Interactive Rams

Ted Baker

2008-08-28T00:07:00.002-04:00

Rest in Peace

Theodore C. Baker

Interactive Ram

Where We Live?

2008-08-17T00:44:00.002-04:00

Hey everybody, come on over to my blog and check it out! The post is about my recent interview on Connecticut Public Radio talking about technology and its effects. Just click here: Where We Live?

It's not over yet!!

2008-08-15T10:01:00.007-04:00

I have to admit that I'm a little bit saddened by the discontinuation of this blog. Maybe even more-so the termination of our class. I realize now how lucky we were to have a place, both in a classroom and online, designated to learning and discussing new technologies and interactive media, namely ones that facilitate new and improved modes of communication. (Blah blah blah I know, but hear me out!!) When I hear about blogs and Twitter in other spaces I get excited because it's reminiscent of our cozy little group(which rocked... check out our other postings and You Tube videos :) ).

I must admit that I used to hate blogging and the idea seemed ridiculous however now I testify to it's adverse functionality. It turns out the my job is going to begin a blog, on behalf of it's belief in the "free flow of ideas." This network involves all ends of Draftfcb, from clients to employees and invites new bloggers and previous bloggers to join in hopes of creating a network which they say experts are calling "link love"... I admit I'm a bit of a fan of this term. I also think it's a bit funny that they say they're staying on the cusp of a trend, which they still are however, we were fortunate to have Paull Younge discuss this phenomenon of commercial providers and consumers beginning in online blogging discussion several months back. It's like we were given an inside scoop, a tip off to things yet to come. Sure I could probably read Wired or follow online sites that track new trends but it wouldn't be half as fun as seeing it's purpose (and if we even think it had one) debated out in class.

Another fun thing I discovered yesterday was that Twitter is officially on the map. I've been watching it's reputation grow over the past few months, seeing it make D list celebrity style appearances in several nooks and crannies on the online world but it's reputation as a second string niche fad is over. Twitter ranked as the second top hit on Google for "Olympic Medal Updates" and FIRST for "Medal Updates". So, welcome Twitter to the Big Dogs. Like many athletes who have risen to victory in the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, Twitter has shed the title of underdog and taken its place, raking with the best.

So, I'm hoping some of you check this blog time to time and will see that I'm tryign to shake the dust off after a long summer and keep the discussion alive. Or else... I'll get sucked into another blog and well, I'm just trying to stick with my roots. So lets go Interactive Rams... I know you want to :)

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The Interactive Rams Say Goodbye

2008-05-12T14:58:00.003-04:00

I am writing this blog entry as my Interactive Rams are taking their final exam. My best wishes to you all, and my gratitude for a semester to remember! And how, here's the video we recorded on our last day of class:

Andrew Rasiej, George Washington, and the Impact of Media on Modern Politics

2008-05-02T15:42:00.018-04:00

I think we can all agree that Andrew Rasiej's presentation this past Tuesday in class was an incredibly appropriate end to our Interactive Media experience with Lance Strate. The presentation helped us draw referential conclusions in between our own interactive research, and proposed how we can constructively participate in the dawn of the up and coming, 'Information Age'. In an attempt to conglomerate my own personal opinion towards the internet and its future implications on society, I decided to take an evaluation of the mainstream media in American culture. The internet is a new medium of media that can reach further, faster, longer, and more specifically than ever before, and it will inevitably affect the news broadcast industry. I'm even going to cite the Farewell Address thoughts of the great, late President George Washington in my evaluation...so sit down and interact with me for a bit.

I don't find politics as important as our modern society makes it out to be. I think it is more important to formulate your own opinion on factual issues, rather than comparing where these ideas stand in relevance to some other group or party's school of thought. From a young age I think we are all under some sort of pressure, as we grow and mature, to pay attention to what is currently happening in society around us. This is a good thing. You cannot actively participate (and feel a part of) a group or society that you don't receive a constant flow of information from. I also think that the idea of current information, and current political opinion are often confused by the general public because of how they're portrayed by the mainstream media. The way that MSNBC feels about the Republican Party's point of view on a particular subject is not technically news because nothing is happening. This is more like promotional propaganda. Now take this one step further and consider the fact that most modern news stations are politically affiliated with a specific party. I think that the diminishing ability for the public to distinguish between current information and current political opinion is alarming.

There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in governments of a monarchical cast, patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.

-George Washington, 1796 Farewell Address to Congress

President George Washington, in the final words of his political career, warned the American government against party politics. He acknowledges the need to express the difference of opinion in a democratic society, but states, "...in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged." I think that the difference in opinion between the Democratic and Republic party has helped to maintain our country to some sort of balance between the minds of many (although this is not relatively true for recent times). This is not George's and my problem with party politics. The problem arises when the ideas and goals of a political party turn focus toward issues that do not enhance free thought and democratic opinion. When a political party has a meeting to discuss how they will raise money to fund an election or a promotional event, it is no longer is politics for the good of the country...It is politics for the good of the party. To spend money, time and effort on the promotion, rather than the progression, of current ideas indicates an atrophy of free thought and egalitarian ideals. Now suppose that the media, which in the age of simultaneous information flow is becoming a cash cow industry, finds mutual benefit in sponsoring a particular political party. For example, say FOX NEWS provides coverage of The State of the Union that primarily outlines Republican issues, or say CNN is administered by a group of people who would feel safer if there was a Democratic majority in government office. Suddenly George's ideas don't seem so 16th Century.

We sit on the dawn of an 'Information Age' age, where the constant, simultaneous flow of information provided by the internet will allow us to investigate ideas and events from more, and different sources than ever before (through both promotional websites and interactive social networks). If the internet was made available to every single person in the country via WiFi and public access ports, then everyone would have the opportunity to formulate their own detailed opinion on issues that they were willing to research. BUT If we have a source of mainstream media that gives us the facts AND nudges us in a direction with which to comprehend these facts, then we do not feel the need to formulate our own opinions from scratch. Yet the freedom of thought and difference in opinion is the cornerstone of democracy. If you are inclined to be an intuitive person, then when you hear a fact your mind will ask you, "What is the reason for that?" or, "I wonder why that happened?" If the constant drone of the 24 hour news ticker already gives us a simple answer to these basic mind-wandering questions, then we wont feel the need to formulate our own opinions on these issues.

So basically, after all of this, I'm not saying much. I'm providing you with a political argument that doesn't even support politics. I will say though, that if you claim to watch the news (via tv, internet, mobile, or whatever new medium is created in the next decade), and assume that you represent an accountable reference on a current issue, make sure you have researched whatever it is your talking about. Better yet, if you are distributing news to the public, claiming to know what you're talking about regarding a controversial political issue, make sure you've researched whatever it is your talking about. The internet has provided us with the ability to globalize information retrieval, making it available to anyone who can get online. We need to take advantage of this resource, so that we can help enhance the cultural awareness of everyone in the world, for all classes and societies. We must also use the new ways in which technology has enabled us to obtain information to formulate our own opinions about current events. If you decide to watch what MSNBC has to say about the depreciation of the American dollar, then make sure to also read an article about it, and then find out what your social network feels about it in a community blog, and really consider your personal thoughts on the issue...all before you formulate your own opinion, and decide to offer that opinion to someone else.

Thanks for a good semester guys, see you in cyberspace.

Thank You Andrew Rasiej!!!

2008-04-30T20:43:00.003-04:00

We had an outstanding guest lecture by Andrew Rasiej, and after it was over, I prevailed upon him to sit down for a quick video interview for YouTube:

And here are the links that he mentioned in the video, for your convenience:

Personal Democracy

techPresident

mouse

Sunlight Foundation

And once again, on behalf of our entire class, thank you Andrew Rasiej for spending time with us and sharing your amazing experiences and valuable insights.

This Time.....It's For Keeps

2008-04-29T16:14:00.002-04:00

During this, my finest and most junior of academic years I was treated to a class of robust interactive ability. The class in question is Fordham University's Communications Department's Interactive Media Class, taught, or should I say hosted and MC'd, by Lance Strate.

It all began on a brisk, yet crisp, January day when I strolled into the Digital Media Lab in Faculty Memorial Hall just outside of campus. Professor Strate, a man I had actually met as a Senior in high school during a tour of the communications department way back in 2005, sat us down and promptly set up a class wide blog. From that point on, the blog postings came heavy and often. We embedded videos, commented on literature, talked about current events, gave reviews of tourist destinations, and just got closer as a group of spry minds just trying to get good grades.

The inter-personal communication didn't stop there. He introduced, well to me anyway, MySpace. I was hesitant at first, like a freshly born deer taking his first steps on a frozen pond, but I settled into it and am now part of a couple of groups and have a solid group of friends who I share an online bond with over such things as our mutual love of Orlando Magic offensive juggernaut Pat Garrity. MySpace wouldn't have been on my radar as an online venue I'd participate in, but I was put on the Strate path towards realization of its true power. I am a habitual Facebook user so this was a welcome addition to my repertoire and contrasted the college-focused Facebook quite nicely.

Amazingly, the roller coaster of new internet destinations for me to discover wasn't over. After our guest Paul Smith regaled us with his love of the chat site Twitter it was, as the saying goes, all the rage. The class and I Twittered until we passed out, in some cases, and had a generally unique experience thanks to Twitter. The unique, short-blurb format was surely original and it lent itself well to people with not too much to say. I could say anything I want, press update, and what I'm doing right at that moment is now out there for everyone (my subscribers, mostly) to see. I like what Twitter has shown me.

I never thought I'd get serious face-time in a medium viewed by all the movers and shakers in this world: YouTube. Thanks to Interactive Media that is a dream that has already been fulfilled. In a humorous, yet informative interview session with Professor Strate we talked about everything from Jerry Seinfeld to messenger boys. It opened my eyes to just how easy it was to make a video that will live in cyberspace forever; accessible free of charge every time. I wish more YouTubeing had taken place, but in a once a week class what more could I ask for.

All in all, this class had me thinking about the internet in a broader, more progressive way. I no longer check ESPN.com first...I browse the web and see what tasty morsels it has to offer. Thanks to this class there are a moatload more morsels than ever before.

Recapping the Year of Interactive (S)excellence

2008-04-29T14:38:00.001-04:00

Candidates using cable lines should be using Net

2008-04-29T14:06:00.004-04:00

I thought this was a really cool class as McLuhan would say. I had a great time watching the Southpark episode on theoretical money, as well as the discussions we would sometime have. I, also liked how we used MySpace and Twitter, but still like Facebook the best. These sights are getting more and more popular each year, they are a convenient and fun way to interact with your friends. They are also being used for web ads and can reach a wide audience rapidly. It has been a successful way of advertising and mass communication. This industry has branched out in recent years and has created social network advertising. While cable television promises to get the right advertisement to the right person, based on their lifestyles, however this is a future goal for cable and reality for the internet. With the growth of the internet comes the growth of time spent on the internet. With this said, many individuals time is dedicated to social networks like MySpace and Facebook, which have also been used for mass advertising since their launch in 2003 and 2004. These social networking sites continue to grow,it is an activity that 37% of US adult Internet users and 70% of online teens engage in every month. By 2011, about half of all online adults and 84% of online teens in the United States will use social networks. However, broadcast television, received nearly 60 percent of total political spending, will be the leader in the political advertising space and may see some follow-along ad dollars from online combo buys from the campaigns. With 95 percent penetration, TV is still the fastest way to reach the broadest audience of registered voters. Even though the internet is becoming more accessible, people that are fifty five and older demographic are still the hardest age group to reach through the internet. Therefore candidates will spend most of their ad money on traditional media.

Checkin' Out

2008-04-29T12:00:00.008-04:00

As I often do for most of my classes, I questioned whether or not, I would enjoy Interactive Media. I was hesitant about such social networks like Myspace.com but eager to discover more about the infinite network of communication in cyberspace. I am happy that I stuck with it, because I got to share and learn new information with a cool class. Also, I was able to learn from a fun professor with an immense amount of knowledge about new media.
One of the best things I developed from this class was the ability to think outside the box about the vast capabilities of the Internet. Consequently, I purchased my first website, Thecollegebible.net. Although, I need to take a computer programming course or hire someone to perfect the site it will being running soon. Nonetheless, the site is designed to be a social network for college students all across the country. It is not really designed to be for personal communication like Facebook.com but a network of information. I intend to make a site where students can leave something behind for the next generation of college students such as recipes, videos, pictures, art, music, and other sweet stuff. Also, I thought of another good website idea, but I cannot reveal yet.

I believe it is essential for our generation to stay involved in such networks of communication to make progress for a better world. I routinely felt obligated to blog posts about important environmental issues like global warming. I tried to encourage peers to check out good links and their movements. As a part of the Internet generation, we must utilize the web to our advantage. We can make positive social changes, because we have the ability to communicate so easily on a global scale. The InteractiveRams must live on and continue to stay socially connected.

Hopefully, I helped my fellow students learn something new similar to how I learned something from them. The beauty of interactiverams.com was sharing with a class rather than just communication between you and a professor. I believe we were all able to get a better understanding of our peers’ style of writing. The blogs reflect aspects of one's personality. For instance, owe have published an array of blogs from Pat Garritty to episodes of South Park. I believe it is safe to say we all have benefited from Interactiverams.com. The blog has become a powerful on-line tool helping even the common person become involved in journalism.
Although some of the terms and theories in Communication and Cyberspace went over my head, I enjoyed reading many of the technology theories that became true. The authors predicted the future benefits and dangers of cyberspace. I felt the book taught us to think ahead and differently about how we should use the Internet. Many of the social networks that they predicted became the basis for this course. We explored interaction among social networks such as Myspace.com, InteractiveRams, Facebook.com and Twitter.com.

Originally, I bashed Myspace.com for being a creepy and lame social network, but I have incorporated it into my Internet routine. I have found it is a great website for aspiring musicians, filmmakers, and other artists. I will continue to keep my Myspace.com page and will probably start putting some of my short films on my site. The visual media on the web has truly captivated America. New web sites like YouTube.com have enabled anyone to share their favorite home video or short film. The InteractiveRams left their mark on Youtube.come. Now anytime that I miss our class, I can watch the video.

P.S. I am not sure if this will be my last blog on InteractiveRams.com, but I may take a personal leave of absence with summer around the corner. I hope everyone enjoyed my blogs, and I wanted to say thanks for a fun and educational class.

You Say Goodbye, and I Say Hello

2008-04-29T11:54:00.002-04:00

To say the Interactive Media class was valuable to us would be an understatement. I consider our generation of students to basically be the first generation that grew up with access to the Internet beginning at early childhood (ages 8-10 when the Internet first really came on the scene.) Thus, a class based on studying social activity on the Internet as well as expanding our own interactivity was incredibly relative. This is not to say we did not benefit immensely from an older generation of "digital immigrants" made up of established communications professors and media ecologists. Over the course of establishing a new persona on the Internet we linked what we experienced to the ideas of communication and technology expressed in Communication and Cyberspace: Social Interaction In An Electronic EnvironmentIn our class's bible as we refer to it, the relationship between new media and society is closely examined through the writings of such professors as Lance Strate, Ron L. Jacobson, Stephanie B. Gibson, John M. Phelan, Paul Levinson, Sue Barnes, Neil Postman, etc. Each author examines different media outlets and their purpose for society along with some fears and possible dilemmas each could be associated with.

It seems that as the Internet becomes more and more polished in today's world it is encompassing all of the myriad of media that came before it. Clearly, the Internet will inevitably bring forth all of the concerns that were expressed about media before it. This was evident at the outset of the course when Professor Strate's first assignment was to begin a MySpace page. Almost all of the class preferred other social-networking sites such as Facebook to MySpace and gave Prof. Strate some grief right from the beginning. The fear with MySpace was that it was almost too personal and would instantly make us more intimately connected with the online society. Most of us connected MySpace solely with spammers, online marketing agencies, bad musicians, and creeps. Yet we created a profile hesitantly to see what the class would be all about. Looking back I feel that our fears before joining a new social network have equated to the best parts about this particular site. The fact that people are not afraid to cross borders and reach out to new and interesting people allows all of us to join extended networks made up of people we do not know in the real world, instead of just communicating with our own friends and family via a site like Facebook.

Every reading took us along the path of technology, from the telegraph, trains, and a postal system to radio, television and the Internet, every new media was examined with respect to society. In order to follow along with what the readings were teaching us we attempted the best we could to describe the message through our own online social interactions and other external sources. For example we took what Sue Barnes and Herbert Zettl wrote about virtual reality and the digital self and applied them to social networking (the idea of having friends and relationships that are solely online-based) in addition to Halo 3. The fact that a video game that came out right at the beginning of the course could all of a sudden be pertinent class information was the very nature of what we were learning. The simulated battle scenes with other online players along with constant communication and flaming all coincide with what these authors teach us about virtual reality. In addition we were able to use the ideas expressed by Trey Parker and Matt Stone in two consecutive South Park episodes to further understand what Neil Kleinman, Eric A. Zimmer, and Christopher D. Hunter teach us about intellectual property, copyright, and Internet dependancy.

I had studied the work of Marshall McLuhan before taking this Interactive media class however I would be lying if I said I could have understood it as well beforehand. To study Interactive Media in the manner we did gives new meaning to McLuhan's phrase, "The Medium Is The Message." That is to say that we were not learning from the content discussed which often consisted of random YouTube videos, meaningless tweeds, South Park, video games, Pat Garrity, etc. On the other hand it was the medium in which we communicated our ideas to the rest of society thorugh online profiles and groups, and our own videos and blogs that truly drove the course. Neil Postman questions us in his epilogue, "Cyberspace, Shmyberspace", the true purpose of the Internet and humanity's need for this. The simple answer would be to say that it represents McLuhan's idea of the "global village" far more than any technology before it. In today's complex world that is in need of political and social communication without bouandaries, the Internet truly allows us to interact with people we never would have been able to before. Thus, uniting the world more and more each day as a "global village".

As the summer nears I feel the best part of this class is that it is only just begun. During the course of the semester we have started online personas and lives that may continue on into the future without end. This class is still closely connected on MySpace, Twitter and within this blog, so we can continue to learn from each other, maybe even more so, when we are not meeting in a classroom once a week. Our interactions online will now have new meaning as we further expand our networks without the guidance of Professor Strate. How well we stay in touch and continue to understand Interactive Media will be a testament to what this course has taught us. See you in cyberspace. 1

In Closing

2008-04-29T11:46:00.003-04:00

In my ever-continuing search to be more "interactive" I checked out a random blog post on MySpace the other day that dealt with a video post proclaiming Christians as delusional. My experience with the few posts and comments I have read on MySpace has been that they are either filled with pointless spam advertisements, random messages of hate or sex, and your few comments of valid ideas and opinions. While this one was certainly filled with all those, I searched deeper and found a discourse somewhere through the chaos and clutter. Pro-religion and pro-agnostic views both rationale, eloquent and well thought out filled the comments board and what I saw was a collection of dozens and dozens of messages perpetuating a conversation of ideas. Not getting all political here but i think America is big on that kind of thing and always has been. This communication was not segmented and edited, it was raw and honest. This is the type of environment that breeds ground breaking and revolutionary ideas, the difference that Rushkoff spoke of when he talked about communication and information. The Internet does have information in the traditional sense but unlike its mass media cousins it still possesses this ability to avoid the editing and bias of television and newspapers and gives us candor.

This experience has shown me the extent to which the Internet and its properties of virtual reality and community can allow us to completely immerse ourselves in this digital landscape. But I'm worried about what we're immersing ourselves into. Is it the blogs, social networks, posts and message boards that link us based on social interaction and shared interests? Or are am I allowing myself to dive into a world using freedom and choice as an illusion? I worry because the web is too 'honest' and powerful of a medium to not garner attempted manipulation. Just like there are some people who think the news we watch and read is 'fair and balanced' and don't question it for a second, I wonder if we are not doing the same thing, or at least will unknowingly believe the same to be true if such a transition ever happens. We see glimpses of this in countries where national control or partial censorship of the Internet exists, we even question that it might be happening here with issues of the phone companies and net neutrality. But how do we know if it hasn't happened in the quiet of the night. James Beniger states that the Internet's progression is bottom up, but in our day and age for every web innovation created there is a multi-billion dollar company or investment group there to propel it from the bottom up. The optimist in me says they are just cultivating and polishing it while getting a nice monetary surplus in the process and that its ideological purpose and functions is of minimal concern to them, but why is this so hard to believe?

Previewing and buying books, television, music...whatever we want has become a reality. More than a simulation of the social landscape, the web has become an extension. We can now yell at, insult, meet and lie to one another at distances and times larger and further than ever before. The outcomes are good and bad but seemingly always more convenient. But if for nothing else that wasn't already readily available to us before the web as we know it today, it has upheld and at least noticeably perpetuated freedom of speech and the discourse of ideas. This is a problem that was not solved before the Internet, will probably not be after it, but is undoubtedly helped as a result of it. This is the saving grace of the Internet, the propagation of our ideas, wherever they may be directed. It is important we keep them free from tyranny and manipulation; corporate, ideological or otherwise.

This is perhaps what I have gotten most out of the class, the productive and creative potential for the web. Whether spitting a hot bar of oratory skills on Youtube, or textually dropping dope rhymes via blog. Seeing the next generation of manifestos, pallets, note pads, and drawing boards on those streaming videos and blog entries, I've learned that at my discretion I can be putting as much in to this Internet-thing as I get out.

I'm Out

The End is Just the Beginning

2008-04-29T11:24:00.003-04:00

I was going to summarize our readings into categories of textual, sensory and issues of sociopolitical importance that still may be a better option however, then I might be re-writing chapters of our bible. Instead, I would like to draw upon our online social interaction and apply those reading which aim to discuss cyberspace, virtual reality, textual de-linearity through hypertext, and time among other topics.

Throughout the past few months we have submerged ourselves into social networks such as Twitter, Myspace, and Youtube. Sure we have asked what types of spaces are being created here but what are we actually submerging out ourselves into? We have discussed that virtual reality is simulation of reality. Youtube is one site that I think we might use to test this statement. Digital videos capture the visual and audio experiences of reality and encode that information, allowing us to view a reality known to us in a digital space. Do we still call this a virtual reality or not? Is it a simulation? A virtual space does not need to capture all sensory experiences experienced in physical reality to be virtual. Virtual reality simulations often only encompass visual and audio senses however, the more senses involved in the virtual experience, the more similar to physical reality it becomes. Jay David Bolter believed that there is a different sense of self, of placement and interaction when mediated. Who are you in a virtual space ad where are you? So when your videos are published to the web and played repeatedly by viewers like a menacing episode, is that an accurate simulation of yourself? What rules apply?

[Side thought: With the beginning of hypertext, all rules of linear thought are broken, unorganized movement throughout a text introduced, forecasting the future of the internet as a network. ]

Gibson coined the term Parasocial interaction and defined it as talking to someone through a mediated form in a personal context. This is an everyday occurrence for many people. Parasocial interaction is made possible through iChatting and vlogging amongst other emerging technologies. How are we affected by conversations that imply geo-relativity while there is no physicality at all? Unfortunately, the term parasocial communication rings of abnormality. It sounds like an irregular form of communication. It is different in comparison to the forms of communication we grew up with (interpersonal, broadcast, non-verbal, etc). But today, mediated communication is no longer parasocial interaction, it is a step closer to true virtual interaction. As it become second nature use mediated communication, we inch closer to a more virtual world where very little human interaction will occur. Constant connectivity to out social networks will allow for more fluid and constant communication that actual social interaction in the physical world will become almost unnecessary. We will then begin to live in a virtual world, a simulation of reality, a place where meetings occur in virtual spaces and parental visitation is a two hour online interactive gaming session.

With time avatars will fade and we will replace online profile with and actual virtual presence. No longer “getting rid of the meat” (Sue Barns) but including the most accurate representation of self possible.

In regards to ownership of the internet and the direction it takes by way of ownership, I would hope to see it remain in the hands of the cyber-junkies and digital geniuses which reminisce on ARPnet, the cyber-cowboys and renegades that explored the dungeons of MOOs and MUDs. I see no option but to continually undermine the wish for governmental control. The internet can only flourish is the same way it was rooted, from a democratic and independent community because the public will overthrow any regulation.

With that said, knowing the power of the user. It is also in the hands of the online community to close the digital divide. Access and computer literacy are two growing issues. As mentioned by Frank E.X Dance, it is going to have to be a “trickle up” effect. This responsibility should be a communal one. Starting small and blossoming outward. Contributions to communities throughout the world will enable access, increase literacy, and start a true global nation. If we want to keep the internet from governmental regulation is is a necessity that the community acts on the gaping digital divide so that they may maintain the democratic community that it was founded on.

Well I’m not sure how much more I could write (definitely a bit) but I feel like I’ll be monopolizing our blog. To all my Interactive Rams… it was fun exploring the unknown, pioneering a new course here at Fordham University and getting know all of you in the process. I’ll see you all in (our final:( ) class and online!

The Internet Isn't For Porn, or The New Internet

2008-04-29T10:46:00.002-04:00

I came to the realization the other day that I've been using the Internet for some 13 years. I do vaguely remember logging into AOL on my 56k modem back in 1995. It was an exciting time. You could actually chat with someone in another state! Though for no more than an hour a day because it cost money to use dial-up in those dark ages. It's interesting because I never really understood what Web sites were until much later. If I couldn't find it through AOL Keyword search, I wasn't quite sure where to go. It's hard for me to sit back and imagine that time period. Not many of my friends had IM, so I went into random AOL Kids Zone chat rooms and made friends. Again, it was hard because dial-up tied up the phone line, and you couldn't have that.

In February 1999, I was "born again" on the Internet. I got a brand new iMac and it changed the way I used the internet. I finally figured out how to get to Amazon.com, and I learned what Yahoo! was. It was a strange time. It's hard to think that was only 9 years ago. Still on dial-up, but so much faster than it had been 4 years before. After a few furtive purchases on Amazon, we didn't touch it again until Christmas of that year, nearly 10 months later. For my family and I, the Internet was still new. We even called in the Credit Card number on that first purchase.

By 2002 (and Sophomore year of High School), I had finally figured this Internet thing out. I was using Web sites regularly, making frequent use of Amazon and eBay and exploring. In 2004, we finally upgraded to broadband and this just served to mean I was on the Internet more. And now here we are, 2008 on the eve of my last classes as an Undergraduate and I'm filling out a blog entry for a class on Interactive Media. It's been a weird 13 years of the Internet for me. But it does give me some unique insight into how things have changed. (It's also hard to imagine that incoming Freshman to Fordham where born in 1990.)

Web 2.0 is new the buzzword of the last two or so years. This is the big, user generated internet push. Things like Wikipedia, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and more are representations of this move toward users creating the content of a Web site. Blogs and online Journals have recently become media savvy, gaining legitimacy. They've become cross-media platforms with embedded videos, a plethora of hyperlinks and tags-a-plenty. Web 2.0 is part of the evolution of the Internet into that which is being called (with about the imagination of a 6 year old) The New Internet.

We've heard recently that we're running out domain names in the next 2-5 years, that the Internet (that is the current or "Old" Internet) will hit its maximum capacity of users and demand by 2010 - 2012 (The latter being the year the World ends for some people, see Mayan Calendar). The New Internet will apparently run on fiber optics and is projected to be 10,000 times faster than our current Internet, broadcasting around 1800 MB a second. For those in the ever-growing field of Internet piracy, that means rough 6 episodes of a 45-minute long TV Show in a second.

But the New Internet won't just be better at processing information and getting you the latest mash-up of Chocolate Rain on YouTube in seconds. (Or perhaps you're a fan of Tay Zonday's other hit Internet Dream.) The New Internet will be a place where Wikipedia-type Web sites are the norm. Resources where the users are using their own expertise to make content better. Blogs could be the place to see news first on the new Web, MySpace and Facebook might replace AIM as a means of a communication (especially now with the ultra-creepy Facebook IM system.) The New Internet could very well be based heavily on Web 2.0 principals. (PS, they're already working on Web 3.0).

I couldn't tell you for sure where the Internet is going to go in the future. One hopes that it will evolve into something strong, something universal. Who knows, maybe Second Life will become the visual aspect of the Internet? Kind of like that Dave Chappelle skit which I would gladly post if only Comedy Central didn't delete anything they copyrighted on the Net. But I don't think we're quite ready for a visually-interactive Internet. We need to still get over Web sites with pictures and videos because they're still relatively new. Heck, there aren't even really books on the subject of social media yet. We're still exploring for ourselves, and the best people suited to develop Web 2.0 and the New Internet are still coming through college. They're the kids who were born with the Internet, the ones who don't remember a time without it. (And to be honest, my early memories of it are pretty boring.) So, that's it. My thoughts on the Internet after looking into the subject these last few months. It's a weird thing. An organic inorganic-technology. It lives and grows because of the millions of people taking care of it. With those kind of parents, it has all the potential in the world.

And, because it's an Interactive Media class, I feel I should share the best medium of them all: The Rick Roll.

Luke Forand--Signing Out

2008-04-28T22:36:00.008-04:00

In what very well likely could be my last blog entry for the Interactive Rams, please sample my reflections on what I have learned in this class about where the internet is headed, and what we should do:

The whole world continues to connect itself with hyperlinks, websites and social networking, drawing together corners and discussions that could not exist without the internet and didn't exist anywhere near this scale before the internet. People can find love (if you believe in match.com), order their groceries, manage their stocks, become ordained ministers, post personal videos, and publish their writing all using their personal computers. None could argue, this freedom gives the masses power, right? Advertisements, pop-ups and spam plague the user's experience, but with a system so fluid and instantaneous, it is virtually impossible to fight all the little things that get in the way of pure information flow. We as users have become creators.

But will people be able to respect the internet and protect the integrity of the information on such an open, free source? The internet allows third parties to create applications and change the face of social networking sites like facebook and myspace. What Jonathan Zittrain calls "generativity", is the ability to create on the internet on multiple levels. "Social, content, physical and logical layers" of the internet can be influenced by any user logging on. Sites like Wikipedia allow content to be changed as users publish. Physical layouts and logical placement of information can be criticized through online networking, "contact us" hyperlinks and digital "suggestion boxes" as available as someone's email account. Social sites have laid the groundwork for people to create an identity online and collect "friends", "followers" and members of different groups that the user belongs to (on or offline). The online identity from social networking will shape social interaction for our generation and those after us.

People must be aware and conscious of how the internet works and what effect they will have on the whole web. It is my opinion that more people are using the internet and less are thinking about it. We must remember to use the internet and not to abuse it. One such problem occurs with social networking applications (individual creators) on sites like facebook and myspace have access to every users private information. The internet is such a leaderless and classless society that the problem and the ingenious of the internet is that ANYONE with know-how can post, send, receive and promote ideas/information.

With this flow of information comes other problems of copyright. Like "who owns mickey mouse"?. Walt Disney isn't going to sue me if I send a picture of Donald Duck in one of my emails, but prominent online authors and poets are not having such an easy time using symbols, characters and images of the past. If a lot of people are seeing something, somebody wants to make money off of it. Who knows where the restrictions and freedoms of the internet are going. International standards must be

One things is sure, the mixing of media is inevitable. The TV and computer will soon be intimately connected to the cell phone and the digital identity people have will be sinonymous with their identity in reality. 3D representation, touch-screen, mouseless computers as well as vocal/video interaction with new technologies and increasing social networking across the globe will prove to bring people closer together and continue to push the boundaries of how people experience the world we have created (and that other world that was here before us, too).

Prediction: By the time I get old, I will be ordering my prescription meds, listening to music, browsing the internet, recording my favorite shows, video chatting with old friends, writing my personal blog and text messaging my friends all from my personal "identity screen", a computer-cable-satellite phone media player that ties your world to THE WORLD(starts at $4,500). And who knows, maybe it will be 3D on my table-- the final frontier in collaboration of media (end of the world to follow shortly...)!!!

Interactive Rams Go YouTubing Part Two

2008-04-22T16:04:00.002-04:00

This time the tables were turned! Here's Part One:

And now Part Two:

Stroke of Insight Video

2008-04-22T15:58:00.004-04:00

This isn't exactly interactive media, or perhaps it's interactive media of the most basic sort, especially if you think of computer technology as an extension of the brain, and the brain as a processor, with the mind as its software.

A Society of Overloggers

2008-04-22T13:18:00.003-04:00

The newest episode of South Park once again has tailored itself to our Interactive Media class and analysis of the internet. For some reason, the "national internet" stops working and the community realizes that they have a serious problem with "overlogging" onto the internet. Randy Marsh has trouble sleeping and some personal problems "getting off" without obscure internet porn. His daughter has an internet boyfriend who she is suddenly disconnected from after the internet goes down. At the conclusion of the episode, Kyle has an ingenious plan to fix the internet and gains access to the top secret location of "the internet". Then he does the unthinkable--unplugs it, then plugs it back in. Miraculously, the internet is back up and everyone can go back to their lives of overlogging.

Humorous as usual, South Park also brings up a point that our class has been making all year and should be obvious to anyone who is more than a product of their environment: the internet world is addictive and has become more important to many people than the real world. We feel insecure and nervous when we can't send emails before bed, look at goofy youtube videos or communicate with our online friends, some of whom we will never meet. I don't know if Trey and Matt read our blog, but they sure are playing a tune that rings true and in key with what we have learned in our exploration of social networking and the medium of the internet.

Social Networking with Fantasy Sports

2008-04-21T22:25:00.006-04:00

Another social network that we have not really touched upon in class is the Fantasy Sports Industry. The immense popularity of sports in the current Broadcast Industry is undeniable. ESPN is an around the clock radio and television broadcast network that updates viewers (to the minute) on what is going on in the world of sports. At any given time during the day or night you can tune into a game or sports talk on ESPN or other major television networks such as TNT, ABC, or CBS. The popular interest for sports in America is aparant, and as fervor for the internet continues to increase, the Sports Industry is bound to find its foothold in cyberspace. The Fantasy Sports Trade Association (FSTA) reports that as of 2007, there are more than 125 major companies (including credited companies such as ESPN and CBS Sports) and 18 million adult users in the Fantasy Sports Industry. The popularity for fantasy sports is becoming increasingly evident, and in terms of our Interactive Media class (that means you Lance Strate) I think the social networking element of the Fantasy Sports Industry is noteworthy. Many employers complain about their employees wasting time at work over the internet competing in Fantasy Sports, which is reminiscent to the complaints from teachers about students interacting on social networks during class time (where computers are available). I found a fairly unintelligent video that argues in favor of participation in Fantasy Sports in the workplace, saying that it promotes positive relationship building between coworkers. In the context of this blog, the existence of this video validates the idea that the Fantasy Sports Industry is really just another type of social network. The Fantasy Sports networks actually have a leg up on some of the other social networks that we have been researching in class, based on the idea that it adds a competitive element to an aspect of society that a large percentage of Americans are very interested in (explained the the begining of this post). Personally I have not really participated in the Fantasy Sports Industry, but I think its increasing popularity within the realm of the Social Network Era (there I said it) is very relevant to the research we are conducting in this class. Anyways, here's the unintelligent video.

Myspace versus Facebook

2008-04-21T18:24:00.003-04:00

The other day I noticed one of the major social differences between Myspace and Facebook. I observed that Facebook has become the dominant social networking site for the typical college students, while Myspace particualry attracts people of all ages in urban areas. It has topics of interests for everyone and has become the biggest social networking site available. Every person, I have become friends with in New York City has a Myspace page, while most of my college friends only have a Facebook account. Social networking has become a less creepy way to stay in contact with a person you have just met. Subsequently, it is more popular in cities, because you interact with a lot of new people. You get to explore their custom website highlighting their personalities. Nowadays, people are using less pick-up lines involving one’s telephone number and concentrating on their Myspace or Facebook connection.
Primarily, you will find that kids in suburbia have abandoned their websites on Myspace due to the recent popularity and engagement of Facebook. Orginally, Facebook limited their accessibility to the website, because it was designed for college students. As Facebook blew up, they opened their website to high school students and it is now available to everyone. I found there is a boundary between the two websites with a small percentage of people participating in both. I wonder why certain people prefer one social networking site opposed to another? Thus, I found an article called Class War: MySpace Vs. Facebook, in which, Researcher Danah Boyd from the University of California Berkeley confirms what teens in any high school across the country already know: “Affluent kids from educated, well-to-do families have been fleeing MySpace for Facebook since it opened registration to the general public in September, while working-class kids still flock to MySpace.”

“MySpace is still home for Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, "burnouts," "alternative kids," "art fags," punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer kids, and other kids who didn't play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm. These are kids whose parents didn't go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school. These are the teens who plan to go into the military immediately after schools. Teens who are really into music or in a band are also on MySpace. MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracized at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers.”

I thought this was an interesting observation that other people have begun to research. We should explore the boundaries between the social networking sites and why certain people choose one group opposed to another.

Blogging Just Got A Little Louder...

2008-04-21T17:02:00.003-04:00

In this class (particularly Camille Paglia's piece) we have discussed the contrast between traditional print newspaper and magazine writing and that of its digital counterpart on the Internet. No more is this more distinctive than in the blogosphere; spawning from a diary-like function this genre of writing has weaved itself into the most accredited of traditional print news media like the New York Times and CNN. News and media organizations have acknowledged this phenomenon as best they could and incorporated it into their business models and infrastructure.
But the blogosphere is a creation of the digital domain, and while to some extent it has been manipulated to function in the format of traditionally print-oriented editorials, the ever expanding choice and multitude of the blog on the web is not as such that it can be limited to a narrower class of "accredited" bloggers.
It is true that there perhaps exists some hierarchy of blog writing in the web; that for every 50 blogs about insignificant personal rants masqueraded in poor grammar and syntax we will find one heralded by a noticeable portion of the online masses. But to assume that these "few" Nobel like blogs entail those found on ESPN.com and USA Today is to be foolhardy. Undoubtedly the blog writers that have been brought in to usher this fusion of internet-print journalism must have been talented and popular so as to have been able to garner such attention from the high and mighty news media, but the law of averages coupled with the sheer abundance of blogs out there covering every possible interest and subject tells us that there are more out there than just the ones we read about in the technology section of USATODAY.com

Many of you guys are going to look at the adjoining article I link to this post and wonder what the coherent connection is. The point that I'm trying to make is that blogging...Internet writing and journalism as a whole, which has often been criticized by detractors as an inferior form is growing louder in its cry for equal artistic and journalistic consideration. This NY Times article which delves into professional sports' issues and concerns with "sports blogging" is a clear example of the reality and attention blogging has begun to command. The questions being asked about traditional press privileges for reporters as opposed to bloggers are noteworthy signals of the changes surfacing on the horizon of news, media, sports and journalism.

Please Read Up & Comment:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/21/business/media/21bloggers.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=technology

Interactive Rams Go YouTubing Part Two

2008-04-15T16:57:00.003-04:00

Three students were MIA last time, so here's the make-up interviews:

Lawrence Lessig on Remix Culture

2008-04-15T15:06:00.002-04:00

Lawrence Lessig gives an amazing talk on remix culture and its influence changing the way copyright laws work. Looking at the past, it's inevitable for copyright law to change to reflect new practices and it would benefit us now and not wait until the last minute.

Postman's Message

2008-04-15T14:01:00.002-04:00

Neil Postman writes in his epilogue that we should not judge technology, new media, and the Internet by the aspects of our lives that they enhance. On the contrary, we should consider if a technology like the Internet is essential to the human race at the current moment. Today, I feel podcasts, mobile Internet devices, and PDA's do not solve any specific problem, but are designed to make people's lives even easier. At the same time the existence of the Internet as a whole may soon be viewed as a necessity for the younger generations to come. In today's fast-paced, large-scaled, and global society the value of human life can be greatly affected by a person's access to the Internet. The emphasis on being connected to the web in a person's life will only be increased in the future. I know in my own life where more often then not the Internet in my home is either down, or being used for other purposes (Halo 3), I miss out on my own obligations of studying at a University and working for a website. Not to say this is a problem for society, but eventually the Internet will become more and more of a necessity for all people. What would Postman think of this?

Good For You Twitter!

2008-04-15T13:45:00.002-04:00

I am actually happy to hear that Twitter may begin providing ad space on their site. Why should they miss out on the money a popular networking site like Twitter should make. Many people have expressed a greater interest in the uniqueness of Twitter than they have with any other, more intimidating, social-networking sites. I feel if its got the buzz, it should have the bucks. MySpace and Facebook have generated monopoly money for their creators based on the sponsors they receive and still provide free registration for members. If Twitter does the same I feel it will only expand to new members and advance its content, thus making it more popular and easier to reach new people and make online connections and relationships.

Twitter Going Corporate?

2008-04-15T13:29:00.003-04:00

In a recent article from Techcrunch.com it is reported that the popular micro-blogging site Twitter, which we have all come to love possibly started introducing ads into its site as of last night. The site, which is currently free and extremely popular has yet to incorporate any traditional ad partnerships that would allow it to start making money. Another possible option would be to add a subscription fee to the site in order to generate some funds, but will this go over well or even come into fruition?? We shall see...

Here's the link to the blog post/article about the issue:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/14/twitter-testing-advertising-in-twitter-streams/

Interactive storytelling: We Tell Stories

2008-04-14T12:06:00.004-04:00

We Tell Stories is an interesting take on the idea of interactive storytelling using the Internet. From the site:

"Starting on 18th March, Penguin UK is launching its most ambitious digital writing project to date. In collaboration with fêted alternate reality game designers Six to Start, Penguin has challenged some of its top authors to create new forms of story - designed specially for the internet.

Over six weeks writers including Booker-shortlisted Mohsin Hamid, popular teen fiction author Kevin Brooks, prize-winning Naomi Alderman and bestselling thriller authors Nicci French will be pushing the envelope and creating tales that take full advantage of the immediacy, connectivity and interactivity that is now possible. These stories could not have been written 200, 20 or even 2 years ago."

The first story—The 21 Steps, uses Google maps to tell the journey that the protagonist takes throughout the story. The company that helped to make this calls it an ARG—an alternate reality game, which according to Wikipedia, is defined as “an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants' ideas or actions.”

The second story, Slice, uses blog posts and Twitter to tell the story, which I guess is a pretty interesting idea; people can get updated with the story almost immediately. The site in general seems to take the most prominent aspects about using the Internet and using it to tell stories. With the first story, it emphasizes how far satellite technology has gotten and how it allows us to look at anywhere on the globe (via Google Maps). Another story plays on the immediacy that the Internet can provide; the authors write the story in real time for readers to read immediately. Another, which uses blog posts to tell the story shows off an entirely different way of telling stories. I suppose the language used will be a lot more colloquial and casual to create Internet personalities where readers can easily get a sense of what the blogger is like. With Twitter, actions in the story would have to be shortened to fit within that 140 character limit. The fourth story, "Your Place and Mine," have two narrators telling about their encounter with the other one simultaneously. Though I think so far, the fifth one, "Hard Times," was the most interesting. It begins with, "More of us live online," and continues on with statements and statistics regarding the current state of how information, ideas, etc. travel and how the current generation is different from the older one.

In general, I think this is a pretty interesting site. It definitely puts a new perspective on how we can tell stories using the resources that the Internet has to offer as well as methods that are currently so popularly used on the Internet.

Viral Marketing

2008-04-09T21:25:00.004-04:00

Digital videos and video sharring are working for more than just media savvy individuals like us, the Interactive Rams. By forging sites like Youtube.com where we create and share videos, we promote ourselves (your name is your brand). Clearly, by sharing our videos we hope to create some type of attention or recognition. When a videos or online games generate some hype and gain recognition solely by viewer sharing, it becomes a viral piece. If an advertiser does this it is called viral marketing. I came across a great viral video which also promotes a product and a brand in this non-traditional form of advertising. So, to keep with the tradition of viral marketing, I am sharing the vide with all of you. Very cool and very boy-friendly. I love this stuff so, enjoy!

Can anyone figure out what this is about? I can't wait to know!

Interactive Rams Go YouTubing

2008-04-08T16:41:00.001-04:00

Our first YouTube video, awkward and lacking any redeeming value:

SP deals with web video

2008-04-08T15:17:00.002-04:00

Episode 1204 of South Park begins with all of Canada going on strike. To the boys dismay, this means no new episodes of Canadian humorists Terrence and Phillip. In an attempt to raise enough money to give to the Canadians to end the strike, the SP boys create a YouTube music video that shows Butters singing a vulgar and hilarious song. When they try and get their "internet money" from an office, they run into every YouTube legend you can imagine. Check it:

Curious Articles I Found

2008-04-08T15:05:00.005-04:00

This was on the Open Anthropology blog I read, thought it was pretty interesting in the context of the class Interviewing the 'Electronically Archived "YOU."'

Also, here's this article about this program called Oddcast.

BBC Articles about the Internet
Sex Offenders and Social Networking

Man gets $2.6m for pizza.com

Search Engines Warned over Information

In class on Monday, one of my professors gave us an article about the electric car in Europe. It was tongue-in-cheek and mentioned the Lizard Alliance and Ray Guns. Our professor thought it was a legitimate article. It from the British technology Web site The Register which presents articles about new technology in comedic fashion. Consistently starting articles about Yahoo! with every word excalamated (yes, I just invented a word). Interesting place with fun articles. One of them linked me to a video of an Italian CEO giving an inspirational speech to his workers where he says that Napoleon won the Battle of Waterloo. (He didn't)

Mobilizing to Save Civilization

2008-04-07T18:04:00.004-04:00

As I noted in our last class class, I found the last chapter of the book to be most intriguing. In our modern and fast-paced society, I believe we often forget the most basic principles.

Recently, I started reading a book by Lester Brown called Plan B 3.0 Mobilizing to Save Civilization. The book is a part of a short series to address and help change problems in our environment. If you are not interested in purchasing the book; the author made the book free of charge on the Internet to help reach a larger audience. If you click on the link above, it will take you to the website. I am aware that I have continually stressed all of you to check out these preservation websites, but this one is essential. I recommend just checking out the introduction or first couple chapters, because the numbers and facts are simply astonishing. It is an easy read with a powerful message. President Bill Clinton praised the book saying,

“Lester Brown tells us how to build a more just world and save the planet…in a practical, straightforward way. We should all heed his advice."

The book is divided into four overriding goals: stabilizing climate, stabilizing population, eradicating poverty, and restoring the earth’s ecosystems. “We have the technologies to restructure the world energy economy and stabilize climate. The challenge now is to build the political will to do so. Saving civilization is not a spectator sport. Each of us has a leading role to play.” He discusses the global role that is so pertinent in saving our civilization. We must globalize to prevent further damage that we will be unable to save known as the tipping point. I wanted to throw out a few overwhelming facts so that you will actually check out the book or website.

"Nearly all of the 70 million people being added to the world population each year are born in countries where natural support systems are already deteriorating in the face of excessive population pressure, in the countries least able to support them. In these countries, the risk of state failure is growing."
"In 2006, the world pumped 31 billion barrels of oil but discovered fewer than 9 billion barrels of new oil. World reserves of conventional oil are in a free fall, dropping every year".
"During the late summer of 2007, the news of accelerating ice melting arrived at a frenetic pace. In early September, the Guardian in London reported, "The Artic ice cap has collapsed at an unprecedented pace this summer, and levels of sea ice in the region now stand at a record low. Experts were "stunned" by the loss of ice, as an area almost twice the size of Britain disappeared in a single week".

Sobering the Cyber-Generation

2008-04-07T16:24:00.003-04:00

In Chapter 2, CyberWalden: The Online Psychology of Politics and Culture, John M. Phelan incorporates a conservative point of view into the progressive idea of cyberspace and the increasing importance of the internet's capability. Phelan states the reiterated idea that the internet may not be able to replace tangible interaction. Seeing pictures and reading about a city on the other side of the world is not the same as actually being there, and a conversation over AIM or even through video web cams using programs such as IVideoChat or Chatablanca is not the same as a conversation face to face. Phelan actually states on page 54, paragraph two, "In this broader cultural context, cyberspace can in some way be a step backwards." Although the internet has introduced an entire new culture of ways in which we can obtain information faster, or reach people easier, we must take this efficiency in context. Since the internet is such an incredible invention, that has developed more within this generation than any prior, I think our generation has formed a type of obsession with cyber-culture. As the internet continues to grow, specifically through channels which allow anyone who can get online to contribute (Wikipedia being an obvious example), our generation continually builds upon this idea that our we have helped to contribute to the boom of what is possibly the most extensive technological advancement ever. Being the first generation to be effected by the internet, as well as foster its growth, there is a astronomical idea that we are the first generation to recognize the human "need" for digital interaction over the internet. I agree with the comments from John Phelan in this chapter which look to sober the obsession that our generation tends to accumulate with the excitement of the internet's growing capabilities. Cyber-culture and the internet have proven to be a cutting edge way to access information, interact with people, and even complete menial tasks (such as banking or paying bills), but this does not mean that the creation of the internet has created a human need for its capabilities. The internet is a tool, not a necessity, and the effects of the internet on a society which aims to expand online capability towards the idea of Universal Service will reflect this. The effects of an incredible technology on our society will not supersede the effects of issues in our society which actually do constitute human needs. While we are worrying about how porn on the internet is going to effect the sexual decorum of our children, people living in the physical world are dealing with starving poor living in inner-city slums, and natural disasters which might point towards global warming. We must look at the internet as a tool to help us solve issues in the world which actually effect our human realm of necessities, rather than obsessing over our adaptation to the technological capabilities of the internet and the resulting effects.

Cognitive Logic and Relational Fascination

2008-04-07T14:35:00.002-04:00

In James R. Beniger's Chapter 3, Who Shall Control Cyberspace, he explains three major characteristics of the internet and cyberspace which foster the adaptation of this new conceptual space into our everyday lives. Beniger says that cyberspace is physical, cognitive, and relational. The physical aspects of cyberspace are needed, but probably the least important in terms of the human adaptation of cyberspace, consisting of the actual computer, modem, keyboard, etc...that we use to access the internet. Cognitively, the internet offers users the availability to do their own research, and pay attention to the information that specifically effects their own personal lives. Also from the cognitive view of making the computer a personal medium of exchange, the evolution in the personalization of our own computers and their desktops is becoming an increasing factor of why we may choose brand loyalty to one computer brand over another. Personally, I think this is why Mac has been so successful in marketing their laptops, pushing Microsoft out of the business of computers and into television (see my previous blog Microsoft ...Television) Lastly, Beniger refers to the new conceptual space of the internet as being relational. This is obviously the most fascinating part of the new world of cyberspace, as it is probably the least understood yet fasting growing characteristic that Beniger names. We can understand the physical means used to access the internet, and we can logically understand why someone would want to use the internet for cognitive purposes (accessing more desired information at a faster pace), but is the relational part of the internet really needed? Cognitively we have almost solved the "problem" of not being able to access information fast enough, but from a relational point of view what has the internet provided us that we could not accomplish more efficiently face to face, or even on the telephone? I don't think anyone is really sure of this, which is why a large portion of the cyberspace community has become so intrigued by online social networks. Learning how to interact with people strictly using digital means is new, unchartered ground that has grabbed the attention of many people who use the internet on a regular basis. Is it possible that as our society evolves, the online social network evolution will have become so prevalent that upcoming generations will need to be able to interact digitally in order to meet the social needs of a modern society? I think this may be pushing the envelope, but it is interesting to note the current fascination of online social networks and the eventual direction that this fascination will lead us in.

Wikipedia Takes Manhattan...

2008-04-01T16:45:00.002-04:00

...is a scavenger hunt and free content photography contest coordinated with Columbia University and New York University students, aimed at illustrating Wikipedia articles covering the wondrous sights on the island of Manhattan.

The student participants will compete to photograph as many sites as possible from a list of goals whose articles lack photographs, or that are missing certain essential photographs.

The event will be held on Friday April 4, and will run from 11:30 AM/noon to 11 PM/midnight. Everyone will meet up and check in at the two starting points at noon, and after a day of subways, street rambles, photography and free culture goodness, the night will conclude with a party back at Columbia. For more info go here or here

Gotta love Wikipedia!

Fears With Social Networking

2008-04-01T15:29:00.002-04:00

Here is an article about a Muslim girl who was killed by her own father for using Facebook in her home country.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Facebook-Kills-Saudi-Girl-Shot-Dead-For-Using-Facebook-82081.shtml

Twitter Updates

2008-04-01T14:01:00.002-04:00

In case you hadn't noticed, I added a tweetpeek to the sidebar on our blog. This applet will display the five most recent tweets from the twitterers in our class. Any one who I missed can follow InteractiveRams and I'll follow you backs you're added.

I learned of this site another group I became a part of known as The Pulse of Ubuntu. The group follows users of the Ubuntu Linux OS on Twitter and I was lucky enough to make "Twitter friends" with some of the people who set it up. We've had some awesome discussions on Twitter and I grow to enjoy the service more each day. Just as a note, our site is based off The Pulse of Open Source which tracks the tweets of prominent open source software developers.

I hope everyone gets a chance to play with Twitter. It takes a little effort at first to make contacts and gain some followers, but afterwards it's very easy to start thought-provoking conversations and network with people you might miss on other sites. If you get a chance, follow me on Twitter @ twitter.com/tedbaker. Looking forward to reading some new tweets!

The Net Generation

2008-04-01T13:08:00.007-04:00

As most of you know, my lap-top, I-pod, and some other sweet things of mine were recently stolen from my house. I missed a couple blogs, so I am writing one long blog to cover certain points of interests from the assigned readings.

As Paull predicted, a child of the Internet and cell-phone generation, I feel cut off from society. I can no longer have the luxury of sitting on my couch and doing my daily Internet routine. Honestly, I do not really miss checking my My-Space page, but I still have the same impulse to check my Facebook. It is weird how every time you go to the computer, you have the urge to check your e-mail, facebook, and favorite web-sites.
We are the Net generation. A generation that always feels the need to stay socially connected. Check around your college campus, everyone walks to class chatting on their cell phones and listening to their I-pods. The Internet and communication have become such an important element in our life. Why do we daily check our facebook and call friends the instant we get out of class? Thus, I wanted to discuss the relevance of conceptual space in cyberspace. I found an excellent quote from James Gleik defining the Net as “It isn’t a thing; it isn’t an entity; it isn’t an organization. No one owns it; no one runs it. It is simply Everyone’s Computers, Connected”

I like this quote, because it brings up the concept that the Internet has become the most valuable global connection. We stay connected through a vast amount of networks and channels of communication. When you think about it, websites like My-Space, Craig’s List, Facebook, Ebay, are truly remarkable. You could make friends before you even move to new town or auction against a sea of anonymous people for an artifact in Egypt. There are a world of opportunities (.com folks) and information in the universal knowledge of the world known as cyberspace. How many times have you heard an argument come down to “Dude, Wikipedia it”!

Last Friday, we decided to have a last minute fundraising party, in which, we facebooked probably a few hundred kids at about seven o’clock. It is amazing that we are able to send a message so easily to a vast amount of people in so little time. No telephone calls, no instant messages, or the thought of mailing any letters! The Internet has forever transformed our generation. For instance, I have witnessed the Internet divide between my grandfather and me. I find it amusing that he needs a list of instructions to log on and check his e-mail. We bought him an I-pod for Christmas, but that was too complicated as well.

In the epilogue, Neil Postman asks “Do we actually need cyberspace technologies? Is there a problem that cyberspace is needed to solve?

I am not quite sure if the Net generation has seen the second part of the question yet. If I had to answer, I would say cyberspace has improved our systems of global communication. We have created networks of communications to help form a common connection for everyone in the world. Hopefully, we can use cyberspace technologies to make social improvements like ending world poverty and help save our environment. Websites like FocusTheNation.com and WorldVision.org
can make a difference. Personally, I like to join all of the environmental groups on facebook to help spread the preservation of the earth to my friends and strangers. Hopefully, we can help answer the first part of Postman's questions.

For spring break, I camped out for about 10 days in the California Redwoods. With no cell phone, electricity, a house, hot water, or computer, I was forced to slow down from the New York City lifestyle. I took the time to enjoy some of the smaller things in life that Neil Postman would surely advise. I got to enjoy a nice hike and swim in the local creek. As he noted, the Internet and technology cannot fulfill personal satisfaction, but as any invention, they improve a way of life. I can tell you that cyberspace technologies are not essential for human survival, but the innovation of cyberspace helps communication among a global level. I hope we can continue to use the Internet to help benefit society.

Cyberspace Our Relationships and Gentrification

2008-04-01T11:47:00.004-04:00

In the first piece of the book Gary Grumpert and Susan Drucker look at the electronic highway that is cyberspace and analyze the properties and duality it gives the human social relationship. In the piece of the connecting power of cyberspace (primarily through the Internet) is reinforced by its tendency to cut across time and space and its seemingly un-biased treatment of people based on interests and personality not race or creed. But along with the beauty of Internet friends holding online eulogies Grumpert and Drucker discusses the perils that exist and are yet to be determined. "Progress and technological developments can be terribly exciting...but it is much more difficult to forecast the impact of such developments" (33).

One of the most powerful parts of the piece was the analogy made using the construction of the traditional interstate highway in the United States and its effects to that of the digital information highway. The interstate highway, which among other things was used to propel commerce and facilitate social communication spawned mixed results as it lead to a partitioning of urban and rural community. This separation, which the authors claimed has lead to the increased violence and lack of safety in urban areas has lead people to secure safety in most aspects of their lives, an element they believe can be satisfied by the sociability of cyberspace. While I believe the authors have perhaps exaggerated the ideas of violence and dis-trust with the physical realm I do agree with their view that people have a perception that the Internet is a place of relative safety and anonymity.

Transitioning on this belief Grumpert and Drucker then question this notion with concerns about privacy and other rights in the realm of cyberspace, where the difficulty of transferring traditionally real world laws to the Internet has proved confusing and far from successful. It is the still expanding and relatively new nature of cyberspace which has allowed for laws and rules to manipulated by the anonymity of instability. This is cited best by the authors' examples of employee privacy with e-mail in the work place, and while internet protection and privacy acts are applied their real world basis often inhibits their capacity to properly protect.

The larger question of this piece, which deals with over-reaching notion of quality of life is what makes it particularly interesting. Grumpert and Drucker are not simply analyzing digital socialization but rather looking at human socialization in general. The digital mode of communication inherently serves the same purpose as the actual version but will its existence change the reality of things? I believe the importance lies in understanding the scope of what we have come to know, anticipating what is to come and combining the two carefully while being aware of threats and problems both new and old.

The Digital Divide is hurting our youth

2008-03-31T22:41:00.004-04:00

Frank E. X. Dance discusses a serious issue with the internet in The United States even though are country is nearly the best when it comes to this problem. The issue is the presence of the internet in peoples home. Families owning a computer with internet access is getting better each year, however not ever family is fortunate enough to own a computer and this is what we call The Digital Divide. The 1999 NTIA documents show how the increase in digital software as well as the amount of families and age groups began using email to communicate from 1994 to 1999. The facts are evident and not surprising to me at all. Two groups of people that stood out in this study were inner city families as well as families living in rural areas lagged behind in these statistics. Black, and hispanic households were substantially behind in this study which is recurring problem. The digital divide often parallels the economic divide so that the digitally rich keep getting richer and the digitally poor, remain poor. This divide becomes a further problem when these children go to use the school computers and students have to fight over whose turn it is. Denying equal access increases poverty, illiteracy, ignorance, hostility, and anti social behaviors. Today many new jobs are coming about, for instance being a computer technician is a respectable job and Dance goes to say that there is a shortage of workers because it is hard to find qualified people. This shouldn't even be a concern in America, but it is. Imagine having a great opportunity to work for a company and then finding out you have to be somewhat computer savy and can't contribute, that shouldn't happen in this day and age. Dance also mentions the social digital divide, and I'm not so concerned nor feel petty towards those folk. If it is against your religion to use new technology, then Im sorry that you chose that faith. However, I do understand when my grandmother gets frazzled when trying to email or use the internet because I can see how that can be an overwhelming task for an elderly person. The digital divide shouldn't be neglecting the youth though, and these democratic politicians share their thoughts on this subject.... By the way I've never seen a man sweat like Richardson its pretty wild!

The Start, and the Finish

2008-03-31T22:13:00.002-04:00

In Gumpert and Drucker's first chapter of "our bible", they discuss the effects and initial impact of cyberspace on society. They argue, as others have (Winner 1993 quoted in the chapter), that "conventional ideas about technology" do not take into account the effects a new media will have on society and culture. The idea that Mr. Alsberg can have a cyber-funeral is totally sweet and should not be seen as "artificial intimacy" but as the next step for societal connectedness. If this class has taught me anything, it is that every internet user customizes their level of involvement and their specific interactions with others in cyberspace. Gumbert and Drucker quote Richard Sennet who makes an excellent point when he describes city building as a way to keep people out more so than to keep people in. By creating "bland, neutralizing spaces", cities attempt to limit the danger of social interaction. On the internet, one's security is defined by the user's general knowledge of the internet, security and anti-virus software on their personal computer and their customized internet experience (some sites and activities on the internet are safer than others).

I enjoyed Phelan's chapter CyberWalden, in which John M. Phelan looks at the internet as a separate reality and compares the cyberspace of today to other mediums. The vividness of HDTV, Phelan argues, falls short of computer and internet because "the machine is part of us." The interaction and feedback that is instantaneous on the internet creates the feeling that the user is inside cyberspace. This "real time feedback" Phelan relates to the call-in shows and participatory broadcast media as the first step in creating feedback media. "What was a public, is becoming an audience." Awesome line, Phelan.

So I come to the end of the book, Communication and Cyberspace, and of course, Neil Postman is there telling me that everything that I just read doesn't solve any problems that the computer set out to solve and that...whoops...we already solved those problems. Sounds like a digital immigrant to me. I agree that the influx of large amounts of information on the internet make it more difficult than other mediums to pick through. But would we prefer that every time a user logs in they have channels/websites they can visit, one at a time? The beauty behind the internet is also its Achilles heel; the more information, the more responsible the user must be in searching. And just because no one would facebook friend Neil Postman, does he really have to take a shot at virtual reality, social networking, emails and TV and call them all an escape from real problems? The digital world is a world inside of our own, it is not an escape, it exists here and now and is the most efficient medium at updating and informing people on current events and news. So Postman, take a deep breath, have a drink, and maybe sign-up for an anger management community or something online...you know, the fake escape world that everyone in the 21st century is enjoying so much.

Cyberspace is King

2008-03-31T20:26:00.002-04:00

In Chapter three Beniger describes cyberspace as the ultimate form of communicating. He goes as far as to say that " it might be be seen as th single greatest reversal in human history of the trend to centralized social control" even though it has only been around for the past twenty years. The chapter is centered around the question, who shall control cyberspace, and the answer is everyone. Cyberspace consists of three components: material, relational, and cognitive. These three components make cyberspace its own culture in a way. It consists of tangible artifacts which fulfills its material culture. It posses widely shared information which make it a symbolic or relational culture. Lastly the cognitive culture can be seen in its ability to display less widely shared meanings that influence the behavior of a particular individual by being able to display information in all languages.
Although this way of communicating has exceeded all other forms, it also presents an immediate setback. While the radio and newspapers were able to reach out to millions of people at once, computers have the same ability but to a much greater degree. Although this form of communicating makes these older forms such as facsimile as well as the postal service obsolete to some extent, it doesn't make it more effective. Cyberspace is limitless and this makes it control decentralized. Our behavior is most affected by those we care most about or see most often. However, we can not see everyone through the internet because of it vast multitude. This means that although cyberspace has the greatest range but not the greatest effectiveness because of its target audience. If you were to publish a story it would be better to start of small with perhaps a local newspaper instead of a site online because the chance of anyone caring about who wrote the article or what it's about is very slim. Cyberspace is the best for mass communication because it branches out to the most individuals, but two way communication is more personal because any question can be monitored and responded to, and this form of communication is much better than one-way in controlling human behavior

Muxtape= new fun!

2008-03-31T14:15:00.002-04:00

So I've come accross a new site called Muxtape! It allows you to create a playlist of up to 12 MP3s. You can then share your mix with others and retrieve it from almost anywhere with a simple link such as http://alix.muxtape.com/. I've also seen it associated with tags on flickr. I've yet to have an account with either site but maybe it's something all of you can enjoy.

Let me know what you think!

A Make Up Blog and a Tribute to the Wire

2008-03-31T00:10:00.003-04:00

For the fifth and final season of what Newsweek and others (Barack Obama's favorite character is Omar) have deemed as the most critically acclaimed show on television, David Simon's, The Wire, takes a deeper look into corruption in the media room. In the most notable instance, Baltimore Sun reporter, Scott Templeton has fabricated a story about how he was contacted by a serial killer of homeless people in Baltimore. The story obviously draws a lot of attention, which both Templeton and his upper level management benefit from. They decide to change the direction of the entire newsroom (which is a little scary in itself, the idea that a public news source always has a particular theme of news that "they" think is relevant) towards rising the awareness of the public to the misfortune of the homeless in Baltimore. In response to the public appall raised from these articles, the mayor is forced to change his election motif towards the homeless and helping citizens who cannot help themselves. The political direction of the entire city of Baltimore has been altered based on a fabricated story from one reporter.
In chapter nine, Ron L. Jacobson comments on President Clinton's Telecommunications Act of 1996. The Act was the first piece of major legislation regarding ownership guidelines for United States telecommunications since 62 years prior with the Communications Act of 1934. The Act had two major purposes, to consolidate telecommunications ownership and to try and deregulate the internet in order to provide mass availability. Critics of the act believed that the government needed to keep a closer eye on a media source (mainly the internet) that could provide such an expansive, efficient, and convenient source of news and exploration for the public. In order to do this they forced the ownership of all telecommunication networks to consolidate into only a few major companies (i.e. AT&T and the Bell companies). Behind the rally cry for Universal Service (free public telecommunications access) the consolidation seemed to most as a necessary evil. The way I see it is the government wants to expand the information highway for public appeal, and more importantly for corporate aspirations. At the same time, a medium which can offer the public such an expansive (and invasive) source of news and information, free of charge, is a scary thing to go unregulated. Therefore, the government has rallied behind the idea of Universal Service while sneaking in the idea that this "unregulated" service will fall under the ownership of only a few mammoth companies. The red flag that surfaces for me after sifting through all of this information is, do I really believe that these major news and network providers are unbiased to political coercion? I mean did the government really go to AT&T and tell them they were going to expand their business by legally forcing thousands of small private network companies to come under their (AT&T's) ownership and not ask for anything in return? And were the major companies chosen for consolidation decided upon by drawing straws, or were these the best major companies in the business who would be the most compliant with the current politicians involved? We look back to The Wire and Scott Templeton...We know that the news which is provided to the public will ultimately have political implications on how people and events are viewed by the public, whether the news is true or fabricated. By trying to keep the telecommunications network under the ownership of only a few major companies so that the broad casted news and information can be more easily regulated, is the hand of the American government breaking the innocence of objective news? Check out this youtube on how FOX News is completely biased because of its infiltration by right wing support.

Although I do have my doubts about political involvement in my "objective" news, I believe that the movement towards Universal Service is a positive evolution, regardless of the ownership issues.

Edison Has Been Had

2008-03-27T14:58:00.002-04:00

I was checking the New York Times website, as I do from time to time, and I saw an article on the front page about a group of french researchers who discovered a sound recording predating Thomas Edison's by seventeen years. Having taken a number of intro-level communications at Fordham University I know that news like this is sure to rouse the life back into the true history buffs that roam the halls of the Communications fortress: Faculty Memorial Hall.

Apparently this wasn't truly a sound recording, or at least that is the way I understood it. Rather, the short ten second clip of a French man singing a baguette-fueled melody was written down on a piece of paper and converted (thanks to American phonoautogrammers!!) at the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory in Berkley, California into sound mapping out the carefully sketched "phonoautogram." The paper dates back to 1860, a full seventeen years before Thomas Edison's sweet, sweet tunes erupted from his phonoGRAPH in gorgeous New Jersey.

The Library of Congress in Washington D.C. has claimed the caregiving rights to the historical piece of sound, furthering my personal belief that people in America still care about sound more than everyone. Americans were the ones who found this groundbreaking phonoautogram. . . . in France!! We've got a definite interest, and for that reason I posted this tasty morsel.

Interesting Article I Found

2008-03-25T14:34:00.002-04:00

Just a little article I was directed to about Twitter by David Murray.

"How to use Twitter (and wheter to bother)."

Back in Action!!

2008-03-25T11:47:00.003-04:00

As Gary Grumpert and Susan J. Drucker mention in their essay "From Locomotion to Telcommunication, or Paths of Safety, Streets of Gore," communication technologies are changeling freedom of speech and thus applicable laws within the federal government. Frequented topics of concern include libel, hate speech, and obscenity. We should parallel the functions of the internet to printed publications if they are going to be regarded by the same laws. Or shouldn't we.

Neil Postman asks us the function of the internet, asking us what problem it has come to solve. If books enabled the Protestant reformation, what will the Internet function for our society? Perhaps we are asking to break free from the consumerist standards broadcast by radio, television and print newspapers. Aside from letters to the editor, where is the voice of of the recipient? like the Protestants who wanted individuality of though from the Catholic church, I assert the idea that individuals, once again want to communicate their individuality and independence of thought from mainstream capitalist societal standards.

Good to be back!

2008-03-25T11:30:00.002-04:00

G'day Rams, I've just returned to the states from down under. Australia was amazing however it is true what our friend Paull Young told us. When I passed through Sydney i believe Internet access was going for either $5 a minute or $30 an hour, which I really couldn't fit into my budget. Maybe it isn't as expensive to them because their minimum wage is $15 but nevertheless I was deprived of being on the net. Some hostels I stayed in advertised free internet, however there were no computers to access it. From being in the country for an extended period of time it is evident that what Paull Young said is true, they truly are at least five years behind us in terms of technology and the access to it. I asked several people our age if they had anything such as facebook or myspace and nobody did. I spoke to a woman from Sydney who was trying to get a marketing job in Manhattan and she was astonished to hear that i was studying New Media in college and that Fordham University would even offer such a concentration. Well it is good to be back in the best country in the world.

As Promised, A Review of South of the Border

2008-03-24T12:58:00.003-04:00

It was about 9:30 Pm on Thursday the 13th when we pulled off of I95 into a neon jungle of ridiculousness. I had been pressuring the driver at the time to pull over since I saw the first billboard advertising South of the Border's many roadside attractions waaaaay back in Virginia, so needless to say we stopped. I was under the impression there would be rides, but rides their were not. I should have checked the website a little more closely. We parked my stuffed minivan infront of what looked like an open arcade and proceeded to try and go in. It was open...but no one was inside. We walked across the asphalt field that separated the two strips of the roadside stop and tried to go into a fireworks shop. Once again, it was open , but nobody was inside. We saw other, probably confused, motorists in the distance wandering around the property just like we were, but we didn't get close enough to really see them or talk to them so who even knows if they were real. We proceeded to go the pink neon lit ice cream parlor. Surprise surprise it was open...and noone was there! Now, when I keep saying "no one was there," I mean it quite literally, no one was in the building. Every gift shop, restaurant, stand, ANYTHING AT ALL was fully lit up and functioning, but lacking any sort of employees. We continued our eerie stroll though this oddly famous over-the-top rest stop and entered a cafe. Finally, some life. We saw a girl behind the counter mopping, she was a teenager I suppose. She looked up at me and quickly went to the back of the kitchen, out of sight to me and my party. She never came back out. At this point my apprehension with the whole situation had reached levels my road trip-mates had already been experiencing. They kept telling me that we needed to go, but I NEEDED to press on. This whole place was a ghost town. I felt like I was in a scary movie of sorts. The neon burned so brightly you couldnt see anything but the South of the Border signs ans shops. We walked some more and found a statue of a ram, so, naturally, we climbed it. The climbing of the ram might have been the most fun part of South of the Border, which obviously isn't saying much. We figured we might as well use the facilities before we got to our still hours-away destination of Charleston, SC. I walked into the bathroom and each urinal was in a closet. Each urinal was behind a small black door and I felt as though leatherface was going to come out and split my sternum apart with a hook, but alas that didn't happen. After stepping out of the dankest bathroom I've used in my career of public restroom patronage we literally sprinted back to the car and motored away. We were in a daze, confused as to why we stopped and why it remains a destination for so many. Professor Strate warned to watch for shady characters down at South of the Border, but he should have warned of it being absolutely abandoned. We ended up finally getting a bite in Charleston; Pizza, in fact. It was some of the worst pizza I've ever had, and I had almost half a pie. South of the Border left me hungry for more.

Wikipedia and Information Overload

2008-03-23T20:41:00.003-04:00

In the epilogue, Neil Postman describes how humans were able to effectively find new ways to access and store information, but in doing so, “…created a new problem never experienced before: information glut, information incoherence, information meaninglessness” (390). In some ways, I agree with this statement, especially when we consider the Internet and the huge amount of information it provides. Lance Strate recently posted an article about how the print form of encyclopedias is gradually becoming obsolete, being replaced with online versions or Wikipedia. But going along with Postman’s statement, Wikipedia shows how just too much information about an endless amount of topics can eventually lead to meaninglessness or triviality. A recent article discusses the fate of Wikipedia:

“…Wikipedia is facing an identity crisis as it is torn between two alternative futures. It can either strive to encompass every aspect of human knowledge, no matter how trivial; or it can adopt a more stringent editorial policy and ban articles on trivial subjects, in the hope that this will enhance its reputation as a trustworthy and credible reference source.” (from "The battle for Wikipedia's soul")

Wikipedia, being open to the public, is causing a large amount of trivial information, which I suppose it what Postman would consider, “disconnected from theory, meaning, and purpose” (390) (the author of the article gives the example of how there are more articles that are more in depth about Pokemon characters than a topic that could be more meaningful and worth learning about, such as the Solidarity movement in Poland). I can see why some consider it a problem. There is just so much information on the Internet that probably, to the majority of people, would seem useless and when an information source like Wikipedia is overloaded with generally pointless information that means nothing to them (unless maybe if they’re a fan of something), the value of it as something that could help people is lowered. Though on the other hand, perhaps all of this information helps to build an information source of the kind of culture that humans have (even if it might seem useless). Then again, maybe it’s similar to how news stations might focus more on celebrity news than what is going on in the world.

Another point that Postman mentions is how people who enjoy virtual reality, communicating with others electronically, and watching television “refuse to acknowledge what their real problem is—respectively, boringness, friendlessness, thoughtlessness” (391). This is true in some ways; he even says that it is because these activities, with the help of technology, do nothing to help “touch life’s deepest problems” (391). Though I think technology has helped create new ways of communication that were not possible in the past. In Gary Gumpert and Susan J. Drucker’s essay, “From Locomotion to Telecommunication, or Paths of Safety, Streets of Gore,” they say that the Internet is considered “more secure” and “nonthreatening” (35), which is true, considering also the amount of anonymity it can provide, which allows people to perhaps interact in ways they would not in real life. It lets us interact with people across the world that we would probably never meet without the Internet (though I guess one could travel and interact with people), and allows spontaneous interaction and possibly gain knowledge about another culture but interacting with them. In John M. Phelan’s chapter, “CyberWalden: The Online Psychology of Politics and Culture,” he says, “Distance apart, cyberspace is a humanizing device for creating a kind of ersatz office/pub/common room/ public square area for those deprived, rather cruelly, of one or more versions of the real thing” (52) It seems that many of the things the authors in these chapters say is putting cyberspace and the Internet in a negative light. Perhaps they are emphasizing that even though these technologies can provide so much interaction and information, interactions we have with people face-to-face and performing activities with other people are just as important in shaping the way that humans live.

Our Friend Paull Young on Fox

2008-03-20T23:15:00.003-04:00

Our friend, and guest lecturer, Paull Young, appeared on the program Happy Hour, which appears on the Fox Business Network cable channel, and happily, the excerpt was posted on YouTube for us all to enjoy. Here's what the person posting it wrote:

Paull Young of Converseon discussing Social Media and small businesses on the show Happy Hour. The big social media secret is to listen to your customers and give them something that they want. Who knew?

And here's the interview:

Encyclopedias in the Digital Age

2008-03-20T00:45:00.001-04:00

Just put up a new post on the topic on my blog: Encyclopedia Down!

Disconnect Anxiety and You (and Me) -- Virtual Tribalism

2008-03-14T23:46:00.004-04:00

I'm just going to reproduce on this blog the post I just put up on my own blog, for the sake of my dear, dear students!

So, I was quoted last week in the National Post, a Canadian newspaper. As is always the case, only a few sentences were used out of some twenty minutes of talk, and the tendency is typically to favor the more banal as opposed to the more brilliant insights. But the article is not bad, and most certainly blogworthy.

It was written by Craig Offman, who also interviewed me, and Craig seemed like an altogether decent, and well informed individual. The title of the article is Many Canadians feel anxious without the Net, I've put in the link so you can click on the title and read it on the National Post website, and of course I'll also provide you with the text right here in Blog Time Passing. Oh, and the date of publication is Sunday, March 9, 2008.

It begins with the facts:

‘Internet addiction" and "CrackBerry" are the narcotic-laced phrases we invariably use to explain our growing dependence on laptops and PDAs. Now a Canadian media research company has examined what happens to users in the absence of their virtual communication of choice and coined a term for the modern-day affliction: "disconnect anxiety."
The syndrome is described, in a study that will be released today, as the various feelings of disorientation and nervousness experienced when a person is deprived of Internet or wireless access.
"If you have your BlackBerry or cellphone just outside of your shower, you're probably suffering from it," says Kaan Yigit, president of Solutions Research Group, the Toronto technology-trend tracking company that conducted the study.
Some recent events have tested people's ability to disconnect from their electronic lifelines. Citing concerns about work-life balance, Citizenship and Immigration Canada recently forbade its civil servant from e-mailing on weeknights, weekends and holidays. And a three-hour service disruption last month left around 10 million BlackBerry users in the virtual darkness.
"Everyone's in crisis because they're all picking away at their Blackberrys and nothing's happening," said Liberal MP Garth Turner about a fidgety caucus meeting.
That kind of dependent relationship with our screens is more common than one might think. There are around 19 million cellphone users in Canada, and, according to the group's research, 70% of them carry the devices with them everywhere. More than half of Canada's two million Blackberry owners have taken their devices or a laptop into the bathroom, and 40% bring them along on vacation.
Almost 60% of Canadians with laptops have cozied up to them in their bedrooms at some point - and 26% do so frequently. Around 14% watch TV while logged on to their monitors.
For their study - called Disconnect Anxiety: And Four Reasons Why It's So Difficult to Stay Off the Grid - Solutions Research interviewed more than 3,000 Canadians last year. They found that 26% of them exhibit elevated levels of disconnect anxiety, 33% exhibit above-average levels and 41% are below average. The last group was heavily in the 50-plus age group, Mr. Yigit said, suggesting an obvious generational difference.

So, this is all about Canadians, and maybe they are different, being farther north, and therefore in a colder climate, than those of us in the US. But I suspect we're more or less the same in our usage.

Anyway, that's the data, which basically can be summed up with the basic idea that more and more people are feeling more and more anxious when they are not connected to the net in some way. Now for the explanation:

Some tech-culture theorists explain being online in terms of pleasure: the validation and adrenaline spike one feels when a hundred e-mails are awaiting a response, or when making a new friend on a social networking site.
In the absence of such technology, however, many people experience a sense of desperation or futility. That reaction leads experts to wonder if this reliance signals a sort of "neo-tribalism," a subtle return to our roots in a collective society. Or it might suggest that we struggle - and perhaps fail - to enjoy being on our own.

Now, maybe I wasn't the only one who said this, but this is definitely something that I talked about, as you'll be able to tell from the direct quotes at the end of the article. One of the things I talked about that he didn't include in the article is the need for phatic communication, the simple confirmation of our existence that we get when we acknowledge one another. That's why we have the ritual exchange of greetings, like hello, how are you?, fine thank you, etc. It's not to actually get information from one another, but rather a euphemism for saying, I recognize your existence, and thank you, I recognize yours as well. Every e-mail, message, blog post, comment, tweet, etc., that we receive carries out this same function--it says, hey, you exist! You are a human being! You are a member of our society! And we need that. Especially since so many of us live in environments where we experience a constant stream of disconfirmation, people who ignore us, treat us like we're not there, like we don't exist. That's why people go a little mad in cities. And that's why all of this electronic stimulation, social stimulation specifically, is so very satisfying, gratifying.

Now, back to the article, where the point shifts to safety needs (as Abraham Maslow used to refer to them):

The Solutions Research study concludes that several factors contribute to disconnect anxiety: the growing worry about personal safety and inability to respond to an emergency; the fear of missing important information at work; the worry, particularly among teens, that they'll miss vital gossip; and a fear of disorientation.
Participants in the study used words and expressions such as "half a voice," "panic," "loss of freedom," "inadequate," and, inevitably, "empty," to express their feeling of estrangement.
"Losing technological access means being left out of the loop," explains social-networking authority Danah Boyd, who is a PhD candidate at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. "Parents fear that they may not be able to get in touch with their kids. Kids fear their friends will forget them."
Ms. Boyd added that if being connected represents the baseline for social status, then it is not surprising that people are anxious about being disconnected. "No one wants to be left behind."
Nor does anyone want to feel stranded or vulnerable. "In our research, people have expressed the belief that fellow citizens on the streets are less likely to stop and help nowadays," says the study. Not having access or service creates anxiety about personal safety and the safety of family members."
One interviewee from the survey recalls being in Death Valley without a signal, worrying that his rental car would get a flat. "I was just praying," the person said. "What would I have done? Rub two stones together? Cry for help?"
Another complained that an inactive cellphone leaves a person prisoner of one's own silence. "It's almost like you lose your sense of freedom because you just can't call someone," said one person. "You might as well be in the 1800s."

I think this is very much to the point, and I said in the interview, as I've said many times before, that the day is rapidly approaching where we will all expect our vital signs to be monitored 24/7/365.25. Anything can go wrong for anyone at anytime, and at minimum many of us now expect to be able to summon help by way of the cellphone under any circumstances, and feel naked without one. Senior citizens wear those medical alert necklaces, dogs and some people have chips implanted in them so they can be located, so just extrapolate out a bit and in the not too distant future people will be linked permanently and internally (through implants) to the net.

Now the article turns to the youngsters, who have been elsewhere described as digital natives, as opposed to us old folks who are digital immigrants:

For younger people who use social-networking sites such Facebook and MySpace, and who are avid text-messagers, the communication compulsion is no less intense. A typical Canadian aged 12 to 24 sends and receives 90 text messages a week and visits her Facebook account three times a day in order to maintain correspondence with an average of 154 "friends."
One teen explained her virtually sociable mornings this way: "You are in your PJs with your toothbrush hanging out and you are already talking to your friends. That's pretty different than 2005, I guess."
While some of these anecdotes might hint at addiction, Sherry Turkle, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, would rather question our relationship to this technology.
"If your child is addicted to heroin, you have one job and one job only: get him off," said Prof. Turkle. "Spending 10 hours a day on Facebook is different. It's really a diagnostic tool. It makes us question what is missing in the rest of someone's life."
Also a psychologist and the author of Evocative Objects, Prof. Turkle said that one young subject told her that "a screen represented hope, hope that life will be more exciting, that it will provide more romance."
The opposite then applies when the user is off the grid. "If something that's seen as sustaining is taken away, people grow anxious," she said. "They feel that nothing is going to happen."
Prof. Turkle also wonders if this kind of manic communication says something deeper about us: our ability to be alone without feeling loneliness. "One of the gold standards of thinking about a fully developed individual is an ability to enjoy one's solitude. So that every time you're alone, you're not lonely," she said. "I wonder if we are part of a generation that is not able to be alone."

I certainly see my 14-year-old son on his cell phone with friends even when he's home for the night, we caught him text messaging once at 1 AM, and he plays with friends online, and talks to them through a headset while playing Halo on his Xbox. The isolation that I remember feeling as a teenager, aside from the limited use of the telephone available to us, is now a thing of the past. I can't really say that's a bad thing.

I do have great respect for Sherry Turkle as a scholar, and the point about addiction is well taken. But she is also defending the sense of self associated with literacy and print culture, a sense of self that emphasizes the private individual, and I am sympathetic to this position, having one foot in the old culture myself. And my mentor, Neil Postman, would certainly approve, but he would also acknowledge that this is exactly what we are, and what we have been losing due to the electronic media. This point was made by Marshall McLuhan as well, back in the sixties, which now opens the door for me to have the last word in this article, echoing McLuhan (and quoting him, but that wasn't included in the article):

Some sociologists see this rampant communication as a return to tribal instincts, with a modern twist. "Rather than people surrounding you in a village, you're in a virtual tribe," said Lance Strate, Chair of the Communication and Media Studies Department at Fordham University in the Bronx, New York.
"When there were real tribes, people had no concept of individualism. If someone was ex-communicated from the tribe, he'd allow himself to wander away and die. He couldn't imagine life outside of the group."

I guess that makes for an interesting way to end the article, dramatic for sure, although I would have preferred a bit more elaboration. But I do think it's a good analogy, between tribal excommunication and today's disconnect anxiety. (By the way, there're some places on the Fordham website where I'm still identified as department chair, and that's why I get incorrectly listed as such from time to time.)

Of course, one of the great differences between virtual tribes and traditional ones is that you can belong to many different virtual tribes, so membership is less central to your identity, or put another way, instead of your identity being subsumed by the tribe, intimately and irrevocably bound up with group identity, identity is now fragmented, decentered, and distributed across many different tribes, not as an individual, but greater than any one tribe. And for other reasons, the tribe itself becomes internalized, but that's another story.

What's also missing is any strong initiation rites, so the boundaries between insiders and outsiders are much looser, more permeable and more easily negotiated. And that means that identification with the group, and loyalty to the group, is greatly reduced from traditional tribal culture. I have elsewhere referred to this as liquid tribalism (in my "Cybertime" chapter in Communication and Cyberspace).

So, wanna be a member of my tribe?

Everything You think, Do and Say Is in the Pill You Took Today.

2008-03-11T12:51:00.008-04:00

In his chapter "Who Shall Control Cyberspace?" James Beniger raised interesting questions and makes rather accurate suppositions about the future of cyberspace. What's most interesting, though is that for Mr. Beniger, there are two classes of people in cyberpace: Those who use it for a social end and those who use it for some other (read as nefarious) end. It would seem that Beniger has no love for people who use the Web to traffic in "less than legal" activities. However, he recognizes that protecting free expression on the Web can not be one sided. It has to have universal applicability in under to mean something. Ultimately, Beniger wants cyberspace to be free of a dominating hand, though he believes that the responsibility of cyberspace "governance" will fall to the powers that be already at large.

Beniger's piece made me think about the recent actions of Comcast. It was recently discovered by the Associated Press that Comcast has been selectively blocking its users access to certain sites, the largest blocked site being BitTorrent and its associated Web sites. Here's the full story. The general consensus from other news sources, and user comments, is that Comcast shouldn't have the power to selectively limit where someone can go on the Web. While in this instance the focus falls on a site primarily used for illegal file sharing, it has much broader ramifications. Namely, what if Comcast doesn't like the Web site you're looking at that's perfectly legal? If the site disparages Comcast, or perhaps the powers that be at Comcast have a moral belief against a certain site? As far as anyone knows, there's nothing stopping this from happening. It raises serious questions about what an ISP is and isn't allowed to do.

There really are no easy answers on how to regulate the internet. And there really are no clear answers on who controls the internet.

John Barlow would probably say that since the providers are only giving you the hardware accessibility to the internet, and that the Web sites aren't located anywhere physical, no one has the right to govern where you go on the Web. Not even your local, regional or state government. For a more in depth look at it, check out Barlow's A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.

And for a look at how Canadians are dealing with similar issues, take a look here.

Title taken from lyrics from the Zager & Evans song "In the Year 2525."

Doesn't AOL Control Cyberspace?

2008-03-11T11:45:00.003-04:00

James Beniger sees the very decentralized structure of cyberspace as the very reason it can become so powerful and influencing. Beniger uses the transformation of the U.S. Postal system from a hand and sort entity into a computerized mass mailing database of the future as the warning that cyberspace's power and appeal are not unnoticed by the politically savvy and business power hungry of the world.

Beniger's analysis of cyberspace's capability to amplify the reach and persuasion of mass communication brings up important points about the versatility of the Internet, and is another demonstration of how it has become the all encompassing medium. Indeed as Beniger puts it, the thought of a personalized and intimate form of mass communication, wherein 2 way communication is possible and a record of who believes what is feasible makes for a pretty scary tool for your deceptively persuasive dictator. Beniger brings up the particularly interesting point about cyberspace's threat to the centralized order as being the main attraction it has to the very people it poses a threat to .

While discussing the future of cyberspace, Beniger brings about the likely rationalization of its structure in some form or another. Just as cited in the Postal system's use of it to categorize the masses into whatever subset they please, e-commerce has used cyberspace to make the Internet one big focus group. With so much of this world unclear as it continues to develop, the business and government elites are using this uncertainty to their advantage. Recalling AOL's divulging of several thousand personal accounts to the government a couple of years back I can't help but think that some of Beniger's predictions are already happening. Not to mention what another peer has stated about Google's power. The decentralized world of the cyberspace runs along a digital divide, so its more likely as Beniger puts it that those who control society at large will be controlling cyberspace and indeed, might be already.

Do Google and China control the Web?

2008-03-10T18:31:00.003-04:00

In James R. Beniger's text, "Who Shall Control Cyberspace?", he makes the case that the web is a prime target of commercial and political exploitation. Indeed, through forced means, either businesses or goverments could control portions of the web with ruthless power. However, the problem with the web isn't just control, it's jurisdiction.

The reason The Pirate Bay continues to dumb found American authorties is because their central servers are located in Sweden (never mind the debate as to whether BitTorrent trackers are actually infringing on copyright). Thus, all the laws the US passes literally cannot touch the Pirate Bay because they are in this country's jurisdiction. And while the US could pressure Sweden, there's no reason the organization can't relocate their server to another country (or buy their own which they attempted with Sealand).

However, there is one company that most people would agree "controls" the web. And that company, of course, is the famous Google. This might not be truly apparent because Google has not chosen to greatly abuse their powers. But just think about it for a moment. Google is the homepage of the web. If they choose to blacklist your site (and they have their reasons) then how would one ever find your site. Sure you could pass out the URL or depend on links from other sites, but for most of the web, your page is non-existent.

The other obvious controlling agent is the government in countries like Turkey and China. However, there are many technological tools which allow internet connections to break through their firewalls and open the end user up to the entire web. Whistle blowers and bloggers within China use this method to post articles and blogs without the fear of suppression. Such tools are usually trivially easy.

This probably isn't exactly what Beniger is talking about when he speaks of control. But these powers are probably the greatest control one entity can wield over the web. The internet's architects, maintainers, and a good potion of its users enjoy the comforts a lack of control can provide. And many will want and fight to keep it that way.

"Advertising . . . creates needs rather than fulfilling them

2008-03-09T20:40:00.003-04:00

Douglas Rushkoff talks about the arguably most prominent function of commercials: fueling consumer need. Advertisements brand themselves and try to "differentiate" themselves from other brands and products to try to appeal to a consumer's sense of "identity," offering convenience, functionality, and overall enjoyment. Situations are created in ad media that demand solutions, which conveniently are provided by the very people who conceived, and possibly fabricated, the problem.
We sit in front of televisions, listen to the radio, and now more than ever we can ignore advertisements - shrug them off and change the channel. The choices for entertainment and information gathering as so vast the attention span of the modern media consumer is brief. Powerfully "coercive" advertising, almost an annoying bombardment, is a necessary tactic these days. Rushkoff preaches of a television patron must be skilled; must know what to look for in advertisements. Ad campaigns and marketing reach new and more abstract heights as we see car insurance peddled by cartoons and visages of our extinct brethren. Ad campaigns, with there every growing arsenal of mediums to tap the consumer on the shoulder, appeal (in some cases) to an indirect set of feelings and interests that the consumer has. What justifies an old man dancing around coercing viewers of going to an amusement park, as Six Flags did recently? In using humor and upbeat music Six Flags wants YOU, the consumer, to find this appealling or at least share in his joy. More confusingly why have people singing in a Mary Poppins-esque way to promote anti-smoking? Imagery and sly deviations in commercial messages are a reality today. Whether it be the internet, television, radio, or print we are subject to more advertising than ever. It is an onslaught of sorts.

Jimmy

2008-03-04T16:24:00.004-05:00

Jimmy
your friends in Interactive Rams miss you
and hope the surgery went well
and think you're still sexy!!!

You'll be back on your feet
and rockin' in no time!!!

The Inevitable Internet

2008-03-04T14:27:00.002-05:00

Everyday, Internet access is granted to new people for the first time. By nature, the Internet has a Democratic purpose and structure that drives it to incorporate new people in a free exchange of communication. Thus, when it was first designed for strictly military use, it was eventually realized that the technology was being confined. It is undeniable that the digital divide will continue to diminish as social networking, wireless technology,and Internet access stretch across the globe. The Internet is a relatively young technology in comparison to others that people use everyday. Much like all those prior, the Internet creates a divide in those who adopt it and those who don't for several reasons. However, with the breakthrough of social networking and wireless communication, more people than ever will demand web access be provided for them.

According to frank E.X. Dance, what drives the closure of the digital divide is people's access to other people on the Internet. The Internet allows us to reach people on both an intimate level, and also a mass level. The original communication purpose of the Internet that connected people to other like never before was e-mail. Today it seems to many that e-mail may have been a mere stepping stone on the path to the social networking we all take part in today, and what the future may bring in terms of people communicating with others without boundaries.

Eventually, when more and more cities of the world become wireless, other nations will demand access to this technology. The developed nations should in turn provide them with the resources necessary for equal access to the Internet. Eric A. Zimmer and Christopher D. Hunter present the possible risk associated with Internet access in these nations. They say that people fear risks that are both, 'unknown and dreadful". This would be the reason why people fear the risk of toxic waste more so than bicycles. In reality however, more people die a year from bicycle accidents than exposure to toxic waste. Although we can admit some Internet risks are still unknown, it seems to be the view in developed and Democratic nations that a free flow of opinion is not dreadful. However, in developing and non-democratic nations, the notion of an unfetter exchange of ideas that may possibly lead to revolution or civil war is a dreadful one. This is wha continues to divide the world on the web for the time being.

Dance-ing over the Digital Divide

2008-03-04T12:36:00.007-05:00

While some grocery shoppers are going to be pushing Media Cartsin Shop Rite by the end of the year, and checking out with self check out kiosks, others will be out of work trying to afford groceries they might otherwise have had if they were still able to assist store customers. What happened to the personal approach and America's obsession with customer service. Might it become minimal with the efficiency of technology. And might Grocery stores even become obsolete in some areas where we can order groceries online, have them pulled from a warehouse and maneuvered to a delivery/loading dock much like the conveyor belt system effective above the heads of patrons, which drops your purchases into a bag at checkout, in B&H photo downtown?

How can we protect the little guy, the computer illiterate, he who is without access and cannot afford courses to increase computer literacy? As the reading noted it is the younger and older age groups which struggle to be online, and with that computer "literate". In my brief research there appears to be a substantial number of programs geared towards children and schools however there are very few non-profit resources for adults, specifically without a price. The problem is further proliferated because, as Frank E.X. Dance suggests, the digital divide often mimics the economic divide, "the poor become poorer and the rich, richer." One of the largest issues to me is the displacement of jobs by the substitution of technology. As we've all seen this is an impossible solution without some consequence/backfire; we learned this first from Homer Simpson of the Simpsons who used technology (a mechanical bird) to perform a simple task (tap a button consistently) which only backfires in a nuclear explosion. The government is not supplying options for those who are behind the divide to acquire the knowledge (and not just the informtion) to succeed in using one of the most necessary tools today. After a decade of talk I believe that Dance recognizes correctly how we will need a ""trickle up" solution. In having this grassroots approach we may be able to conserve the democratic freedom of information that is so cherished. But it will take global computer literacy in order to maintain the information governmental law or edict.

*I am still looking for the Simpson's clip.... if anyone has it let me know!

Telecommunications and Net Neutrality

2008-03-04T12:26:00.010-05:00

I found this week's reading to be rather interesting; in particular, I wanted to discuss Net Neutrality in relation to Ron Jacobson's discussion about the rise in telecommunications. He examines an emerging National Information Structure which raises debate as to who will benefit from the proposed super-structure, and how it will be regulated? Should the Internet operate like a utility, with equal service for every level of subscriber, or whether the Internet service providers should be able to provided tiered access and pricing?

Furthermore, he discusses the need for government intervention as well as eliminating the digital divide. The digital divide is similar to Net Neutrality, in which, everyone should be able to access the Internet equally. On a corporate level, Net neutrality is a current and on-going debate about how we should regulate the Internet. One side of the fight is that the government should step in and protect the content providers like Amazon.com, Google.com, and Yahoo.com. In opposition, to the Internet service providers creating an extra market by forcing customers to pay for more efficient and faster service. If this occurs, the companies can control bandwidth on their services and hinder or block certain aspects of the Internet including: competing companies, certain political views, gaudy or immoral content.

I think Jacobson would agree that we need to regulate yet maintain “Internet freedom”. It is essential that Internet traffic be treated equally by carriers. Net Neutrality promotes economic innovation and free speech helps people contend on an equal ball field. A big fear is that Congress will cave to a multi-million dollar lobbying campaign by telephone and cable companies that want to decide what you do, where you go, and what you watch online.

Net Neutrality Walk-Through Video

Divided We Stand

2008-03-04T11:25:00.003-05:00

Frank Dance's piece on the digital divide discusses the continued problem of a growing digital divide and addresses a larger and perhaps more important issue that he identifies as the "Social Divide". Dance re-introduces the ever present problem of growing digital divide, separating the internet have's and the have-nots more and more. This phenomenon is affected by income, geographic standing, age, race and education. The growing fear is that in ongoing technological revolution those who are on the outside will lag further behind and be subject to the unfair politics of those privy to this world. Dance brings up the nation's awareness of this problem and their intentions to alleviate the divide through either the free market or government intervention. He suggests that these methods coupled with the economic urgency behind closing the divide and using it to benefit our economy and workforce will assure that a solution will be pursued actively. The real problem Dance introduces is the void of communication those on the bottom end of the divide will incur and further alienation they will succumb to as a result.
Dance remarks that the problem of the social divide is not only directed by the ability to possess technology but also from the desire to possess and use it. Citing the delay of literacy's acceptance historically into societies, Dance claims that there are those who are often unwilling to integrate themselves into new forms of media and technology. For people to accept technology they see its importance to human interaction and growth. Primarily as Dance adds, through the functions of linking humans to one another, the development of higher mental processes, and the regulation of human behavior. Dance reinforces these points with the benefits that voting online provides as well as the camaraderie that e-mail develops and fosters. These are very strong points that Dance makes and he admits the execution of the social divide will not be a smooth transition but I believe several factors will inhibit the proper use of the Internet as a tool to help human growth.
The first is the tendency for humans to relegate their media to forms of consumption, primarily for entertainment. Television, which ideologically should create the viewer an array of benefits, often remains a tube of mindless recreation and leisure, leading to more than anything the impediment of higher mental processes. Not denying the Internet's usefulness, it can be said that the medium is not reaching its full potential for efficiency, or specifically enough even Dance's desires for it. The second reason, which is closely tied to this is the tendency for big business to alter the more social but possibly less profitable elements of the Internet. Undoubtedly, social networking sites such as FaceBook and MySpace have expanded the notion of human interaction that Dance discusses it can foster to close the social divide. But these sites have been manipulated by large corporations into increasingly larger marketing mediums. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, simply something that affects the potential of these sites. Human interaction is limited or determined by the companies who own them and how we speak to one another is judged on the merit of how profitable it can be. I believe Dance's intentions are good and offer a step in the right direction of how technology can influence the betterment of society. However, we must look at our tendency to pursue the almighty dollar and address it. To close the social divide the Internet must not necessarily look at it as the business of human communication but rather as human communication.

A Lesson From the Talking Paper Clip

2008-03-04T10:57:00.003-05:00

In "Cut, Copy and Paste" Lance Strate looks at the culture of these digital tools in correlation with pre-historic tools such as the stone knife, citing that their evolution is not so far off and in actuality are tied close together through the advent of writing. In the sense that the digital tool kit creates text and other tools, the ancient stone knife could be used to carve other tools as well as markings on caves, which depending on the purpose could be created for aesthetic or symbolic reasons. This connection is what causes Strate to see our society filled with "hunterers and gatherers" seeking out information.
Revolving around the tools of Copy, Paste, and Cut, Strate outlines how these are exemplary forms of the human activity of tool use. The three tools cover an array of basic functions including arithmetic operations (adding, subtracting, division, etc.) and more impressively the modification and manipulation of symbolic and visual environments. The importance of the latter two functions are particularly interesting because they reveal the ability of these tools to edit linguistic reality and in turn, be able to edit reality. However as in other instances of the packet an essential part of this ability relies on the element of written language. Visually, the digital tool kit has allowed creative control and expression to the laymen by allowing documents to be created that resemble the appearance of professional work.
A key point brought up by Strate is the interaction that takes place between the digital tool kit and the G.U.I (graphic user interface). This relationship seems to be equally reinforcing to both elements, as the GUI places a strong importance on the digital tool kit by locating them first and giving them greatest precedence (aside from 'File' commands). However, the tool kit also reinforces the GUI by granting it simplicity and speed. Strate remarks how without the tool kit the windows on the desktop of the GUI would be isolated. Furthermore, this relation becomes unnoticeable to the user after a time, which makes the impact of the tool kit even greater. "Our tools which are often so inconspicuous and ubiquitous, form the deep structure of human cultures". It is interesting that the impact of the digital tool kit is only partially apparent, while we understand the effects it has had on things such as plagiarism and intellectual property rights, there is so much more we are not privy to. This is particularly powerful when considering we are the ones who purposefully give these tools the leeway of being little more than instruments we use to create meaning, all the while not considering whether they alter or influence the meaning we create and perpetuate.

Internet, Education, and the Digital Divide

2008-03-04T00:58:00.004-05:00

It is important that we work to close the digital divide because we would be able to have access to so much more information. Ron Jacobson, in the chapter, “ ‘Are They Building an Off-Ramp in My Neighborhood?’” says that “information is not knowledge. Knowledge is gained by making evaluative judgments on the quality of information, which in turn is achieved through the cognitive skill of separating the significant from the irrelevant” (167). I agree with this statement, since the Internet is so huge, it is easy to get lost in the overload of information, and it really is up to us to determine what information is reliable and what is not. I think that this information that can be derived from the Internet is an important aspect for education, and as Jacobson says, it is important that users are media literate. Though it is true that students can easily cut and paste writing from the Internet onto their own papers, (as Lance Strate writes in “Cut, Copy, and Paste” (55)), the potential knowledge that can be gained from the Internet I think outweighs the trouble it could cause.

In the chapter, “The Digital Divide,” Frank Dance mentions how the Internet should “heighten the profile of education, of participatory government, and of human fellowship” (178). I recently found a site for the OLPC, or “One Laptop Per Child” project that is working to get computers into the hands of children in developing countries. Their goal is “to provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves,” and it is interesting that children have to have a computer in order to achieve those goals. This I think, would be very beneficial for the children because these laptops, which were designed specifically for children will help them connect with other students in other schools or even access the Internet. I’m sure that the number of people online has increased since Dance’s writing of this chapter, and this shows how far some people have gotten in working to close that digital divide. It is good that these children are able to learn differently with these computers, but more importantly, it's that they can have access to the Internet. Though in this case, they would not have complete access to the Internet; what they can access will be determined by the government, which reduces the amount of information the Internet can provide. So maybe it’s not such a great thing; if their goal is to provide them with all of these opportunities and experiments, then limiting what they can access could hinder that process, as censoring the Internet anywhere else will do the same.

Across the Great Divide

2008-03-03T23:59:00.004-05:00

I really enjoyed reading about the creation of the internet and ARPAnet's original purpose. I always knew the internet was created originally for the military, but Giese does an excellent job of describing how the creators of the internet broke away and followed the hacker ethic of "free information" which eventually led to the world wide web.

The digital divide is an international problem and must be considered as such in order to promote a global village(where everyone speaks the "digital language"). As is expected, third world and developing countries are behind the curve of technological advances and will be until international organizations like the UN discuss and act in a way that aids these countries. It is the global responsibility of wealthy nations to help developing countries when assimilating to new technology and communication opportunities.

Another debatable subject of pushing for internet internationally are certain governments that wish to censor and police the internet in their country in order to stifle the free flow of information certain nations' citizens receive. Countries like China, who have a tight hold on the media and information that comes in and out of the country do not share other countries' natural acceptance of the democratic nature of the internet. I argue that it is time for international policy-makers to protect the internet's integrity by allowing it to grow uncensored and unfiltered. The great thing about this new technology is that it levels the playing field so that any individual can be heard and promote their ideas. As the internet becomes accessible across the globe, peoples' right to information on the web must be protected. This and only this will ensure that the bridge we build across the digital divide will stand for generations to come.

Microblogging

2008-03-01T00:38:00.002-05:00

I just put up a post on my blog about microblogging, and twitter in particular:

All A Twitter

It's a worth a look, if I do say so myself.

Thank You Paull Young!!! And G'day, Mate!

2008-02-27T19:39:00.006-05:00

We were fortunate indeed to have Paull Young, Senior Account Executive for Converseon, Inc., a social networking consulting firm, come up to Fordham and give a talk to our class about professional opportunities associated with social networking. He was a dynamic and engaging speaker, especially for an Aussie (just kidding there), highly knowledgeable, and I know everyone learned a great deal from him.

If you click on the link, you'll find that Converseon lists among their services conversation mining (monitoring online conversation about a product or brand), affiliate and search marketing (including search engine optimization), brand reputation management (public relations extended to the online environment), and blogs and social media.

Paull has been blogging for many years now, and his own blog focuses on public relations, and appropriately enough bears the name, Young PR.

An interesting concept that he introduced was astroturfing, which is the counterpart, in a sense of a grass roots campaign. With astroturfing, what appears to be a grass roots initiative, or messages produced by private individuals, is secretly the product of organized effort, work done for hire, on behalf of a political group or corporation. Paull provided us with an example that is both hilarious, reminiscent of Terry Gilliam's animation for Monty Python's Flying Circus, and at the same time highly sinister because it masquerades as something done by some guy in his basement who just doesn't like Al Gore, but was actually produced and paid for by commercial interests. Here's the video:

Well, the good news is that Paull and some of his colleagues got together to set up an Anti-Astroturfing site and campaign. And just to be clear, he's a list of definitions from their site:

Definitions
From Wikipedia: In American politics and advertising, the term astroturfing describes formal public relations projects which deliberately seek to engineer the impression of spontaneous, grassroots behavior. The goal is the appearance of independent public reaction to a politician, political group, product, service, event, or similar entities by centrally orchestrating the behavior of many diverse and geographically distributed individuals.

From answers.com: Astroturfing describes the posting of supposedly independent messages on Internet boards by interested companies and individuals In American politics, the term is used to describe formal public relations projects which deliberately give the impression that they are spontaneous and populist reactions. The term comes from AstroTurf -- the fake grass used in many indoor American football stadiums. The contrast between truly spontaneous or "grassroots" efforts and an orchestrated public relations campaign, is much like the distinction between real grass and AstroTurf.

From the Jargon File: (The Jargon File is a compendium of hacker slang)
astroturfing: n.
The use of paid shills to create the impression of a popular movement, through means like letters to newspapers from soi-disant 'concerned citizens', paid opinion pieces, and the formation of grass-roots lobbying groups that are actually funded by a PR group (AstroTurf? is fake grass; hence the term). See also sock puppet, tentacle.
What an individual posting to a public forum under an assumed name is said to be doing.

Oh, and here's their logo:

It is certainly a pleasure, and very much in keeping with our outlook here at Fordham University, to be dealing with professionals who have a firm commitment to ethical practices and a reflective approach to their business.

Anyway, just as another example of the new and powerful phenomenon of social networking, Paull gave us the example of one of the most popular recent videos on YouTube, "Star Wars according to a 3 year old," which at the time of this writing, is up to 2,892,082 views!!!! It is an altogether charming little home movie, I must say:

Paull also showed us the highly successful YouTube campaign "Will It Blend?" which promotes BlendTec Total Blenders with the kind of stupid human tricks that David Letterman is known for. Here's the example he showed us, featuring Chuck Norris:

And Paull showed us one of Converseon's projects, Second Chance Trees for American Express, which was set up on the Second Life, the 3-dimensional virtual reality social network, where they created a place on Second Life for people to enjoy, and gave people an opportunity to buy trees that would be planted both in the virtual world where they can see them, and in the real world where they otherwise would not be able to see the results of their donation. Anyway, here's the YouTube video on the project, which interestingly includes "machinima" among its tags:

And guess what? There's another YouTube video featuring a presentation by Paull Young on this project, so let's take a look at our friend here:

Not surprisingly, Converseon also has its own blog. And Paull also mentioned another website/blog worthy of our attention, FORWARD.

Interestingly, the fact that Paull spells his name with a double "l" came up, along with the point that it turned out to be fortuitous because otherwise he would not be easy to pick out from all the other Paul Youngs when his name is googled. And that gave me the idea that in the future parents will want to give their kids unique names, in order to optimize their kids for search engines--in this way, technology may alter the time honored traditions by which we name our children. And you can probably say goodby to John Smith!

In sum, Paull gave us lots to think about, and lots to explore. So please join me in saying, G'day Mate!!

A Little Bit of Everything

2008-02-26T12:26:00.003-05:00

I must admit that I never finalized my "draft" from the previous postings so, I'm a week behind on my thoughts. To make it up to you I will include some fun materials I've come across since then throughout my post!

First and foremost, here is the Barack Obama music video I love so much, "Yes We Can" which was inspired by a speech he gave in New Hampshire.

Now for a little business(from last week):

Bolter says that "Graphics have played a role in printed books since the 15h century. With some important exceptions, such as atlases printed books have firmly asserted the primacy of alphabetical text. Printed books contain illustrations; they are texts...As our culture moves toward a greater reliance on electronic graphic presentation, the qualities or printed prose are being displaced or marginalized."

I do agree with Bolter that printed texts prove primitive except for the on going debate for people's preference to be able to hold a book in hand; there is something nostalgic and comforting about holding a book. This, I believe, will stay with our generation but such sentiment is sure to dissipate with future generations. Think about how there are already massive transcriptions of texts online such as Google books or the movement of periodicals and journals to online Databases. Google Book Search intends to work with publishers and libraries to create a comprehensive, searchable, virtual card catalog of all books in all languages toping out with a goal of 30 million texts over the next ten years. Online formats allow for delineated media and research via hypertext and hypermedia. There is an increasing preference towards graphics and video which leads me to believe for anyone to hang out in a library cross referencing and perusing through fictional novels seems something of the past if it has become available from the comfort of their own home.

Funny enough, by going onto Google Book Search, one of the first suggested texts to pop up was entitled "Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon." It's the almost the entire text and relevant to out discussion! I just skimmed through but here is the link!:

And for my next treat:

Now, to discuss Cybertime-
I had a question for clarification and I apologize if it seems elementary. Lance Strate says, "it is generally accepted among scientists an philosophers that time does not exist independently of action, motion and event, but is in fact generated by physical change (hence, time's relativity in relation to speed)." So, am I correct in saying that you MUST have motion/ speed in order to have time and that without motion, action, or event, that space (to most scientists and philosophers) might be considered to be a vacuum? I seriously think myself in circles with this.

In response to cybertime, I think that it has proven a great way to put into perspective the space in which we are interacting and placing data. Strate has presented an enormous amount of information and viewpoints throughout his essay, "Cypertime." The observation that VR does not change within time goes along with the idea of the virtual self and a previous discussion of creating a digital self/ society who could live on past human existence. I appreciate Strate's acknowledgment of how "although our physical selves are subject to the ravages of time, our dream selves are the masters of cybertime." He is correct in saying that meeting with out data doubles might inevitably be disturbing however again to continue on with the previous conversation of the perfect recreation of the digital self, would you not want to be best friends? okay just kidding.

Also, to pose a question, if we did indeed live in a surveillance society and a metadata organizer could sort and compile all the information traceable back to us, could a data double be created to simulate you? Information will eventually be available from an entire lifetime for some individuals and "clones" or AI who learn to simulate your being seem like a sci-fi meats horror film. After continuous discussion regarding these types of issues I almost think it will almost be inevitable.

And now for a video that I’m sure Ted will appreciate because it proves the harmful effects of Myspace (specifically in young children). This video is a bit disturbing and yet I'm sure the kid was a bit provoked but watch for a couple minutes. He answers a few questions about his habits amidst all the chaos. Also please note that this video is a bit offensive, I couldn't even watch it all. There is a bunch of cursing and brief nudity. Not in my usual taste but relevant to our ongoing discussion. So without further ado, here is "Kid Brother is addicted to Myspace"

Her are suggested spots to watch if you don’t want to be patient: 1:14, 1:50, 2:07, 2:50, 3:11-3:20, 4:11 and 6:30.

Justin Cybertime

2008-02-26T12:10:00.007-05:00

Many of the ideas Lance Strate possesses about cybertime encompass the idea that much like a human being, the internet lives in the present, everchanging and adding to itself much like the human body. The display that we all see on our monitors shows only one time, now. This is much different than clocks of old, where you get the impression of time passed and time to wait. Strate refers to this notion in saying that, "the digital display is entirely present-centered, representing the time as nothing more than a discrete quantity." People can relive the past or look toward the future as much as they want, but they still exist in present time.

Not only does today's advancing internet cover the span of all time zones, it also seems to eliminate many time barriers and deadlines associated with technology before it. Looking at anything that is even a few days old can be considered looking at ancient history in cybertime terms, because so much will be added and updated every second. While by the same effect worrying about what the future may bring is pointless (Internet2), because of the massive amount of information and advancements that will occur as time passes leading up to anything in the near future.

One point about crossing over time zones is the obvious interaction between people in far away places of the globe. Clearly, this occurs everyday in games, chat rooms, message boards, etc. If one was to play an online game with participants from around the globe for a full day, you will see when each time zone has its most popular hours of gaming. If you find yourself up at say 5 am and can't fall asleep (it happens around here), then you will not have to worry about finding friends or gamers online to compete with.

It seems that the most obvious overcoming of time barriers is through email communication. To me e-mail erases a sturdy sense of time with regard to mail that was in place for centuries leading up to the breakthrough of the internet. The fact that you send the email at the same instant as the person recieves it shows that time has been erased, and if it took no time to gather your thoughts, you could have a normal conversation with some one across the globe as if they were sitting in your living room. Email has erased any burden of time on global communication.

When referring to the idea of deadlines being completely altered I picture any large newspaper corporations. The employees for these publications must work around the clock leading up to a deadline for the next morning where all the news is cut off, and placed into the same process for the next day. The fact of an alotted period of time to fit as much news from the day in as you can brings about a sense of time running the business. However, in cybertime a person can constantly update as the news updates, without the constriction of basing your news around a specific time on a specific date in a specific time zone. The difference shows how cybertime is much more concerned with the present and the deadlines that exist on the internet are every second. By constantly updating and changing form, these internet news publications are living in the now as much as you or I would. While working for a newspaper conforms a person to always looking ahead to the next day or trying to recap the prior day.

Although blogs like this one and message boards all over the internet show past posts with an attached time, I do not believe this exhibits the passing of cybertime or an idea of concentrating on the past. This is because I consider these type of Internet discussions to be living organisms. With every post from the past there are new posts that can come in at any second from any place in the planet. The fact that new posts are constantly confirming, challenging, or responding to those prior, I believe that as the blog changes constantly as a whole, time in cyberspace is being overcome at every turn.

The Times They Are A Changing

2008-02-26T12:10:00.006-05:00

Lance Strate brings up some very heavy ideas in his piece about 'Cybertime'. The apparent space bias discussed shows our prevalence to denote things in terms of the space they occupy. This thinking has passed over to the realm of computer technology and the Internet, infiltrating the design, ideology and terminology which it functions in. Indeed, Professor Strate remarks how politicians (and inventors like Al Gore) use terms such as "information super highway" to conceptualize or explain the Internet. This predisposition is what sets up the direction of the essay in discussing the true and grossly underestimated importance of time to both the Internet and the computer.
An extremely powerful correlation made is that of the mechanical clock and the computer, this initial relation ties in many of the points included later on in the essay about how essential and versatile time can be.
"As clocks became common, became not merely useful but unavoidable. Men and women began to work, eat, and sleep by the clock...as soon as they decided to regulate their actions by this arbitrary measurer of time, clock was transformed...into a necessity of urban life" (363)
Among other shared characteristics of the clock and the computer are the measurement of duration, the ability to determine present time and the foresight to provide alerts. However, Lance Strate is careful to point out that there are just a few differences...Since the computer is time through the digital format it is in essence a decontextualized form of time, where only the present moment is of concern. Moreover, the establishment of digital time as something created and "malleable" through its existence as data in the computer makes for it to be something that is not beyond the reach of the computer operating system (the "micro-world") to control what time really is. In this sense it does sustain a religious connection to it, that everything is functioning because of a God, a elemental force keeping the balance going, that is until...this world shuts down and everything freezes and time along with everything else has stopped.

While I may at first find this a stretched out point, I don't find myself hard pressed to see this point in the Y2k hysteria. Like a digital judgment day of destruction, this concern of a mass faulty set back in computer systems was one independent of the physical construct of our systems of time. Programmers and experts in the real world trying to alter the reality and working order of the computer micro-world could only hope to play the role of divine intervention and stop this independent progress of time (luckily it was all good).

Another point is the one Lance Strate brings up about the concept of the future in computers. Citing how computers can run simulations of stock markets and changes in systems to demonstrate the passing of time, these processes are done in the present and as such are invariably a reflection of the future within the context of the now. In this sense, digital time is not beyond that of real time. I'll be the first to admit that at times I was lost in the scope of the dense topic of cybertime, but i do believe this demonstrates the duality of cybertime as both existing in conjunction with the real world and expanding independent of it.

1 or 0: On or Off

2008-02-26T11:47:00.004-05:00

I enjoy the passage from Rifkin which states:

The really good video game players are able to block out both clock time and their own subjective time and descend completely into the time world of the game.

And later:

Long-term computer users often suffer from the constant jolt back and forth between two time worlds.

I never thought about time in this manner, but it makes perfect sense to me. In my own experiences, I often feel "jolted" when my thoughts leave the computer and return to reality. I can often be sitting at my computer hours into the night and not feel any sleepiness or tired at all. But as soon as my eyes, glance down at my clock, all of a sudden, I feel like I'm about to fall asleep at the keyboard. It's an unsettling feeling, that return from cyber to real time.

Perhaps, its because the descent into cybertime leaves behind the traces of fatigue real time can enforce. Cybertime has no space for sleep. Computers, once on, are always on, always occupying themselves with some computation. For a computer, its 1 or 0, on or off, there is no state like sleep a computer can relate to. In that same way, we forget sleep when we enter that cyber timezone.

Internet Time

2008-02-26T00:20:00.002-05:00

We all already know that the great thing about cyberspace is that people can communicate with each other no matter what time zone they are in. Lance Strate says in the chapter, “Cybertime”, “there is a tendency to experience them (e-mails) as if they were being communicated in the present. This sense of immediacy can also be present when reading other people’s electronic discussions in the archives of bulletin boards, listservs, and so on” (379) and then Dery writes that the things the reader is reading is taking place in real time. I can see how email and communicating with other people on the Internet makes communication instantaneous, though when looking back through old bulletins or conversations, wouldn’t that just be similar to looking through documents from, say, a book? They are all archived there for people to look through, I guess because there is still the use of timestamps on them. I suppose it would apply more to interactive activities on the Internet in a virtual world, such as the example Rifkin gives about gamers creating a different sense of time while playing video games.

On another note, I found this statement to be interesting: “I believe that we will eventually find ourselves referring more and more often to Greenwich mean time, global time, or simply Internet time, rather than our regional time, and that new timepieces will be widely adopted that are capable of receiving broadcast time signals, thereby maintaining synchronization with the world clock” (368). Internet time has been around since 1998, though I don’t see much of a difference it is to real time. The way that the day is split up is different—24 hours is split up into 1000 “.beats”, with each .beat measuring to be 1 minute 26.4 seconds. The only thing advantageous about this system that I can see is that it takes away the restraints of time zones; it is still in a way, similar to any other digital clock and uses different measurements, though still within a 24-hour period.

I first saw the use of Internet time on an online art community. Essentially, the reasoning behind this site's use of Internet time was to correspond with the fact that it is an international online community, and thus, should go according to Internet time. Additionally, it takes away any disputes that could occur between art submissions, with questions of who posted what at what time zone and so on, which I guess is pretty helpful in any kind of online community where users can put up submissions. Here's the site, they keep the time up at the top -- GFXArtist

When Is Lance Strate?, or We Have All the Time in the World

2008-02-25T23:49:00.002-05:00

Maybe you've downloaded something from iTunes, or a favorite Web site or (dare I say it?) BitTorrent and resented the time it took to download the desired file, song or movie? Maybe you wanted to back up your files to an external hard drive and a little dialogue box pops up to inform you of the time remaining? It's interesting to notice that it gives you a relative time duration. The last time I backed up my MP3's my computer told me that it would take 200 minutes. After a few seconds, the numbers started dropping drastically till it settled on 43 minutes. I noticed that the only consistent measurement was the amount of megabytes/gigabytes being transferred. The time was relative to the speed of the connection and the upward limit of the amount of information that the connection could handle. While the events still progressed in "Real Time," and in fact it did take 43 minutes for all 32.8 gb of my music to be saved, the time calculation shifted constantly. Sometimes it assured me 30 minutes, sometimes 50. The computer didn't care that the download happened in my 50 minutes, it only cared that it would be done when it was done, the time was only there for my benefit.

It's this weird phenomenon of relative time that Lance Strate talks about in his essay on "Cybertime." The computer is ruled by technical limitations, it creates it's own time. The internet only adds to that. The events still happen in "Real Time" but they're ruled by the computers that process them. A good example is sending an e-mail. I've sent e-mails to people on different e-mail clients and find that sometimes an e-mail will take far longer to reach one person than it does another. With AOL and gmail, it's almost instantaneous. Some hotmail users might take a few minutes. Sometimes, the e-mails don't arrive for hours. It doesn't change the content or the meaning, but can bring messages out of context. Imagine a series of important e-mails where the key piece doesn't arrive until after the conclusion?

Computer time doesn't work on a strict progression of cause and effect, it works on many levels of running information back and forth. Most often that information works withing the normal time framework we're used to. Sometimes, it doesn't. I'm sure we've all clicked on a program on the desktop, and the application loads slower than we'd like, but the computer remembers the strokes and clicks you've made and adds them as soon as the program is open.

Cybertime--

2008-02-25T21:24:00.004-05:00

While I agree with Lance Strate on the electronic place speeding up human concepts of time, "cybertime" exists in the same world in which humans live. In other words, I wake up in the morning, 9 A.M. EST and log into google to check the daily news. At that very moment, it is 9 P.M. elsewhere and some Chinese family has just finished dinner and logs in to hear their favorite internet radio broadcast or log in to chat with friends. Their cyber experience will always exist within the actual world. All computers have a clock in the corner of the screen, grounding the cybertime in real time. After I finish this blog, as soon as I "publish" the post that time will forever be attached to this writing.

The speed of the internet and the conception of the nanosecond is for the most part unexplored by common internet users, and for good reason. Not only are they too technical and impractical to deal with, but the speed of the process of the internet is cool but not pertinent to accessing information. The time it takes to type the web address and the time it takes to load a webpage is the speed of the internet. Although thinking about binary code does kinda flip your mind: zero zero zero zero zero zero one zero zero zero zero zero one one zero zero zero zero one one one zero zero zero one one one one (Flight of the Concords "The humans are dead" reference; if you haven't seen it...do yourself a favor)

The synchronization that occurs from the world clock and the Western idea of time has pushed industrialization to create and influenced mankind to imagine things like the printing press, telegraph, telephone, computer and the internet. The speed and magnitude of information one the internet creates a flowing, streaming fountain of knowledge, automatically updated and covering the entire globe. When Lance discusses Experiencing Time: Computing as Activity and Event, he cites video games and virtual reality as a way to "lose yourself" in cybertime and spend hours on end staring at a screen. Many of my friends comment on how easy it is to spend hours looking through facebook or "surfing" the web. Is this different from the intoxication glow of the Television screen? or the digital IMAX that has pushed the limit of quality movie projection? I think the reason the internet is different is because the information is pertinent and customized to the users wants as well as the endless web of sites that would take an eternity to fully explore.

There are still concepts of past, present and future on the internet. One thing teachers have been telling me since high school is always "know when something is written". Even more so on the internet, it is important to understand source reliability as well as the timetable of events surrounding the information. In this way, I think cybertime cannot be seen as religious in any humanly spiritual way; it turns us all into gods of our domain. Whenever we want to log on, any information you want to access is at our fingertips, creating what Strate calls "dream-self doubles...masters of cybertime". The "more integrated, metadimensional sense of self" is the future of human interaction with information, education and each other. The global network and McLuhan's "tribal village" is very real and connects the whole world instantaneously to information with unlimited potential for growth.........given time.................and space (The internet is running out of room, btw)

Virtual Future?

2008-02-25T21:05:00.005-05:00

Virtual time yields yields virtual futures...

We can create virtual programs, and we can predict and form the future in a virtual world, but can we really determine the future of reality using these virtual programs? In Chapter 22, Lance Strate talks about predicting the future through the use of virtual programs. We can use virtual programs to stimulate the future in the present and "Given that knowledge, we can then act to control the future; and with or without forecast, the program creates a pre-determined future." Although we can see into the future, it is important to distinguish the difference between reality and virtual reality. I liked how Strate incorporated a a passage about Gary Gimbert who discussed how we can use film as a medium to create illusions from the past or the future that exist in the present. We can create films that will visualize our future through a simulated environment that is similar to our reality. For instance, one of the best movies that explores virtual reality is 'The Matrix'. The characters live in a virtual reality because their true reality was so polluted and gruesome that they learned to coincide in a virtual world.

Although I agree with virtual programs simulating the future, I was unclear about how this can form a pre-determined future. We can simulate a program to predict our future, yet I agree with Kurt Vonnegut that it is impossible to change or create the future. Why are we searching to break away from time in the natural time world? Natural time has been an ancient tradition dating back to the Aztecs capturing light through prisms to depict the time of day and year. I believe it is important that we stay within these boundaries and avoid trying to pre-determine our future in cyberspacetime.

The Future in Cybertime

2008-02-25T19:44:00.002-05:00

I agree with J. David Bolter when he says that the computer is an extension. Chapter 22, written by Lance Strate is a great topic, becuase although it is so much apart of everyday life, it is easily overlooked. The concept of time and clocks is not very complicated, when someone wants to the know the time they either look at their watch or any other digital device that is handy. The clock was bound to be invented sooner or later simply because it's much easier than using a sundial. When clocks began to make their way into society, they were very expensive just as early computers were. As clocks became popular, men and women would live by them. In urban life they were so essential, because people would eat, work, and sleep by the clock. Today a clocks purpose has become basically obsolete mainly because phones and computers can display what time it is as well as having many other functions. Cybertime introduces us to a new type of telling time. Cybertime is absolute time, ditgital time, and quicktime. The computer has contributed the processing of information at electric speed. While digital time is still being used, cybertime has become the best and most efficient way of taking down data, receiving information, and communicating with others world wide. While ordinary clocks are produced with identical series of minutes, hours, and seconds, cybertime works with nanoseconds, and this marks a turning point in the way human beings relate to time. Never before has time been organized at such a precise time, at a speed beyond the realm of conciousness.

Linear Time versus Polychronic Time

2008-02-25T19:34:00.004-05:00

In a traditional sense of the word, we see time as a linear progression from one point to the next. It is two o'clock before it is three o'clock, and an event has to begin before it can end, etc. In Lance Strate's Chapter 22 on Cybertime, he refers to the work of Marshall McLuhan and his description of polychronic time. If linear time describes a straight line progression from one point to the next, then polychronic time would involve the progression of multiple lines at the same time. The idea that the internet has opened doors and changed the way humans can experience time and space is unavoidable. Strate gives concrete examples such as the "new nanosecond culture" and "time-sharing" which are obvious dimensions invented by the versatility of cyberspace and the internet. Strate adapts the phrase "cyberspace" from the creation of the nano-second because of the existence of a segment of time that takes place beyond human consciousness. A nano-second could pass (and does) and we as humans would have no way to consciously realize this. The idea of time sharing is another component of McLuhan's theory of ploychronic time. Instead of one person being able to access one network, or one mainframe computer, multiple people are granted access at the same time. Even a document that is not duplicated through publication can be view by multiple people at any given time if they are granted access to the network where the document exists. Although Strate uses concrete evidence to formulate his argument for the evolution of time with the creation of the internet, I question the actual relevancy of the idea of "cybertime." The creation of the internet has obviously opened new dimensions to the speed in which we can experience the world (or whatever is put onto the net), but has it changed the fundamental framework of the clock and the way in which we view time? It is my belief that the clock, and measurement of time in a 24 hour day, is a timeless invention. The clock which tells us what time it is, when we have to leave our house, when we have to go to bed, and even wakes us up out of a sound sleep, will never evolve past its already established boundaries. No matter how fast and broad the internet becomes, it will still take us just as long to read an article as it always has, and just as long to write a page as it always has. Information is obviously more accessible, and at a faster rate, than it has ever been, but that does not mean that true time has to become shorter? We still have a 24 hour day, a 60 minute hour, and 60 second minute. The point of the internet is to broaden the availability of accessible information so that we can accomplish more and reach farther than we have ever been able to, not to rush through life and increase the speed of time.

Virtual Reality and Community

2008-02-25T19:03:00.002-05:00

In chapter 6, we learn that Alduous Huxley coined the term Virtual reality in his classic book Brave New World. Charles U. Larson goes on to explain what Huxley meant by these "Feelies". A feelie was a person who entered a booth, and after planting their hands on an electronic contact board, they would experience sensations identical to whatever was happening. This type of feeling was like an advanced form of a movie, because now all five senses are being moved, rather than just seeing and hearing. Although the idea of Virtual Reality seemed far fetched when first introduced, we see it being applied more rapidly day by day. Critics of virtual reality warn of potential overwhelming , and wonder how many hours a day people will want to spend in virtual reality. The central concern is that the phone, computer and television use interactivity within some community while virtual reality limits the sense of community that has been accompanied by earlier media. As Burke describes in his theory of Virtual Act, that what happens to a person during this reality is private and interpersonal, they are similar to dreams and fantasies. If these instances are only experienced by the participant, will sense of community fade away? Virtual Reality tis very cool and seems great. However, everything should be done in moderation, if we were to get to carried away video games and airplane cockpit learning would be old news, and other things such as learning, sex, and eating may become virtual and that would take away from personal relationships and community.

The Chronicles of Riddick Was a Crappy Movie Anyway

2008-02-25T16:48:00.006-05:00

Going through Prof. Strate's bulletin board on our trusty "Interactive Rams" group I couldn't help but read his re-telling of the "YOU" poem incident. I think Prof. Strate's strong points coupled with the accuser's continuous poor grammar more than reinforce the honesty of professor Strate's claims. But moreover, I couldn't help but wonder if this guy was accusing the poem of being stolen after it was received so publicly. By this I mean, if the poem hadn't garnered any attention at all would this issue even had come up? This got me recalling a documentary clip that was shown to me a year ago by Professor McCourt in my Electronic Media class. This incident Professor Strate posted about demonstrates the sticky and ambiguous nature of ownership, copyright and trademark in the digital domain. With so many more venues on the internet expanding the realm of creativity and expression, the notion of originality and ownership continue to become blurred. The clip I was shown is entitled "Amen Brother Break" and deals with the complexity and significance of these issues.

The basic outline of the clip traces the far-reaching history of a drum sample known as the Amen Break. The sample originates from a 1960's song entitled "Amen Brother" by the music group, The Winstons. Yet despite being created over 40 years ago, the break has permeated successfully into various musical genres of our culture in the last decade; including Hip-Hop, Electronica, Rock and R&B. The clip shows how thanks to the advent of sampling technology this break has been transformed in a variety of ways impacting numerous types of musical genres and sub-cultures, even going as far as reaching the advertising realm. Furthermore, it was the freedom of this musical sampling and reconstruction, due primarily to the ineffectiveness with which sampling was seen that allowed such a prominent period of growth through this break. I don't want to spoil the main points this clip brings up so I won't go into it much further, but it brings up powerfully interesting ideas about the importance of creative freedom in the face of copyright and the extent to which it should overplay or underplay the use of sampling.
I think powerful connections can be made since so much of this piece addresses issues of ownership and use in the digital realm. I hope you all enjoy!

PC Internet of the Future!

2008-02-25T13:55:00.003-05:00

I read a tasty article from the New York Times today chronicling Abobe's efforts in consolidating things like eBay, NASDAQ, and FedEx all on the PC while seamlessly incorporating the internet. It is as if using a PC, lets say just the desktop, would be like using the internet, only broader. The platform you choose (XP, Vista, or some crappy Apple creation) would be able to function like a working web browser. It reminds me some of widget technology, but what Adobe is trying to do is make it less link-oriented, like a widget, and turn those widgets into working, internet powered functions. The actual program, which was designed by one guy, is called AIR. Flip flop back and forth from desktop to web, exchanging information seamlessly. The article did say there was competition, as there almost always is, but this is a new product still. It's like having a desktop thats your homepage. Pretty cool stuff.

Heres the article: Right Here

Literary Quite Contrary, How Does Your Gardner Grow?

2008-02-19T09:21:00.004-05:00

Howard Gardner is a well known and highly respected scholar in the field of education, and educational psychology. He's best known for his theory of multiple intelligences, which argues that, rather than there being one single "thing" called intelligence as is implied by the IQ test (a test that measures something that was never clearly defined), there are many different intelligences, for example verbal, mathematical, scientific, musical, visual, social and emotional, etc. Different people may be better or worse in any one of these, or any combination. Interestingly, for me, his theory was influenced, in part, by the highly uneven combinations that give rise to the autistic savant, an individual who may be on a genius level in mathematics or visual expression, for example, and extremely poor in verbal, and especially social intelligence.

So anyway, this morning as I was reading our local paper, The Record, (traditionally referred to as the Bergen Record, but now officially the North Jersey Record), I was delighted to see an op-ed piece by Gardner on literacy and the new media (the piece is not listed as a reprint from another paper, as is sometimes the case, but appears to have been commissioned by The Record, to its credit).

Gardner is certainly a media ecologist, as he puts literacy in an historical context going back to prehistory (although I find his chronology to be slightly off, as writing was developed a bit over 5,000 years ago, and other forms of notation are significantly less than 100,000 years old. But what's a few millennia among friends? More importantly, he discusses how different communication technologies, different media in other words, give rise to different types of literacy.

And please note that, at no point does he use the term literacy as a metaphor. He's not talking about some vague notion of media literacy, visual literacy, or even computer literacy. He's talking about the ability to create and understand written texts, about knowing your ABCs and minding your Ps and Qs.

And so, without further ado, let me give you over to Howard, in this think piece that's entitled: Gardner: Reading, R.I.P.? and appears on p. L7 of today's Record (February 19, 2008):

Computers, pessimists maintain, are destroying literacy; optimists foresee the Internet ushering in a new, vibrant participatory culture of words.
WHAT WILL HAPPEN to reading and writing in our time? Could the doomsayers be right? Computers, they maintain, are destroying literacy. The signs -- students' declining reading scores, the drop in leisure reading to just minutes a week, the fact that half the adult population reads no books in a year -- are all pointing to the day when a literate American culture becomes a distant memory. By contrast, optimists foresee the Internet ushering in a new, vibrant participatory culture of words. Will they carry the day?
Maybe neither. Let me suggest a third possibility: Literacy -- or an ensemble of literacies -- will continue to thrive, but in forms and formats we can't yet envision.
That's what has always happened as writing and reading have evolved over the ages. It was less than 100,000 years ago that our human predecessors first made meaningful marks on surfaces, notating the phases of the moon or drawing animals on cave walls. Within the past 5,000 years, societies across the Near East's Fertile Crescent began to use systems of marks to record important trade exchanges as well as pivotal events in the present and the past. These marks gradually became less pictorial, and a decisive leap occurred when they began to capture certain sounds reliably: U kn red ths sntnz cuz Inglsh feechurs "graphic-phoneme correspondences."
A master of written Greek, Plato feared that written language would undermine human memory capacities (much in the same way that we now worry about similar side effects of "Googling"). But libraries made the world's knowledge available to anyone who could read. The 15th-century printing press disturbed those who wanted to protect and interpret the word of God, but the availability of Bibles in the vernacular allowed laypeople to take control of their spiritual lives and, if historians are correct, encouraged entrepreneurship in commerce and innovation in science.
Criticism and celebration
In the past 150 years, each new medium of communication -- telegraph, telephone, movies, radio, television, the digital computer, the World Wide Web -- has introduced its own peculiar mix of written, spoken and graphic languages and evoked a chaotic chorus of criticism and celebration.
But of the changes in the media landscape over the past few centuries, those featuring digital media are potentially the most far-reaching. Those of us who grew up in the 1950s, at a time when there were just a few computers in the world, could never have anticipated the ubiquity of personal computers (back then, IBM's Thomas Watson famously declared that there'd be a market for perhaps five computers in the world!). A mere half-century later, more than a billion people can communicate via e-mail, chat rooms and instant messaging; post their views on a blog; play games with millions of others worldwide; create their own works of art or theater and post them on YouTube; join political movements; and even inhabit, buy, sell and organize in a virtual reality called Second Life. No wonder the chattering classes can't agree about what this all means.
Here's my take.
Once we ensured our basic survival, humans were freed to pursue other needs and desires, including the pleasures of communicating, forming friendships, convincing others of our point of view, exercising our imagination, enjoying a measure of privacy. Initially, we pursued these needs with our senses, our hands and our individual minds. Human and mechanical technologies to help us were at a premium. It's easy to see how the emergence of written languages represented a boon. The invention of the printing press and the emergence of readily available books, magazines and newspapers allowed untold millions to extend their circle, expand their minds and expound their pet ideas.
Inhabiting fascinating worlds
For those of us of a 19th- or 20th-century frame of mind, books play a special, perhaps even spiritual, role. Works of fiction -- the writings of Jane Austen, Leo Tolstoy, Toni Morrison, William Faulkner -- allow us to inhabit fascinating worlds we couldn't have envisioned. Works of scholarship -- the economic analyses of Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes, the histories of Thucydides and Edward Gibbon -- provide frameworks for making sense of the past and the present.
But now, at the start of the 21st century, there's a dizzying set of literacies available -- written languages, graphic displays and notations. And there's an even broader array of media -- analog, digital, electronic, hand-held, tangible and virtual -- from which to pick and choose. There will inevitably be a sorting-out process. Few media are likely to disappear completely; rather, the idiosyncratic genius and peculiar limitations of each medium will become increasingly clear. Fewer people will write notes or letters by hand, but the elegant handwritten note to mark a special occasion will endure.
I don't worry for a nanosecond that reading and writing will disappear. Even in the new digital media, it's essential to be able to read and write fluently and, if you want to capture people's attention, to write well. Of course, what it means to "write well" changes: Virginia Woolf didn't write the same way that Jane Austen did, and Arianna Huffington's blog won't be confused with Walter Lippmann's columns. But the imaginative spheres and real-world needs that all those written words address remain.
I also question the predicted disappearance of the material book. When they wanted to influence opinions, both the computer giant Bill Gates and the media visionary Nicholas Negroponte wrote books (the latter in spite of his assertion that the material book was becoming anachronistic). The convenience and portability of the book aren't easily replaced, though under certain circumstances -- a month-long business trip, say -- the advantages of Amazon's hand-held electronic Kindle reading device trumps a suitcase full of dog-eared paperbacks.
Books in jeopardy
Two aspects of the traditional book may be in jeopardy, however. One is the author's capacity to lay out a complex argument, which requires the reader to study and reread, following a circuitous course of reasoning. The Web's speedy browsing may make it difficult for digital natives to master Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" (not that it was ever easy).
The other is the book's special genius for allowing readers to enter a private world for hours or even days at a time. Many of us enjoyed long summer days or solitary train rides when we first discovered an author who spoke directly to us. Nowadays, as clinical psychologist Sherry Turkle has pointed out, young people seem to have a compulsion to stay in touch with one another all the time; periods of lonely silence or privacy seem toxic. If this lust for 24/7 online networking continues, one of the dividends of book reading may fade away. The wealth of different literacies and the ease of moving among them -- on an iPhone, for example -- may undermine the once-hallowed status of books.
But whatever our digital future brings, we need to overcome the perils of dualistic thinking, the notion that what lies ahead is either a utopia or a dystopia. If we're going to make sense of what's happening with literacy in our culture, we need to be able to triangulate: to bear in mind our needs and desires, the media as they once were and currently are, and the media as they're continually transforming.
It's not easy to do. But maybe there's a technology, just waiting to be invented, that will help us acquire this invaluable cognitive power.
Howard Gardner teaches cognitive psychology at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is directing a study of the ethical dimensions of the new digital media.

Now, far be it from me to argue with the esteemed Professor Gardner, but I must conclude by saying that I do not share his optimism about the future of literacy.

While I believe that a significant minority will retain reading and writing skills, I think that minority will be a combination of an affluent elite, for whom literacy will be a luxury item, and certain vocational groups, for whom literacy will be a requirement, say computer programmers. But for the latter vocational literates (Eric Havelock used the term craft literacy), they may only use reading and writing for utilitarian purposes, not to obtain culture, entertainment or enlightenment.

The same short attention span that Gardner writes about in his piece will, in my opinion, drive people away from the written word altogether, and toward the visual. And while images can never entirely replace words, speech recognition and speech synthesis software will go a long way towards making literacy unnecessary for increasingly larger numbers of people.

Anyway, that's just my op-ed rebuttal, for what it's worth (about a buck forty-nine, I figure). Believe me, nothing would make me happier than to learn in no uncertain terms that I'm wrong and Howard's right.

Microsoft...Television?

2008-02-19T02:05:00.008-05:00

In chapter five Charles U. Larson comments on the impact of television on the implications and predictions of virtual reality. Aside from the virtual aspects of it, the influence that television can have on our individual and social needs in the future is something that Larson believes is worth stating. Although I'm not sure that I agree that television is a personal and social necessity, I do think that the television, as compared to the computer, is a more accessible means to enter a true virtual reality. The FCC recently passed a law which raises the standard of all TV transmission to be digital rather than analog. Analog transmissions are over the air and take up more space than cable or satellite transmissions. Eventually this will lead us into a standard of television where HD TV is the standard for watching all television channels.

In my own personal opinion, HD TV is the most stimulating type of virtual reality. The sound and picture quality of HD is the the most realistic way that I can explore a foreign country or feel like I am actually at a sporting event. So my next question is what if we could experience the virtual reality of HD not only as television entertainment, but also in a social network? I think Microsoft MediaRoom has started to try to answer this question.

MediaRoom is Microsoft’s lastest technology in Microsoft TV IPTV. It is a comprehensive television, picture, music, gaming, and social network. The television is the highest technology of current TV, including picture-in-picture which allows multiple screens to be watched simultaneously. Many TVs have this feature, but for certain shows MediaRoom can watch the same program from multiple angles. For example Nascar fans can watch the entire race and the in-car camera of four or five of their favorite drivers simultaneously. MediaRoom is also highly compatible with X Box 360 software and ultimately plans to incorporate the X Box into the MediaRoom system, using the X Box headset and controller to go shopping in virtual reality. This will allow MediaRoom users to talk to a sales representative who will guide and recommend virtual shoppers by bringing up different products for them on their screen. This would truly create a virtual shopping experience, more so than online shopping can. Far and away the most virtually realistic part of MediaRoom is the social networking. Microsoft takes the high definition environment it has created that allows you to store your pictures and music, and allows you to share and exchange these with other people. Looking forward, the MediaRoom also contains a program called Microsoft Mediaroom Application Development toolkit, where you will be able to create your own programs for the system which run on Microsoft media platform. This toolkit will aid in the advancement of MediaRoom's technology by opening the suggestion box to anyone who is creative enough to try it.

References:

Microsoft's MediaRoom Tests the Grounds Beyond IPTV's 'Walled Garden'

Focus the Nation

2008-02-13T20:56:00.003-05:00

Focus the Nation is a relatively new web-site which stresses the need for college students to get involved with preserving our earth. I was checking out articles on the N.Y. Times website when I found this article called "Changing the Climate on Campus." The article discussed how Focus the Nation is trying to make a change among college students all across the country. They even wrote about a teach-in at Fordham University. They had an organized daylong series of lectures on the environment, ranging from the restoration of the polluted Bronx River to the ins and outs of international climate treaties. At Fordham, 19-year-old, Thomas Zellers, helped organize the Focus the Nation teach-in said, "Attendance at the teach-in there was a bit light." Zellers noted that drafting college students into a political movement on global warming — or almost any issue — can be an uphill battle. "Still, I think this is inspiring people," he says. "Everyone has a stake in this. Above all else I think this will be the defining issue for us."

Do not be afraid to get involved! Be Conscious! Check these sites out!

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1711450,00.html
www.focusthenation.org/greendemocracy_whatsnext.php

Progress from the Computer Chair: A Look at Larson's Piece

2008-02-12T14:03:00.000-05:00

Charles Larson's piece, Dramatism ad Virtual Reality: Implications and Predictions focuses on intrapersonal communication. As discussed in earlier blogs about Larson's chapter, he states the usual concerns and criticisms over Virtual Reality and the threat it poses to genuine human interaction, "virtual reality almost by definition limits the sense of community that accompanied earlier media" [115].

It has been shown time and time again that the fears we have of our tendency to increasingly immerse ourselves in digitized worlds of communications are grossly exaggerated. One does not need to look hard at examples such as SecondLife or Facebook for glaring contradictions to these fears. One claim made by Larson is however, interesting, or at least worth thinking about again. Looking beyond the dramatized fears of people losing complete touch with those around them and their physical surroundings, the point that though we might not become engulfed with solitude and anti-social behavior does not concede the fact that we might become really lazy.

"Virtual Reality also raises serious questions regarding our social order such as concern over the degree to which humans might vegetate their lives way playing in a virtual amusement park, never engaging in productive efforts" [115].

While this claim by Larson is probably shaped in extremes, it does bring up the point that while we're not completely useless are we limiting our productivity to a noticeable level? I Can't help but recall countless night of procrastination and stress being facilitated at the hands of FaceBook and YouTube. The ability to connect with others or help society is not being questioned here, I'm just making the point that Larson is right in the sense that a good amount of productivity is being sacrificed at the hands of mindless web surfing. Bringing this back to Virtual Reality, I can only harp on the infamous South Park War of World Craft episode, mocking as it may have been, the observation was there; the characters in their quest for "progress", physically grew fat, slobbish (to the point of incontinence) and idle.

There ARE a lot of benefits to virtual reality, I'm not denying it, but beyond the utilitarian and humanitarian example you can't ignore that a lot of this industry is developed for recreation, and part of what fosters it is immersing yourself in it for hours at a time. The fear isn't in not talking to the people around you, or living in the real world, it's not doing anything with your life.

Calling all Philosophers(2.0)

2008-02-12T13:18:00.000-05:00

Bolter gives an analysis of the conflict between words and images and reviews philosophical theories of the self as they relate to virtual reality. Any attempt to relate the virtual self to ancient philosophers like Descartes or Plato (in Zettl's piece) will fall extraordinarily short in explaining this new dimension of living.

The shadows in Plato's cave that the people in the cave grew up believing in project images that mirrored reality; these images appeared to those who had only seen shadows as reality. But we live in a world now where the shadows are becoming more and more real; BUT we know they are fake, unlike Plato's cave dwellers. Descartes ideas about the self and issues concerning the body and the mind do not concern the 21st century man. We are capable of creating a digital body as a reflection of the mind as well as the body.

Its a new world, and we need new philosophers to interpret the implications that the digital world will have on our generation and those following. Not even the most pensive of academics during the Renaissance or during the Age of Reason could interpret the new technologies impact, so the new academia must stop trying to tie ancient philosophy to the digital universe. Ask the youth of the nation what implications these new technologies have on their lives, because it is their lives that have been most deeply impacted by the new digital world.

Push The Wii To The Limit: VR Head Tracking

2008-02-12T13:02:00.000-05:00

The history of Virtual Reality begins with Aldoux Huxley, who invented the feelie experience. These "feelies" were obviously not advanced at this time, however the idea was to incorporate all of the senses. That is, one could feel sensations of touch, taste, smell, and even sexual experience (not a sense but pretty cool). From this original model, virtual reality did not begin to truly take off in this "feelie" manner. According to Charles U. Larson in Dramatism and Virtual Reality, this idea of "feeling" a virtual world and the idea of cyberspace was immediately clenched on to by not just video game industries, but the Pentagon and Pornography industry as well. Clearly, all three could have infinite fun with a world where people can escape their limited, physical bodies, and then complete their inner goals and desires. Multi-million dollar projects in places like Disney World captured similar interactions between human beings and the VR worlds around them. It was noted during the infant stages of VR that the potential of this medium would not be realized until years down the road, much like what occurred with the breakthrough of the television medium.

Well, here we are and now is the time where technology can provide the uses of virtual reality that Larson has predicted. Ideas like "virtual surgery", "virtual driving lessons", "virtual clothing", "virtual vacations", and "virtual sex" all seem possible and applicable to today's society for a myriad of purposes. It seems that one necessity before people can begin to indulge in the experience stated prior is an easy portal into the virtual world, one that doesn't constrict or nauseate the peron attempting to cross back and forth between dimensions. This is very necessary if we were to finally "bridge" the gaming world most play in now with an unbounded, virtual world. What we need is to turn our computer screen into a window, rather than turning our eyes or "windows to the world" into computer monitors themselves.

Larson refers to this difference in virtual thinking as a VR participant not being on the outside looking in, however they are on the inside looking around. The more we look around the more we see, thus making the VR world both infinite and incomplete. Playstation 3 and XBox 360 are right now becoming the most popular consoles in the gaming world, however it seems the Nintendo Wii will be the first system that can truly take a gamer to a new scene. Watch this video and see how if the Wii is taken to the next level you may find yourself smack dab in the world of virtual reality and the future of gaming.

Zettl's Take on Virtual Reality

2008-02-12T12:50:00.000-05:00

In Zettl's article on the advent of virtual reality, the technology is analyzed in terms of its artistic parallel to traditional painting and its capabilities when measured against media like television and the motion picture. Analyzing virtual reality in terms of media aesthetics, specifically the realm of three dimensional tehcnique, Zettl asserts that there is relatively little difference from past works of Renaissance art and the digital creations of generated through computer graphics. Zettl makes the claim that many artistic approaches are used in both formats such as perspective, with the only true difference coming from the computerized precision that the artistic eye can perceive. Additionally, virtual reality expands on the form of television, which captures the reality of motion and sound, by allowing perspective and point of view to be controlled and altered in a manner more accurate and befitting of reality. While enhancing on real life however, Zettl maintains that the power of virtual reality lies not its ability to duplicate but go beyond the scope and characteristics of reality. This statement is reinforced by Zettl's claim about HDTV, whose standard is inhibited through its tendency to depend on the motion picture.

Zettl's piece is interesting because, aside from the usual remarks made about coming technology, such as concerns, uses and the ethics of it all, interesting and new points are made. Zettl refreshingly sees the ability of virtual reality to not merely enhance or duplicate the characteristics of reality seen in photography and television but go beyond them. Perspective, distance and angle are merely a few characteristics, which VR expands upon in such a way, where they are no longer reminiscent to what we compare them as in real life. Zettl's originality is reinforced by the way in which he does not discuss the past with superiority or the past with disdain, points are both thoughtful and objective, making them even more insightful.

Interpersonal Relationships in VR

2008-02-12T12:34:00.000-05:00

In Charles U. Larson's Dramatism and Virtual Reality: Implications and Predictions, he voices the same concerns as critics of virtual reality. By emphasizing the intra-personal nature of virtual reality simulations, Larson is neglecting some of the most important aspects of a virtual reality network. The greatest ability of virtual reality is connecting people in deeper manner than message boards and emails. Through an extension of a virtual body, people are more willing and more able to make emotional connections with others.

While there are more impressive simulations available, the most popular virtual reality is World of Warcraft. I don't think I'm stretching the definition of the word by calling WoW a virtual reality environment. So why is World of Warcraft so popular? Because it's fun and it allows people to make real connections without needing to be in the same time zone or zip code. And WoW does this without the need for headset glasses or touch sensors placed all over your body. Nor does World of Warcraft display ultra-realistic graphics or physics resembling the real world. Yet, because of the real players behind their avatars, the game presents a realistic, humanistic map for one to explore.

My point is that virtual reality won't appear like in the Matrix. We won't "jack in" one day to this virtual environment. Rather, through slow and deliberate modifications to existing technologies, the world will become more digital and more virtual, but do so invisibly to most people. We will continue to augment our reality with virtual environments. And the most important use of virtual reality will be in presenting an environment to interact in and connect through without the need for physical or temporal locality.

Just a thought

2008-02-12T10:37:00.000-05:00

In an article I recently read about realism in videogames, the author brought up the point that a simulation does not only refer to how an object in a virtual world is represented, but in its behavior as well. He gave the example of a car engine not just looking like a car engine in a virtual world, but also behaving like an engine. Herbert Zettl, in “Back to Plato’s Cave: Virtual Reality,” states that the goal of computer graphics is “not to simulate the real environment, but the lens-generated one” (107). So I guess, in a sense, it simulates the behavior of a wide angle lens or a telephoto lens, as he explains, but what about things that are more than just the physical appearance? How would virtual reality be viewed if someone threw an object and the virtual environment followed the laws of physics? Many videogames already incorporate physics into their game engines to make their games more realistic. What I’m wondering is how realistic does virtual reality have to be to be considered realistic enough for the possibility of someone getting too caught up in it and then being unable to distinguish the real from the virtual world. Would it be worth following the laws of physics or any natural laws in a virtual reality world. Or how much importance should be put into creating a world that simulates more than just the aesthetic aspects. Though I suppose it is more important to put an emphasis on the ethical issues that could arise in the “perfect existential world” (108) since it leaves so much freedom and room for experimentation. A bunch of computer games whose graphic quality isn’t as realistic as some are now already have been presenting audiences with moral and ethical decisions. I guess it’s only natural for people to worry about this since technology is making virtual reality more realistic every day.

I love to Blog and the N.Y. Giants

2008-02-12T03:08:00.000-05:00

Recently, I have found the blog has become one of the newest influential mediums on the internet, because it provides a real personable approach and can help you get a better understanding of the writer. I like how anyone can write subjectively on any given subject. Unlike a magazine or newspaper article, in which, the authors most often write similar as well as completely disregarding your name; (except maybe the N.Y. Times) the blog shows the true personality of the person. I love it how you can post pictures, videos, articles without the permission of the rightful owner. I believe the freedom of the blog has helped create another form of communication that will continue to prosper over the years.

It provides the ability to reach a wide-spread and global audience to check out your writing style whether you choose to be formal or informal. Obviously, political blogs have to maintain a degree of professionalism, but they help you get a better understanding of their true opinions and beliefs. On the other hand, blogs from the general public have become increasingly popular because you get to write how you feel. It is completely subjective, and as our teacher noted it is even offensive to comment on one’s grammatical errors. I love to blog. I do not have write with rhetorically persuasion, but I am going to throw out my thoughts out there and let them grow on you.

P.S. This is for all you who doubted the N.Y. Giants. Sorry, I missed class last week but for a true Giant fan this was one holiday that comes around as often as a swarm of locusts. Also, Steve Spagnuolo signed back with the Giants for another three years as the defensive coordinator, because he said there was no better city in the world to come home to for a parade! Nonetheless, I think the ‘Redskins suck’ chants might have helped which I screamed at the top of my lungs. Sorry, Jimmy Page, but defense wins championships and ruins perfect seasons too.

Are We Getting Ahead of Ourselves

2008-02-12T02:23:00.000-05:00

Here a soldier demonstrates the Virtual Reality (VR) parachute trainer, while Aviation Survival Equipment man controls the program from a computer console. Students wear the VR glasses while suspended in a parachute harness, and then learn to control their movements through a series of computer-simulated scenarios. The computer receives signals from the student as they pull on the risers that control the parachute. The VR trainer also teaches aircrew personnel how to handle a parachute in different weather conditions and during possible equipment malfunctions. Navy and Marine Corps aviators receive state of the art training at the Naval Survival Training Institute. U.S. Navy photo by Chief Photographer’s Mate Chris Desmond. This is why they do it this way. It saves lives, money, gas for the jets and ect.

I found it interesting that Herbert Zettl of chapter five referenced a quote from Socrates and even named his chapter 'Back to Plato's Cave'. He writes about the philosophical and ethical implications of virtual reality on human action relating it a passage from the "Republic". As we continue to expand our technology it is hard to recognize when we will make a mistake or have pushed the limit too far. Although, I support the virtual reality program for teaching soldiers how to fly, maybe we can direct this energy and expenses toward creating a more positive outcome rather than training soldiers of war. One of the main points in the analogy between Plato and the reading was whether it would be better to stay in a cave remaining in a world of shadows or whether it is better to expand the boundaries. I support stretching the boundaries, but it can be complicated in certain situations when VR has been used to help one's evil actions. For example, the story of the suicide bomber in 9/11 who learned to fly a plane through a VR program. Although we can not prevent cases of people making bad decisions, the question when do you limit the expansion of technology?

Grand Theft Auto in Plato's Cave

2008-02-12T00:20:00.000-05:00

Herbert Zettl's and Charles Larson's chapters in Communication and Cyberspace focus on virtual reality and how it can effect the human understanding and even human behavior. Zettl states, "...virtual reality provides a perfect existential world, in which we can exercise free will and make any number of decisions, however extreme, without ... the underlying anxiety of accountability." [Pg. 108]. While things like Second Life or simming have not moved beyond very basic levels, Zettl's vision of "...operating in an amoral environment...whose virtual character liberates us from feeling any existential angst when making choice" [108] can be seen in video games like Grand Theft Auto, Bully or World of Warcraft. In these games, players are able to choose missions to take on which can run the gamut from moral ambiguous to downright evil and dirty. Many a researcher has tried to argue that these immersive games with questionable moral ground have an effect on children and violence, though most research into the subject matter has not revealed a strong argument either way. In fact one could if the game invites anyone to act out in the way in which they choose.

Larson points out that "In objective reality, the agent must choose to act and follow or not to follow the path implicit in the scene. In virtual reality, the interactent must decide to look left, look right..." [119, sic]. In a virtual world you decide on a path and take it, it frees you from a moral sense of guilt/angst over, say, taking out a mob hit man or blowing up a car in a video game. The player is not choosing the past for them self, they are just deciding on what makes the game more interesting. To Larson, VR is influenced by the setting: A mob game will make you think like a mafia don and act thusly, a game about solving puzzles will make you think analytically, etc.

Larson and Zettl illustrate how virtual reality is a great tool for training, and even gameplay, but that there are still moral issues that needed to settled. If cyberspace remains an amoral place of escapism, how will that, in turn, change us?

Physical Cyberspace

2008-02-05T13:44:00.002-05:00

I discuss the concept of physical cyberspace, as opposed to perceptual and conceptual cyberspace, in the Introduction to Communication and Cyberspace: Social Interaction in an Electronic Environment, edited by Lance Strate, Ron L. Jacobson, and Stephanie Gibson and the following article from Technology Review discusses a dramatic example of this material foundation of our shared sense of space.

http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/20152/?nlid=854

Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Analyzing the Internet Collapse
Multiple fiber cuts to undersea cables show the fragility of the Internet at its choke points.
By John Borland

When the Internet suddenly collapsed early last Wednesday across the Middle East and into India, it provided a stark reminder of how the Net's virtual spaces can still be held hostage to real-world events.

Almost simultaneously, two separate undersea fiber-optic cables connecting Europe with Egypt, and eventually with the Middle East and India, were cut. The precise cause remains unknown: experts initially said that ships' anchors, dragged by stormy weather across the sea floor, were the most likely culprit, but Egyptian authorities have said that no ships were in the region.

Whatever the cause, the effects were immediate. According to its telecommunications ministry, Egypt initially lost 70 percent of its connection to the outside Internet and 30 percent of service to its call-center industry, which depended less on the lines. Between 50 and 60 percent of India's Net outbound connectivity was similarly lost on the westbound route critical to the nation's burgeoning outsourcing industry.

"This [fiber path across the Mediterranean] is a choke point, which until recently was a very lightly trafficked route where there wasn't great need for cable," says Tim Strong, an analyst at telecommunications research firm Telegeography Research. "There are many new cables planned for the region, but as it happens, they're not in service yet."

Undersea cable damage is hardly rare--indeed, more than 50 repair operations were mounted in the Atlantic alone last year, according to marine cable repair company Global Marine Systems. But last week's breaks came at one of the world's bottlenecks, where Net traffic for whole regions is funneled along a single route.

This kind of damage is rarely such a deep concern in the United States and Europe. The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are crisscrossed so completely with fast fiber networks that a break in one area typically has no significant effect. Net traffic simply uses one of many possible alternate destinations to reach its goal.

Not so with the route connecting Europe to Egypt, and from there to the Middle East. Today, just three major data cables stretch from Italy to Egypt and run down the Suez Canal, and from there to much of the Middle East. (A separate line connects Italy with Israel.) A serious cut here is immediately obvious across the region, and a double cut can be crippling.

The two damaged cables, both cut about five miles north of Alexandria, Egypt, are the most modern of the trio. One, owned by the U.K.-based Flag Telecom, a subsidiary of the India-based Reliance Group, stretches nearly 17,000 miles from Europe to China. The second cable, known as Sea-Me-We 4 and owned by a consortium of 15 different telecommunications companies, stretches from Spain to Singapore. Together, they have a capacity of close to 620 gigabits per second, according to Telegeography Research.

The one remaining cable traversing roughly this route is the older Sea-Me-We 3 cable, which has a capacity of 70 gigabits per second--considerably less than its newer rivals.

A third regional cable, also owned by Flag Telecom, was cut the morning of February 1 off the coast of Dubai, in an apparently unrelated event. This break has caused less trouble, since it is part of a Middle East loop that offers alternative routes for data traffic.

A map of the fiber-optic cables crossing the Mediterranean, connecting Europe with Egypt, the Middle East, and ultimately India. The Flag Telecom Europe-Asia and Sea-Me-We 4 lines were cut last week just north of Alexandria, Egypt.
Credit: Telegeography Research

The cause of the cuts in the two main broken cables remains somewhat mysterious. A spokesman for Flag Telecom said on Monday that the company would not speculate on the causes until the broken line has been examined. However, Egyptian telecommunications officials said on Sunday that no ships had crossed the site of the breaks in the 12 hours before or after the incidents on Wednesday. The site is also a "restricted area," further lessening the chances of a ship's responsibility, the ministry said.

The unexpected collapse in service forced Internet providers across the region to scramble for alternative connections, most using backup bandwidth sources under contract for just such an emergency. Many ISPs began switching traffic east instead of west. Data from India to Europe might thus first pass through East Asia, across the Pacific, through the United States, and across the Atlantic Ocean before reaching its destination. While slowing traffic, in some cases significantly, this at least allowed data to get through.

According to ISP Association of India secretary R. S. Perhar, service providers in his country adapted to the cuts relatively quickly. Traffic from business customers was given a top priority on networks, with consumer traffic taking second place. Three of the country's largest service providers weren't affected at all, since they weren't buying bandwidth from the Flag or Sea-Me-We 4 cables, he says.

Many other Indian companies had diversified their network connections following December 2006, when an earthquake off the coast of Taiwan severed seven major undersea cables that served India as well as East Asia. But some providers who had not acted as quickly found themselves cut off entirely, Perhar says.

"Most have done good network planning and made sure they get bandwidth from several service providers," he says. "But there are people who did not have redundancy in their networks."

Outsourcing companies also found themselves facing potential disruption. With so much outsourced work now being performed in India or elsewhere in the region, companies in the United States and Europe are increasingly dependent on these broken lines for their everyday business. But like the ISPs, the biggest outsourcing companies said that they relied on redundant connections to ensure the flow of data.

"We have planned for circumstances like these," says Nathan Linkon, a spokesman for Infosys, a large Bangalore-based outsourcing company. "We have diversity in path and providers, and we haven't lost any connectivity to our offices or customers."

With just two cables at issue, restoring service is expected to go more smoothly than did the 49-day process required after the Taiwan earthquake. Flag Telecom has told its customers that a repair ship that launched from Catania, Italy, will arrive and begin work today. The company said that Egyptian authorities are "expediting the permits" so that work can begin as soon as the ship arrives.

These repair operations have become fairly routine, with marine service companies on call around the world to launch a ship as quickly as possible when a nearby cable has been torn by a ship's anchor or fishing net, or, more unusually, by a natural event such as an earthquake.

A repair ship will typically take several days to reach the site of a break, says Stephen Scott, commercial manager for the U.K.-based Global Marine Systems, which is not involved in fixing this week's break.

A ship will locate the break in the line, sometimes by using a remote-controlled submarine device that can send signals up and down the cable, Scott says. The cable is then cut entirely at the break, and the little sub brings one half to the surface. Alternately, some operations simply use long grappling hooks to grab the cable.

Once the first half is brought to the surface, the crew splices on a long segment of replacement cable. The first half is let back to the sea floor; the other broken half is brought to the top, and the other end of the replacement cable is spliced on.

Unless the seas are rough, this double-splicing operation can take about 20 hours from start to finish, Scott says.

In the wake of the fiber breaks, Perhar says that his organization is encouraging ISPs and companies dependent on fast connections to continue diversifying their bandwidth sources as much as possible, and to lobby for new cable to be laid.

Telegeography Research counts at least four new fiber lines planned for the Europe-Egypt route over the next few years, including another by Flag Telecom, one by Telecom Egypt, another by the Egypt-based Orascom Telecom, and a fourth funded by the India-Middle East-Western Europe consortium of companies.

But even these will all use roughly the same route, says analyst Strong. That will keep this Mediterranean zone a "choke point" worth watching.

"With more cables, it's getting better over time," Strong says. "But there will still be a lack of physical, geographical redundancy. That is something of a concern."

I would just add to this that satellites are also part of physical cyberspace, and knocking them out of orbit would also have an effect on the internet.

Really? Online Web Ads are like Art?

2008-02-05T13:44:00.001-05:00

Paglia brings up an interesting point of discussion in the chapter on Online publication. Writing on the Internet, whether Newspaper, blog, or an online magazine is often undermined if not underdeveloped. However the point of view which Paglia brings about these points are a little questionable to me. Since the whole ads as art thing has been brought up numerous times on the blog i'll leave that one alone, but would also point out that its a little far-fetched and not in the same league as a Warhol lithograph.

Firstly, I would start off in agreement of Paglia about the scope of opinion and refreshing dialogue online writing can create in a world that is hyper sensitive to the daring articles, writers sometimes attempt to make in the traditional world. One would be ill to attempt to argue what the marketplace of ideas promoted by business did to the Internet, especially when considering its humble beginnings. Furthermore, the scope is one that is best measured by its impact on our youth (look at this class), Paglia's point about the futility of newspapers in our world cannot be denied. Newspapers are struggling, as evident by the bombardment of free papers we encounter at every subway stop in the city. If the Internet can strengthen the limping newspaper industry than Kudos.

That being said, I do disagree with some points. Many of the pro's Paglia states about online publication such as its instantaneous ability to be updated, and its visual more abridged format are only benefits depending on how you ask. In response to the criticism made about those "verbose" pieces superfluously written, they are not doing so in the spirit of College papers that are trying to create fillers. Its not like we're paying writers by the word like Charles Dickens, what i'm saying is there is value to these type of pieces, people read them because they enjoy this type of reading and discourse. The simplicity online publication offers isn't bad, but neither is the alternative wordy article. Moreover, the free flowing format of online writing seems more a personal preference of Paglia, who harps on the stream of consciousness-like writing of Ginsberg and Kerouac, and if thats the case, thats not a benefit of online publication but a personal preference.

Finally, I'd like to reinforce Paglia's own mention of the Internet as "an ever-expanding if still ill sorted and error filled encyclopedia...". An abundant amount of links and sources does not mean something good, too much choice can be just as bewildering and ineffective as not having any choices at all.

The convenience of hypertext

2008-02-05T13:40:00.000-05:00

In Chapter 16, Camilia Pagli discusses a very pertinent subject dealing with print and hypertext. Hypertext allows the reader to quickly find an area of interest just by the click of the mouse. Although books and articles written in print explain material just as well or better, the convience of these hyperlinks s made learning via internet superior. The ultimate example of this would be wikipedia. org. I love wikipedia, and feel that once I have pressed search it is hard to exit the site. This is because you can type in almost anyone, or anything, and something else maybe even a vocabulary word will spark your interest. However, there are some advantages to actual written work. Sites such as wikipedia as well as other search engines, can be edited by whomever feels like it. Although I have noticed false information will rapidly be deleted the fact that printed work is written by only one individual, and cannot be changed once it is published, seems to be more reputable and trustworthy in most peoples eyes. I feel that its a good thing that people will go out of their way to contribute to a site that others will read. The internet is great in the sense that everyone can participate and add something positive. Hypertext was bound to happen sooner or later. Today people are becoming less and less patient with all the technology coming out in recent years. People want instant gratification, and hypertext is allowing that to happen while trying to find out certain information. Its a whole lot easier than flipping through an index, or searching through a five inch thick dictionary, why not go to dictionary.com ?

New Privacy Concerns About Facebook

2008-02-05T13:29:00.000-05:00

From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

http://chronicle.com/free/2008/02/1489n.htm

Monday, February 4, 2008

Study Raises New Privacy Concerns About Facebook

By JEFFREY R. YOUNG

Undergraduate researchers at the University of Virginia say that Facebook's application platform, which allows anyone to create plug-ins that can be placed on personal pages of the popular social-networking service, sends far more personal information than is necessary to the plug-ins' developers.

That means that an identity thief could develop an application to grab personal information using Facebook, says the study's leader, Adrienne P. Felt, a senior majoring in computer science.

Facebook officials argue that their application platform needs to be liberal with users' information to function properly. And they insist that any application developer who creates a malicious plug-in would be denied access to the site because misusing data violates Facebook's terms of service.

Thousands of applications have been created for Facebook since the company began allowing them last May. A typical application lets a user who adds the plug-in to their page share some information about themselves with other users who have also installed the application. One application called Visual Bookshelf, for instance, lets users list books they have read and share their lists with friends.

Even some colleges have joined in, creating plug-ins that, for instance, stream headlines from the public-relations office to users' Facebook pages or allow users to search the library's card catalog via Facebook. A college marketing blog recently listed more than a dozen Facebook applications created by colleges.

To install an application to their profile, users must check a box that says: "Allow this application to know who I am and access my information." The site further warns: "If you are not willing to grant access to your information, do not add this application."

But Ms. Felt argues that many Facebook applications do not even need access to most of a user's personal data to perform their functions (an application that lets users search a college library's catalog, for instance, does not need to know a user's birthday or who their friends are), and she is urging Facebook and other social-networking sites to fine-tune their settings to better guard user privacy.

In her study, Ms. Felt examined the 150 most popular third-party Facebook plug-ins to see whether they made use of private information on the users' accounts.

"We found that 8.7 percent didn't need any information; 82 percent used public data (name, network, list of friends); and only 9.3 percent needed private information (e.g., birthday)," Ms. Felt wrote on a Web site about the research.

She said in an interview that she did not know of any Facebook application developers who had misused private information, but she argued that "if this hasn't happened already, it will."

"I would recommend that people think twice before installing some random application," she added.

Protection From Plug-Ins

Facebook officials defended the company's policies.

"By limiting developers' access to user data, Facebook would be limiting the types of useful applications that can be built," said a representative of Facebook, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she is not authorized to talk to reporters.

The representative, in an e-mail interview, pointed out that users do have the ability to fine-tune some aspects of how applications access their data. Those settings are somewhat buried, however. (To get to them, users must go to the "privacy" section of the service, and then select the "profile section.")

"Obviously, privacy and security are a huge priority for Facebook," she added.

B.J. Fogg, director of Stanford University's Persuasive Technology Lab, co-teaches a course at the university about developing Facebook applications. He agreed that many applications can see more user information than they need to. But he argued that the risks of using Facebook applications are minimal. "Like most things in the world, it is a trade-off, and the risks are low compared to the benefits," he said.

Even if a malicious application developer could snag all of the information from someone's Facebook profile, they probably wouldn't have enough to do anything terribly damaging with the information because the site doesn't store social-security numbers or other sensitive data, he said. "I can't come up with a really terrible story" or worst-cast scenario, he said. Facebook has a high incentive to strictly enforce its policies and ban any abusive applications that might pop up, Mr. Fogg said.

He also argued that most users of the social-networking service were aware that the applications they installed could monitor their information. "Facebook has this ethic of openness, and if you're on Facebook, there are certain things you share with other people," he added.

Most Internet users these days seem far less concerned than Ms. Felt about the information they share online. In a survey conducted last year by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 61 percent of respondents said they did not feel a need to limit the amount of information that could be discovered about them online.

"By and large, people aren't worried about the personal information about them that's available online, which is striking," said Mary Madden, a senior research specialist for the project.

This is not the first time that concerns about privacy have come up in regard to Facebook. The bottom line is that it is a mistake to consider anything private that's online.

Wire

2008-02-05T12:38:00.000-05:00

Very relavant poll question, nice work whoever did it. Whoever doesn;t watch The Wire should start, it deals with the interactions between the media, police force, government officials, and drug dealers in West Baltimore. Recently has focused on great insight into the "truth" behind how the media deals with a troubled society and corrupt city.

P.S. Is Cheese's last name really Wagstaff? I could have sworn Young Randy donned that one?

Whose Violent Descent?

2008-02-05T12:07:00.000-05:00

Stuart Moulthrop promotes a very interesting discourse and approaches the "threat" of the Internet to traditional written text very rationally in this reading. Addressing the age old threat that Media Ecologists so ardently point out is possible with the advent of the next big technological gizmo with writing capabilities, Moulthrop points out how the cross hares have landed on electronic hypertext and the Internet. The concerns voiced are over the fear of written text's redundancy in the face of a new digital realm granted an array of sources and access to the knowledge seeker. The problem that critics claim is, however, that through digitization this will be mutated into a hollow means of recreation, and that as a result, written text will be defeated at the hands of a "toy shop" as the reading so wonderfully phrases it. The glaring problem in this criticism is that of course, this threat that hypertext poses is no different than that of every new technological medium before it (including written text itself). To point out this criticism is nothing new under the sun, written text threatened the capacity of the mind to remember things, television is believed to "rot our brains", the Internet is just next in line...

The truth is that, when almost every technology is introduced it has strong ties to entertainment and often is thrust into the role of a commodity to be sold and packaged as representing a variety of functions, recreation being one of them usually.

Another key criticism I felt worth pointing out, was the fear of a monopolization of information with the digitization of text. With or without the world that hypertext allows, this monopolization of information already exists, they're called COLLEGES and UNIVERSITIES. Oh...and there's the fact that the majority of books circulated and sold around the world belong to say, a handful of publishing companies. They may fool us by selling them through smaller more "intimate" publishing companies, but these are still owned by the same publishing juggernauts (i.e. check out Time Warner's holdings in the publishing game). Moulthrop asks us to "imagine a world without bookstores" where the 'burden' of physically buying a book is replaced by accessing some type of digital book catalogue directly. As menial as physical shopping may be, the bookstore won't be going anywhere for the same reason the movie theatre is sticking around, people value the intimacy of shopping. Something about being able to pick up and see (read if you will) what you're getting.

Jay David Bolter is quoted as referring to things as "the late age of print", claiming that print is on its last legs, but since the technology isn't completely developed/available it's still hobbling along. Let's give written text and old Gutenberg some credit, its managed to stick around for a couple of centuries and change the way we communicate, learn and live our lives.

Moulthrop may bring up some fragile fears, but he brings it home pretty rationally claiming that if we understand and acknowledge what hypertext represents to the future of text (print text included) and the availability and access of knowledge than we might not have to look at things so ominously. The Ecologists point out finally, that before we go making hypertext into the next VCR it might just end up like the Sony Beta. Big changes in our climate are rare.

I'd say the violent descent is going at more of a moderate plunge...

The Gibson Takeover of Hypertext

2008-02-05T11:48:00.000-05:00

Stephanie B Gibson takes the time in her chapter of Communication and Cyberspace to critically analyze the breakthroughs in the use of computers and a new form of print in the classroom. These observations are most closely applicable to our generation. This statement relates to the fact that we entered our respective classrooms as youngsters with little or no technology at our fingertips. We were basically going through grade school using the same amount of technology in the classroom our parents did, oblivious to the accelerating medium surrounding us. Eventually, however, the expansive world of hypertext surrounding us became overwhelming and the possible connections to the classroom became clear. it seems when we reached high school teachers and administrators began to feel the pressures of cyberspace and hypermedia;s necessity in the classroom as part of our changing world. It is difficult to incorporate the use of multimedia and the internet in the vintage classroom setting. This is because, just like Gibson stated, the classroom itself and the learning format in general had adopted many of the linear characteristics associated with the outdated form of writing and printed text being used to educate. At times, students like myself may have found themselves confused for seemingly no reason in a pioneer class that attempted to use hypertext and multimedia as educational instruments. the confusion is not rooted in the material however, but in the blending of today's technology with an antiquated form of pedagogy.

Today most of us find ourselves on the verge of ending our educations and college careers, and we all look forward to moving away from being students. Before we reach the point however, we all take at least one course that's main focus is multimedia pressent on the internet, and what resources are available to us on this medium. Besides these readings on the background of the technology that exists in today's cyberspace, every other action in this class is performed by looking at writing on a screen and using this text and media to interact with other students and technology itself. This class in particular overthrows the balance of electronic and printed text way over to the more interactive side. Professor Strate even jokes about if any of us still bring pens to class or even use them during the minimal occasions that we may need to jot something down. Usually, a password or pin number we still don't fully trust a machine to secure for us for some reason. We could be the beginning of the end for the linear classroom.

Online Advertising.

2008-02-05T11:02:00.000-05:00

I'd like to comment on advertising more thoroughly. While "F Ng" has already commented on Camille Paglia's comparison of online (banner) ads with art, I would like to make a stronger argument that, in essence, they are most akin to hypertext in it's traditional sense. With increased market research and online tracking services, marketers are easily able to know what sites you visit, in what order, track bands, movies and books in your Facebook or MySpace "Interests" and then tailor ads to you and other very specific niche groups. For example, if you are searching cute pictures of cats, you may get an ad for PetSmart/Petco on your next page. Likewise, if tickets for your favorite Indie band go on sale for a local show, you will be shown ads directing you where to go in order to purchase them. This simulates hyper text (not just in the essence of it's definition but of it's functionality) in that we are actively being shown "links" which direct us from our current search into more in depth/ specific information and products, relevant to our initial topic. Additionally, think about Google ads. These are the epitome of the traditional "hypertext link" which allows for you to click on the hypertext and be redirected to a sponsored web site which fulfills the requirements of elements you've entered and submitted into the Google search field.

Can we comparatively say that online ads are as "intrusive" as Paglia suggests television ad spots have become? She comments that tv hosts "...sternly [stop] even the most high-ranking guest mid-flight to cut away for a series of eye assaulting commercials." While commercials have become an integrated regiment of advertising spots throughout television programming, research I conducted last semester shows that students felt more at home with commercials because they are expected. While I believe that online advertising will fade into the background of our online endeavors as we learn to "tune out" the blinking banners much like we have for commercial breaks, I still believe that we are just fighting the initial intrusion of commercialism on our (relatively)new media space. Despite pesky pop-up and pop-under ads, the viewer has a greater choice of whether or not to view the ads (and at our leisure at that). Online, we are choosing whether or not to watch or take advantage of an advertisement. We are an active consumer, no longer passively consuming commercialism, taking control of our information consumption and very ADD online habits. It is at this point in which we have become critics of what we see online that we will become "fascinated by advertising slogans, as folk poetry." (Paglia) They will become culturally integrated with our online experience if they have not succeeded in this effort thus far.