By Andrew Lenoir, David Paesani, Jelena Jelusic
To adequately dissect the global Facebook phenomena, it is important to note, not only what power it has over its users, but also the need it fills to justify their continued patronage. Through discussion of Foucault’s Panopticon model and Agre’s Capture model of control, the structure and function of Facebook will be engaged, exposing it for what it is and what it means for all those that use it.
Facebook falls into the realm of visual and linguistic metaphors, as discussed by Foucault and Agre respectively. In the Panopticon, the guards establish their power over the prisoners by creating the illusion that someone is always watching from the shuttered tower at the prison’s center. Similarly, when one joins Facebook, and any photograph of them is uploaded, the user is immediately tagged in the picture. Photographs can be taken willingly, or uploaded from another user’s camera or camera phone without the subject’s knowledge or permission. These little details of the user’s day to day life appear as picture updates on the user’s friend’s newsfeeds. The same issue occurs when one friend writes on another’s wall, allowing anyone on their newsfeed to see a snippet of conversation. Updates to one’s profile, whether about changing music taste, or the ending and beginning of relationships similarly become public knowledge amongst a user’s friend base. However there is also the similarity with Agre’s capture model in that the “guard” subject is not one set person or group of people. If a user is friends with his family members, they may know what he got up to on Saturday night when he was supposed to be studying. If it is a user’s future employer, some recorded behavior or opinion, in either photograph, status update or wallpost, may be later count against their employment.
When Foucault explains the system of surveillance, he offers the model of the town governed according to the principles of surveillance: “...the town immobilized by the functioning of an extensive power that bears in a distinct way over all individual bodies...” (198) The system of surveillance relies on the existence of a single authority that collects and possesses all the information (there is only one central tower of the Panopticon). However, in case of Facebook, the surveillance principle is not its only means of functioning because there is no clear single authority that has exclusive right over the information distributed. Instead there is the autonomous, and generally unbiased newsfeed home page, which automatically updates all news from the user’s friends and centralizes the information. The capture model, on the other hand, offers a decentralized and heterogenous model for circulation of information. These two are not mutually exclusive. Though the newsfeed offers a central site for information, users decide what objects of news are worth looking into and what friends they want to check on. On Facebook, every user observes a certain number of other users, but never everyone and he never becomes the only observer. In this way, every user functions as a local center for the storage and exchange of information. Every user’s news feed is the tower of the Panopticon, and every user is a decentralized, autonomous guard choosing where to look.
Surveillance means observing in space and often functions by “invading” the space of the observed. Agre offers structural metaphors, where activity is captured as it falls into preexistent categories within an institutional setting. Unlike the panopticon model’s reliance on a physical space, Facebook is abstract- already a characteristic that distinguishes it from the surveillance model. The freedom of Facebook boils down into preexistent categories of action (poking someone, joining groups, writing on someone's wall, chatting etc) and they always remain within the institutional setting of the website. The activity of a user on Facebook is captured within these categories rather than surveyed like in the metaphor of the Panopticon.
While this surrender of privacy is inherently troubling, the fact that millions of people have willingly surrendered it to gain access to Facebook shows the model is working. Facebook, by its very nature forces the user to examine and recreate himself by the very act of joining. Questions that would ordinarily require some level of intimacy: religious views; political views; relationship status; are all answered in the initial set up of one’s profile. The user picks his own photograph to represent himself, he chooses what bands and books he thinks will look good on his list of favorites. Facebook allows one to construct oneself as he’d like to be, and then interact with others through that façade. Facebook allows for the construction of a new “me” made up of what “I” am not. It is the same sort of freedom provided by program’s like “SecondLife”, however all the users are directly tied to the real world and their real friends. The users of Facebook have signed a social contract, linking this idealized “profile avatar” of themselves within Facebook back to their real identities. The phrase, “That picture cannot wind up on Facebook, ” has become highly-prevalent in common discourse, both out of fear of other’s seeing (and potential real world consequences, i.e.- Parents see pictures of you drinking) but also of damaging one’s profiles good name. Much in the way the Panopticon causes its prisoners to internalize their guard’s gaze, turning themselves into model inmates, the potential of one’s actions being witnessed on facebook, complicated by the fact that there is no set guard, but rather “everyone” watching, forces the user to internalize a similar gaze, modifying their behavior.
Where as the Surveillance model of control has a connection back to the state, the capture model connects to a higher ideal, in this case the human need for interaction and relationship. By providing games to play, such as MafiaWars and Farmville, Facebook provides new means for users to interact and expands its own role in interpersonal connection. Facebook has become completely ingrained into how this generation socializes: it is a hyperreal that reaffirms personal popularity and the belief that one has “friends”, despite the fact its impossible to actively consider more than 150 people at a time. Each user has agreed to a social contract surrendering their control. By giving every user access to anything posted by their potential friends (or even friends of friends), Facebook has also provided an ever watching, all recording bank of information for their users’ access.
Friday, April 30, 2010
DormLife Frequently Asked Questions
Dormlife Frequently Asked Questions
In reference to Agre’s concept of ‘the capture model’, how would Dormlife alter the behavior of its users?
One of the conditions for Agre’s ‘capture model’ is that a large amount of information is “captured”. Computer programs then filter through this information to look for certain identity markers of the subjects. This identity can then be targeted for economic niches, “the organization of personal information as the commodity” (738). Dormlife would work in the same way in that it would surmise the identity of a user through a collection of data about location, events at those locations and the media associated with those locations. It would then use that identity to best cater certain advertisements to the users that are deemed relevant to the user’s lifestyle. In this way, the ‘capture model’ of Dormlife reinforces the behavior of its users; it spits back out to the user products that it believes will speak to the user as a subject. It also introduces the subject to products that fit with his or her identity thus introducing the user to new products to incorporate into this behavior. The capture model works to reinforce and speak to already existing behaviors.
How does Dormlife address issues of identity security and privacy?
Dormlife focuses primarily on location. You find people through location, and their Dormlife location doesn't betray their privacy any more than a real location could. To see a user’s profile and their currently living situation or any of the information or media they add to Dormlife, you must ‘knock on their door’ or find them through roommates that you are friends with (if the set to allow this latter option). Just like in the real world, you can go up to strangers’ doors and knock, so (also just like in the real world) privacy is dependent on the intelligence and caution of the user.
The user is in control of how their information is displayed. Anytime they post anything, they will be given the options to make the information available to everyone, make it available to only ‘roomies,’ or select a custom group of people who can see. There is one exception: the room journal is always visible to anyone who has lived in that location. When choosing who can see the content, you may also choose how you sign the content. Dormlife provides two signature options: sign as your room number and year, or sign as anonymous (which simply doesn't provide any information, not even “anonymous’, just the content). You may sign the content with you name, but Dormlife will not; Dormlife only shows your name inside your dormroom webpage. The user always has the ability to delete what they have added to any part of the site.
With so much potential anonymity, users may fear the possibility of identity theft. Dormlife would need to have some relationship with the institutions it hopes to focus on. Dormlife would need some verification system which may rock the socks off some student privacy advocates; if a website can ask for confirmation down to the specifics of which room you live in, the world has ended as anti-”the man” hippies and whiny criminals who have something hide know it. It is not possible to trust college students, their universities and a website made by college students with the responsibility of confirming student room assignment in a way that is not dangerous for the student? Perhaps not, but if the student says they want their institution to tell Dormlife where they live–for the sake of the honesty and thus the effectiveness of the site–and if the institution agrees to work along, why should theorists highlight the possibility that it might be used improperly? (Because that is their job...) Just remember the following: computers “can only compute with what it captures” (749), meaning that like with any social networking site, the user and in this case, the academic institution, get to decide what information they are willing to risk to a website. Dormlife can only capture the information that is submitted to it.
Societies are defined by their location and inhabitants. Facebook and MySpace are profile-centric social networking sites, where the main focus of the society is its inhabitants. Facebook initially seemed to have some formal focus on location, as every user was required to be registered at a school. This eventually broadened to allow high school, and then eventually Facebook networks became almost unlimited including any city or place of work (and by allowing users to not have a network). Facebook used to provide a network webpage for each network, but eventually ended this. Facebook now seems to be it’s own world, with the different user pages being different locations. With the profile being such a focus of the Facebook site, privacy is obviously important to consider. Facebook, as it name implies, allows users to browse through people in the form of profiles of information. In contrast, Dormlife centers information on the location in which an event occurs. Because the focus is not individual people but instead the spaces that they inhabit, privacy most likely would be less of an issue than with a social networking site such as Facebook. The purpose of Dormlife is not to reveal personal information about oneself such as in Facebook; the purpose is to create a digital community through physical spaces.
Jack Horkings
Farah Shaer
Jamie Lynn Harris
iPad
In the introduction to Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins argues against the understanding of convergence as merely a technological phenomenon, stressing instead that convergence represents a very important cultural shift in the relationship between the consumer and media content. The active, participatory consumer who crafts individual entertainment experiences by making connections across dispersed media outlets has replaced the old conception of the passive consumer. Convergence culture reflects a shift from industrial capitalism, in which consumers were viewed as a monolithic demographic to which mechanically reproduced and unpersonalized commodities could be marketed. As Donna Haraway explains in A Cyborg Manifesto, in post-industrial society "the home, workplace, market, public arena, the body itself--all can be dispersed and interfaced in nearly infinite, polymorphous ways" (163). Haraway's image of the cyborg, which is always a fractured, partial identity, pushes back against the essentialist image of the consumer in industrial society. What Jenkins' convergence culture and Haraway's cyborg point toward is a new flow-based mode of subjectivity that sets the stage for a rhetoric of personalization through its focus on difference and change over static identity. With the introduction of the iPad, Apple takes advantage of the rhetoric of personalization to channel the user's desire for a distinct new media experience into the act of consumption. More than Apple's previous new media devices, the iPad intensifies the enclosure of the consumer within an Apple-centric closed system of media convergence, one in which the consumer's needs for various media content are met through Apple.
In the April 2010 Wired article "How the Tablet Will Change the World", Steven Levy writes that "the iPad offers a streamlined yet powerful intuitive experience that’s psychically in tune with our mobile, attention-challenged, super-connected new century" (http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/03/ff_tablet_levy/). What appears as Apple's catering to convergence culture in a form that "streamlines" the participatory experience for iPad users is actually an ideological restructuring of user subjectivity, an ideology driven solely by the capitalist profit motive in which the user is always and above all a consumer of and through Apple. Behind a rhetoric of efficiency, ease, and choice, Apple has in fact created a structure in which it is the entity through which all media and information can or must be accessed. As Levy notes, the "rigidly enforced standards of aesthetics will ensure that the iPad remains an easy-to-navigate no-clutter zone," a feature that seems wholly to the benefit of the user, but in fact plays into Apple's consumption paradigm. The strict aesthetics of the iPad, with its icons arranged in orderly rows across the screen allows for very little of the personalization afforded by the desktop of a computer. Whatever desire a user may have for personalization or individualization must be satisfied through the act of consumption through the App Store, of selecting and purchasing apps with which to outfit one's iPad. Apps are only available through the App store, and all developers and publishers must have their apps cleared by Apple. The App Store is the final and arguably the most crucial component in an Apple-centric closed system, one in which the need to go beyond Apple is preempted or denied. Users not only get their apps solely through the app store, but they must also surf the web on Apple's Safari browser, can only access web media that is QuickTime compatible, and must use the iPad's iPod to listen to music or watch movies.
In a sense, it is possible to argue that Jenkins foresaw this type of corporation-centric convergence, writing that convergence "is both a top-down corporate-driven process and a bottom-up consumer-driven process" (18). Jenkins saw corporate convergence in "new media conglomerates" like Warner Bros., which "have controlling interests across the entire entrainment industry" (16). Apple's model, however, is new and totalizing in that it also acts at the level of the device with which consumers access their media content. By starting with the media technology, with the success and ubiquity of the iTunes and App stores it is easy to forget that Apple was first and foremost a electronics developer, and then expanding to the regulating of media content, Apple was able to create a closed system unlike any other. Through the iPad, Apple complicates Jenkins' argument that "convergence does not occur through media appliances, however sophisticated they may become" (3). While the Apple-centric style of convergence does not occur solely through the iPad, the device nevertheless plays an instrumental role in Apple's consumption ideology as this "media appliance" allows Apple to shape a specific form of convergence culture. Furthermore, through the iPad Apple problematizes Jenkin's argument that "delivery systems are simply and only technologies," opposed to "cultural systems" (14). By restricting access to software and thereby creating a monopoly on "delivery", Apple incorporates the delivery technology as an element of capitalist ideology.
Apple's restrictions on software appear to intentionally circumvent the bottom-up, collective trend in theories of new media after the company initially used them to market their products. As closed and totalizing as Apple's closed system may be, however, it is important to remember Jenkins' "convergence refers to a process, not an endpoint" (16). Quoting Pool, Jenkins asserts that "convergence does not mean ultimate stability or unity [but rather] operates as a constant force for unification but always in dynamic tension with change" (11). American culture is in a state of transition, similar to the one Jenkin's posits, in which media conglomerates battle confusedly for what markets and delivery technologies (it is interesting to note this media war also coincides with what Haraway terms "boundary wars"). If Apple's current war with Adobe is any indication other new media corporations--if not consumers--may soon wake up and break down the walls of Apple's self-centric structure, allowing for new and different systems of convergence to emerge.
The Wii
Ryan Sammartino
Kapil Mishra
Conor Biller
In her article “Reload: Liveness, Mobility, and the Web,” Tara McPherson discusses the unique experiences of the Internet, many of which apply directly to the Wii and suggest parallel experiences between them. McPherson claims that the Web’s cursor is “a tangible sign of presence implying movement” (McPherson, 201). The slightest move of one’s hand can move him limitless distances through cyberspace. The Wii’s remote mimics this dynamic, but also expands on it: Wii users literally point to where they want to go, using the motion sensing technology of the game to wirelessly control their movement through it. With the stroke of the remote, one’s location changes in the Wii world, giving the remote the power of “liveness” shared by the Internet (McPherson, 201). As McPherson says, the Web’s liveness “foregrounds volition and mobility, creating a liveness of demand...a sense of causality” (McPherson, 202). Flicking the Wii or clicking its buttons can take the user to an endless variety of worlds, immediately and at the user’s whim. Like with the Internet and mouse, the user has complete control because of the remote: control of where they go or what they experience, a control which McPherson terms “volitional mobility” (McPherson, 202).
The user’s choice to navigate the screen occurs through an immediate process. The motion of the remote control instantaneously affects the motion of the cursor, causing rapid gratification during game play. Jenkins, in “Games, the New Lively Art,” remarks that when observing the immediacy of game play, one should look “not in terms of how convincing the representation of the character and the fictional world is but rather in terms of the character’s ‘capacity’ to respond to our impulses and desires.” The Wii characters are essentially replicating the user’s movements, as a swinging of the arm translates to the swinging of a racquet. In addition to this visual gratification, the controller vibrates at appropriate times (i.e. ball hits the racquet) to create an accompanying physical gratification. The game console, however, strips away the aesthetics and sharpness of the fictional world to compensate for its attention to interaction. The remote control functions as an extension of the arm, serving as the vital connection to the character and game play. One might wonder if it’s worth taking away the visual appeal, but Jenkins points out that it is the “expansion of the player’s capacity which accounts for the emotional intensity of most games.” While a conventional game controller typically measures a character’s strength by how frequently the user pushes button X, Wii’s innovative design requires a faster motion by the user’s arm. The user’s freedom to move his arm in any direction leads to the same freedoms and movements for the character.
However, within the confines of the Wii, the user’s control by arm movement is just that—control by arm movement. The Wii remote’s interactivity does not extend any further. Whereas Jenkins focuses on a character’s ability to respond to the user’s full range of desires and commands, the Wii limits the characters primarily to the user’s ability to gesture. What cannot be gestured cannot be accomplished. For example, in Wii Tennis, the system’s popular tennis “simulation,” the player has full control of the strokes of his racquet. He can slice, he can use topspin, he can pull the ball wide or he can drive it straight. And while the versatility of the racquet via the Wii remote offers the illusion of actual tennis, character limitations keep that illusion grounded. Because of the nature of the Wii remote, the player is entirely stripped of his freedom of movement. So while the “emotional intensity” Jenkins discusses is certainly present in the often hyper-competitive Wii Tennis, the Wii’s programming directs character movement and therefore restricts a significant portion of user control. The overlying idea is that the user overlooks this limitation because of the specific and powerful control he possesses over the racquet.
The structure and form of the Wii intervenes in the user’s otherwise-complete control over their player in the game, but it also intervenes in the broader narrative of their gaming experience, hindering their volitional mobility in subtle but not invisible ways. The Wii’s design and form prevents the user from having complete bodily control over the remote, and it also prevents them from having complete control over the path and progression of their use of the Wii. This problematizes the parallels between the Wii and Tara McPherson’s reading of the Internet as a realm of user freedom and choice.
McPherson claims the Web “can be multidirectional and also simultaneous, both forward and backward at once” (McPherson, 203). In other words, there is no true limit or necessary direction to the path an Internet user must take while experiencing the Web. Once the Internet user enters an address, he or she can enter another with the same ease: the user can go forward endlessly via the address bar, mobile in any direction desired. The Wii, however, is neither simultaneous nor dimensional. Even though both the Web and Wii offer a myriad of experiences, they do not overlap within the Wii, and cannot be accessed from one to the other. For example, suppose a Wii user wishes to leave Wii Sports and experience the Wii Shop Channel. He must first return to the homescreen, then find and select the Wii Shop Channel. On the other hand, Web users need only type a new web address to mobilize themselves in the exact direction they have chosen. The Wii’s interface and design impede the user’s volitional mobility by tethering users to the homescreen.
Kapil Mishra
Conor Biller
In her article “Reload: Liveness, Mobility, and the Web,” Tara McPherson discusses the unique experiences of the Internet, many of which apply directly to the Wii and suggest parallel experiences between them. McPherson claims that the Web’s cursor is “a tangible sign of presence implying movement” (McPherson, 201). The slightest move of one’s hand can move him limitless distances through cyberspace. The Wii’s remote mimics this dynamic, but also expands on it: Wii users literally point to where they want to go, using the motion sensing technology of the game to wirelessly control their movement through it. With the stroke of the remote, one’s location changes in the Wii world, giving the remote the power of “liveness” shared by the Internet (McPherson, 201). As McPherson says, the Web’s liveness “foregrounds volition and mobility, creating a liveness of demand...a sense of causality” (McPherson, 202). Flicking the Wii or clicking its buttons can take the user to an endless variety of worlds, immediately and at the user’s whim. Like with the Internet and mouse, the user has complete control because of the remote: control of where they go or what they experience, a control which McPherson terms “volitional mobility” (McPherson, 202).
The user’s choice to navigate the screen occurs through an immediate process. The motion of the remote control instantaneously affects the motion of the cursor, causing rapid gratification during game play. Jenkins, in “Games, the New Lively Art,” remarks that when observing the immediacy of game play, one should look “not in terms of how convincing the representation of the character and the fictional world is but rather in terms of the character’s ‘capacity’ to respond to our impulses and desires.” The Wii characters are essentially replicating the user’s movements, as a swinging of the arm translates to the swinging of a racquet. In addition to this visual gratification, the controller vibrates at appropriate times (i.e. ball hits the racquet) to create an accompanying physical gratification. The game console, however, strips away the aesthetics and sharpness of the fictional world to compensate for its attention to interaction. The remote control functions as an extension of the arm, serving as the vital connection to the character and game play. One might wonder if it’s worth taking away the visual appeal, but Jenkins points out that it is the “expansion of the player’s capacity which accounts for the emotional intensity of most games.” While a conventional game controller typically measures a character’s strength by how frequently the user pushes button X, Wii’s innovative design requires a faster motion by the user’s arm. The user’s freedom to move his arm in any direction leads to the same freedoms and movements for the character.
However, within the confines of the Wii, the user’s control by arm movement is just that—control by arm movement. The Wii remote’s interactivity does not extend any further. Whereas Jenkins focuses on a character’s ability to respond to the user’s full range of desires and commands, the Wii limits the characters primarily to the user’s ability to gesture. What cannot be gestured cannot be accomplished. For example, in Wii Tennis, the system’s popular tennis “simulation,” the player has full control of the strokes of his racquet. He can slice, he can use topspin, he can pull the ball wide or he can drive it straight. And while the versatility of the racquet via the Wii remote offers the illusion of actual tennis, character limitations keep that illusion grounded. Because of the nature of the Wii remote, the player is entirely stripped of his freedom of movement. So while the “emotional intensity” Jenkins discusses is certainly present in the often hyper-competitive Wii Tennis, the Wii’s programming directs character movement and therefore restricts a significant portion of user control. The overlying idea is that the user overlooks this limitation because of the specific and powerful control he possesses over the racquet.
The structure and form of the Wii intervenes in the user’s otherwise-complete control over their player in the game, but it also intervenes in the broader narrative of their gaming experience, hindering their volitional mobility in subtle but not invisible ways. The Wii’s design and form prevents the user from having complete bodily control over the remote, and it also prevents them from having complete control over the path and progression of their use of the Wii. This problematizes the parallels between the Wii and Tara McPherson’s reading of the Internet as a realm of user freedom and choice.
McPherson claims the Web “can be multidirectional and also simultaneous, both forward and backward at once” (McPherson, 203). In other words, there is no true limit or necessary direction to the path an Internet user must take while experiencing the Web. Once the Internet user enters an address, he or she can enter another with the same ease: the user can go forward endlessly via the address bar, mobile in any direction desired. The Wii, however, is neither simultaneous nor dimensional. Even though both the Web and Wii offer a myriad of experiences, they do not overlap within the Wii, and cannot be accessed from one to the other. For example, suppose a Wii user wishes to leave Wii Sports and experience the Wii Shop Channel. He must first return to the homescreen, then find and select the Wii Shop Channel. On the other hand, Web users need only type a new web address to mobilize themselves in the exact direction they have chosen. The Wii’s interface and design impede the user’s volitional mobility by tethering users to the homescreen.
The Liveness of Desire
Written by Ann Ford, Karynn Ikeda, Sophie Savryn
The iPod is an object of desire: a personal device, a fetish object, essential for the music consumer. Users desire the iPod and its promise of mobility and freedom, but the iPod is also a vessel through which they can then express future desires. Desire begins as a force outside of the user that he or she plugs into but is then reworked through the user's interaction with it. According to Tara McPherson in her article "Reload: Liveness, Mobility and the Web", the modality of volitional mobility is used to describe that desire plays an active role in navigating the Web. Mobility is a key aspect linking the iPod to the Web. Yet, the iPod complicates the modality of scan-and-search by holding onto the older modality of flow. The iPod's disjuncture of space and time separates it from the web.
The web is different than that of television primarily through the difference in navigation. McPherson differentiates between “flow” and the “scan-and-search” as two modalities of experiencing media. Flow is the feeling that one freely coasts through one's interaction with media objects. McPherson illustrates the concept of “flow” through the experience of watching television. We immerse ourselves in a television program that constitutes a continuous and unified trajectory. The “scan-and-search,” alternately, exposes Web users to different segments of data simultaneously, and thus they employ a scan-and-search method of viewing so as not to miss anything. McPherson states: “This is not just channel-surfing: it feels like we’re wedding space and time, linking research and entertainment into similar patterns of mobility” (204). Unlike TV, in which the choice to change the channel is the extent of one's ability to navigate the medium, the modalities of the Web allow for the manipulation of space and time, amplifying the effect of the user's desire on one's experience.
The iPod, like the Web, has disrupted the experience of “flow,” a modality that resembles listening to music on the CD player or the walkman. Prior to the iPod, one primarily listened to a cohesive album that constituted a musical narrative. The navigation of the iPod depends upon the modality of volitional mobility, in that the user must choose music and navigate through one's library to construct a personalized listening experience. Additionally, the Shuffle feature on the iPod, which randomly selects the next song from the user's music library, enables one to listen to an eternal mix tape, again resisting the traditional coherent narrative of the album. Instead, users listen to individual songs similar to the way in which they see individual web segments, allowing for a scan-and-search method of spanning countless genres and periods of music. Ultimately the experience of listening to the iPod depends upon a mobility of the user through the iTunes library, desire prompting action.
However, the iPod also incorporates an experience of flow into scan-and-search that makes it unique from both the Web and television. Similar to the flow modality associated with TV, simultaneity is not possible with the iPod; one can only listen to a single song at a time, similar to the division of channels on a television. The agency essential to the Web is reduced in the iPod. A common thread between TV and the Web is the desire to not miss information. Yet, the iPod resists the anxiety inherent in both the scan-and-search modality and the flow modality with respect to missing: "Whereas this fear of missing something in the realm of television may cause the user to stay tuned to one channel, not to miss a narrative turn, this fear of missing in the Web propels us elsewhere, on to the next chunk" (204). One's music exists permanently in the archive of the iTunes library and then downloaded into the iPod itself, therefore the desire to navigate through the iPod is not based on anxiety. The songs cannot be missed because they are already embedded within the iPod's hard drive. The desire to navigate, then, exists free of anxiety. Thus, the mobility that creates the sense of "liveness" in the iPod is attributed to the immediate desire of the user to listen to music whenever and wherever, rather than the object itself embodying "liveness", such as live broadcasts on TV or the instant updates of the Web.
The iPod further demonstrates a schism from McPherson's description of liveness by countering her point that the user is “wedding space and time,” with the Web. Physically, the media object takes up such little space yet manages to hold within itself so much time: hours upon hours of music fit into a very tiny nano or iPod shuffle. This small size enables mobility, creating the wherever of the iPod. The whenever of the iPod is structured a little differently. The act of "plugging in" to the iPod expresses a desire to dissociate space from time, willing one separate from the other: one hopes to mentally escape the physical space one is in, or to pass time when it seems to linger. Both scenarios disengage the user from the now: the current space or the current time. To listen to the iPod whenever means that one must sacrifice the time of present when this when occurs. The volitional mobility that accounts for the "wedding" of space and time on the Web instead divorces the two in the iPod. Though the Web and TV stress that "liveness" corresponds to real time, the iPod's liveness allows one to move through real time by fracturing it.
Through volitional mobility, the iPod becomes the ultimate expression of the user's desire. Desire prompts our navigation from song to song, but unlike television and the Web, this desire to act is not motivated by a fear that the user will miss the next thing. The iPod distinguishes itself from its parent media, TV and the Web, in that its mobility, which contributes to its "liveness", is not based on how one navigates the device, but rather depends upon the user's desire to be mobile. This desire to move away from the parent media is both in the physical device - to use it the listener must be away from the computer - and in the theory - moving away from flow and scan-and-search to carve out its own modality: a volitional liveness that allows navigation to transcend the device itself, swapping real time for iPod time and escaping space through the iPod.
Tara McPherson, “Reload: Liveness, Mobility and the Web,” The Visual Culture Reader, 2nd Edition, Ed. Nicholas Mirzoeff (New York: Routledge, 2002), 458-470.
The iPod is an object of desire: a personal device, a fetish object, essential for the music consumer. Users desire the iPod and its promise of mobility and freedom, but the iPod is also a vessel through which they can then express future desires. Desire begins as a force outside of the user that he or she plugs into but is then reworked through the user's interaction with it. According to Tara McPherson in her article "Reload: Liveness, Mobility and the Web", the modality of volitional mobility is used to describe that desire plays an active role in navigating the Web. Mobility is a key aspect linking the iPod to the Web. Yet, the iPod complicates the modality of scan-and-search by holding onto the older modality of flow. The iPod's disjuncture of space and time separates it from the web.
The web is different than that of television primarily through the difference in navigation. McPherson differentiates between “flow” and the “scan-and-search” as two modalities of experiencing media. Flow is the feeling that one freely coasts through one's interaction with media objects. McPherson illustrates the concept of “flow” through the experience of watching television. We immerse ourselves in a television program that constitutes a continuous and unified trajectory. The “scan-and-search,” alternately, exposes Web users to different segments of data simultaneously, and thus they employ a scan-and-search method of viewing so as not to miss anything. McPherson states: “This is not just channel-surfing: it feels like we’re wedding space and time, linking research and entertainment into similar patterns of mobility” (204). Unlike TV, in which the choice to change the channel is the extent of one's ability to navigate the medium, the modalities of the Web allow for the manipulation of space and time, amplifying the effect of the user's desire on one's experience.
The iPod, like the Web, has disrupted the experience of “flow,” a modality that resembles listening to music on the CD player or the walkman. Prior to the iPod, one primarily listened to a cohesive album that constituted a musical narrative. The navigation of the iPod depends upon the modality of volitional mobility, in that the user must choose music and navigate through one's library to construct a personalized listening experience. Additionally, the Shuffle feature on the iPod, which randomly selects the next song from the user's music library, enables one to listen to an eternal mix tape, again resisting the traditional coherent narrative of the album. Instead, users listen to individual songs similar to the way in which they see individual web segments, allowing for a scan-and-search method of spanning countless genres and periods of music. Ultimately the experience of listening to the iPod depends upon a mobility of the user through the iTunes library, desire prompting action.
However, the iPod also incorporates an experience of flow into scan-and-search that makes it unique from both the Web and television. Similar to the flow modality associated with TV, simultaneity is not possible with the iPod; one can only listen to a single song at a time, similar to the division of channels on a television. The agency essential to the Web is reduced in the iPod. A common thread between TV and the Web is the desire to not miss information. Yet, the iPod resists the anxiety inherent in both the scan-and-search modality and the flow modality with respect to missing: "Whereas this fear of missing something in the realm of television may cause the user to stay tuned to one channel, not to miss a narrative turn, this fear of missing in the Web propels us elsewhere, on to the next chunk" (204). One's music exists permanently in the archive of the iTunes library and then downloaded into the iPod itself, therefore the desire to navigate through the iPod is not based on anxiety. The songs cannot be missed because they are already embedded within the iPod's hard drive. The desire to navigate, then, exists free of anxiety. Thus, the mobility that creates the sense of "liveness" in the iPod is attributed to the immediate desire of the user to listen to music whenever and wherever, rather than the object itself embodying "liveness", such as live broadcasts on TV or the instant updates of the Web.
The iPod further demonstrates a schism from McPherson's description of liveness by countering her point that the user is “wedding space and time,” with the Web. Physically, the media object takes up such little space yet manages to hold within itself so much time: hours upon hours of music fit into a very tiny nano or iPod shuffle. This small size enables mobility, creating the wherever of the iPod. The whenever of the iPod is structured a little differently. The act of "plugging in" to the iPod expresses a desire to dissociate space from time, willing one separate from the other: one hopes to mentally escape the physical space one is in, or to pass time when it seems to linger. Both scenarios disengage the user from the now: the current space or the current time. To listen to the iPod whenever means that one must sacrifice the time of present when this when occurs. The volitional mobility that accounts for the "wedding" of space and time on the Web instead divorces the two in the iPod. Though the Web and TV stress that "liveness" corresponds to real time, the iPod's liveness allows one to move through real time by fracturing it.
Through volitional mobility, the iPod becomes the ultimate expression of the user's desire. Desire prompts our navigation from song to song, but unlike television and the Web, this desire to act is not motivated by a fear that the user will miss the next thing. The iPod distinguishes itself from its parent media, TV and the Web, in that its mobility, which contributes to its "liveness", is not based on how one navigates the device, but rather depends upon the user's desire to be mobile. This desire to move away from the parent media is both in the physical device - to use it the listener must be away from the computer - and in the theory - moving away from flow and scan-and-search to carve out its own modality: a volitional liveness that allows navigation to transcend the device itself, swapping real time for iPod time and escaping space through the iPod.
Tara McPherson, “Reload: Liveness, Mobility and the Web,” The Visual Culture Reader, 2nd Edition, Ed. Nicholas Mirzoeff (New York: Routledge, 2002), 458-470.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Dormlife
Dormlife is a location-based social network that allows you to connect with present, past, and future residents of your dorm. You can’t travel into the future, but once the future gets here–and your time in the dorm has passed–you can still follow what’s going on...if you’re some lame creep. WARNING: If you find yourself saying “I wish it worked more like Facebook!” it is possible that the creators intended for certain inconveniences to emphasize the relationship between Dormlife and the real-world locations it digitizes.
Friday, April 23, 2010
S03. Internet Memes
Reading Jenkins' treatise on Convergence, I became stuck upon the idea of "consumption... [as] a collective process," and its relation to my favorite part of the internet, the internet meme. According to wikipedia, a meme can be defined as "a postulated unit of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena."
Watching the spread of certain videos ("David after the dentist", "Charlie the Unicorn", etc) and images (Lolcats) without any real explanation invokes in me a certain belief in a collective unconscious, or at least in the concept of ideas that spread rapidly like plague. Perhaps this has more to do with Keenan's assertion of the self-other construct being just that (constructed), in the way that peer pressure is actually an internal influence, but it strikes me as odd that many people become aware of the same material at the same time.
With the rise of KnowYourMeme.com and Digg.com, these objects themselves are being spread wider and faster than ever before, drawing further parallels in the way that the spread of the internet represents the spread of a single, universal culture that is a convergence of all the others that went into its creation.
Watching the spread of certain videos ("David after the dentist", "Charlie the Unicorn", etc) and images (Lolcats) without any real explanation invokes in me a certain belief in a collective unconscious, or at least in the concept of ideas that spread rapidly like plague. Perhaps this has more to do with Keenan's assertion of the self-other construct being just that (constructed), in the way that peer pressure is actually an internal influence, but it strikes me as odd that many people become aware of the same material at the same time.
With the rise of KnowYourMeme.com and Digg.com, these objects themselves are being spread wider and faster than ever before, drawing further parallels in the way that the spread of the internet represents the spread of a single, universal culture that is a convergence of all the others that went into its creation.
S.03 Freedom of ...
We continually redefine the idea of freedom. What is it? How related to control is it? It seems that this we we again redefined freedom with passion as a basis for the argument. Basically what I concluded from the lecture on wednesday that passion is the freedom to explore what you want to explore. This concept further the idea mentioned earlier in the class that control is freedom and visa versa. If that statement is true, control is freedom than essentially what is being said is you have the ability to develop you own passion; you have the freedom to pursue learning and other adventures. What I think the real questions is does this conception of control and freedom have a positive reflection or negative? At what point is it bad and what point is it good?
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Free Labor = Crowd Sourcing, Friday 11am Section
The article “Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy” by Tiziana Terranova made me think hard about current internet trends. I find it interesting that this was written in 2000, well before Youtube , Facebook, and Wikipedia. The “free labor” that she discusses is called “crowd-sourcing” and is a key factor controlling affecting the success of social media companies. The arguments being presented here are stronger than ever and I would not be surprised if others felt this paper was ahead of its time. I find it hard to understand what it was that she had in mind when writing this and don’t think I would have believed her if I read it in 2000.
My favorite part of the reading can be found on page 37 where she writes:
My favorite part of the reading can be found on page 37 where she writes:
“Free labor is the moment where this knowledgeable consumption of culture is translated into productive activities that are pleasurably embraced and at the same time often shamelessly exploited.”This, in a nut shell, summarizes the rest of the paper and perfectly encapsulates emerging internet trends. Fan fiction, as was described in class on Wednesday, is a perfect example of this. Fans love reading the new material, but the original writers themselves can take advantage of it without any compensation to the fans. Facebook’s user-agreement stipulates that any original material on the social networking site is property of Facebook. In other words, crowd-sourcing is the name of the game on the internet these days because of all the useful material that free labor produces. Terranova calls these new workers “digital artisans.” I also find it particularly interesting that the younger generations seem to be adopting these new trends quicker. Although I consider myself a heavy internet user, I have never contributed to Wikipedia, been an active member of an online community, and have never uploaded a video to Youtube. On the other hand, there is no limit to how many 13-year olds upload video after video of them ranting nonsense. I think modern crowd-sourcing sites are the beginning of this trend toward harnessing the power of crowds online and am excited/scared to see what comes next.
Friday 11 am Session Blog Post
The formation of free labor, according to Tiziana Terranova, is the result of the digital economy in a macroeconomic sense. For individuals, their laboring is sometimes voluntary, but not willing. They understand that “the free stuff offered around the net” is “either a product that gets you hooked on to another one or makes you just consume more time on the net. After all, the goal of the access people and telecoms is to have users spend as much time on thoe net as possible, regardless of what they are doing” (50). A lot of my friends who claim to be “addicted” to Facebook, among whom a lot are aware of the commercial mechanism of the website and of the nature of their addiction, somehow can’t help spending hours on their addiction, or labor, of roaming on Facebook everyday. When we think about what happens when people do that, Csíkszentmihályi’s concept of flow seems to fit into the picture. In the users’ long-time vision, they don’t want to spend that much of time on Facebook; but they cannot not want, because they are subject to be immersed in the flow of exploring the random stuff online. Their situation of “escaping, but never leaving” is due to the capturing nature of the labor, which utilizes their addiction, more than self-fulfillment. This form of voluntary but unwilling labor exemplifies the convergence of leisure and labor in new media economy in a different aspect, with the individuals being the subject of this convergence, rather than active practitioners.
Open Source Software
I have been using Open Office for quite a while and I never really asked myself what is the ideology behind creating Open Source software. I started using it not because I knew how to modify the source code, but because it was free and I wanted to try it. I never thought Word was any better than Open Office though. However, using Open Office did change the way I perceived buying computer software. In particular, it did not seem very reasonable to me to pay for something that I can get for free and that is not really significantly different.
Yet, I still don't think I completely understand the difference between “free beer” and “free speech” in terms of computer software. Even after reading Open Source Initiative, I still did not think programmers were awarded enough for the work they did. On the other hand, when I thought about it in more general terms, I realized that people from many professions do not get sufficient awards for the work they do. In fact, the income one receives does not (and often is not) proportional to the amount of effort one invests or the talent one possesses. That is why, in my opinion, free labor is so important.
Free labor is what makes functioning of the capitalist society possible. Free labor enhances the flow of information greatly, enabling more people to participate actively in the functioning of that same capitalist society. Without free labor, information would circulate much slower which would, in return, cause not the development of the capitalist society, but rather its stagnation.
Taken in that context, the ideology behind Open Source software makes much more sense. Ultimately, Open Source is not something that would destroy programming profession, but rather help it develop to a more advanced level. True, in the very beginning, programmers would most likely experience financial difficulties, but, Open Source software could lead to higher demand of programmers due to the fact that it stimulates individualization of software for specific needs of the users and due to the availability and possibility to modify the source code.
No one could stop the programmers from selling copies of modified Open Source software that would satisfy needs of particular users. In that way, not only would programmers still have their jobs, but the users would have software that would be more appropriate to their needs.
However, the complete transition between standard commercial and Open Source software would be certainly very hard, if not impossible. For that, we have to start perceiving computer software as a tool of our electronic “speech”. Because of that, we should have the right to use it just like we use other people's written or spoken thoughts.
Yet, I still don't think I completely understand the difference between “free beer” and “free speech” in terms of computer software. Even after reading Open Source Initiative, I still did not think programmers were awarded enough for the work they did. On the other hand, when I thought about it in more general terms, I realized that people from many professions do not get sufficient awards for the work they do. In fact, the income one receives does not (and often is not) proportional to the amount of effort one invests or the talent one possesses. That is why, in my opinion, free labor is so important.
Free labor is what makes functioning of the capitalist society possible. Free labor enhances the flow of information greatly, enabling more people to participate actively in the functioning of that same capitalist society. Without free labor, information would circulate much slower which would, in return, cause not the development of the capitalist society, but rather its stagnation.
Taken in that context, the ideology behind Open Source software makes much more sense. Ultimately, Open Source is not something that would destroy programming profession, but rather help it develop to a more advanced level. True, in the very beginning, programmers would most likely experience financial difficulties, but, Open Source software could lead to higher demand of programmers due to the fact that it stimulates individualization of software for specific needs of the users and due to the availability and possibility to modify the source code.
No one could stop the programmers from selling copies of modified Open Source software that would satisfy needs of particular users. In that way, not only would programmers still have their jobs, but the users would have software that would be more appropriate to their needs.
However, the complete transition between standard commercial and Open Source software would be certainly very hard, if not impossible. For that, we have to start perceiving computer software as a tool of our electronic “speech”. Because of that, we should have the right to use it just like we use other people's written or spoken thoughts.
S03 Collective Intelligence
"Consumption has become a collective process" (Jenkins 4).
There are times when I get on Facebook that several people have posted the same video. Where is this information coming from? It is as if there is a collective source of knowledge. This is what the internet does. It provides for a collective space for knowledge to be shared in. When there is a scandal, almost everyone has the same information. It creates a collective memory and essentially connects an imagined community not only on the source (Facebook) but also information.
How does this information even come about? Sites like Google cater to larger companies who purchase ad space and it caters to the consumers who choose the popular websites. The consumer chooses a lot of what appears when they enter a website because it is based on what the consumer has a tendency of checking online. (All my Facebook adds mention Jason Mraz and fraternities) "The Internet is the material evidence of the existence of the self-organizing, infinitely productive activities of con- nected human minds." (11) All this work by the consumer is creating free labor. We create the content that appears on websites and at the same time consume it.
There are times when I get on Facebook that several people have posted the same video. Where is this information coming from? It is as if there is a collective source of knowledge. This is what the internet does. It provides for a collective space for knowledge to be shared in. When there is a scandal, almost everyone has the same information. It creates a collective memory and essentially connects an imagined community not only on the source (Facebook) but also information.
How does this information even come about? Sites like Google cater to larger companies who purchase ad space and it caters to the consumers who choose the popular websites. The consumer chooses a lot of what appears when they enter a website because it is based on what the consumer has a tendency of checking online. (All my Facebook adds mention Jason Mraz and fraternities) "The Internet is the material evidence of the existence of the self-organizing, infinitely productive activities of con- nected human minds." (11) All this work by the consumer is creating free labor. We create the content that appears on websites and at the same time consume it.
Friday 11am
I was a little confused by Jenkin’s Convergence book. He says, “I will argue here against the issue that convergence should be understood primarily as a technological process bringing together multiple media functions within the same devices” (Jenkins 3). Alright fine that’s all well and good, but then for the next couple pages the only references to convergence he makes exemplify the contrary. He goes into detail about how the cell phone represents a convergence (that he believes to be unnecessary) of phone, web, video, picture, music storage, and navigation. The cell phone is the perfect example that refutes his argument. He brings it up, and then does not explain why it is not an example of convergence. Later he mentions Microsoft and Sony and how they planned on disguising convergence within their game consoles. Indeed these consoles do represent a form of convergence; they can be used for enjoying games, movies, or music. I think convergence is better represented in the examples Jenkins uses in order to try to change how people think about convergence.
-Ben Trotter
S03 - Hackers
When I pulled a new issue of Wired from my mailbox today, I was unsurprised to notice that the cover article, "Geek Power: How Hacker Culture Conquered the World," was quite relevant to this week's readings. In the article, author Steven Levy follows up on the hackers he chronicled twenty-five years ago for his book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. These included Bill Gates, Richard Greenblatt, Richard Stallman, and Steve Wozniak. In a look towards the future, Levy also turns his focus on "the next generation" of hackers, namely Facebook's founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. While Stallman remains faithful to the ideals of the Free Software Foundation and his GNU project, he admits, "I have certainly wished I had killed myself when I was born." Perhaps this is due to the next generation's view of hacking as a "humming economic engine." The Internet guru Paul Graham and Mark Zuckerberg believe that they have managed to retain some of the hacker ideals even as they combine hacking with "entrepreneurial effectiveness." What we should challenge however, is this new generation's assertion that big business as a means to find the broadest audience possible fulfills the ideals of broad, unrestricted distribution or that Facebook's "hackathons" are the same as releasing early, often, and having the kind of beta-tester and co-developer base achieved through what Ryamond calls the bazaar model.
Digital Media- Spark of International Controversy
11 AM Section
Convergence- new media is convergence. Think of the ipad, the ipod, the iphone... basically any Apple product, or as Jenkins puts it, "The other week I wanted to buy a cell phone- you know, to make phone calls. I didn't want a video camera, a still camera, a Web access device, an mp3 player, or a game system." The phone of today has become a one stop shop, where you can make calls (which of course is becoming rarer and rarer due to the features of internet/IMing and/or texting), surf the internet, watch tv, listen to music, take pictures, preview music, play games, and about a thousand other things; convergence has become the future. Why have a laptop, mp3 player, tv, or landline telephone when you can just get a nifty little blackberry or iphone, perks of the others wrapped in one? Yet the funny thing is, even though there is this convergence all these other forms of technology still run rampant, and are promoted as necessary for one to be a citizen or rather a "new cultured" human being- and even here convergence is the perk, convergence is the answer, convergence is supposed to make lives easier not more anxious. Oh well. That- anxiety- is what people are left with, a device that makes them neurotic on what is constantly happening, whether thats finding out from friends via text, facebook, AIM, checking the New York Times or Perez Hilton. The problem with convergence is that it complicates everything, it sets out doing what is was meant not to do.
Section 3: Big Picture Communication
Sometime after the human race harnessed fire, in what we call the twentieth century, humans started doing some relatively awesome stuff. We figured out flight (...to the moon), started to more fully understand how to treat ill members of our species (...or clone them), and conceptually began to grasp our global situation (...we don't get along, but when we do we prosper). We learned so much from each other that some guy who helped a bunch of other people destroy and larger bunch of other people in a globalizing war decided we may need a machine to facilitate in our information retention and organizational system. Shortly after that desire we arrive at now, here, on the internet.
The massive archive of collective human knowledge and information we hold on our computer hard drives, in our libraries, and in our minds cannot be organized by a single human, but must be organized with the facilitation of communication. Some argue that verbal communication is partially based on the fact that since our eyes are both on the front of our face we have to turn more to see our surroundings. We teamed up and the ones who had better warning systems for predators propagated the survival of their genes by not being killed. Eventually those warning sounds became language, both verbal and written. We express our selves with our body through 'body language' and signs, or by using our body to push sound waves to other bodies' ears, or by leaving symbols of thoughts to be read by others (perhaps in a letter–if it looks like you're writing one to the Paperclip in word–or on a blog). We began to develop ways to extend the range of these visuals and sounds of communication. Now we can leave visual and audio recordings of ourselves or our symbols all over the internet and beam them all around the world almost instantly.
If the goal of human existence is to preserve our personal physical body as much as possible, and to appease it with direct benefit for its actions in a small picture way, then things like Facebook and open source are a threat, because they reject the priority of the body for the sake of the mind. For Facebook, the body is the profile and our physical bodies are simply a part of the equation (as much as a computer is; a middleman), which may at least seemingly undermine society's current opinion of corporeal existence (that it is super important; that can never be ignored, as it is our first mediator to existence, but other mediators like Facebook profiles or our art may be just as influential if not more). For open source, personal credit and monetary benefit may be sacrificed, which also threatens a society of competing individuals. It seems unfair to give away knowledge we individually obtained over time for free, but we may not be giving it for free; in return we expect human betterment which we may personally benefit from.
If the goal of human existence is for the betterment of our entire race (which in turn benefits the selfish being we all fundamentally are), things such as Facebook (with the decorprealizing/globalizing effect of internet profile communication) and open source (super globalized cooperative progress) certainly provide better access to more of the collective human knowledge. Now we must decide: once we break the world down into the big picture mosaic of physics and atoms that it is, do we want to keep knowledge as a luxury and limit access to our individual discoveries or act with our species as one single being? Our 'body' would be the collection of all our bodies, just like our bodies are collections of cells that communicate for a common goal of mutualistic existence; our minds would be all one mind facilitated by communication (like a computer with more than six million hard drives, many of whom have hard drives themselves). It works on an atomic level, and a cellular level, but atoms and cells don't whine as much as humans do. We've made it pretty far as a race that hates itself, imagine what we could do mutualistically.
Jordan - Matt's 11 Friday Section
This is a response aimed at Jenkins' essay "Worship at the Altar of Convergence". Jenkins' writes that, "a medium establishes itself as satisfying some core human demand," and I am interested in what the contemporary pervasive mediums are, what core human demands they do satisfy, and how does the development of technology itself develop these core human demands. In western culture, if you were to ask any individual what they consider a type of media or medium they would probably say television, radio, and art; however, it seems that many people do not recognize the internet as media for some reason. (I just asked two of my roommates, they both said television, radio, and art.) I believe the core human demand that the internet is attempting to fulfill is establishing a space for information that situates the individual in the post-modernist society. Space is definitely a form of media that has been evolving as the internet evolves.
I disagree with Jenkins' claim that the black box will never exist as evidenced by the divergence of technologies. He immediately points out how annoying it is to have so many different devices and technologies. Ultimately, there will not be one black box; however, think of the black box as an essential system of situated mobility. It will be a system that utilizes mobile devices networked over a broad public national network to any other device anywhere on the system. Additionally, you will have a point of situation, whether it is a web page or a networked hard drive, that contains your relevant information that you want to have with you as you move. This way your iphone can act as a remote control for your television. That's what I think will happen and I disagree with Jenkins.
I disagree with Jenkins' claim that the black box will never exist as evidenced by the divergence of technologies. He immediately points out how annoying it is to have so many different devices and technologies. Ultimately, there will not be one black box; however, think of the black box as an essential system of situated mobility. It will be a system that utilizes mobile devices networked over a broad public national network to any other device anywhere on the system. Additionally, you will have a point of situation, whether it is a web page or a networked hard drive, that contains your relevant information that you want to have with you as you move. This way your iphone can act as a remote control for your television. That's what I think will happen and I disagree with Jenkins.
Jenkins, convergence S 03
What interests me most about convergence is the way that it redefines the term consumer. When we are surfing the internet or even watching a television show via the web we are interacting with that television show in a way that makes us not only a consumer but also a producer. We are encouraged to contribute to comment pages or blogs about the shows we are watching. We are encourages to rate them, star them etc. We are even encountered with instances where our television characters themselves become consumers and producers at once, as in, when a television character (as many do from the Office or Barney from How I Met Your Bother) has a blog that exists within the same webpage that you are using to view the television show, regardless of who is actually the writer of that blog, they have had to use, or consume, a program created by somebody else in order to create that blog. Therefore, they have too become consumers. We are encountered with instances where we assume to be producers, where we are creating something like fan art but instead we act as free advertising for the very same thing we are assuming to produce. Then comes such problems as copy right laws and how they aid and harm certain industries. I recall reading that the show South Park when it started had very lenient copyright laws to enable consumers to duplicate parody and recreate the show. This gave the consumers a sense of control and they felt as if they were part of that show they were watching. This boosted rating and when the show boomed they were forced to enforce harsher laws to protect the show, and enable it to bring in more revenue. In this way, the sense of control that was created for the consumer was in a way a ploy to get to get them to tune in more, and therefore it was not control at all, and they were not producers at all. Rather, they were reproducers and everything they produced was somehow owned by, or lead back to the original conglomerate that created that which they are consuming. This also makes me think of such sharing sites as Youtube, where if a video has enough hits or if a character is popular enough, it brings the attention of the larger media owners to it, and eventually and for enough money, they can own that idea that at first was in the name of an individual consumer/producer.
Jenkins talks a lot about what it means to converge. He seems to say that convergence is a state of mind. That convergence occurs in our mind as much as it does in our appliances.Convergence, to him seems to be a positive movement forward. It is a way for old media to meet new media and for old media to find a new meaning to new audiences. Like the theater that becomes elitist or the comics that become specific to certian audiences. He says that the difference between old media and new media is that new media is interactive. It gives us the chance to create a collective memory and it deceneralizes media. but i wonder if this is actually a good thing because this means that we start to hold the position of consumer/producer. We are using programs in order to produce material that is then put into another program through which the owners generate revenue through advertising; therefore we as producers are free labor ( even if it is a labor of love). Or we create content, whilst watching a video that tells us how to produce content. Or we begin to expect to be able to produce and consume at the same time, or to consume different things all at once. We begin to expect to be able to have our music on our computer, ipod and phone. We begin to expect to be able to take a picture with our phone and send it to a friend. The incident that he first mentions about the “Bert is Evil” problem that Sesame Street had just seems absurd and yet so normal. We are faced with these kinds of things everyday now with our convergence culture.
This kind of humor is normal, if not hilarious. When a show like Family Guy parodies a song or a clip from a film, are they in danger of being sued? What about a person who parodies a clip and posts it on Youtube? If anything they are generating more buzz for whatever it is they are parodying. It is free labor. The other thing that has come out of convergence that I am fascinated with is Viral Advertising it is by far the best thing that advertisers have ever done. Viral advertising is produced by a “producer” but is read like it is produced by a producer/consumer. It is everywhere and it is created in a way that it converges with our culture, our habits, our needs, our wants and goes unnoticed as advertising, but is rather enjoyed as a form of entertainment.
Jenkins talks a lot about what it means to converge. He seems to say that convergence is a state of mind. That convergence occurs in our mind as much as it does in our appliances.Convergence, to him seems to be a positive movement forward. It is a way for old media to meet new media and for old media to find a new meaning to new audiences. Like the theater that becomes elitist or the comics that become specific to certian audiences. He says that the difference between old media and new media is that new media is interactive. It gives us the chance to create a collective memory and it deceneralizes media. but i wonder if this is actually a good thing because this means that we start to hold the position of consumer/producer. We are using programs in order to produce material that is then put into another program through which the owners generate revenue through advertising; therefore we as producers are free labor ( even if it is a labor of love). Or we create content, whilst watching a video that tells us how to produce content. Or we begin to expect to be able to produce and consume at the same time, or to consume different things all at once. We begin to expect to be able to have our music on our computer, ipod and phone. We begin to expect to be able to take a picture with our phone and send it to a friend. The incident that he first mentions about the “Bert is Evil” problem that Sesame Street had just seems absurd and yet so normal. We are faced with these kinds of things everyday now with our convergence culture.
This kind of humor is normal, if not hilarious. When a show like Family Guy parodies a song or a clip from a film, are they in danger of being sued? What about a person who parodies a clip and posts it on Youtube? If anything they are generating more buzz for whatever it is they are parodying. It is free labor. The other thing that has come out of convergence that I am fascinated with is Viral Advertising it is by far the best thing that advertisers have ever done. Viral advertising is produced by a “producer” but is read like it is produced by a producer/consumer. It is everywhere and it is created in a way that it converges with our culture, our habits, our needs, our wants and goes unnoticed as advertising, but is rather enjoyed as a form of entertainment.
Friday 11am Section
“It only does everything.” That is what Sony marketing executives have to say about their Playstation 3. And while many people, Communications Professor Henry Jenkins included, would argue that such a claim is not only false but entirely impossible, the numerous functions of the system are impressive to say the least. Sony's machine “only” reads the newest and most popular movie discs (Blu-Ray), plays the newest and most visually astounding video games (PS3 games), allows users to watch youtube, check their facebook, and browse the internet, among other functions. Prior to the Playstation 3, Sony's line of game consoles had been just that—a line of game consoles. Their functionality had been limited almost exclusively to playing video games. But their newest product illustrates the growing trend of convergence in media.
Certainly, the Playstation 3 is not the only example of media convergence, nor is it the ultimate example. Everywhere people go, media is becoming relevant and significant across multiple platforms. The term convergence itself, in Henry Jenkins' mind, refers to “the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behavior of media audiences” (Jenkins 2). Jenkins' three part definition can be easily illustrated by the recent efforts made by godaddy.com. The company, which earns money by selling domain names, airs brief, misleadingly risque ads that end with a message: go to godaddy.com to see the rest of the ad. This method is occasionally successful, and results in the viewers seeing the coordinated effort between two platforms to communicate the company's message.
Convergence, though, does not end at just a definition. As content flows across various media, “consumers are encouraged to make connections” (Jenkins 3). Obviously it is impossible for one person to know everything or make every connection. However, everybody knows something. As a result of this incomplete personal knowledge, a collective intelligence is formed. That means that the bits and pieces of information possessed by multitudes of people are pooled to add up to a more complete whole. The richness of information in media helps to stimulate a desire for discussion, which in turn generates a buzz surrounding the content. Therefore, collective intelligence serves as an alternative form of media power (Jenkins 7). This leads to an important point of convergence—it takes place in brains, not appliances. As the crossover takes place in people's minds while discussing information, they piece things together and begin to contribute in there own way.
Certainly, the Playstation 3 is not the only example of media convergence, nor is it the ultimate example. Everywhere people go, media is becoming relevant and significant across multiple platforms. The term convergence itself, in Henry Jenkins' mind, refers to “the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behavior of media audiences” (Jenkins 2). Jenkins' three part definition can be easily illustrated by the recent efforts made by godaddy.com. The company, which earns money by selling domain names, airs brief, misleadingly risque ads that end with a message: go to godaddy.com to see the rest of the ad. This method is occasionally successful, and results in the viewers seeing the coordinated effort between two platforms to communicate the company's message.
Convergence, though, does not end at just a definition. As content flows across various media, “consumers are encouraged to make connections” (Jenkins 3). Obviously it is impossible for one person to know everything or make every connection. However, everybody knows something. As a result of this incomplete personal knowledge, a collective intelligence is formed. That means that the bits and pieces of information possessed by multitudes of people are pooled to add up to a more complete whole. The richness of information in media helps to stimulate a desire for discussion, which in turn generates a buzz surrounding the content. Therefore, collective intelligence serves as an alternative form of media power (Jenkins 7). This leads to an important point of convergence—it takes place in brains, not appliances. As the crossover takes place in people's minds while discussing information, they piece things together and begin to contribute in there own way.
Wii and Convergence
I think the Nintendo Wii is the perfect example of convergence culture. Jenkins defines convergence as “the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries” (2). The Wii is at its core a video game console, but it is really so much more than that. On the menu page, there is an option for uploading your photos from an SD card and it has the current weather and news stories. You can connect to the Internet over the Wii Wi-Fi Network to interact with other people and go shopping. The different applications you can do with the Wii each have their own “channel” (eg. Internet channel), which is interesting because it is juxtaposing the idea of TV channels, video games, and the Internet all into one. You are looking at the TV screen and “flipping through the channels,” essentially changing programs, but it from a video game console, not the actual TV.
When the Wii first came out, it cost $5 to be able to use the channel to browse the Internet. After two years it was made free and everyone who had previously purchased it could get a refund. Making the channel free showed how deeply integrated the Internet had become to the media of video games- they have converged. Also, it means the TV basically becomes a computer. The Wii brings together all the media forms to create ultimate convergence.
The Wii actually facilitates convergence within its own genre. Using the online store, you can buy “classic console” games, which go all the way back to the first ever Nintendo console. No other system can boast having such backwards compatibility. Past and present media are both available in the Wii and coexist side by side.
Lastly, the Wii can now be used to watch TV and movies. Netflix recently introduced a disk that Netflix members can request for free, and it allows you to watch your TV shows and movies from Netflix on the Wii. The Wii is literally a combination of a DVD/VHS player, a TV, a camera, a computer, and a game console. The Wii 100% accomplished the challenge of “expand[ing] the potential uses of this cheap and readily accessible technology so that it…smuggled convergence culture right into people’s living rooms” (8). The appeal of this broad range of media cultures is apparent in the Wii’s success- it leads the market in sales over its competitors Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, which have Internet capabilities but nothing like the multi-media approach of the Wii.
Friday 11AM Section
"Free like speech"
The idea of "Free like speech" as opposed to "Free like beer" references Agre's theories of Grammars of Action in two ways. First, open source software, and for that matter all software and all code-based material exist within protocol: users can customize, manipulate, optimize, and utilize software programs, but only to a certain extent - only as much as the code will allow. Second, though the original intent of "free like speech" probably wasn't to directly reference Agre, this phrase brings to mind the freedom of speech that exists within a grammatical system. We are able to express thought, emotion, create near infinite combinations of articulation - but only within a grammatic protocol. Some structuralists may say that a thought does not exist until it can be articulated: we are therefore imprisoned in the system of grammar (and language) - we are unable even to think without the lens of protocol.
Emily for Matt's section
Emily for Matt's section
Blog #10 - S03
In “Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy,” Tiziana Terranova discusses postindustrial societies’ emphasis on knowledge as a new commodity for consumption. While I had never directly considered knowledge in this way, as an entity as commodified as anything material, what struck me more about Terranova’s article was not the idea of free labor and its fueling of Internet capitalism (though it is simultaneously exhausted and largely unrewarded), but rather the extents to which this free labor stretches – just how many free laborers the Internet is contingent upon, individuals who make possible some of its largest capitalist enterprises yet are not acknowledged or reimbursed for their efforts. Moreover, they are often not even aware of their own labors. When you consider a site like eBay, mentioned in a post below, it is quite amazing how holistically the entire system depends on free labor. Users must photograph, describe, and post their products to be sold; sellers must browse seemingly endless pages and bid constantly to secure their win. Negotiations between the winning bidder and the seller are common, and occur directly through email: what, then, does eBay really do to sustain itself, besides providing the domain and interface through which buyers and sellers may find one another? For, once they do find each other, the labor rests almost entirely on them. Of course, eBay, like all other large commercial websites (e.g. Amazon) has adopted customization features, telling users what products they might be interested in based on past purchases, but even still, the site itself, i.e. its paid and acknowledged employees, are not particularly responsible for the site’s capital revenue. The users’ labors, the posting and bidding and emailing and shipping, fuel the site through its commission and seller fees.
Even a site like Facebook, where no direct transactions involving the users are executed, still depends on the free labor of those who join it. The more Facebook users, the more wall postings and uploaded pictures and general time spent on the site – all a sort of labor in itself – and thusly the more site traffic, which attracts the advertisers that clog the margins of our screens and create large amounts of revenue for Mark Zuckerberg et al. To go a step farther, even news websites like The New York Times Online or CNN online – which certainly do create much of their own revenue through their journalists – still depend partially on the free labor of others. News coverage of the riots in Iran last year, for example, was deeply rooted in the cell phone videos and pictures submitted to the NYT, CNN and others by people far removed from the organizations – people present at the event itself. It was their labor, their strife and the effort of capturing it, which allowed online news publications to break the news with on-the-scene video and photographs.
And yet, as Terranova very astutely says, free laborers are not entirely exploited: they have a “desire for affective and cultural production that is nonetheless real just because it is socially shaped,” which creates an interesting distinction between the free-labor-dependent capitalist structures of the contemporary Internet and, perhaps, a stricter Marxist view of capitalism (Terranova, 36-37). There is a sense of “fulfillment through work” that drives the voluntary labor of so many web users (37). We enjoy viewing and consuming Facebook pictures, and thus post them to create/produce our own fulfilling experiences. With eBay, there is a monetary/material gain (whether you buy or sell) but fulfillment plays its part too. And of course, in the example of online news sources, one might contribute to worldwide awareness of a cause or event; the free laborer’s contribution and production has undeniably beneficial ramifications in the news world, thusly supporting Terranova’s claims of “fulfillment through work,” even when it is free, uncompensated, under-appreciated work.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
The little black box of dreams
I want to talk about the black box (issues of myth that surround convergence) in Jenkins' article and relate it to Terranova's theories about freedom and control.
The image of a "black box of convergence" that Jenkins discusses posits resided in my mind. I couldnt help but see similarities between it and the sleek black, rectangular iphone and now iPad. The black box is an ideal goal for convergence that has real wold corollaries (ipod, kindle, blackberries, xbox etc) but at the same time is imaginary, something to strive towards, inovation, simplicity. The ideal black box wouldnt be a fixed object but rather durable hardware that can adapted to the flexible and always updated world of software, allowing for the new inovations to work on the device. There are always new apps coming out, that make the iphone not just a point of convergence for media but a toolbox, a means of currency and transaction (imagine a not to far off world where creditcards will be embedded into phones). Inherent in this image is a not so far off world where not just media converges but all technology may converge.
This idea attracts our society because of its implicit promises of freedom, mobility etc. Indeed today many people aspire to have location free jobs, or ones in which mobility becomes possible. In our postfordist society this is increasingly more possible (appaderai points to this in his idea of Ethnoscapes). The imaginary associated with this is a CEO doing work from the a beach in Fiji, sipping a momosa. Such freedom is an ideal: to travel the world, to follow a loved one, to shake up the stagnation of daily rhythms, and live life to the fullest (sorry gettting a bit carried away here) but that is the point.
Essentially convergence becomes synonymous with ease, and freedom, and convienence. Authorship of the little black box means early retirement, fame, accomplishment, buisness. Both the consumers and the producers participate in this goal. Consumers want it and will pay for it, while producers want to create it. This creates a situation in which the quest for utopian convergence fuels productivity, research, innovation. This work essential is unpaid because profits are hypothetical based on meeting a future goal. But those who enter the race, enter willingly and most importantly freely
The myth then that surrounds convergence is responsible for late hours, for technological juicing of human productive power, and de-emphasis on the individual in favor of the synergistic energy of collaboration.
Perhaps convergence is an interesting way to think about Appaderai's theory of consumption fetish where there is both a fetishism of the producer and a fetishism of the consumer.
Now i turn to the appaderi's social imaginaire. Appauderies idea of nostalgia and the social imaginare- which he says: "Social imaginare is built around re-runs". We are stuck in the the media of other temporalities the past yes via the re-run culture, but also the future, imaginary culture (of convergence) which we strive towards.
Fuller's article about Microsoft discusses our hope for more autonomous workers, and also that work gets absorbed into the technology via the convergence of skill and capabilities into one interface. But at what point does this hope become oversaturated? is it only imaginary? Has it yet been realized in society?
Are we simply taking the neoliberalism promise too seriously and becoming addicted?
It seems that capitalism is trying to manage our desire for change/progression (is there a difference?). but equally it could be that we we project onto capitalism our disires and ideals. and that capitalism can regulate our actions without itself having agency other than simply being a promise or a set of rules.
So then my questions break down here . i want to know how capitalism regulates social desires. And what does marx have to do with it?
Word -- changing the face of programs
While we did not talk about this article much in class, I was really interested in Matthew Fuller’s “It looks like you’re writing a letter.” To me, this article not only illustrates what we’ve been studying regarding control society, the user vs. the creator and the things that the user can do in the world that the creator has given him.
Like Fuller, I am typing this article on word, and I can agree with him that since lot of the space “is taken up with grey toolbars pocked with icons.” This gives the user so much to do. From personalizing the toolbars to deciding which tools we want to use, we feel like we have a lot of freedom. This multiplicity of offerings is also available on the other applications in Microsoft Office.
While it seems like there is much freedom given to us as the user, we must remember that, like when using one of Google’s many websites, we are still in a system, and cannot go outside the boundaries, unless we are the ones programming a new version of Office. This brings us back to the control society and the idea of “always escaping, never leaving.”
It also is illustrating it’s control over us by “shifting things about in the workplace…And what it changes into at work effects how it is used, what it allows to be done, outside of work.” Word is also changing standards by changing what we think is normal for a program to give us, as “the volume of features…is often represented as a disastrous excess, but…[is] fitted up as standard” now.
I think that what word and programs in general have been doing are very interesting and definitely pertinent to the changing face of programming, and I hope that we can talk about what Fuller wrote about in section tomorrow.
Like Fuller, I am typing this article on word, and I can agree with him that since lot of the space “is taken up with grey toolbars pocked with icons.” This gives the user so much to do. From personalizing the toolbars to deciding which tools we want to use, we feel like we have a lot of freedom. This multiplicity of offerings is also available on the other applications in Microsoft Office.
While it seems like there is much freedom given to us as the user, we must remember that, like when using one of Google’s many websites, we are still in a system, and cannot go outside the boundaries, unless we are the ones programming a new version of Office. This brings us back to the control society and the idea of “always escaping, never leaving.”
It also is illustrating it’s control over us by “shifting things about in the workplace…And what it changes into at work effects how it is used, what it allows to be done, outside of work.” Word is also changing standards by changing what we think is normal for a program to give us, as “the volume of features…is often represented as a disastrous excess, but…[is] fitted up as standard” now.
I think that what word and programs in general have been doing are very interesting and definitely pertinent to the changing face of programming, and I hope that we can talk about what Fuller wrote about in section tomorrow.
BLog10--Matt's Section Fri 11am
Because I brought up the Terranova piece in an earlier blog post, I want to address that reading this week. To me, it is one of the most applicable readings that we cover in the class. It is also, just as Qian mentioned a few posts down from me, a terrifying notion. Within the notions of freedom and control, Terranova’s ideas truly shed a new light on the twisted control that is present on the web. I definitely feel freer on the web than I do in the real world: I can say whatever I want behind a veil of anonymity via sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace. I can peruse through peoples’ belongings in unprecedented ways via sites such as eBay and Craigslist. However, my participation in these sites leads to my overall control under the auspices of the web, according to Terranova. All of these sites clearly fit into her idea of free labor—none of them could work if people were not constantly updating and adding digital material to the sites.
I want to take eBay as a perfect example of Terranova’s ideas. eBay is quite possibly one of the largest market sites on the web. Its big rival is most likely Amazon, but their difference is remarkable. Amazon is a company: it runs by selling books from its own warehouses, but eBay runs person-to-person, with people selling their belongings to one another. This website would be completely defunct if it did not have the many users it has today. It is as if we are all working for the website. How paradoxical is this though? Because this website is used as a convenience, something that people can easily get rid of old things with and make a few dollars on the side with, eBay is not thought of as controlling. Thus, the freedom and control that the web gives us is interestingly intertwined. In section this week I think it would be interesting to think about this intertwinement. Most of all, does the web give us more freedom or more control?
I want to take eBay as a perfect example of Terranova’s ideas. eBay is quite possibly one of the largest market sites on the web. Its big rival is most likely Amazon, but their difference is remarkable. Amazon is a company: it runs by selling books from its own warehouses, but eBay runs person-to-person, with people selling their belongings to one another. This website would be completely defunct if it did not have the many users it has today. It is as if we are all working for the website. How paradoxical is this though? Because this website is used as a convenience, something that people can easily get rid of old things with and make a few dollars on the side with, eBay is not thought of as controlling. Thus, the freedom and control that the web gives us is interestingly intertwined. In section this week I think it would be interesting to think about this intertwinement. Most of all, does the web give us more freedom or more control?
Reading over the Fuller link this week, I found myself continually disagreeing with the analysis of Microsoft Word as an application. On paper, sure, the number of permutations of preferences and selections is downright ridiculous. In practice, I know what I'm doing and I rarely if ever feel overwhelmed by the formatting options. It is when I use more basic, traditional text editors, like TextEdit, that I find myself really confused. At some level, that's just the nature of becoming accustomed to an application - you know how it works insofar as you need to use it, and anything else becomes uncomfortable.
At some other level, though, my perspective is fundamentally different from Fuller's. Word was released years before I was born - my generation pretty much grew up on it. Beyond that, I think people who were born into the world of affordable personal computers as lifestyle necessities have a totally different perspective on them. We know how to cut down immense amounts of information into just the relevant and how to ignore the constant interruptions to the flow of computer use - as we discussed in class, virtually nobody reads over the terms of use documentation anymore. I see my friends dodging software updates (for better or for worse...) and circumventing registration for websites like it's second nature. The image of a toddler using an iPhone is the perfect illustration of this idea - bafflingly complex interactions with technology take on a disarming quality of fluency among those who grow up in an environment where that technology is commonplace.
This is why the tone of Fuller's piece didn't resonate strongly with me - the ideas are compelling and accurate. It's the presupposition that I've been extensively frustrated by the Word software that misses its mark. It's not that I don't think the program has design flaws that could have been thought through more thoroughly from the start - I just think those flaws have a rapidly decreasing salience to the experience of the average user.
At some other level, though, my perspective is fundamentally different from Fuller's. Word was released years before I was born - my generation pretty much grew up on it. Beyond that, I think people who were born into the world of affordable personal computers as lifestyle necessities have a totally different perspective on them. We know how to cut down immense amounts of information into just the relevant and how to ignore the constant interruptions to the flow of computer use - as we discussed in class, virtually nobody reads over the terms of use documentation anymore. I see my friends dodging software updates (for better or for worse...) and circumventing registration for websites like it's second nature. The image of a toddler using an iPhone is the perfect illustration of this idea - bafflingly complex interactions with technology take on a disarming quality of fluency among those who grow up in an environment where that technology is commonplace.
This is why the tone of Fuller's piece didn't resonate strongly with me - the ideas are compelling and accurate. It's the presupposition that I've been extensively frustrated by the Word software that misses its mark. It's not that I don't think the program has design flaws that could have been thought through more thoroughly from the start - I just think those flaws have a rapidly decreasing salience to the experience of the average user.
Wednesday Section
I thought Daniel's post worked excellently to illustrate Monica's critique of Jenkin's distinction between technologies of "delivery" and cultural media. Daniel's example of the Guatemalan village complicated the distinction in an odd way, the "media" of the television can also be seen her as a mere delivery technology delivering a fantastical, intangible commodity of Western society. However small, many of us could exert some influence on something like "The Hulk" by influencing its American box office, or among the more privileged crowd becoming MCM concentrators and going on to work in the Media industry; thus we have access to the medium's cultural aspects than a post-colonial other. So perhaps Jenkin's dichotomy IS true, but for racialized, or ethnocentric reasons not addressed.
Wednesday Section April 21st- Users and Convergence
One of the major insights of new media theory surrounds its questioning of the forms of producer/consumer in relation to not only digital economies, but traditional forms of media that are translated to a digital existence. In this field the subject of new or digital media is no longer a spectator or reader, but conceived in the paradoxical position of the user. The user as a category for theorizing those who consume new media is a paradoxical position because it calls into question the passivity of consumption.
In Jenkins piece, it is through convergence that we not only see a way in which old media emerge n the new, but "a change in the way media is produced and a change ijn the way media is consumed" (16). Speaking further to this Jenkins writes, "Convergence requires media companies to rethink old assumptions about what it means to consume media, assumptions that shape both programming and marketing decisions. If old consumers were assumed to be passive, the new consumers are active...[i]f the work of media consumers was once silent and invisible, the new consumers are now noisy and public" (18-19). Whereas the film spectator was silent in their seat in the house of disciplinary media, Jenkins calls us to rethink the new media or digital user as extremely visible.
One question I wish to bring to discussions is whether the users of digital technology especially surrounding the internet can always be thought of as "noisy" or visible because the media themselves are public? In a sense how are new media technologies always caught up in a process in which users become the producing consumers contributing not only their "free" or immaterial labor but to a collective knowledge. If this is the case then it requires us as Terranova suggests to question notions of the employment. Under this new form of consumption Terranova recognizes that "Often the unemployed are such only in name, in reality being the life-blood of the difficult economy of 'under-the-table,' badly paid work, some of which also goes into the new media industry" (46). Not only does such a formulation question the binary of producer/consumer in relation to the media but to the economy at large forcing us to ask if such a binary is even possible in our control society.
In Jenkins piece, it is through convergence that we not only see a way in which old media emerge n the new, but "a change in the way media is produced and a change ijn the way media is consumed" (16). Speaking further to this Jenkins writes, "Convergence requires media companies to rethink old assumptions about what it means to consume media, assumptions that shape both programming and marketing decisions. If old consumers were assumed to be passive, the new consumers are active...[i]f the work of media consumers was once silent and invisible, the new consumers are now noisy and public" (18-19). Whereas the film spectator was silent in their seat in the house of disciplinary media, Jenkins calls us to rethink the new media or digital user as extremely visible.
One question I wish to bring to discussions is whether the users of digital technology especially surrounding the internet can always be thought of as "noisy" or visible because the media themselves are public? In a sense how are new media technologies always caught up in a process in which users become the producing consumers contributing not only their "free" or immaterial labor but to a collective knowledge. If this is the case then it requires us as Terranova suggests to question notions of the employment. Under this new form of consumption Terranova recognizes that "Often the unemployed are such only in name, in reality being the life-blood of the difficult economy of 'under-the-table,' badly paid work, some of which also goes into the new media industry" (46). Not only does such a formulation question the binary of producer/consumer in relation to the media but to the economy at large forcing us to ask if such a binary is even possible in our control society.
Blog 10: Free Work and/as Civic Volunteerism
As I brought up in class, the concept of free labor is not at all new to late capitalism. In fact, as we discussed, new media institutions (e.g. Google, Facebook, AOL, open-source software) have tried to appropriate the culture and practice of free labor in the production of knowledge from the academy. The academy, meanwhile, looks back even further to democratic ideals put forward in the political theory of Rousseau and other late Enlightenment and early modern thinkers. It is this connection - between free labor as practiced via new media in late capitalism and free labor as civic volunteerism in a participatory democracy - that I would like to explore further.
By virtue of living in a participatory democracy, we are called upon to do a great deal of free labor - we need to vote, pay attention to the news, stay engaged in community affairs, etc. Meanwhile, we are also often called upon to work for (and/or give money to) social causes that we deem worthwhile (although America's obsession with charity may harken more to our brand of capitalism than to democracy in general). This kind of work can be as varied as giving food to a local homeless shelter, volunteering at a nursing home, protesting for workers' rights, or writing op-eds in the paper. I propose that we do these things for several reasons. First, it is a way of building friendships and community. Second, we have certain moral beliefs toward the causes that we support, and so this can of work gives us pleasure and satisfaction in trying to realize the kind of world that we want. Third, we might feel that it is our responsibility to the community.
I posit that the rationale behind free labor in new media is very similar to what is typically seen as volunteerism. There are, however, a few key differences, which need to be explored more. First, in typical volunteerism there is little prospect of renumeration from the work that we do (i.e. not only do we work for free, but nobody else makes money off of what we do). This is fundamentally called into question in new media (e.g. Linus, the millionaire; the NetSlaves of AOL). Second, typical volunteerism builds communities of physical proximity. Free work online builds communities of shared interests that are not place-based. This change might have important political implications, but I will ignore those for now. Third, the prospect of exhaustion would appear to be much more present in free work within new media. On the other hand, since volunteerism involves a more permanent connection tied up in place (through, for instance, personal relationships with neighbors), it is less transient and less likely to coincide with exhaustion.
I'd like to continue exploring this relationship between community volunteerism and free work in new media.
Wednesday 2pm Section
During Paige's lecture, I was particularly interested in how the impetus to freeware and open source functions as a critique of privatization but not of the politico-economic system or the drive to consume that is commensurate with it (read: capitalism). How can we understand this in the context of Jenkins statement that "consumption has become a collective process" (4)? Interestingly, what seems to be elided in this collective process of consumption is the individual, also known as what I had understood to be the very bedrock of liberal/capitalism as we know it. We seem to live in a culture of the me: of the i-phone/Google/car/computer/etc. Everything we use in the digital realm seems endlessly personalizable by the user. So much advertising seems to be aimed squarely at this 'individual', at constantly inviting construction of our identity through our consumption, but then what about this collective business?
Leaving aside the psychoanalytic challenge that I see at once protesting any collapse of theoretical concepts into a 'collective' with commensurate theoretical problems of subjectivity, agency and the unconscious involved in a translation of these concepts from the individual to group scale, how might we see the concept of the individual as always-already presupposing a collective? That is, can we really understand the individual/collective binary as a hard and fast distinction anyway? To what extent do these individualizing imperatives found in consumer advertising (e.g. "if you use [read: buy] X detergent, YOUR clothes will be super soft! [and hence YOU as an individual will be happier]) have always assumed a silent collective to which the individual is invited to participate (e.g. "if you use [read: buy] X detergent, YOUR clothes will be like EVERYONE ELSE'S clothes in that they will be super soft [and hence YOU as an individual will become part of a happy COLLECTIVE of X detergent-using people])?
Moreover, can we see how the dynamic of production, for artifacts like Wikipedia and Linux, Facebook and Myspace, can actually reinscribe this neo-liberal consumption/production as two sides of the same collective process? Does this suggest that the very binary of consumer/producer no longer functions in the same way and is thus always-already complicated just as individual/collective is?
Blog Post #10
The term “free labor” given by Tiziana Terranova could be a little horrifying. It sheds a very different light on the open source movement. Words like participation and collaboration are of course still relevant, but it seems they do not necessarily guarantee the creation of a utopia which the Internet had been entrusted with the potential to be from its emergence, free from controls of the real world, state or corporate. As ‘Netscape went 'open source' and invited the computer tinkers and hobbyists to look at the code of its new browser, fix the bugs, improve the package and redistribute it, specialized mailing lists exchanged opinions about its implications,” enabling maybe the better and faster upgrading of its browser for free, than could be done by hiring a group of engineers to work on it. Because the Internet is a site of limitlessness. They could hire the best people they can find, but somewhere on the Internet there must be someone better. And of course however many people they hire it will not be as many as those that are active on the internet. What is more, the Internet offers an “open communications environment” that is hardly conceivable in any one company. It is the most wonderful space for generating new ideas and knowledge that is crucial to today’s digital economy. What capitalism needs to do is to find ways to capture these ideas and knowledge and turn them into profit. Terranova’s essay tells us that it has found ways to do it, for free. It really bothers me to think that the many activities that we enjoy as leisure activities that better our lives, such as uploading YouTube videos, and for some people, fixing the bug of an open source browser, can be conceptualized as tasks that generate profits for some corporation that I have nothing to do with, and that we are not paid for it too. I need to think more about what to make of it that the line between work and leisure is blurred to such an extent that it’s actually possible for people to generate profits while genuinely believing that they are having fun. But then, it’s not their own profits that they are generating, so this is a kind of exploitation for sure.
Qian
Anna's section
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