Network Culture

Blog for EngL 5950

[riseofnetworkculture]

Static vs. Dynamic

The other day we discussed changing news articles. This was intriguing to me. With the recent demise of the print industry comes a few interesting things. Our news and all data on the internet is dynamic and can forever be changed. Something put on the internet can be edited on the fly. This makes internet sources less reliable and more reliable at the same time. You can read an article and it could have changed by the time the friend you recommended it to reads it. Making the quote you used unreliable but also on current events if you know its changing it will continuosly be the most reliable single source because it is being updated with details of the story as they progress. A point for each side. 

[riseofnetworkculture]

Split attention

This is just a random thought that popped into my head. (How appropriate) During today's day in age and since we are all connected it becomes hard to focus. As I was writing a previous post a question of a movie time came to mind. So, I opened a new tab and looked it up. This disrupts the writing I was initially focused on and creates a disjuncture stream of conscious. Food for thought! 

[riseofnetworkculture]

This photo is Galison's war against the center enacted. Although Galison is discussing industry this also becomes true with other things such as life itself. For the longest time we clumped into groups to do things, and we still do to some extent but some things are taking place via the internet now. Such as online album release listenings. This is something that would have taken place in a location before and clumped people together. but with virtual space this changes and people who are spread out are now all connected and not centralized.

[riseofnetworkculture]

Control: The little man inside your head.

Control. Everything we do is regulated in someway it seems. Either through societal rules or personal restrictions. There is a little man inside each and one of our heads and he says "steeling is wrong, don't turn when the light is red, kiss your girl friend goodbye" These are all things implanted into our lives from a young age and sub consciously a little man or woman in the back or our heads internally decides whether or not we are supposed to do certain things. This process is so ingrained in us that we don't even think of the things we are doing as being controlled. Food for thought! 

[riseofnetworkculture]

"When I participate in an online service like Livejournal, Facebook, or MySpace, I engage with a series of interconnected encounters at the level of personality, writ ing, interest, politics, and taste. The moment I view an advertisement on TV, in the movie theater, or on the Web, and that ad calls to me (purchase this product/identify with it), I enter into an economic and emotional connection with new media pro duction. When I make a purchase on any of the online services such as Amazon, Overstock, or eBay, I work within a networked path of associations and connections, all of which draw upon my past habits and direct me to a variety of products and finks the services provide. All of these kinds of activities interlink information and users of information in ways English studies has not yet fully explored."

This is a quote from The rise of networks and new media essay we read at the first of the class. This just brings up the question that we have been discussing through most of the semester. "How does this relate to english?" My answer would be in the current way we view English it parallels but not relates but as everything else evolves so does English. "College English has not yet imagined or perceived itself as a network". But really it needs to start because being self aware and analysing is a part of english studies and it is now something that needs to be analysed in and of itself. 

[riseofnetworkculture]

How has this not been created earlier. Live television is going to be linked to the internet eventually. Network television should, instead of suing everything that invokes change, jump behind one of these new solutions for home television and endorse it because it is the future whether they like it of not! 

[networktopologies-deactivated20]

Here’s the real Google Glasses product.

Notice the difference?

One thing I found particularly interesting about this video is the sheer amount of information you are being bombarded with constantly and I think we have started to become more accustomed to this information but having it shot up at us all the time I could see becoming annoying especially the advertisements in the video. be subjugated to customized constantly could get old. I mean more currently people are getting sick of customized advertising on Facebook. and not being able to close the browser to get rid of them. Also another interesting thread I think to be explored on this topic is privacy with these glasses. 

[riseofnetworkculture]

This is some new tech coming from Samsung currently. This is just further blurring between the lines of the network and solid reality. Similar to the wearables in Rainbows End. 

[riseofnetworkculture]

One thing I found really interesting is the concept of the wearable in Rainbows end, and how it lets you perceive the houses and such not as they look but as they appear to you while wearing the wearable. This creates an interesting point to piracy. In my paper I included this link for the piracy video. It says you wouldn't steal a car, purse, ect.... but what if it was as easy as downloading these things. Rainbows end brought up the idea of being able to download the perception of a nice house. and as with everything else (currently media) on the internet you just need to look for search for the right thing to find a shady website to get it for free. I think that this could be our future where things can be downloaded for free, or at least the perception of nice things.  

[riseofnetworkculture]

Project idea

One project I think would be interesting would be a creative example of how certain technology companies product lines would look in the future such as apple,Microsoft, intel... Also we could predict public reaction to the new line of products as well. Also how these companies would look in Rainbows End.

[riseofnetworkculture]

I came across this video the other day from South Park and I found it relevant to the class. The idea of trading friends as currency years ago might have been far fetched but today with social networking it is starting to become reality. Recently I also read an article about including social networking data into resumes. This starts to cross over to the ability to make a monetary gain from social networking. Over all just thought this was a funny take on our current society. 

[riseofnetworkculture]

The Last Novel and Intellectual Property!

Watching the documentary the other day one thing that came to mind is The Last Novel By David Markson. The Last Novel is an interesting take on this idea of intellectual property.  First thing to understand why is a description of the novel. The novel takes place in a series of unattributed quotes and interesting anecdotes that create different moods through out the novel. Sound Familiar? It should it is very similar to what Girl Talk does in his music. Taking unattributed musical phrases and such, and placing remixing them. The Last Novel does exactly this same thing. It is a remix of complete unoriginal artistic work into a new original work. This book hasn't created the intellectual property up roar like girl talk has. I wonder why? I think the indie nature of the book is important and the fact that the stuff that the book is stealing quotes from are not making people money. Current modernist lit. has become so independent it has allowed authors to concentrate on the art and not on making money. Which I think unleashes their ability to create unique pieces of art with out a corporate business man making decisions in the creative process.I think that the rest of the artistic industry needs to catch up to a free exchange of artistic progression.  

[riseofnetworkculture]

Disconnecting from the network.

I am currently sitting in the union building and right now I am within visual distance of two TV screens, about four laptops (including mine open right in front of me) and three cell phones (also including mine sitting on the table next to my laptop). This is all as I read the first of Shivaro's Book on my laptop. The first sections about being connected made me hyper aware of all the ways in which I personally am in, at a minimum of visual contact with the internet and information. Shivaro says that we cant be connected with out giving up something and I think one of the things we are giving up is our privacy. This comes after recently watching the movie Enemy of the State. This movie, if you haven't seen it, is basically about the NSA and their ability to track down people with a minimal amount of footwork. Everyone is connected to the network and that is the reason this movie ends up working. The ability to trace a person from the devices they use and by the infinite network of cameras and satellites that are in and around the world makes it near impossible to hide. Think of not just how many times you are using a device that can link you into the network but are around these devices at all. If you are viewing them you are technically connected to the network. Think of the ways this has changed since the release of the movie. almost everything now has a camera on it including most laptops and phones. The scare is that if someone, anyone, has the ability to tap into these cameras they could technically work backwards through the network to watch you. This goes back to the Shaviro again and although we are connected and have a constant up to date flow of information entering we are also giving out information and there is the possibility that we are being watched.   

[riseofnetworkculture]

Networking in public spaces.

“You’ve even left your laptop behind so that you won’t be tempted by the queue of e- mails to catch up to. You’re in the café with your Moleskine notebook—a non- networked object ubiquitous among the digerati—trying to start an essay on the role of place in network culture and finding that the only way forward is to detach yourself from the network as much as possible. But the people surrounding you have other ideas. The man behind you is trying to commit himself more deeply to the network, purchasing a plan that will allow him to talk on his mobile phone for one- tenth of his waking hours every month. A woman next to you is browsing the Internet with her laptop, a late- career executive is thumbing his Blackberry, two students are studying together, and some teenagers are hanging out listening to music on their iPhones. While one texts her friends, the other downloads music from the iTunes store. A thirty something man is on his laptop working on a screenplay, while a few people are just reading books or the paper.”(16)  -Kazys Varnelis and Anne Friedberg- 

This quote brings to light a scene that is very obvious for many of us, especially being college students. I have spent many an hour sitting in a coffee shop but connected to more people who are not in the coffee shop than are. This seems to be the point of this quote. There is no way to completely escape the massive overlying network. While sitting in the coffee shop with a note book you are still subjected to everyone else’s connectivity but where I want to focus is on the concept of being together while being apart. One of the most interesting social happening that have come from this hyper mobile and networked age is the ability to stay connected to everything that is happening with all of your friends, the news, and just about everything else in the world. The part I find interesting is even with this connectedness we go to gathering places where we are still physically next to people we are not actually interacting with but we are more connected through our devices. It will be interesting to see where the future of networking and human interaction takes us.

[riseofnetworkculture]

Fordism

“Ford believed that the new kind of society could be built simply through the proper application of corporate power. The purpose of the five-dollar, eight-hour day was only in part to secure worker compliance with the discipline required to work the highly productive assembly-line system. It was coincidentally meant to provide workers with sufficient income and leisure time to consume the mass produced products the corporations were about to turn out in ever vaster quantities. But this presumed that workers knew how to spend their money properly. So in 1916, Ford sent an army of social workers into the homes of his 'privileged' (and largely immigrant) workers to ensure that the 'new man' of mass production had the right kind of moral probity, family life, and capacity for prudent (i.e. non-alcoholic) and 'rational' consumption to live up to corporate needs and expectations. The experiment did not last too long, but its very existence was a prescient signal of the deep social, psychological, and political problems that Fordism was to pose.”

The over arching hope of Fordism is to create a closed economic system. Fordism tries, in some ways to control many aspects of a citizens life. The idea that a company that you work for would come in to a citizens home and teach you how to spend the money "properly". An interesting focus that the article brings up is the "(i.e. non-alcoholic)". This seems at first like a general well being for the employee but after further thought it becomes more obvious that this is for the benefit of the company. If the employees are spending their money on alcohol then they aren't spending their money on products and also it inhibits their ability to be productive in the work place. The benefit to the worker of living a m ore healthy life is just a by product of the company's desire for success. This effect is where possible, I think, current ideas of spending just to spend or the concept of therapeutic shopping gets its roots. If a company's workers have free time why not encourage them to use that free time by buying products. This is an interesting way of looking at the corporate structure I think still holds true today. Although your boss may not come into your home to encourage you to spend but I think television advertising does this much more effectively.