You don't often read an article about the "behind the scenes" of the hip hop world; reading de Bourgoing's piece was extremely interesting. I was extremely interested in the way she discussed the need for artists to collaborate in order to gain more recognition, more respect, from the fans. She briefly discussed the use of Twitter and networking to have shout-outs to other artists, to me this is related to the topics we have covered in the first half of the semester; there is a need for networking, for users to interact and help each other out to gain more global recognition. She also talks about the use of sites like Twitter and sometimes Facebook and other blogs to market their music but also the merchandise that goes along with it; artists have very recognizable names, "in hip hop every artist is its own brand" (de Bourgoing). This use of social networking websites and easily memorized names reminded me of tagging for some reason, names that everyone would use make it easier to reach a certain page where artist-info and merchandise can be found. De Bourgoing also touches upon the fact that our society used to be story-tellers in the oral sense, but has slowly shifted to a "written tradition", she states that "hip hop is an art form that exists in a society with a strong written tradition yet it is an art form that travels mainly orally [...] This explains how it embraces easily a visual aesthetic" (de Bourgoing); I think this is an important point to retain when we know that our culture is going more and more into a digital world where multiple media are expected to be found all at once: text, film and music brought together.
Miller was a little tougher to read; a few things did stick out to me, I'm not sure if they are considered his key arguments, but I figure they will be important none-the-less. The first idea that I caught on to was the importance of touching upon more than one thing to keep renewing your 'style' rather than sticking with one topic that will become boring and overworked, Miller writes "by being a hobbyist, a kind of flanneur or somebody who jumps around, it keeps things fresh and new", this to me linked to the past discussions we have had, especially the way information is constantly worked on, changed and added to in order to stay 'fresh', interesting, and constantly on top of things. Another idea from Miller is the way we have "multiplex consciousness" because of our surroundings full of data, I suppose my mind linked this to previous readings because of the word "data", once again, our changing world from non-digital to digital is also changing our society and the humans that are part of it. Two quotes that can be considered important are:
"There's so much information about who you should be or what you should be that you're not left with the option of trying to create a mix of your very self. Mix culture, with its emphasis on exchange and nomadism, serves as a precedent for the hypertextual conceits that later arrived from the realms of the academy. The mix absorbs almost anything it can engage - and much that it can't" (64).
"But today, the voice you speak with may not be your own. The mechanization of war, the electro-colonization of information, the hypercommidification of culture, the exponential growth of mass media - all of these point to a machinic/semiotic hierarchy of representation that models human thought as a distributed network" (69).
These two quotes describe the way our use of all this digitized information is working towards making us less humans, this is a detail that many people truly believe in, one of the reason many individuals refuse to use computers, afraid that they may lose their sense of identity.
Both de Bourgoing and Miller discuss the use of multimedia to gain more recognition and keep things new and up-to-date. That links right into Weinberger's and O'Reilly's need for things on the Internet to be constantly viewed and reviewed, changed and added to in order to keep customers (or fans) happy, and not click away from such or such page to find current information elsewhere.
Miller was a little tougher to read; a few things did stick out to me, I'm not sure if they are considered his key arguments, but I figure they will be important none-the-less. The first idea that I caught on to was the importance of touching upon more than one thing to keep renewing your 'style' rather than sticking with one topic that will become boring and overworked, Miller writes "by being a hobbyist, a kind of flanneur or somebody who jumps around, it keeps things fresh and new", this to me linked to the past discussions we have had, especially the way information is constantly worked on, changed and added to in order to stay 'fresh', interesting, and constantly on top of things. Another idea from Miller is the way we have "multiplex consciousness" because of our surroundings full of data, I suppose my mind linked this to previous readings because of the word "data", once again, our changing world from non-digital to digital is also changing our society and the humans that are part of it. Two quotes that can be considered important are:
"There's so much information about who you should be or what you should be that you're not left with the option of trying to create a mix of your very self. Mix culture, with its emphasis on exchange and nomadism, serves as a precedent for the hypertextual conceits that later arrived from the realms of the academy. The mix absorbs almost anything it can engage - and much that it can't" (64).
"But today, the voice you speak with may not be your own. The mechanization of war, the electro-colonization of information, the hypercommidification of culture, the exponential growth of mass media - all of these point to a machinic/semiotic hierarchy of representation that models human thought as a distributed network" (69).
These two quotes describe the way our use of all this digitized information is working towards making us less humans, this is a detail that many people truly believe in, one of the reason many individuals refuse to use computers, afraid that they may lose their sense of identity.
Both de Bourgoing and Miller discuss the use of multimedia to gain more recognition and keep things new and up-to-date. That links right into Weinberger's and O'Reilly's need for things on the Internet to be constantly viewed and reviewed, changed and added to in order to keep customers (or fans) happy, and not click away from such or such page to find current information elsewhere.
You did a great job with this post and with the connections. I, too, am intrigued by the notion of "multiplex consciousness." Great post.
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