication technology and culture.

We’re back to Matt Mason and The Pirate’s Dilemma, chapter two in particular. I’m sure you all have a copy by now. If not, they released it online for free, so go ahead and get it so you can be smart and stuff. In all seriousness, the book is pretty solid, despite being a few years old. For y’all who ain’t down with the kids’ slang, solid = good. Anyways, lets get on with it. I’ll begin with a picture. 

I like this image a lot. It’s not in The Pirate’s Dilemma, but I think Mason would like the picture too. This “handy little guide” is a comprehensive explanation for the piracy newbie, but it falls a bit short when you try to explain patent piracy. With patent piracy, once someone copies your patent, you really don’t have any power anymore. I’m not sure that I really agree with patenting to begin with. I understand that the creator wants some recognition for inventing whatever the patent is for, but it seems wrong to allow inventors to hold a monopoly over the use of what they made.

For example, Mason references the medicine situation I touched upon in my last post. Western companies that own patents for medicines sell their goods to developing countries at Western prices. The majority of people can’t afford the medicine at the prices it is offered at, but there is no cheaper alternative. The cheaper alternative can’t be made because the major company won’t let others copy its precious, patented formula. So thousands die, unless pirates come to the rescue. Patent pirates just don’t care about what the company thinks is important (i.e. their profits), so they risk everything by making copies of the big brand medicine and sell it for an affordable price. And you thought piracy was a bad thing.

What does this mean? Well it certainly shows how committed the health industry is to protecting health. Drug companies clearly don’t make drugs just to help people. They make drugs for the paycheck, and the whole “betterment of humanity” thing is just a side effect that helps them sleep at night. After being revealed, certain drug companies dropped their prices by 80% when selling medicines to developing nations. By doing so, they made their product more competitive. When there are cheaper alternatives, people will buy those. So the big companies dropped their prices. The fact that they shed 80% of the price tag is one thing, but the intentions are another entirely. Drug companies were made to look bad, and they lost money. So to fix it, they drop their prices in an attempt to fit in. Not only do they appear to have realized their wrongs, but they can start making money again. They can’t lose!

This post is not about piracy - Post # 10

I’m sorry, and it won’t happen again. I’m perfectly aware of how much of a snore that last post was. I don’t know what’s happened. I think the veneer of blog writing rubbed off. The first few posts were great. Remember Pointy Things? I loved that. Writing these posts has become a chore. It hurts to admit that. I made the last post because I realized that I had to submit a total of 12 posts with only 10 readings to write about. Now I’m running out of time and I have to write this one and two more. I’m not confident that they will be my best work. I still have to decide what I’ll write about for my last post, which I don’t have any readings to supplement. I hope my readers, and especially my evaluator, won’t mind if I use that opportunity to discuss some of the internal debates on ethics that I’ve been having throughout this course. Without further ado, I present my next blog post. Don’t get excited, I have low expectations for the next few posts.

This post is about piracy…

What an awful way to start a blog entry, especially when the topic is actually interesting. I read the chapter and everything, but with the mood I’m in, I think piracy is going to have to wait until the next entry. Just like that, this just turned into a completely different blog post, right before your eyes!

This post is not about piracy.

I recently joined Twitter. There’s a link on the right side of this blog. I’ve noticed that among the trending topics, #thingsthatpissmeoff is there pretty regularly. Sure enough, I just checked and it’s not there. The point I wanted to make, but which now seems pointless, is that the #thingsthatpissmeoff trend pisses me off. It’s just a series of people complaining about the dumbest things. For example:

“Old crusty people taking up space on the highway in rush hour traffic is on the top of my list…” – Nathan Riddell.

I have no idea who this Nathan Riddell is, but I don’t like him. If the elderly in traffic are at the top of your list of things that anger you, where does that leave things like Monsanto completely monopolizing farming or governments supporting corporations that have complete control over the media (I’ll talk about Monsanto in my next post). Stuff like that makes me really angry, and they’re not even on Mr Nathan Riddell’s list. They can’t be, or else “crusty old people” wouldn’t be at the top.

I’m trying to figure out exactly why things like the Monsanto situation make me angry. One reason is that I can’t stand the fact that humans can ignore the throes of death in order to preserve their own bottom line. How fucking sick do you have to be to watch calmly as thousands of your fellow human beings shrivel to a lifeless, bloody pulp at your feet because:

            You wouldn’t sell them the medicine they need.

            No-one can grow food without paying you first.

            You’re pumping oil into their backyard.

            You won’t tell anyone about the genocide going on.

The worst thing is that I’m doing this, too. I’m supporting the people (do they deserve that title) who condone the murder of millions of people by using their medicine, eating their food, driving their cars and being ignorant to the plight of others. I line the pockets of greedy, awful people, and it makes me sick. I am actually nauseous right now, just thinking about it. (It could have been the awful mac and cheese I had for lunch, but the poetic side of me says that my current gastro-intestinal instability is being caused by my conscience.)

That’s why I’ve been struggling with assignments these last few weeks: I’ve been struggling with myself for these last few weeks. A lot of things, including this course, have turned my concept of humanity on its head. I’ve been doing everything in my power to observe and take in content from a variety of sources, and my work has been suffering. I’ve been focussed on input rather than output. While others are frustrated that I’m not doing “work”, I know that something way more important is going on. I’m gobbling up ideas and concepts from everywhere, and I’m chewing on them very carefully and very slowly. I think it’s called learning, and I’m not ready to make a conclusion just yet. In the mean time, I’ll make more blog entries.

Social Networking and Participatory Surveillance - Blog Post # 9 - Week 10 Pt 2

Anders Albrechtslund strikes me as slightly more optimistic than Zimmer in the last article I examined. You can read Albrechtslund’s article here. Don’t misunderstand me though; Albrechtslund is just as aware of the privacy concerns that many have about the web. The difference between the two is that while Zimmer examines the need for monitoring and aggregation of data and the privacy concerns associated with that, Albrechtslund is instead considering the empowering and playful nature of participatory surveillance. In my head, I imagine Zimmer saying “Watch out!” while Albrechtslund says “Hey look, isn’t this neat!”. I have to say, I associate far more with Albrechtslund.

A lot of online privacy concerns occur in a manner that combines both the virtual and physical world. For example, a naïve teen posting a status that says “Dominican with the whole family for 2 weeks”, they have essentially invited thieves into their home. Albrechtslund makes the point that social networking needs to incorporate both the physical and virtual world in order to be successful. It is by isolating the virtual world that people put themselves at risk – actions online often have real-world consequences. The once mega-popular site MySpace gave users a sense of owning a space online. The problem is that the space allotted to each user is a bit like a bedroom with glass walls. Everything in the room is visible and should be presented as such. Users need to realize that the advancing social web is increasing the amount of required accountability. Using social networking sites eliminates the protection of anonymity, which too many take for granted.

Albrechtslund talks about invisible audiences – the people who access your information despite without you intentionally revealing it to them. The intended audience is not always the actual audience. Therefore, users must be prepared for anyone online to read their information. Users cannot assume that the intended recipient will be the sole recipient. Therefore, posting any sort of delicate information online is dangerous. Internet users need to become acquainted with how sharing information in the virtual world can have repercussions in the physical world. Instead of blaming the evil interwebs for identity theft, it is more appropriate to blame those who make their information available for people to take advantage of. This reminds me of the whole “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” The difference between guns and the web is that guns were made for only one purpose, and it certainly isn’t sharing.

Sometimes, it isn’t a user’s fault that their information gets into the wrong hands. A testimonial from the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre goes to show that banks are slimy gits who can’t take responsibility for ruining lives. This kind of thing irks me to no end.

Privacy Undone: How Convenient - Blog Post # 8 - Week 10 Pt 1

Are we selling our souls online? In my last post, I talked about how users pay for a website’s service using their personal information as currency. We aren’t always aware of the transaction, but Michael Zimmer certainly is. The recent course readings included an article by Mr. Zimmer concerning online privacy and surveillance, which you can find here. It has an obscenely long title, but thanks to the advances of Web 2.0 (namely linking), I don’t have to write it out in order for you to find it. All you have to do is click on the underlined blue text up there. How convenient.

I fear being too pretentious, but I’d really like to coin a new term: the Mephistopheles Complex. The Mephistopheles complex refers to the common practice of corporations making grand promises to encourage users to surrender their information (and ultimately their anonymity) unknowingly and permanently. This goes hand in hand with the “Faustian bargain” Zimmer describes in the article with the obscenely long title.  In the ancient German tale of Faust (or Faustus depending on which story you read), the demon Mephistopheles mediates a deal between the devil and titular scholar Doctor Faustus. In exchange for his soul, Faustus receives ultimate power and infinite knowledge – or so he is made to believe. It is Mephistopheles who persuades Faustus to seal the pact and in the end, it is Mephistopheles who collects his soul and sends the doctor to his damnation. I read Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus back in high school, and I can’t help but find similarities between the themes of the play and the current state of the Web. The Wikipedia entry on Marlowe’s work is rather inaccurate, but you can read the play in its entirety here. How convenient.

Users willingly sacrifice their information in order to receive the rewards promised by Web and Search 2.0: “breadth, depth, efficiency, and relevancy”. In his article, Zimmer is specifically referring to Search 2.0, but I would argue that the terms could just as easily be applied to the social web. Users want sites that are all-inclusive, and that effectively spoon-feed them the specific content they want. It is very difficult to provide specific content along with a variety of content. Sites that achieve this (eBay, Wikipedia, Facebook) allow users to seek out specific content and also provide content that the site deems relevant. Sites that accomplish this are often the ones that experience the most success. YouTube provides recommended videos in the same way that Facebook recommends friends. The site recalls your stored information and makes an effort to provide you with content of interest to you. The problem is that we rarely consider the cost at which these services are rendered. How convenient.

More on Zimmer in the next post.

Voluntold: Who Benefits from my Unpaid Work? - Blog Post # 7 – Week 9

There have always been volunteers who provide labour without financial remuneration. For every tree-hugging activist, there are two YouTubers who have uploaded videos. Those who archive sites for others to discover using StumbleUpon do so for free – at least in the traditional sense of the word. Volunteers do not work for nothing. Instead of money, volunteers receive a different type of payment: satisfaction.

           

The exchange of labour for payment between an employee and his/her employer has changed, albeit slightly. This change is not sudden, nor all-consuming; rather, it has been with us for a long time. The difference now is in the proliferation of the number of people who work for personal satisfaction. The social web has provided opportunities for millions of users to volunteer their time towards an ultimate goal. The (professionally unpopular) online encyclopedia known as Wikipedia does not pay its contributors. Those who invest time and effort into the creation of Wikipedia entries do not receive any monetary gain from doing so. However, they do gain a sense of worth for contributing their valued input to the site.

“Valued input.”

How can a series of thoughts, expressed in words and reproduced (for free) on monitors worldwide be “valued input”? Because value is relative. In this week’s reading, Changing Notions of Labour – From Participation to Exploitation, Søren Mørk Petersen states that nothing has an inherent value. “Usually we would ascribe significance or value to objects and subjects as if it came from within.” Instead, we need to realize that value is assigned relative to the supply and demand for an object.

Real life example: A starving man would give his life savings for a piece of bread.

Digital Age example: Digital music is so abundant online that there is no (rational) point in paying for it. People do pay for it, but more out of pity and favouritism than anything else.

As we have seen in the past few decades, web technology is dynamic. As the technology changes, so does the value of communication, information, and entertainment. Stamps are far less commonly used now than when mail was the only communication option short of smoke signals. The value of stamps has decreased in general opinion because of the advent of new communication technology. There is less demand for stamps, therefore their value is diminished. The internet is going to change the notion of supply and demand, because it eliminates the first half of that equation. Once something is online, it can be reproduced ad infinitum.

Capitalism is also dynamic, Petersen points out. It reinvents itself in order to turn a profit. Those who profit from capitalism are already cashing in on the web. Corporations don’t have to worry about maintaining a supply of their online product. They just have to ensure that there is demand for it, and that someone is available to rake in the money. But pirates are here to break the mould. Since the corporations have their product online, ready to be reproduced and sold, pirates find a way around paying for it.

With pirates on the horizon, capitalists have a crisis on their hands. In order to battle it, they have created opportunities for internet users to “volunteer” their time, while taking the information they provide and selling it. This allows other corporations to advocate their product more effectively, ensuring their own profits. What concerns many is this system’s reliance on users to “volunteer”. Some worry that this is exploitation. By definition, exploitation is the unfair treatment of others for personal gain. In this case, corporations have been called exploitative for not paying users for their work maintaining and contributing to websites. However, if the site leads to personal satisfaction, then the users are being paid, just not in the traditional sense. But here’s the kicker. Many popular sites today allow users to connect in order to exchange information through linguistic communication in order to benefit general knowledge. In his article, Petersen references Paolo Virno, who in his 1996 work, Marxism Beyond Marxism states:

“Science, information, linguistic communication, and knowledge in general – rather than labor time – are now the central pillars on which production and wealth rest.”

Are those who work for “Science, information, linguistic communication, and knowledge in general” attaining wealth? I certainly think so.

Way Off the Mark - Post # 6 - Week 8

Media theorist Trebor Scholz has me convinced. Web 2.0 really is just a useless buzzword used to advertise the web. It says: “Look! Something shiny and new!” when in reality, the technology that is massively popular today has been around for a while before this Web 2.0 stage is said to have begun. A veil of uncertainty surrounds Web 2.0, as there is not even a definitive release date. Nobody really knows when it started.

In his essay entitled Market Ideology and the Myths of Web 2.0, Trebor Scholz didn’t impress me entirely. I started disagreeing with Scholz halfway through the abstract. The idea that the branding of Web 2.0 limits the imagination of the future web is ridiculous. Toy Story 2 did not prevent Toy Story 3 from becoming a blockbuster. Unless I am misunderstanding his point, Scholz is way off the mark here. According to Scholz, Web 2.0 also limits media discourse. My jaw is on the floor. Is Scholz blind to the millions of discussions taking place on the web? Has he not seen countless conversations, arguments and idea sharing online? This blows me away.

Scholz makes clear that the widespread use of Web 2.0 technology is new, but the technology itself is not. In fact, technology was deemed to be Web 2.0 material after its release, instead of being designed to fit into the Web 2.0 environment. The creation of the term Web 2.0 is akin to changing the colour of a jellybean. The insides are the same as they were before, but now they are more flashy, popular and useful. The only purpose is for marketing.

The sites of Web 2.0 increase in value as the number of users increases. Scholz relates this to a telephone. If no-one else owns a telephone, it becomes worthless. Only with a network of users does the device have value. With more users, more information is entered into the network. According to Scholz, modern American youth care less for their online privacy than those in the past. This comparison holds no merit, because American children of past generations were not exposed to the web in its current form while growing up. How is it possible for kids today to care less than kids of the 60s about information online?

What is more, Scholz states that by sharing their info, users confide their “friends lists”, conversations and navigation habits with corporations on a daily basis. According to Scholz, this opens up “possibilities for total control” that are “barely imaginable today.” I’d love to hear some examples. Corporations are going to surround you in advertisements that have been selected based on the information you have provided to them. This is not a bad thing. This only means you’ll see more advertisements that you are interested in, and corporations will have more success in making the appropriate consumers aware of their products. If this is Scholz’s idea of total control, I would love to see how he fares in North Korea.

Remixing The Old Testament and the Old Oak Tree - Post # 5 - Week 6

Over the last year, I’ve noticed a definite positive shift in the public attitude towards digital piracy. At first, when the topic was hot, pirates were made out to be thieves with no respect for the creators of the content they stole. It seems as if society has come to accept these pirates and their practices. It has become clear that it is impossible to enforce digital copyright laws due to the vastness of the web. Additionally, several industries have begun using the side effects of piracy to their advantage. Musicians, for example, have started releasing free songs for download on their website for a limited time. This creates a buzz, and drives sales after the time period has ended.

In 2003, pop megastar Madonna made her opinion of piracy crystal clear when she released a series of spoof audio files at the same time as her American Life album. Instead of the actual songs, anyone who downloaded the spoof mp3 files would hear the pop star cussing at them. Matt Mason describes this series of events in chapter three of The Pirate’s Dilemma. Mason goes on to explain the aftermath of these events. Madonna lost a few fans after her stunt. It was a figurative slap in the face to the tech-savvy, and they responded in turn. One such techie hacked Madonna’s web page and released her songs for free download. Resistance truly is futile. Once anything is put into the public domain, it becomes public property. If the public chooses to take your content, they can do as they please and there is little to be done about it.

Mason made an excellent point by stating that pirates create and push their own content. Before reading this chapter, I believed that pirates merely took other people’s property and shared it. In reality, many pirates produce their own content, and they are quite adept at distributing it. In the words of Robert Munsch: “We share everything!” After Madonna’s anti-piracy stunt, pirates created songs out of the spoof tracks. Pirates took Madonna’s insult, remixed it into new content and threw it back in her face.

I often relate the piracy debate to furniture. A wooden chair is made up of several pieces of wood that are combined and sold for profit. A song is made up of several notes that are combined (for free) and then sold for profit. It is completely acceptable for anyone to remix that wooden chair that they bought and make it into a crib. And yet, if you remix that song, you could get sued. As Ecclesiastes says in the Old Testament: “There is no new thing under the sun.” An artist didn’t make the notes that they included in their song. A carpenter did not magically summon the wood for the chair. Both want to be paid for remixing their medium, but only musicians feel that their work should not be tampered with. I’m willing to bet my left arm that the Old Oak Tree could care less if you gave your chair to your grandmother, as long as you paid for it first.

Remixing in other media is pretty common. In literature, to reference another scholarly work is accepted and encouraged. In film, one often experiences references to other works, and this is accepted as a complement. And yet to use part of a song is heresy. What makes this industry so different? All three of these industries are quickly changing because of their easy reproduction and availability online. So much is available for free that major corporations in these industries are struggling to make profits. Until these corporations adapt to the new file sharing environment and stop fighting against it, they are in danger of losing out on a lot of business.

Perspectives of Social and Technological Interaction - Post # 4 - Week 5

In the second chapter of Personal Connections in the Digital Age, Nancy Baym organizes four perspectives of how technology and society interact. The four perspectives are as follows:

Technological Determinism

Those who follow this perspective believe that technology enters society as a force of change that humans must adapt to. There is nothing to be done except change to fit into the new world created by technology. Advocates of the idea that the use of fast TV film cuts leads to short attention spans follow the ideals of technological determinism. Those who believe that violence in video games causes violence in gamers follow the ideals of technological determinism. I could never see myself among the ranks of this perspective. There is far too much interactivity in today’s media to ever feel helpless against it. There is a pressure to adopt and adapt to any new technology, but it is not a necessity of life that one does so. No one ever died from refusing to join Facebook. There is always a choice.

Social Construction

This perspective is the exact opposite of the first, as it believes that technology is at the mercy of society. The creators and users are the cause for change in technology, and the citizens are the cause for change in society. This viewpoint is far more appealing, but still too black and white for my liking. There are many who do not have any effect on the technology they use, other than the act of using it. For example, many people play video games without supplying any sort of feedback to the developers or modifying the game to meet their own ends. In this way, they do not effect the technology at all. They use it, but it is not changed through their actions.

Social Shaping

The ideology behind social shaping is that technology and society influence each other. Humans make the technology that changes the way many of us live. The human-made technology is perfected by users, and once again affects how we use the software. This feedback loop can be experienced in any form of media, and is proof of the shared influence of technology and society.

Domestication

When technology “fades into the woodwork” and becomes just another part of life, it has become domesticated. This is the idea behind domestication, the fourth perspective examined by Nancy Baym. This perspective incorporates the others by stating that technology changes us, and then fades after the process of alteration is complete.

If one were to combine the last two perspectives, I feel that it would be the most accurate. Nothing truly fades away, though. It takes on a new form, an improvement on the last model. It goes into the woodwork because we are more concerned with where the technology will take us and where we can take the technology. This shared progress is the definition of humanity’s explorative nature.

Just Another Post On The Wall - Post # 3 - Week 4

Consider if you will: this is being written at 11:15 PM in my cosy little dorm room with the heater whirring in the corner and disembodied voices occasionally seeping through the cracks around the door. Chances are, you will not be reading this from the same place, or even close to the same time that I am writing it. This “separation of presence”, as described by Nancy Baym in the first chapter of Personal Connections in the Digital Age is not a new concept. People have written on (cave) walls long before Facebook ever popularized the practice. The difference is that it is now possible to immediately send and receive messages while experiencing this separation of presence.

Despite the immediacy that current technology provides, the challenges - privacy, translation and misinterpretation, among others - of obsolete communication methods remain. As Baym states, the boundaries between public and private communication are blurred. It is possible for others to read what others have posted on Facebook walls in the same way anyone can see the contents of a cave drawing, if they are lucky enough to catch a glimpse. Here again, we see a shift from primitive cave scrawlers. What was once accessible for several people is now available for viewing by countless others. Many concerns about privacy raised in Baym’s book are concerns that have existed (in more primal forms) since the ancestors of humanity first became vocal.

It is a thought-provoking fact that particular technologies have flourished in certain geographic locations and not others. For example, cell phones are much more popular than the Internet in developing countries. This is largely due to its patchy availability and the expenses incurred in order to connect to the web. It would appear that the usefulness of a “separation of presence” is limited by the demands of the communicators. The communication demands of the third world can be economically accomplished with a cell phone, so there is little need for accompanying technology.

In 2005, a computer was developed that would cost under $150 USD, with the intent to provide cheap laptops to children outside of the first-world. The program was spearheaded by MIT and named “One Laptop Per Child”. Its developers hoped to allow children of low-income countries to connect to the Internet and use technology in their education. Despite many computers being purchased and distributed, the program was a devastating failure. Adding computers to a learning environment can be a useful tool, but only if the education system can properly implement them. A poor education system, in which students are solely responsible for the regurgitation of information, is not one in which computers or the Internet are used to their full potential. (Ruge)

After a few large purchases by wealthy groups, demand for the device dropped dramatically. The reason for this, and the reason why developing countries use cell phones far more commonly than the Internet is because the technologies were developed by those in developed countries to meet the needs of consumers in developed countries. The developers of the “One Laptop Per Child” program failed to research what would benefit children in developing nations, and instead made a computer that was useful for the technological demands of the first-world. There was little need for the machine in the first place. (Nussbaum)

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For more information about the “One Laptop Per Child” operation, visit:

http://laptopfoundation.org/

Additional Sources:

Nussbaum, Bruce. "It's Time To Call One Laptop Per Child A Failure, - BusinessWeek." BusinessWeek. N.p., 24 Sep. 2007. Web. 15 Feb. 2011. <http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/NussbaumOnDesign/archives/2007/09/its_time_to_call_one_laptop_per_child_a_failure.html/>.

Ruge, Tms. "Why OLPC is “...dead in the water”… still." Project Diaspora. N.p., 17 Mar. 2010. Web. 15 Feb. 2011. <projectdiaspora.org/2010/03/17/why-olpc-is-dead-in-the-water-still/>.

The Voice of Its Master - Post #2 - Week 3

Did you hear? Space and time were annihilated by the telegraph in 1868. I’d forgotten too. Don’t worry though, it seems like everyone is in the same boat. As Vincent Mosco makes crystal clear in the fifth chapter of The Digital Sublime, “Every wave of new technology […] has brought with it declarations of the end.” Chapter five raises the question of how society seems to forget the myths generated by advertisers. Many accept the claims without realizing that very similar statements were made about other products in the past. Obviously, advertisers were wrong when they claimed that the radio would turn every home into an extension of Harvard. And yet, society still gobbles up their claims about the next big thing. Advertisers have been wrong so many times, and commonly exaggerate claims far out of proportions, so why do people still listen?

This collective amnesia of society has happened many times in the past, and is already happening again. Myths are being created, consumed and forgotten every day. Currently, the myths concern Web 2.0, smart phones and tablets. Marketers claim that these technologies bring us together with their powers of mass interactivity. Consumers quickly forget how downright magical all previous technology once was. In the case of electricity, its novelty wore off in a decade. One arc light drew crowds in 1880, but after five years, it took a fully lit mansion to impress the masses. In ten years, electric signs were developed and everything else had become "normal". In time, each development loses its allure and fades (in the case of electricity, literally) “into the woodwork.”

On its website today, WIRED magazine carried a feature that showed vintage posters, advertising the latest technology of their time. One poster from 1935 shows a young woman with a light bulb. The text reads: “Buy light, not just lamps”. In this time period, buying a light bulb meant bringing the magic of light into your home. In today’s age, residential lighting is concerned with how you display the light. The average consumer cares little about the bulb itself, and more about the fixture.

A poster from 1958 shows a French family enjoying their television. Most striking of all is the text. Translated, it reads: “The evenings are pleasant with a television, the voice of its master.” The entire family appears to be enjoying the device, with their young child gesturing realistically along with the TV. The most interesting is the woman shown in the image. She is shown in a pose that implies she is thinking about what is on the television. This is somewhat different from the cultural standard of the time where women were to believe and do what they were told and not waste their time thinking. This poster displays a transition in the role of the wife from housekeeper to independent thinker.

The myths created about these wondrous devices and technologies all serve to generate a public view of the object. At the time of their development, new devices need exaggerated advertising in order to convince people they need one. For example, advertisers told consumers that to own a telephone is a moral obligation. If you didn’t buy the product, the ads implied you were an inconsiderate husband, a bad citizen, or uninformed. By making it seem that everyone has no choice but to own their product, advertisers were able to make a killing. The problem is that this still happens today.

Link to WIRED magazine's vintage posters feature:

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/02/vintage-posters/

Pointy Rocks and the Forces of Evil - Post #1 - Week 2

A long time ago, pointy rocks were pretty darn useful. Over time, they were improved and replaced by humans looking to get something done right. Recently, the pointy rock has evolved into a Swiss Army knife, capable of many tasks that a pointy rock just couldn’t handle. This is what happens to tools. They become more powerful over time. They don’t magically turn into self-aware intelligent organisms. Unfortunately, perceptions of the current most powerful tool – the web – are somewhat warped. In his article, Web Squared: Web 2.0 Five Years On, Tim O’Reilly and John Battelle make several rather grandiose statements about the nature of the web.

          They say that the web is a platform. I wholeheartedly agree. You build upon platforms to make them more powerful. Later on, the authors state that the web is the world. I wholeheartedly disagree. The world contains life and death, chemicals and compounds and sights and sounds. The web contains comparatively poor reproductions of some of these things in the form of digital data. The authors make the valid point that web users cast a digital shadow, and are constantly contributing to the immense pool of data that makes up the resources of the web. The authors also claim that the web has acquired intelligence and is growing with our guidance. This just is not true, and I feel sorry for the web developers that work so hard to improve the web so that we humble users may enjoy it. The web is a tool that is maintained by humans. There is no self-awareness. The evolution of the web is really just a sign of the increasing knowledge of humans. Rocks don’t grow handles and become hammers, and the web doesn’t develop online marketplaces where zillions of dollars of merchandise have been purchased and sold. For more on this rant, request it in the comments section.

          The web is said to currently be in its second stage, known as Web 2.0. According to O’Reilly and Battelle, this era will involve a race for acquisition of data. Once data has been acquired, it can be distributed for profit, and many corporations, individuals and criminals are taking advantage of this.

          Current web-based applications are largely concerned with utilizing the vast amount of user-generated data that is available to them. Thus, the applications being developed and used are made to improve as more people use them. Evidence of this can be seen in all fields of technology, from online commerce to interactive multiplayer games. The applications and websites that are being used are the ones that blur the line between users and developers. eBay is simply a virtual market, where employees act as custodians by maintaining and improving the place. Users take on the role of vendor, and can sell their goods in the market for a fee. This site would be useless without users in the same way a market would be useless without anyone selling or buying anything. It is this codependence between users and developers that defines Web 2.0.

         The current state of the web places great priority upon so-called “collective intelligence.” O’Reilly and Battelle make claims that the increase of user generated data will allow for the creation of valuable collective works that would have been impossible if not for “crowdsourcing.” The authors fail to take into account the fact that these developments don’t make the web good, they make it into a more powerful tool. Pointy rocks can hurt people. Swiss Army knives can inflict more pain on more people. In its first stage, the web was used by the forces of evil. This won’t stop with Web 2.0. The difference now is that they have greater quantities of data at their disposal, and they can work together with increased efficiency.
Isn’t that just super?

-Will

My First Blog Post. Ever.

Today marks a monumental occasion. The creation of my first blog.

I still have to purchase the textbooks for Communication Technology and Culture. Once I do, I'll be posting my thoughts on the readings here for our mutual reading pleasure.

Until then, carry on with your life normally.

Despite my sarcasm, I'm actually quite looking forward to this whole bloggin' thing.

-Will