Blog Assignment 6

1) What is the author's understanding of convergence culture?

Henry Jenkins refers to convergence culture as one “where old and new media collide, where grassroots and corporate media intersect, where the power of the media producer and the power of the media consumer interact in unpredictable ways.” In this sense, traditional media platforms such as radio, television, newspapers, and other platforms merge into one another through the advanced technology of the twenty-first century. Sources of information are no longer related to distinct outlets but rather, where you happened to come across them. Corporations no longer dominate the chain of information flow as technology has provided mediums that place grassroots organizations on par with corporations in regard to volume of production and circulation. No longer is one party dictating to another but rather, a two-way street has been opened in which dialogue now occurs and creates all new dimensions to media production and consumption.

2) What is creative engagement?

Creative engagement is the not just the use of creativity by an individual but with the intent to creatively engage with their community, whether it be local or global. In a time of such immense change, creativity is one of the most valuable assets humans possess. New modes of thinking, new modes of doing, and new structures of relationships force individuals of the twenty-first century to constantly push the envelope and above all, avoid stagnation. Progress and change are fueled by the creative potential of humanity and the technological tools at our fingertips are not meant just to be absorbed but to be utilized to an extent each individual is uniquely capable of. With technology and the age of the Internet, creativity doesn’t just happen in somebody’s basement or garage out of the world’s view but rather is increasingly visible to the world, as feedback is instantaneous and progress more possible than ever. The key is creating in an interconnected world and never allowing the comment “This is enough” to stick.

3) How are the participators engaging?

Participators are engaging in the world of convergence by restructuring the power dynamics of information exchange. Companies can no longer hide behind legal proceedings and back door dealings, as the world now has eyes in all places. The interconnected world is completely dependent on a participatory culture. The Internet is an infrastructure that must be continually perpetuated, added to, edited, and propagated by the users of the world. Whether it be someone’s novel, their work in Photoshop, their blog on their opinions, viral sharing, video creation, and the list goes on, the key is engagement. No longer is passive absorbency of the world around us acceptable but rather, we must actively engage in contributing to progress and the well-being of humanity as a whole, rather than the traditional fractionalization of society. The Internet has created a global community in which anyone can contribute as long as they are willing to participate.

How to Control Piracy: Blog 5

The age of the internet is one of freedom, equality, open community, and sharing. We share our life stories, our favorite articles and cat videos, our opinions, but we also share our media. The age of Internet piracy has dawned and is such an enormous force that stopping it completely is not possible. The Peer-To-Peer networks that have developed, in combination with torrent programs and increasingly advanced video conversion and ripping programs allow for the creation of an entire marketplace of movies, music, and whatever digital media people see the need to share. This marketplace has one defining characteristic: it’s free. In the age of the Internet and file sharing, goods can be transferred without the necessity of currency. How do governments and media corps curtail such activity? There’s no stopping it but limiting it may be possible. I’ve got a few ideas:

1. One option that could be taken would involve the media corporations joining the Peer to Peer (P2P) network. I have heard of attempts to upload broken copies as a ploy to discourage downloaders. I think it would be possible for these companies to join the network of seeds and leechers for whatever file it is they are trying to stop from being pirated, download the copy and then corrupt pieces of it, which would then be downloading by the rest of the network, creating faulty copies for many users, helping to undermine the use of that particular upload.

2. Another option involves continuing the ongoing efforts of the government to track down file sharing sites. While much of the illegal downloads today are shared via peer to peer networks that need only a magnet link to initiate, there are many sites that operate as providers of that link. The government must continue to seek out pirate sites and compile lists of illegal downloads being hosted or initiated in order to shut down the sites. While many sites change domains following such heat, it creates trouble for them that may slow down pirate activities. The government should also dish out hefty fines and prison terms to the site operators, who could be charged per download which could result in crippling damages to that individual or organization.

3. Another possibility, while hypothetical and potentially unethical within the realm of net neutrality, would be for Internet providers to create blacklists. It is well known they do monitor illegal downloading, with a list of sites that have the potential to create illegal activities, the ISP could slow down bandwidth to those sites to the point of snail’s pace to either prevent users from visiting or to make doing so incredibly difficult.

This is no easy problem to solve and will need ever evolving methods to control the scope of piracy and file sharing.

Privacy-Enhanced Personalization

In the article Privacy-Enhanced Personalization, questions are posed about the future of privacy in an increasingly personalized digital realm. Privacy was once thought to be in a reciprocal trade-off with personalization, with increasing in one resulting in decreases in the other. This idea is outdated as personalization, especially with the use of metadata and compilers, results in many more factors that affect what is lost and what is gained, and by whom. As far as relinquishing privacy, there is a positive association between age, education, and income, and stated concerns over Internet privacy. The result is three groups of privacy ideologies, those of the privacy fundamentalists, who are hard pressed to reveal anything, those of the privacy unconcerned, who think very little on their disclosure decisions, and the privacy pragmatists, a middle ground between the two. At a ratio of 1:1:2, privacy pragmatists compose the majority and will most likely continue to do so. Personalization provides people many benefits, the most important of which are time savings, money savings, and a third factor muddled among pleasure, customized content, and saved preferences. Most people are willing to disclose their basic demographic information as well as their personal preferences and lifestyles, while very few are easily coaxed into revealing financial or contact information, which is most easily used for identity theft. A staggering 94 percent of those surveyed believe they have the right to know everything a website knows about them, a logical expectation. One of the instrumental factors that must be established between information collector and information provider, the user, is trust. Elements such as positive past experiences, refinement of website design and performance, email confirmation of transactions, as well as the reputation of the website operator are all key ingredients to the building of an online relationship. Many people also prefer to see a privacy statement as well as a privacy seal in order to reassure themselves that they are in fact protected. Over 40 countries have worked to establish stringent privacy laws to ensure the protection of users. Technology has also been developed in order to enhance the privacy of personalized systems, such as pseudonym usage to identify users rather than their actual name, as well as the ability for users to store their metadata on their own computer. One question that I could not get out of my head revolves around complete disclosure between collector and user related to their data. If huge companies such as Google and Facebook provided users with all the data they have collected about them, as well as the many third-party uses, would this actually result in a better relationship or completely appall most users who have only minimal ideas about what these databases contain?

New Media and Technology: Content Moderation

The Laborers Who Keep Dick Pics and Beheadings Out of Your Facebook Feed

I chose this article because it is increasingly relevant as social media sites continue to grow. We all scan our feeds and unconsciously appreciate the tireless work of content moderation teams. I remember a few days where it seemed Facebook had yet to implement such a team, with videos of murder, beheadings, and rape jumping into millions of feeds. The psychological trauma associated with extended time spent viewing such images and videos is dangerous to society. The work of these many brave people help not only to protect the credibility of the companies running social media sites, but also the well-being of humanity. The damage done to these workers, who most of us never consider, is intense and a new development. In the age of increasing globalization, cultural ideas of what is "offensive" will likely come into conflict, and the decisions made by teams such as these will undoubtedly affect the effects of social media on all users.

Blog Assignment 2

In today’s technological age, information and networks are joined at the hip. Within the digital realm, the distribution of information is no longer bound by physical transmission. While at the beginning networks provided little value to the masses, their evolution has grown to embroil every human with a connection to the Internet. Today, there are two types of digital networks. The Local Area Network, or LAN, is limited in scope, usually confined to a building or geographic area. At the other end of the spectrum lies the Wide Area Network, or WAN, which takes the concepts of the LAN and broadens them in scope to a global infrastructure. With Wide Area Networks, the audience for broadcasts and advertising has grown by leaps and bounds. The key question between businesses and consumers in the digital network revolves around “value.” Businesses and advertisers see value as market penetration; how many people can they get their message to? For the consumer, value has a different meaning. For the content creating consumer, having a wider audience is also desired as a facet of value. But it goes much deeper than that. The consumer also seeks interactivity with digital content as well as desires connections to others engaged in Web culture, providing the human aspect to all of this. Sarnoff’s law equates network value to a linear relationship with the number of people on that network. This is a very traditional approach that does hold its own in older forms of broadcasting such as television and radio where more people does equate to more money. Unfortunately, this law is losing ground as traditional broadcast methods are being replaced by streaming services, social networks, and consumer generated content. In the digital realm, a much more calculated theorem is needed. Metcalfe attempted to address this issue with his theorem, calculating that the value of a network is proportional to the square of its members. The Dot Com bubble burst this theorem as speculators found that the theorem merely represented a maximum value, not a realistic one. Reed’s Law does a great job creating a theorem that has a place in today’s cyber culture. Reed claimed the utility of a network increasing exponentially from a base 2, that initial connection. This outward spiraling of value represents the immense power social networks hold and the nodes created by groups of users. Online businesses and advertisers have increasingly tried to create these nodes by creating their own communities in which, often times, users are their best salesmen. The dynamic has shifted into the hands of the consumer as businesses face the scrutiny or applause of the public in a never ending cycle. In 5 years, I believe information will be disseminated through surfaces. With the production of translucent panels, advertisers will find it easier to place information in every area of daily life. The move away from paper will continue, with maybe only a handful of books the survivors. The phone in our pocket will be our gateway to every service, be it paying utilities, finding news, banking, insurance, gaming, etc. The app will be the hub of every facet we can imagine, all in the power of our hands, or as Apple hopes, strapped to our wrist.

Blog Assignment 1

The article Why We Blog surveys an ethnographic study focusing on the blogs of average individuals, exploring wide array of motivations for their blogging as well as what these participants gain from blogging. The sample studied consisted of well educated, middle class adults who were either enrolled in school or employed in “knowledge” work or artistic pursuits ie. Intellectuals. Uncovered was the variety of styles found amongst the bloggers, with some posting frequently and others occasionally, some self-promoting their blog and others finding blogs through others. Delving deeper, researchers found that bloggers put quite a bit of effort and thought into the cultivation of their posts, most notably what they excluded, such as comments on friends and family. Some bloggers were driven by a desire to document their daily lives in a public forum, welcoming viewers to their personalized experience of life. In this vein, other bloggers use the medium to decompress, often expressing deep, heartfelt emotions that the authors were able to resolve through writing and talking to an audience. Many bloggers, reinforcing the typical perception of blogs, used the medium as an outlet to voice their opinions and commentary on events, ideas, or whatever popped into their head. Another motivation for many was the use of writing to help clarify their own ideas, leaving physical evidence of their thought processes and assisting in the formation of conclusions. The final motivation found in the article was the author’s active engagement in community forums, not only as poster but as commentator as well. The interactions across blogs are the fruition of blogging’s potential, as personal space enters the community arena and creates a distinct culture. I found that many of these motivations were in line with why I thought people blogged, while the variety of content found within blogs surprised me. Blogging represents a revolution of sorts, as the traditional “journal” becomes an open book, shared with the world and embraced by others. The opportunity for empathy, conversation, and development of the conscious are inherent elements of blogging’s potential.

First Blog Post (Video)