fun sized

short thoughts from a short person, created for the work of core uni subjects in media.

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Open Science and the Eagle Nebula

The way new media has changed society’s perception on communication - by especially breaking down traditional spatial barriers between communicators - has inevitably lead to a new way of thought for scientific research, open science. I feel this concept is a positive step for science, where anyone is able to access science material via the Internet rather than expensive paid subscriptions to academic journals. As John Wilbanks says, the Internet will, “Transform science publishing and science itself,” due to the Internet’s highly adaptable nature.

I love how Wilbanks says, “Science publishing isn’t just an industry. It’s also the core factory for knowledge transfer in the world.” Science is so powerful that it seems the time has come for universal sharing. I believe that open science is one of the terms that sounds great theoretically but will not have a smooth translation in the actual world. Wilbanks confirms my thoughts with two words, “For now.” He says that right now, “the web functions far better for culture than for science.” So open science is a great concept from a social standpoint. Wilbanks believes that we need to maximising our “societal investment in science by making sure it can be read, understood and used by the network culture.”

I feel the Hubble Telescope has managed to combine socio-cultural behaviours with science. The site has a bunch of social media outlets but what brings this site to life is the capturing of images from the Hubble Telescope. Society is predominately visual, and this universal language through sight can bring science and culture closer together.

Check out this picture of the Eagle Nebula (M16):

According to Elizabething Pisani, we are relying on the delicate nature of trust between the institutions and the public. What a dangerous stepping ground indeed. Pisani believes that open data is the answer to a faster discovery of new cures. This does bring into question quantity over quality research, especially when the public does not have access to disease testing institutions. Pisani confesses, “The fear of exposing the dirty underside of our data – the mistakes that are inevitable but rarely admitted to – is a major reason for not wanting to share.” Pisani says that we need to, “recognise data-sharing as a professional achievement,” and by doing so, the major barrier to sharing data will be eradicated.

Another aspect of open science, which Michael Eisen brings to light, is the importance of valuing peer review. Eisen wrote, “Most scientists value peer review, believing it protects and improves the papers they publish and read.” Imagine the review’s scientist’s can achieve through the public eye! They won’t be limited to a particular industry’s chain of thought. Pisani also admits that, “Publishing papers are virtually the only measure of success in my job,” and I believe open science will one day become a “win win” situation for both the scientist and the public, purely because it provides the necessities to the world’s survival.

  Eisen, Michael, 2012 “Op-Ed: How Traditional Publishing Hurts Scientific Progress,” http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/03/michael-eisen-open-science/

Pisanim Elizabeth, 2011 “Medical science will benefit from the research of crowds,” The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/11/medical-research-data-sharing

Wilbanks, John, 2011 “On Science Publishing,” Seed, http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/on_science_publishing

Hubblesite, 2012 “The Telescope, ” http://hubblesite.org/the_telescope/

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Transversal collaboration of new media and society

Unfortunately in recent times, the word collaboration has been overused and thrown around too easily, and now we question the difference between co-ordination, co-operation and collaboration.

Shawn Callahan sums up quite nicely what is meant by collaboration, “It’s when a group of people come together, driven by mutual self–interest, to constructively explore new possibilities and create something that they couldn’t do on their own.” The old saying of a challenging but rewarding experience fits in quite nicely with the term. People take the experience as an honour and a joy when attaching ‘royalty’ to the term.

Callahan’s meaning shows that collaborations take place for a complex situation. He says, “Complexity is unpredictable, and collaborating is adaptable; complexity is messy and collaborating involves bringing together a diversity of people and talents to improvise and test possible approaches, all learning as you go.”

Here is a easy to understand map from Callahan’s website:

The transversal collaboration of new media and society has an unpredictable nature making for a complex situation. Once this collaboration formulates, an extended cultural awareness is found through the social movement via new media platforms.

A micropolitics example please!

Take a squiz at New York’s Occupy Wall St, now a worldwide phenomenon that started as a rather small protest. The spread of information became viral via the use of mainstream social media, primarily Twitter and Facebook.

New media brings people together from all walks of life and makes for power in numbers in the community. On a local level, new media enables people to organise and form new communities. Organisation’s can become a stronger place due to this. It is fair to say that any social event today will not have as great of an effect without the use of new media. Now social movements and new media co-exist and need each other for survival.

However, collaborating isn’t always a positive process. Here’s something to be weary of before taking on the world:

It has been proven that there is a lack of creativity when a brainstorm is done for the first time in a group. It can inhibit people’s true feeling towards a particular issue or some people may be afraid to raise their ideas, particularly if their idea will go off on a tangent. An article by Susan Cain found, “Culturally, we’re often so dazzled by charisma that we overlook the quiet part of the creative process.”

Research has found, “People are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption.” Most people now work in a contemporary team environment and Cain simply puts, “Collaboration is in.”

  Now go on, collaborate!

  Callahan, Shawn, 2008 “When should we collaborate?” http://www.anecdote.com.au/archives/2008/12/when_should_we.html

Cain, Susan, 2012 “The Rise of the New Groupthink,” http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/opinion/sunday/the-rise-of-the-new-groupthink.html?pagewanted=all

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Taking a side on the transparency debate

I am going to jump on the negative bandwagon and shed a harmful light on political transparency.

Although transparent data has the ability to de-stress members of society by encouraging good behaviour amongst government officials, it becomes an expensive task to implement when considering that society will need to be educated using the right tools and skills in order to participate in “online engagement.”

Towards transparency, Lawrence Lessig decided, “It is not going to inspire change. It will simply push any faith in our political system over the cliff.” I do agree with Lessig here. Transparency removes the power from the elite and authorization becomes diminished. This doesn’t necessarily become a good or bad result.

Lessig also states that everyone’s individual needs are different, resulting in transparency, “may not benefit everyone in the same way.” Considering this statement, it is hard for government data to be available as it has the power to restrict some individuals. However, in every aspect of life there needs to be winners and losers or give and take from both sides. It just seems part of reality.

Transparency of data shapes and reshapes frameworks in order to maintain the receiver’s attention. However, the reshaping of frameworks has resulted in an excess of information. Jenny Rathbone, a member of the Labour Party stated, “in order to be accountable, information has to be presented in a format that is understandable to people.” Transparency in data will not allow for a universal language. And this is why: Danah Boyd, a sociologist and Microsoft research said, “Information is never neutral. Neutrality is another one of those lovely ideals.”

Boyd sheds her light on transparency:

“The issues with transparency are similar to the issues with Internet access and the digital divide…Internet access does not automatically created an informed citizenry. Likewise, transparent data doesn’t make an informed citizenry. Transparency is only the first step. And when we treat transparency as an ends in itself, we can create all sorts of unintended consequences.”

So true!

Open data becomes mighty hard to organise. The influx of information creates its own pattern, and one that is hard to follow. It brings about it’s own means of organisation. Theoretically, open data is meant to expose behaviour and political ideals, but how to you organise such information?

  Lessig, Lawrence, 2010 ‘Against Transparency: The perils of openness in government.’ http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/against-transparency?page=0,1

Caebrwyn, 2012 ‘Transparency debate back at the Senedd… and an AM insults of the people of Wales!’ http://carmarthenplanning.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/transparency-debate-back-at-seneddand.html

Ingram, Mathew, 2010 ‘When It Comes to Open Data, Is Transparency Enough?’

http://gigaom.com/2010/05/28/open-data-transparency-is-not-enough-boyd-says/

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Transversality - big word. What does it mean?

Yes yes it’s a word that is commonly associated with a mathematics concept, however, transversality in media does hold similar connotations to its mathematical cousin.

Simply put, transversals transform by connecting. Transversals intersect frameworks to create something new. Murphie explains a transversal as a, “Line to cut across other lines,” meaning that transversals move in an non-stereotypcial way. This seems to be the definition of media. This is no one route. Glen Fuller states that transversality is a joining of individualities. Transversals do not only link up across things that are already there.

Transversals are highly active in the new media environment. New media is all about sharing information and brings about a diverse socio-cultural change in everyday life. On the bottom of news articles, we find various ways to share the story, via Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest – to name a few. Now it seems traditional media can only survive with the adaption of transversal new media.

How weird is it to think that your everyday life was and is still framed for you.

Yes, your whole life has been framed. Shock horror?!

We are dependant on frames. Our traditional morals, values and expectations are all 'framed' or shaped in some way via the media. People behave depending on the decision that problems are framed. Yes these ideas may be subconscious but previous thoughts on particular issues shape and reshape your decision towards certain events, particularly ecologies of new media.

The frameworks to approach media event are always changing. That’s the transversals taking effect and keeping up with the fast-paced contemporary society.

Think of the increasing amount of people who watch their television shows via the Internet. This is a transversal phenomenon. The frameworks surrounding the act of watching television have been framed, but have reframed to suit the new transversal environment.

  Murphie, Andrew, 2006 “Issue 9 2006: general issue,” http://nine.fibreculturejournal.org/

Fuller, Glen, 2007 “Transversality,” http://eventmechanics.net.au/2007/05/transversality/

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New media with a focus on augmented reality.

New media tends to open up the viewers experience with the use of engaging more senses that traditionally thought of. New media or multimedia needs to be seen as existing harmoniously in a multi-sensual environment where unfortunately, these different senses do not exist equally in the experience. Some senses inevitably, are dominant over others - where in more cases - there is high concentration of the visual aspect.

Multimedia tends to be data-driven, due to the increasing abundance of accessible information and the need to access a hybrid of information at once, making interactive media more of a multi-modal platform. Continuing from this idea, media acts as the agent, which changes engagement and triggers thoughts or memories. We are in the era of the technical animal.

It’s interesting to note that perception more often feels like us rather than feeling our sensations. Sometimes we cannot identify with our sensations such as feeling cold, but perception taps into our memory and thus our perception of the world. We, naturally as humans, do not see the world as it is and the view that we all see is individual to ourselves. Our views are heavily contextualized by our previous perceptions and our senses. The partial world that we see can be made holistic with the use of augmented reality and the opportunity to have equalized experiences amongst the community. There has been debates about when reality actually becomes real and I think that’s when augmented reality comes into the present and allows for engagement. 

Media changes our perception of the world and self, making media a very powerful resource that helps us adjust to social and cultural changes, with our focus in this case of augmented reality.

After watching this video on the new augmented reality concept called the Articulated Naturality Web (ANW),

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnRJaHZH9lo

and found this article written by Gheric Speiginer;

http://ael.gatech.edu/mrdesignclass/tag/anw/

My conclusions to this breakthrough in technology seems that this was the natural progression of information growth and accessibility. To be able to tap into the immediate world by holding up a Smartphone to a hotel for example and accessing information that one could not normally from their perception, such as checking out the inside of a room before booking one – has resulted in the usefulness of this concept.

There are so many more examples to show! I will stick to the most frequent:

The future of advertising has been completely revolutionized through the new bid of the Volkswagon Beatle. Here you can hold up an iPhone or iPad and make the advertising come to life in 3D. http://www.realareal.com/volkswagen-augmented-reality-app

For all those gamers out there, here’s a video that may tickle your fancy, Playstation Vita – Pocket Soccer. With the use of special coding cards – that will be made as a uniform alphabet for every Vita game – the football game can become alive with your choice of where to place your end goals to where you can place your scoreboard. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOHe9fhrJnU

That’s all for now!

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How we know what is real.

Seriously, how do we know what is real?

Media is such a big part in both our short and long term memory today, that I find it difficult to understand how we managed without media communication platforms before! The truth is, we have always been technical beings even in the caveman days. I really like the comment from Bernard Steigler suggesting that memory in human beings was “technical from the start.” Using tools for any facet of our life is something that separates the human race to other species. We crave for this type of interaction and it seems that media interaction is part of our core and embedded into us.

The reality check comes down to a German word called “umwelts” meaning environment or surrounding world. It’s the idea that we all live in the same world but have different experiences. Each individual has different perceptual relations and affordances for their actions, resulting in stereotyping of people becoming redundant. We cannot simply call a group of students, students, because each student to their own is experiencing something different with their studies and life that occurs outside uni.

There are no simple experiences and it is only by human contact via mediated tools that can allow for negations or thoughts about certain situations. This in turn, helps society to understand individual reality.

This means reality is part of an individual experience, something that can be shared by others but is unique to one person. People are part of ecologies (shifting sets of relationships). These changing relationships result from people questioning their actions and discovering the origins of their actions in order to understand what is real. To do this we need to link our attention to our emotions in order to remember past similar feelings.

It’s interesting to think that memory and attention are linked with emotion. By remembering similar feelings of a past experience can in turn, result in subconscious habits which result from that initial feeling. This brings about particular body movements that occurred when this emotion last occurred. For example, each morning when I wake up and hear my alarm clock, I associate the radio station with annoyance and in turn smack down on the sleep button. This is a habitual move that has evolved from my memory.

Memory is somehow virtual and real but not in the actual. We are able to link up experiences from our past and present in a dynamic relationship between remembering and forgetting.

An experience is the reality but is a conflict between archives and memory. For example, using a contact book in your phone, results in a lack of memory for remembering phone numbers. The archive, the contact book, becomes the faster mode of contact, eliminating the memory.

In today’ society, we need to extend our memory which is done through media technologies– called mnemotechnics.  Fundamentally, media intervenes with the individual, social and global memory, which in turn shifts and changes the meaning of reality.

That's all for now folks!

Sources used:

Stiegler, B. 2011, Anamnesis and Hyomnesis, http://arsindustrialis.org/anamnesis-and-hypomnesis

Wikipedia, Umwelt, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umwelt

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Empowering change is essential for media survival

It is crazy to think that various forms of media have the power to facilitate or impede our chance of survival within media ecologies.

Let’s rewind: what are media ecologies?

It’s a complex interactive message system that has blurred boundaries between the thinking, feeling and behaving aspects of the ecology.

What?

It’s an environment that is very complex in nature and made up of other ecologies that aren’t media related such as technological, economical and human interests such as the social and the psychological self. The media aspect holds the heartstrings of the formation, pushing and pulling the information into continuous change.

We, as a society are reliant on this continuous rapid change in order to see growth and change in society. It’s a bit like Darwin’s thoughts on natural selection.

Just last night on TV, channel 9 aired a documentary on the Great Barrier Reef. It was interesting to note that the Parrotfish seemed like one of the culprits to the disappearing and ever-changing coral reefs, but other factors such as the impact of the waves and the competitive nature of the distance between the different species of coral, also results in the reef changing nightly. The mix of factors that combine to the changing nature of the reef is similar to the almost ‘natural’ changes that occur in media ecologies.

I have normally seen the term ‘information’ as a rather rigid, stable concept where society builds on past knowledge to further the growth of knowledge available. However, society needs to see that information is not stable and is subject to changeability – it’s something that needs to be accepted rather than debated.

Information is "a difference that makes a difference." English anthropoligist Gregory Bateson knew his stuff even back in the 40's and 50's and what he’s saying here is patterns are formed and disturbed in these complex ecologies. We crave and need media to clash and collide with other media to form new information that makes a difference.

The humble computer is a universal media space where other forms of media can transform. A simple example of this is the program Photoshop, where pictures from a camera can combine with effects in order to create an enhanced, idealised photo. Then the user is able to post this in a public space online. Here there is a changed product from the original concept and change of information has occurred.

In order to make our media ecologies change constantly, the information that houses these differences need to be considered as a priority, then naturally, differences will make differences. This allows for the dynamics of ecologies to change and the new differences can be embodied in the recently changed ecology.

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The future beholds the Internet of things.

We already know that the western world has developed into a tech savvy generation of multi-gadgets that have multi-functions and capabilities. We are culturally evolving to online communication technologies. Researchers have found that technology is becoming apart of us. We are reliant and need to co-exist with the developments of technological advances. 

But not every technology is made to further society’s development. And generosity of new media has the potential to spoil people when they take information for granted. This influx of information available in the technological world makes data available at its most raw context, so much so that this data may not be contextualised to the situation.  For example, wrong self-diagnosis of individual symptoms has become a problem due to science availability online. We now have so much information readily available that we give power to our own judgements to become an expert in a matter we may not have much expertise in.

On a positive note, Jane McGonigal, a gaming producer of ten years believes, “online gaming can make a better world.” Her justification was that gamers communicate much better in the virtual world, which makes for great team play. With this team play, she suggests we can conquer the world’s most demanding problems such as hunger, obesity and climate change - wow big words indeed. Through a virtual space, it is suggested we can conquer actual obstacles. McGonigals method of thought is transversal in nature and does not follow conventional frameworks of problem solving. For this, I admire her work she presented.

  McGonigal, Jane, 2010 “Gaming can make a better world,” http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html

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The changing role of publishing in contemporary social life

With an increasing number of modes of publishing becoming available online, contemporary society functions in a truly transformative manner because the barriers of traditional media and publishing have been broken down. Traditional publishing platforms include radio, television, books and print media. Traditional intermediaries no longer posses their hierarchal and authoritative characteristics and are instead shaped by the trends of new media. The contemporary modes of publishing now exist in a domain that is available online.

Today’s social life is part of the complex assemblage of publishing contexts. Computer intelligence is a running motif in the changing role of publishing in social life and other contexts. Boyd (2007) suggests that richer and more complex societies will continue into the future.

Traditionally, publishing only focused on one-way transmission, where as the changing role of publishing has facilitated communication from the sender and the receiver, creating a more personal environment, by providing two-way communication. The culture of society has changed and is not focusing on transmission alone. Response is equivalently reliant as reception. This two-way communication brings about interactive conditions. This new role of publishing in social life has come about because users want and have the need to be active and creative. This results in a complex relationship between the media industry, as users do not just want to be consumers. (Luders 2008).

The improved role of publishing has occurred due to the Internet’s unique characteristic as an interactive medium, something that mass media negates (Miller 1996). Internet as a new platform for media, has transformed the role of publishing and interactivity is the core of the change (Bezjian-Avery et al. 1998). Interactivity reflects how society wants to communicate. It exposes consumers’ behaviour of what they seek, select, process, use and respond to information (Bezjian-Avery et al. 1998). Interactivity is a means of controlling information, since the consumer is no longer a passive figure (Bezjian-Avery et al. 1998). The attitude of individuals’ active social participation presents how interactivity is perceived on the Internet.

Media usage has transformed into a more personal and dynamic space, creating a mass ability to communicate simultaneously with an increasing amount of people (Luders 2008). The features of interactivity in online social life provide an opportunity for users to communicate over time and spatial restrictions (Miller 1996). To be able to create a personal experience with someone in an entirely different physical location without going through traditional platforms of media makes today’s communication transformative. Interactivity establishes a higher regard or understanding and cooperation by intersecting different cultures, creating a heightened human consciousness. People learn to be internalized and think silently, which leads to a different sense of self, affecting society, which in turn, has a domino affect on publishing in the social sphere.

Users and producers are able to have a ubiquitous nature when they publish through contemporary technologies. Users and producers are able to exchange their roles with one another. They are able to be in multiple locations at once and have a stronger online existence. Being omnipresent allows for aggregating information and publishing that data over several domains. Distribution of data has a free flowing action and information has the ability to be portable and carried anywhere. Aggregation and distribution are fundamentally transformative and are a form or reorganization. Their actions result in the changing role of publishing in a social space. Publishing in this format is successful because the higher degrees of distribution and aggregation users have, the more transformations we have. More change means that society needs to adapt to change, inviting further distribution and aggregation.

Communicating is not just content focused. It also relies on how the content was distributed and aggregated. Gathering content is a form of expression in itself, and a new type of publishing. Distribution and aggregation are at the heart of the act of publishing, made possible by multiplying, diverging and converging data. These processes occur through archives, which are the authority of culture holding power. This shows that everything has become a surface of publishing in a multi-dimensional space.

The change in social behaviours has brought about an importance of collective perceptions (Mutz 1992). Publishing has changed to be a form of collaborative and open media. It is something that is more respected but can also be feared through the power of numbers. Open, social media seems to have created permanence in the digital world through the power of numbers. The digital space does hold a weight that can balance concentrated voices of those with status. In contemporary media societies, expert opinion is not only received. Peer to peer authority is more prevalent and other users relate to each other purely to how others communication through their expression. Social networks are the agents to this authoritative change as power lies in numbers. People are able to combine their opinions around the world.

The collaborative new media challenges conventional politics, seen in the recent carbon tax movement in Australia. Cate Blanchett was endorsed and spoke in an environmentally conscience topic, about the carbon tax and to sway Australians to say, “Yes”. Today, the opinion of experts in fields is not necessarily the voice to follow. Celebrities’ powerful influence is changing the culture of social life and the role publishing shows. The culture of society is infatuated about entertainment and celebrities can have a powerful impact on the viewers’ life. Celebrities do have the ability to affect people’s interests in political decisions.

Society benefits from a continuous cycle of expert opinion and increased audience usage (Rusbridger 2010). Rusbridger (2010) suggests that users are becoming a platform for communication as well as a publisher, due to the open and collaborative nature of their platforms. Society does enjoy playing the role of the critic, commentator and wants to share their knowledge with others, highlighting the collaborative nature of contemporary social life. From a journalistic sense, reporters use open media to find sources, communities and audiences (Rusbridger 2010). Linking data allows the journalist to be at the centre of information and news. The mutual knowledge of the journalist and the audience involves others and creates an engaging environment that promotes future participants rather than observers. Collaborative environments create richer and more complex societies that have an undertone of influence, reach, scale, engagement and ambition. This takes the role of publishing into comtemporary society.

Mass media is known for its impersonal impact and influences social rather than personal opinions of particular issues (Mutz 1992). Mass media is transforming and is breaking through its traditional barriers to generate interaction between senders and receivers (Luders 2008). According to Redin (1989) it is only natural for traditional media to change over time, much like how religious practices can change. Leckenby (2003) confirms that traditional media continually changes over time. The change occurs because of the traditional and new media interacting with each other’s processes (Leckenby 2003). Leckenby argues that new media development may have been in the absence of traditional media types and has been emerging from traditional media over time. New media has been transformed from traditional mass media forms, however, new media is an entirely new platform, which did not appear from the shadows of old media. Instead of moving away from the traditional media, it is changing to be better suited with new media forms.

Flanagin and Metzger (2001) suggest that although new communication technologies broaden user’s communication capabilities, they become “folded” in the traditional media. New media is the evolved version of traditional media. However, new technologies create communities that would have never been created otherwise, which shifts the notion of authority. Luders suggests that “Personal media are distinguishable from mass media, if not always technically, then at least socially” (p. 685). However mass media is becoming part of the social sphere too.  Mass media is crossing the borders into personal media space, affecting how publishing distributes and receives its information.

  New media forms a connection between mass media and interpersonal media (Rice and Williams 1984). The traditional dichotomy between mass media and personal media has been destabilized with the digitization and personal use of media technologies (Thayer 1986). “Personal media are de-institutionalized or de-professionalized and facilitate mediated interaction,” (Luders 2008 p. 683), where as mass media content is made up with the opposite of this. These new technologies assist mediated interpersonal communication (Cathcart and Gumbert 1983). Personal dynamic media is where there is interchanging use of interpersonal and mass communication use (Luders 2008) and is the direction that publishing and communication is taking in contemporary social life.

  The features of mass media are the undertones of the digitalization of information and mediated networking, which are personal media communications (Luders 2008). The digitialization of personal media has brought along an unknown audience who can witness private information. There is an anonymous audience who will participate in private media platforms and private publishing. This is a large change that has occurred in private media consumption; making personal media forms take on mass communication characteristics (Luders 2008). Private content can be accessible to anyone and society is put in the position of not knowing what and whom their published content has reached.

  Personal communication and mass media both involve receiving and producing information, hence blurring each others boundaries. These traits are intertwining, making mass media and social interaction compatible with each other. Differences are created with the levels of involvement from individuals and their online flexibility (Luders 2008). It was a natural trend for society to produce these types of transformative behaviours, thus the role of publishing should follow suit.

The paternalistic view of knowledge from mass media isn’t as common in contemporary social life, as the categorization of information has changed.  As Rusbridger (2010) mentions, the “splintering of the fourth estate” has occurred due to mass media’s broken down barriers that take on more personal characteristics. “Personal media are institutionally and structurally different from mass media, and consequently their functions are different” (Luders 2008, p. 694). Fredin (1989) states that new media has not completely been established and need to mature in their development. New media does show improvements in society’s existing media through the personal relationship formed between the audience and creator. This digital space cannot be owned and regulated to an extent, because the information has become personal. Society needs to question who owns the published data. Further development in regulation needs to take action to increase the reliability of sources and to protect copyright laws.

There has been a transformational change where contemporary social life is moving away from mass communication to personal communication. This results in a changing role in publishing where users can also be producers and enjoy having the power to distribute and aggregate information. Mass communication has taken on two-way personal communication behaviours, resulting in the sending and receiving of information. Power seems to lie in numbers, and mass media communications is responding to this by taking on personal media characteristics. This is great for society, as the public can get a voice and publish information made up of the people, by the people. However, there is question on the quality of the content received as user generated content doesn’t necessarily have expert undertones.

References:

Bezjian-Avery, A., Calder, B., & Iacobucci, D. 1998, ‘New media interactive advertising vs. traditional advertising,’ Journal of Advertising Research, vol. 38, no. 4, pp. 23-32.

Boyd, D. 2007, ‘Why Youth ♥ Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life,’ Youth, Identity, and Digital Media, pp. 119-142.

Cathcart, R. & Gumpert, G. 1983, ‘Mediated interpersonal communication:

toward a new typology,’ Quarterly Journal of Speech, vol. 69, no.3, pp267-77.

Flanagin, A. & Metzger, M. 2001, ‘Internet Use in the Contemporary Media Environment,’ Human Communication Research, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 153-181.

Fredin, E. 1989, Interactive communication systems, values, and the requirement of self-reflection, Communication Yearbook 12, New York Park.

Leckenby, J. 2003, ‘The Interaction of Traditional and New Media,’ in New Media, The University of Texas at Austin, Texas, pp.1-43.

Luders, M. 2008, ‘Conceptualizing personal media,’ New Media & Society, vol. 10, no. 5, pp. 683-702.

Miller, S. 1996, Civilizing Cyberspace, ACM Press, New York.

Mutz, D. 1992, ‘Mass Media and the Depoliticization of Personal Experience,’ American Journal of Political Science, vol. 36, no. 2, pp. 483-508.

Rice, R., & Williams, F. 1984, ‘Theories old and new: the study of new media,’ in The New Media: Communication Research and Technology, ed. R. Rice, Sage, California, pp.33-34.

Robinson, J., Meyer, K., Neustadtl, A. & Alvarez, A. 2000, ‘Mass Media Use and Social Life Among Internet Users,’ Social Science Computer Review, vol. 18, no. 4, pp. 490-501.

Rusbridger, A. 2010, ‘The Splintering of the fourth estate,’ guardian.co.uk, 19 November 2010, viewed 1 June 2011 <http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/19/open-collaborative-future-journalism/print >.

Thayer, L. 1986, ‘On the Mass Media and Mass Communication: Notes Toward a Theory’, in Inter/Media: Interpersonal Communication in a Media World (3rd edn), eds G. Gumpert & R. Cathcart, Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 41-61.

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favourite form of publishing

When I started the course, I said my favourite form of publishing was on huge billboards, or posters at bus stops. However now, strategically thinking, great forms of publishing should follow criteria involving some use of an archive, if the information has been aggregated and distributed and of course, it should involve the public culture. Today, culture is data and data is made up of culture, which makes up the publics, and this spinning circle is where modes of information or data are published. 

So then for me, my favourite form of publishing are blogs or online newspapers. They follow this criteria. According to Edwards, 2010; he says that basic infrastructures should be "reliable, standardized and widely accessible, at least within a community." If blogs are a form of infrastructure, they follow his criteria.

Blogs are transparent and the data does not have to be reinvented each time. They have the ability to 'plug' into other infrastructures and tools, (not necessarily other blogs, but any form of data). 

I agree that "infrastructure both shapes and is shaped by the conventions of a community of practice." To say that blogs are my favourite form of publishing is such a broad statement. But a single blog can be quite specific, and can  attract and retain a particular type of public because of its features.  

Glaunett's video sums up how contemporary society is moving into a dynamic everyday life where people should be able to make their own mark in the world. He says, "being a creator makes significant difference to your orientation," and this is a very powerful tool that bloggers hold. With blogging, people are able to make something whilst connection with people in a simultaneous process. Society is abel to express themselves and have a voice as people now want to make and not just consume data. No-one likes to be held up by anyone but themselves. Traditional media, in the form of television, radio and newspapers, is given to us by media professionals. This is a sharp contrast to what Web 2.0 platforms have developed into. 

References:

Edwards, Paul , 2010, A Vast Machine Cambridge, MA:MIT Press, viewed 24 May 2011, <http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12080&mode=toc>.

Gauntlett, David, 2010, Making is Connecting,  Britain, viewed 26 May 2011, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IB0CsizJL7o>.

[danicolubriale-blog]

Our visualization is based on data from two different sources. It compares Facebook usage in 20 different countries in comparison to its population size. Simply put, it is interesting that the sheer amount of Facebook users in a country, doesn't impact it's rating, because we are comparing this figure with a country's population. For example, India is the 5th highest country using Facebook, but since it is a developing country, this number in comparison to its population size is only 2.1%, making it ranked 20th in our visualization. Where as, a smaller populated country such as Australia has a ranking 4th because close to half of the population use Facebook. It's interesting that how many people use Facebook in Australia, places the country at 17th position otherwise.

The size represents the amount of Facebook users in that country. The colour choice differentiates the countries as well as provides a story-telling aspect that makes the information easy for the viewer to follow (as my having jaggered sizes circles, this can distract the order of the data, so the colour is meant to waiver this).

The hot colours represent the higher ranked countries who use facebook in comparison to their country size and the cool colours show the lower ranked countries. 

We were unable to put what the population size is and what the amount of users are in each country, as these figures would distract the viewer and make the image more complicated.

[danicolubriale-blog]

Visualizations. Best mode of Publishing yet

The 'Afrographic Blog' had the most interesting visualizations of otherwise pretty dry data. From the mobile devices used in Africa to African carbon dioxide emissions, all of these visualizations were consistent in the colour used and size given to different elements of one piece of data. By looking at these visualizations, I realized how much visually seeing the size of information in comparison to another factor, (such as, the highest African country by GDP to the lowest) really does make such information clearer to understand and easier to withhold. Back to the African countries by GDP example, the use of different sized and coloured squares really emphasized the order of who had the highest GDP to the lowest with the help of a rainbow gradient, to easier lead your eyes down the information line.

The relation of this blog in comparison to other modes of publishing is that for me, the colour and layout of each visualization design, made me want to read and evaluate the data given. Everybody is different and is subjective to the modes of publishing. I find that information presented visually is easier to take in, especially if it is laid out is an easy to read fashion. Although a blog can be established by amateurs to a particular field or the professionals, I love how someone is able to speak their point of view. The space is active, where comments by viewers are able to be left and the creator of the blog is able to post back. More modes of publishing are turning into this interactive space as the recent demand has increased. Although blogs may not hold the most accurate data, I love what they stand for and hold. Now it is so easy to double check where information comes from online if one was to have any queries about a point put forward. YouTube is a type of blog in itself when you relate that people who post videos aren't necessarily professionals and they have their own point of view. Our society is becoming dynamic that it is only natural for society to respond through a means of an interactive public place that is published.           

References:

Vidani, P. 2011, AFROGRAPHIQUE, Tumblr, viewed 4 May 2011, <http://afrographique.tumblr.com/>

[danicolubriale-blog]

Attention! ATTENTION!

All attention is distraction and all distraction is attention. Do I have your attention now??

A common video that highlights both keeping your attention and distraction.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo

or theres this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBKKgtsWqZQ

 Goldhaber’s article states, “Attention has its own behavior, its own dynamics, its own consequences.” Goldhaber further says that attention is unavoidably scarce and a limited resource. The information may only be around for a very short amount of time. Even if you are a multi-tasking phenomenon, your full attention will be limited. For the record, multitasking only works if one action is more of an automated response. If both actions are foreign to the person performing them, regardless if it is man or woman; it has been proven with multiple studies that this is impossible to do! Attention can also be rich and complex because it comes in many forms.

I found it interesting that what catches someone’s attention might not catch someone else’s. This must mean that attention is selective. Even if the information could be helpful and informative to a particular person, they could deny taking in the information. Does this mean that the viewer has the power? I think it just proves and heightens just how much power attention can hold. Even by denying the attention, the attention had the power to make you deny it in the first place.

“Attention as a basis of a new economy really does work,” writes Goldhaber - an economy being something that collects, arranges and distributes. Attention does function as a fundamental of human desire because some minimum of attention is essential in order to get recognition. Feedback is essential because when wanting to discuss something that caught your attention, you have the need to share it with someone. We all crave the praise from the people surrounding you. The Internet is a perfect example. It is an attention seeker or grabber or turn-your-nose-in-the opposite-direction-er. There are forums, for advice or just pure gossip to advertisements that you want to click on to ones that are so unnecessary to the functioning of your life.

Just one more video to finish off:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS1enJr49os

I have to say, because of the sheer length of this video, when the accident happened with the police on the scene around the two-minute mark, I wasn’t paying attention as to how the accident occurred. But after watching it a second time, I don't understand where my attention could have gone. I'm going to blame it on the time of the day when I was watching the clip.

  I wanted to put this video in, but I thought some parts we not as appropriate as others. If you type Distraction a gradualreport into YouTube, you know what I mean. Here are a few highlights from the video.

Distractions are usually caused by, the lack of ability to pay attention, the lack of interest in the object you are meant to pay attention to, and the greater interest in something other than the object of attention. Distraction is the value we place on things that hold our attention. Everyone is distracted by something that attracts our attention. This never-ending cycle helps us stumble across information and data of interest that we may otherwise wouldn't have found.

  References:

Goldhaber, M. H 1997, ‘Attention Shoppers!’, On Newsstands Now, Vol. 5, No. 12, pp. 1-5. 

[danicolubriale-blog]

Archive Fever!

Jon Stokes uses ‘discontented masses’ to describe archives. He says that from reading the Salon article, archives are made up of two groups that are search engine optimizers and bloggers. He does mention that there is extraordinary and unacknowledged power that comes with search engines in particular, his example was Google. He says “if the wed is a giant public archive, then the privately owned and secretive Google is its de facto interface”. However, the development or more rightly, evolution of search engines has resulted in Google replacing a traditional news editor with an automated script. So how reliable accurate is the information now?

Stokes does mention that a social history of the archive from ancient to modern times needs to be written, however, the intricate work that needs to be put in, or just knowing where to start gathering information would be a challenge in itself.

Stokes gives a positive book review on Derrida’s work saying that it’s “the best mediation I’ve ever read on the power, politics and technology of the archive.” It was written at the dawn of the Internet age ten year ago, yet it’s still such a major resource to refer to. He also quoted a French lecture called Memory: The Question of Archives. I thought this exert was most interesting:

“The technical structure of the archiving archive also determines the structure of the archivable content even in its very coming into existence and in its relationship to the future. The archivization produces as much as it records the event. This is also our political experience of the so-called news media.”

Sharon Howard believes that Archive Fever is a kind of desire. Carolyn Steedman’s book, Dust was referred to “the desire to recover moments of inception, to find and possess all sorts of beginnings.” The bed analogy that Steedman uses in her book gave me a disturbing new way to look at archives. You don’t know how all the information is archived and by who and almost how ‘hygenic’ and ‘pure’ the content is that is left by others.  When you hop in a hotel bed, I will now consider the hundredss of people that have slept there before me and are “leaving their dust and fibres in the fibres of the blankets.”

Sharon suggests that nothing starts in the Archive but all things end up in one, especially discontinuities of stories caught halfway through. She sees an archive as something that’s “made from selected and consciously chosen documentation from the past,” a relatively general definition, until she adds that these selected works are from “mad fragmentations that no one intended to preserve and just ended up there.” It makes me think that archives where created incidentally. Matthew Ogle’s work proved this. He says that the web captures our information that would wouldn’t of captured otherwise. It’s accidental, but regardless a form of archive.

I found a youtube video of a guy studying our course! I want to put it up, not to steal his ideas but to prove how archiving can become accessible to the public.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnIcd0mM43c

[danicolubriale-blog]

This video sums up Latour's Actor Network Theory very well in simple terms with pictures. It helped me understand the theory better.

The second video is a parity of Latour's Theory and it shows how the relationship between human and non-human actants is successful in a humorous light. When these two actants come together, they form a type of network called an assemblage. It shows how social and technological factors can cooperate and work together, and it supports Latour's theory. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2o-BLubvOg

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Speed of Digital Publishing: Convenience and Multitasking

According an article in the Business Standard, High-speed Internet access has taken over the average household, resulting in digital publishing (e-books, e-papers, online research papers) is evolving into big business. Publishers are bringing their content online in order to reach a wider audience across geographies. Most universities and libraries are digitizing books  which becomes convenient for students as they may only need to read part of the book rather than the whole book.

Speed has also brought along convenience through the ease of multitasking. Now, it is easy to create tabs in an internet browser, whilst clicking on hyperlinks in digital books and jumping to different chapters with a click. That’s just on the computer. iPhones have made digital publishing mobile, where we can access multiple apps and the internet in an touch. You can also see how many apps you have open at the some time, much like tabs on your Internet window.

Google Chrome is arguable the most important piece of software on your computer, according to Google. While you are online you can search, chat, email, shop, bank, read the news and watch videos. It has been designed to be fast from its start up and loading and running the web pages.

A level of convergence is being exercised as well by being on different forms of media such as your phone, laptop and the TV. This could only be achieved successfully with the speed and convenience of being able to do so.

Speed is evolving digital use.

[danicolubriale-blog]

Week 1 Readings: Publishing. What is it?

Simply, publishing is to make something known or public. Traditionally the term refers to the printing the works of authors, but with the expansion of electronic sources, publishing has now expanded.

No longer is publishing a narrow minded stream of print publishing but many more publications are brought to life through the internet. People that have access to the internet and social networking sites publish comments and pictures unknowningly. Graffiti painters and sponsers are very similar as they both publish themselves to the public. I'm sure most graffiti writers do not consider this similarity or even consider their work as published. That is because contemporary publishing does not follow the traditional means of getting work visible to the world.  

E-books (no publishing needed), printing on demand (allows books not to be sitting in a warehouse) and and accessible publishing (the digitization of books) have brought technological changes to this industry. These methods have less of an environmental impact and therefore have created a new branch of publishing called green publishing.

This is the epitome of what publishing had evolved into. There are so many different forms, especially through web 2.0, that there is constant 24 hour access to publishing if needed. 

Check out this video of the Future of Publishing uploaded by Penguin Group USA:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Weq_sHxghcg> Is it really the end of Publishing?

Naughton's article “Publishers take note: the iPad is altering the very concept of a ‘book,’” argues that some magazines still need to be printed because they don't translate well to the internet. The future is relying on digitized works for convenience and green reasons. For Naughton to say this, means that he is in potential denial to move forward or that reading online could be an inconvenience for himself. He suggests that there will always be books but he questions the lifespan on publishers.

This article is a mode of publishing in itself with the public able to post their own opinions at the bottom of the article. Some put him in a negative light, whilst others agree.  

His other article suggests there are limitations to digitized books. He says he “cant sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense or otherwise assign any rights to the digital content or any portion of it to any third party.” He says this narrows consumers’ freedoms to reading and in a way, has control over the reader, something he says printing will never do. 

However there are factors that are beneficial such as cheaper prices for e-books. The National Public Radio’s article “E-book boom change book selling and publishing” highlights the positives to the enhancement of e-book technology. The upgrades allow for videos and pictures to be embedded into an e-book. This allows for children to enjoy colour books, thus changing the everyday life of the future generations. This new technology means that there are traditional e-books, which is when the consumer just reads the print. The accessibility of e-books means that you can get a book instantly and start reading, instead of waiting for it to arrive at a bookstore. 

Mr Osnos, puts a positive publishers perspective on the e-book and he says that they “are in the process of transforming the way we do what we do.” The essence of e-books is they represent good books that you can receive in any way you want them now. The convenience with travelling comes with e-readers. Local and franchised bookstores need to keep up with the consumer demand and may need to start selling digital readers. However, printed books will always be in our lives. 

It’s interesting that it is predicted that over the next year, e-books will make up 20% of the reading market. Today physical books make up 91%. It is an exploding market that is convenient and the range of devices used will be increased.

‘Publishing’, Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publishing>

Liquid Site Hosting, Per Cederberg, 2011, viewed 8 March 2011, <http://www.percederberg.net/software/liquidsite/index.html>

The Future of Publishing, created by DK (UK), Penguin Group USA, 2010, viewed 8 March 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Weq_sHxghcg

Naughton, John, 2010 ‘Publishers take note: the iPad is altering the very concept of a ‘book’ The Guardian, December 19, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/dec/19/ipad-publishing-kindle-books-apple>

Naughton, John, 2009 ‘The original Big Brother is watching you on Amazon Kindle’ The Guardian, July 26, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jul/26/amazon-kindle-book-deletions>

National Public Radio, 2010 ‘E-Book Boom Changes Book Selling And Publishing’, December 21, <http://www.npr.org/2010/12/21/132235154/e-book-boom-changes-book-selling-and-publishing>