Rewrite of Henry Jenkins (Photoshop for Democracy)

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9729506-7.html

When discussing Henry Jenkins and convergence culture, I immediately thought of the YouTube/CNN debates. This I guess has more to do with convergences politics which is politics coming together with things of pop culture in order to appeal to more people, especially a younger audience. Ever since I could remember, presidential candidates have had televised debates. However, at least in my opinion, these debates have been uneventful and boring to watch. I’m not that into politics. I mean I understand it pretty well however I would rather go out and debate it then watch other people do so. So for me, they have never been something I took great interest in watching. Now, after hearing about the YouTube/CNN debates, I find myself watching more and more of them. I really like how people can send in videos to ask questions. It doesn’t matter how old you are and you don’t need to physically be there to ask questions. It provides America with a more interactive experience with the candidates so they can make a more well-informed decision. In an article entitled “YouTube, CNN aim to ‘revolutionize’ presidential debate process” by Caroline McCarthy, it mentions that not only will people be able to post questions online, but all the debates will then be posted online so the responses can be heard. Also, the article predicts the success of the debates. Says YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley, “We're confident we're providing a new outlet for them for distribution. We have thousands of media partners, and we're actively working to provide them new opportunities and develop new technologies that provide some choice: choice to control their content in the system, and choice to provide more promotional and revenue opportunities." Some say the debates were rigged to only show the most non-controversial questions. However, I’m not sure I believe this to be true. If they did select their questions to be non-controversial, it might be because they were trying not to start an uproar so close to the election. It’s really up for speculation but the YouTube/CNN debates are a perfect example of Jenkins’ grassroots media and convergence culture.

Henry Jenkins gave several examples of these two things in his article “Photoshop for Democracy” and ends by saying on page 208, “In each case, entrenched institution are taking their models from grassroots fan communities, reinventing themselves for an era of media convergence and collective intelligence”. I think that pretty much sums but what convergence culture is. It is taking old forms of media and new forms and colliding them. Grassroots media is content created by citizens as opposed to giant corporations. With the debates, YouTube is generally a place where anyone (no matter age or social status) can share their videos. Big name corporations such as CNN post their own shows online but that’s not grassroots. That is why the debates were so effective was because all you needed was a webcam/video camera and a computer in order to create content or watch the debates. And the coming together of the two was a genius idea on their part. Now that the YouTube/CNN debates are over, many would agree with how effective they were. They caused people (especially young people) in America to become more involved in the campaigns and election. I think YouTube and CNN should strongly consider doing this in the future because it gives a great opportunity to citizens out there to participate in grassroots media.

Rewrite of Howard Rheingold (Smart Mobs)

I found the concept of “smart mobs” very interesting. I especially understood that there can be disadvantages to being so technologically advanced. For example, the great lack of privacy. Rheingold shows this through his statement “When you piece together these different technological, economic, and social components, the result is an infrastructure that makes certain kinds of human actions possible that were never possible before”. He is talking about radio chips, and wireless internet and ways that people use technology, all of that makes up this puzzle of a “smart mob”. I really agree that we are doing things now that never in a million years we all thought technology would be capable of. Back to the privacy issue, surveillance is a technology that is increasingly developed to new levels. When we used to know very little about people, we can now know almost everything due to surveillance. It is almost scary how people can get information about you.

I remember watching the movie “V for Vendetta” and seeing how surveillance plays a huge role in that film. Surveillance is used as a means of catching so called “terrorists”. In the movie, the main character V is trying to overthrow the government (for political and personal reasons) and is being watched every second by video cameras and microphones places all throughout the city of London. Although, V was doing something that doesn’t seem right to us, this could be seen as an invasion of privacy by the government as well as a hindrance on V’s freedom of speech and expression. The government had the power to see almost anyone and the use of cameras and video footage really bring to life that V and others around London were being watched constantly. They used surveillance in a menacing way to stop the basic freedoms. It is supposed to inflict a fear in a panoptic sort of way. When I watched this movie, it made me question if I really had all the privacy I thought I had and that really bothered me. None of us know what goes on in government offices. Are our nation’s leaders really telling the truth? Are we being watched as we live our day-to-day lives? It can definitely cause of a little paranoia. I fully understand that in some cases surveillance can be a good thing. Video cameras in convenience stores and banks have saved lives. However, it is a real privacy issue. This is a definite disadvantage of “smart mobs”. While they are good for many things, they are not very respectful of privacy.

Rewrite of Douglass Rushkoff (Open Source Democracy)

The point that I am going to be talking about in this blog post deals more so with the backlash section of Douglas Rushkoff’s third chapter of his book (Open Source Democracy) called “Electronic community: From birth to backlash”. One of the main points that he makes is that the so-called “do-it-yourself” attitude of the internet community took a backseat in order to accommodate commerce. He says “when selling information online didn’t work, business people turned instead to selling real products online” (39). It sparked the new phenomenon of ecommerce. People wouldn’t have to leave their houses in order to shop for things. Businessmen realized that to make any money at all off the Internet (other than stocks) they needed to sell tangible products to consumers. A great example of this was and still is eBay. eBay was created in 1995 just around the time the dot.com bubble was being formed. eBay is an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy goods and sell goods and services worldwide. Since being founded in San Jose, eBay has become the epitome of the online commerce world.

The dot.com bubble burst in the early 2000’s however eBay seemed to be one of the lone survivors. It is still a website with a lot of traffic and continues to be one of the largest websites for online shopping. Back to Rushkoff’s comment, I think it was almost unavoidable that the internet be turned into a station for commerce. Americans (and others around the world) love to buy and spend money. That is what keeps our economy going. Rushkoff isn’t saying that this is a negative thing and I agree that it is not. I simply think it was inevitable that we would have a shopping mall right at the click of a mouse. Will eBay and internet commerce continue to be strong? I believe so. Although the internet is used for a great deal more than online shopping in today’s world (communication has become the big thing since the early 2000’s), it still holds a solid place in the infrastructure of the internet community. Online commerce is still a huge part of many lives today. Some people do nothing but shop online. Rushkoff really did his research and I think he made it clear to us how much we really value online commerce.

Exrta Blog 3

I know that we have written many blogs on virtual worlds and that we have discussed it extensively in class, however, I still have some things that I want to vent about. Okay, I have two virtual worlds that I have issues with: Second Life and LambdaMOO. First, I’ll start with LambdaMOO. I don’t really understand how someone can enjoy spending all day long talking on the computer. Sure I have instant messenger but I do not spend all day talking on it. In fact, I haven’t gone on in a while. But back to LambdaMOO. I just don’t see how reading a bunch of text on a screen is enjoyable. I would much rather go out and meet people or talk on the phone. I like real life interaction so I guess virtual worlds aren’t for me. But how are they for anyone? I know the answer to this question but I don’t want to believe it. Because I still think it is a little ridiculous. Reading text descriptions of rooms and characters isn’t the same as seeing them and experiencing interactions in real life. This brings me to Second Life. I would say that Second Life is a little better than LambdaMOO. You can see graphics and have a character that you can actually see their features. But still, why would sitting for hours in front of a computer screen be entertaining? It is a strain for your eyes and these virtual worlds hardly correlate to real life. I don’t think that typing for hours on a keyboard can make you any more social in real life. I know that people use virtual worlds because they are too shy to socialize in real life. However, I feel like they are wasting their time. I know that I have brought up a lot of things that we have already talked about but I am just reiterating my point.

Extra Blog 2

This blog might be a little short but I want to tell a story of how I participated in a grass- roots campaign just two weeks ago. A girl who is a recent alumnus of my sorority has a younger brother who has Acute Myelogenous Leukemia (AML), a fast-growing cancer of the blood and bone marrow. They needed $500,000 by April 3^rd for a bone marrow transplant and weren’t sure how they were going to get it because the boy, Michael, hit his lifetime insurance amount. His parents sent out an email saying that there was a website that people could donate money to in order to help save his life. I received it and sent it on to 20 people. That was the goal. For each person to send it on to some people they know. That way, the information would be disseminated throughout as many people as possible. Also, they needed the money rapidly so email is the fastest way to do it. Fortunately, they received all the money they needed in order for Michael to get the transplant. I’m not entirely sure on how he is doing now but if I find out I will update this blog. I thought it was really interesting to be part of this. In class we were asked if any of us had participated in a grass-roots campaign and at the time I hadn’t. Now I guess my answer changes. I thought that Michael’s parents picked a very effective way of trying to get money to help their son. I would probably do the same if people I knew needed money for surgery or something like it. So here is a real life example of a grass-roots campaign!!

Extra Blog 1

Okay so this blog isn’t about media so much as it is about technology. Which aren’t the same things. My future career plan is to become a forensic psychologist. I have wanted to follow this career path for many years (not just because I watch CSI). Anyways, I am taking an anthropology class and we go into a little bit of forensic anthropology. This is really cool. We are learning how to tell the age and gender of deceased people by their skeletons! They have amazing ways of preserving skeletons now a day. I just think it’s really cool how far we have come with technology. According to an article I found called “Forensic Anthropology is used in…” written by Carl Walker, recent advances in technology have made forensic anthropology a very popular field of study. The use of new microscopic technology has made it incredibly easy to get the tiniest details at any crime scene. I was really impressed by the things I learned in my anthropology class and I strongly recommend that if anyone is interested in forensics (like I am) then take a forensic anthropology class!

danah boyd- MySpace

The danah boyd article called “Identity Production in a Networked Culture: Why Youth Heart MySpace” was definitely something I could relate to. After all, at one time, I did have a MySpace account. MySpace started as a social networking site for new bands and young people who needed a place to “hang out”. I was pretty young when I got a MySpace. I want to say I was a freshman in high school. I have long since deactivated my account and for one reason: my parents. Actually that’s not true, there was a multitude of reasons but none of them actually drew me away from the site until my parents stepped in. boyd’s article talks a lot about how MySpace (and other social networks like it) become this place where people define themselves and she mentions a lot of good things. However, she does mention how it is hard for parents to relinquish control of their children’s internet lives and that “this dynamic most often destroys the most important value in the child/parents relationship: trust” (6). I totally agree with that statement and a living example of it.

My parents were always pretty trustworthy of me until my Jr. year of high school when someone let them see my MySpace. Now being the oldest, I usually got it pretty hard and since my sister’s didn’t have MySpace accounts, there was no way for them to understand what MySpace was really about. They found some things they didn’t like and made me not go on my account anymore. But I did. And they found out. And finally they made me shut it down. They didn’t trust that I would make good choices over the internet about what I posted and who I became friends with. They didn’t like the type of person I was online or the type of person that I was becoming due to MySpace. Up until last summer, I wasn’t involved in any type of social network. I know it sounds weird but I felt like I was missing out on something. Soon a lot of my friends had Facebook’s and were sharing photos and I couldn’t do that. I eventually convinced my parents to let me get one in order to stay in touch with high school friends when I went to college. I am older now and understand the dangers of the Internet and am very careful what I say and post. Also, I really look at who I friend and who can see my profile. I really hope I never violate my parents trust again. I do believe that they need to let go because I am an adult and can make decisions by myself. I also understand their concern however. I don’t like MySpace because I say that it “ruined my life” for a short period of time (to be dramatic). However, I think it was actually myself and not the site that was the source of issue. At one time MySpace was a great thing but there are dangers to it. So be careful what you put on there.