Monday, February 14, 2011

Blog #6

Obviously, the main concept found in Jenkins is that of convergence, "the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behavior of media audiences who will go almost anywhere in search of the kinds of entertainment experiences they want" (Jenkins 2). Jenkins states on page 16 that convergence is not an endpoint but a process, I found that to be an interesting take on it. In a way it reminded me of Weinberger and the constant organization that goes on in the digital world compared to the first and second order of order. Adding tags constantly in order to find things keeps modifying the way an item is organized.

At one point Weinberger talked about who was in charge of organization; Jenkins goes over the fact that corporations or individuals associated with said corporation have more power, he writes on page 3 that "not all participants are created equal". I'm writing about this in another class so this jumped out a me. On page 17 he does mention that the public taking the media into their own hands can lead to both positive and negative results.

One key aspect of Jenkins article is the way he links convergence and the media. He writes that "in the 1990s, rhetoric about a coming digital revolution contained an implicit and often explicit assumption that new media was going to push aside old media, that the Internet was going to displace broadcasting, and that all of this would enable consumers to more easily access media content that was personally meaningful to them" (Jenkins 5).
First of all, I like the implicit/explicit part, connection to Weinberger in the form of the writing if not the meaning behind it.
Second, the comment about "easily access media content that was personally meaningful to them" is exactly what we are doing with tagging, with the way Weinberger organized thing, it made items easy to find, easy to store, easy to share.

Continuing along the line of new and old media, I think this is one of the important key points from Jenkins, the way new media is replacing old media but the old media will always remain. Jenkins writes "history teaches us that old media never die-and they don't even necessarily fade away. What dies are simply the tools we use to access the media content" (13), he then goes on to define what a delivery technology is, making the distinction between the product we use to get our media (tape player, ipod) and the actual media being produced. I liked his example when he says that the cinema did not kill the theater and the TV did not kill the radio, that was a great way to make his point.
Jenkins defines what media is, it helped me apply his concepts a bit better: "a medium is a technology that enables communication [...] a medium is a set of associated 'protocols' or social and cultural practices that have grown up around that technology" (Jenkins 13).

To link Jenkins ideas of convergence and media back to Weinberger, they both state that things have to be available to everyone in a fast-paced manner, lag is becoming more and more unacceptable as we get used to Facebook and Twitter.

So to make it even simpler, from my take on Jenkins, the important thing to understand is that convergence is constantly transitioning, therefore the media we use is being transformed and "replacing" the old media we've been using, and could potentially still use.

As a side note, I really liked the term "tele-cocooning" =)

Monday, February 07, 2011

Blog #5

"The meaning of a particular thing is enabled by the web of implicit meaning we call the world" (170).

I think pages 169 and 170 explain that quote really well; we cannot define one specific object if we have not defined the objects surrounding it. We have unspoken knowledge of some things which helps us to constantly gain new understanding of what surrounds us.
This quote reminded me of the way I used to look up definitions in the dictionary and had to constantly look up new words to grasp the meaning of the original one. My mom had to often give me a simplified definition before I understood. Being young, I had in many cases not been exposed to the implicit (or even explicit) meaning of things in the world. Even now I need to expand my research to grasp the meaning of things such as politics.

In the third order of order one object is characterized and organized not based on the first letter of its name compared to another. It's organization often relies on its connection to the other object, Weinberger describes the connection such as the tag California bringing up pictures of San Francisco, San Jose and the Golden Gate (167). Even without the California tag on a specific picture, we know (implicitly) that San Francisco is in California, therefore many of us would not take the time to tag it as such.

For my drawing I chose to "illustrate" Enya's song Flora's Secret. I'm not sure I did such a great job making the implicit explicit, but I tried to focus more on how I connect to the song; to link this song to me a computer would have to know that I'm from a foreign country (Enya's "foreign island"), that my Grandparents' hometowns remind me of long green grass and blue skies and that my own hometown is full of willows.

Willow: http://dracoart-stock.deviantart.com/art/Willow-Tree-2-22158486
Field: http://eirian-stock.deviantart.com/art/BG-Dandelion-Field-152980595

Tuesday, February 01, 2011

Blog #4

One of the first things that caught my attention when reading Weinberger was the quote "every time you organize matters in one way, you are disordering them in others" (88). From past chapters and the What Is Web 2.0 and Web Squared articles we've read it was understood that going beyond first and second order of order allows a digital organization that places items into multiple places, "hang information from as many branches as possible" (Weinberger, 103).

An aspect of the digital world I'm very interested in is the idea of users working together to create a workable place for each and every single person. The use of tags is a life-saver in many situations when searching for a specific website, picture, or book title. In What Is Web 2.0 O'Reilly discusses Wikipedia and Flickr where each user brings in his knowledge and experience so others can reach specific information. Wikipedia and Flickr are discussed in Everything is Miscellaneous as well, all editors in Wikipedia create hyperlinks to other pages creating a web (or tree) within the website. The use of tags in Flickr (and a majority of other sites) allows for individual labeling of information; as a user you look for specific things that will lead you down a path no other user would have followed.

The section "The Rise of Real Time: A Collective Mind" discusses the use of hash tags in Twitter allowing users to follow a specific channel without the distraction of "useless" information. Weinberger talked about hash tags as well when describing the lists that can be created in Delicious. Using hashtags facilitates the finding of information but once again it allows easier sharing between users of the Internet. I suppose O'Reilly and Batelle summarize it quite well in Web Squared when they write "many people now understand this idea in the sense of 'crowdsourcing,' meaning that a large group of people can create a collective work whose value far exceeds that provided by any of the individual participants" (2).