my two cents

hi, i'm karri. this blog was created for a university course concerning the big beautiful world of media. It contains my mindful opinions on insightful ideas. enjoy!

[twocentsay]

Graffiti as a Mirror to Modern Society

As the definition of art broadens, new forms of art have begun to pop up. Art has slowly transformed from traditional Monet’s and Turners, to Brett Whiteley’s and Andy Warhol’s to finally Stephen Birch and Patricia Piccinini. Art is becoming more outrageous and hard to define.

One of the most controversial forms of art is graffiti. The fact that some may stop me at the previous sentence and say that graffiti is not a form of art proves my exact point. But more and more so, graffiti is making its way from scribbles on the street to spray painted masterpieces in art galleries.

Why?

Because graffiti art speaks.

Note my use of ‘art’ instead of just ‘graffiti’. The fact that graffiti art has something to say is what I believe is the key difference between art and just vandalism.

Like social media, blogs, YouTube clips and everything in between, graffiti gives people a chance to say what they want and be who they want to be with a sense of anonymity. It represents free speech and rebelling against leaders and officials. It’s an expression of self that goes way beyond just written words on a letter. By placing these words in public places, they seen, heard, felt. How can they be lost when they’re painted illegally in places where so many people cross paths with it daily? As Evee Rayne Summers from Japan Today stated in her article about Japanese graffiti, “graffiti is a powerful way of expressing talent, creativity, culture, social and political views”.

Take Banksy for instance. The British stencil graffiti artist has become world renown for his political driven art that makes comments about the society we live in. Here’s a few examples:

Photo: Flickr

Photo: Flickr

Photo: Flickr

Banksy’s most interesting aspects is that his identity is, to this day, still unknown and that even though his pieces sell for thousands of dollars at art auctions, Banksy doesn’t gain their profit.

So what’s the point of making art if you’re not making a profit?

To which I ask, what’s the point of writing a Facebook status, or writing a blog post? It’s the one thing we all in this modern day society yearn, the one thing that we feel our governments are both threatened by and prevent.

It’s the freedom of expression.

  Bibliography

Anon (n.d.), 'Frequently Asked Questions', Banksy, <http://www.banksy.co.uk/QA/qaa.html>

Ellsworth- Jones, Will (2013), 'The Story Behind Banksy', Smithsonian Magazine, February, <http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/The-Story-Behind-Banksy-187953941.html>

Summers, Evee Rayne (2013), 'Graffiti- art or vandalism', Japan Today, May 12, <http://www.japantoday.com/category/arts-culture/view/graffiti-art-or-vandalism>

    Lecture Word- Generative

[twocentsay]

The Great Debate: Media vs Science

There has been much debate about the problems surrounding the media and science’s fragile relationship. Here is a representation of key arguments.

Stephen Lewandosky and Steve Sherwood from The Conversation believe that “the media thrive on conflict, and.. believe conflicting opinions usually have equal validity”, whilst science is based on “the weeding out of bad ideas”.

Ananyo Bhattacharya from the scientific journal Nature wrote a blog post in The Guardian that scientists just don’t understand what makes a good journalism piece.

Ben Goldacre from The Guardian column Bad Science wrote in his article that the problem between media and science is that media articles are written by non scientists who believe that the public “won't understand the "science bit"” and so have to be dumbed down.

All three arguments do have valid points, and much has to be done about the cooperation between two of society’s most important and interesting sectors.

But where to begin?

How about actually cooperating instead of having jabs at each other? Science and the media need to start collaborating with each other and develop a form of journalism that both the scientific community and the media would be proud of. This may mean (dare I say it) changing the inverted pyramid style of writing and science accepting that sometimes statistics alone just don’t attract readers. It means finding a balance between interesting and  accurate. It may mean creating a new generation of journalists/ scientists that specialize in the fine art of science media.

Don’t get me wrong, such people and media do exist. Take a look at Robin McKie’s article about why Neanderthals died out.

All I’m suggesting is that more collaboration and cooperation needs to happen in order to see this issue tackled. In true scientific spirit, prime evidence for how well collaboration works in science is the success of genetics data sharing in 1986. The best thing is that this is still working today.

Bibliography

Bhattcharya, Ananyo (2012), ‘Nine ways scientists demonstrate they don’t understand journalism’, The Guardian, January 18, < http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2012/jan/17/scientists-journalism>

Eberhart, Achim (2012) ‘Science vs. the Media’, Australian Science Communicators, February 4, < http://www.asc.asn.au/blog/2012/02/04/science-vs-the-media/>

Goldacre, Ben (2005), ‘Don’t dumb me down’, The Guardian, September 8, < http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/sep/08/badscience.research>

Lewandowsky, Stephen and Sherwood, Steve (2011) ‘Way off Balance: science and the mainstream media’, The Conversation, November 24, < http://theconversation.com/way-off-balance-science-and-the-mainstream-media-4080>

Mckie, Robin (2013), ‘Why did the Neanderthals die out?’, The Guardian, June 2, < http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/jun/02/why-did-neanderthals-die-out>

Pisani, Elizabeth (2011) ‘Medical science will benefit from the research of crowds’, The Guardian, January 11, < http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/11/medical-research-data-sharing >

    Lecture word: open science

*this article was edited 3rd June, 2013- placed added Mckie's article.

[twocentsay]

Our Unhealthy Reliance on Social Media

            There has been a recent trend in society to use social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to organize political events. Protests, petitions, rallies and interests groups are all being established and organized using such sites.

And for a good reason. Their ability to reach thousands and thousands of people and spread like wildfire is possibly one of it’s most powerful components. All people have to do is discover it,- on a homepage, a friends wall, likes, a retweet or even in advertising- click it and the ability to be convinced at the click of a button is uncovered. The world realizes this power and are using it more and more to get a message across. Some might even say that we rely too much on social media to get a message across.

So what would happen if one day, a platform just simply disappeared? What would happen if all of a sudden, our government just decided that the bullying, defamation and sharing of sensitive information overrode all the positives of social media and took it away? It’s possible. In fact, a similar thing happened in Syria this week, when it was discovered that Internet traffic to and from Syria has ceased.

Douglas Rushkoff in his article The Evolution Will Be Socialized describes an alternative Internet call ‘Contact’ to prevent such a catastrophe. Contact would include the “development of a new non-hierarchical Internet to the implementation of alternative e-currencies, the prototyping of open source democracy to experiments in collective cultural expression”. Basically, an Internet without any hierarchical control but rather a democratic, open source system and where only virtual money would exist.

However, I do find problems with this concept. Without any government control, who is going to set the rules as to what is okay and not okay? Even democracy has rules and regulators that control what is defined as wrong and right. If there’s not a governing body overlooking content, then who’s going to stop problems such as child pornography, when it could simply be defended as being a ‘collective cultural expression’? My other issue is why is there a need for currency at all in an open source system? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of open source content?

I think there’s a much easier solution. I think we should just start going back to ye old times and start communicating and organizing in person. In fact, the other day my mother offered me to hand make some simple invitations for my 21st, and my reply was that I was just going to make an event on Facebook and not worry about invitations. Why? Because it’s easier, and the reason it’s easier is because I’ve stopped using ‘outdated’ forms of organizing, such as invitations. Its also easier because of how much I rely on social media in general to organize my life, and I don’t think I’m the only one.

So I challenge you all to do something that you would usually do on social media and do it in person. Send someone a birthday card instead of a wall post. Call someone up or meet for coffee when you’re catching up with a friend or family member. Organize your next event using invitations. It may be a little inconvenient, but at least we’re not relying on a social networking site as a way of life.

  Bibliography

Rushkoff, Douglas (2011) ‘The Evolution Will Be Socialized’, Shareable: Science and Tech < http://www.shareable.net/blog/the-evolution-will-be-socialized >

  Lecture word- social organisation

[twocentsay]

Will Social Media Change Politics?

Does anyone else find it strange that Julia Gillard tweets?

I mean, she’s the leader of our country. Doesn’t she have slightly more important things to do than sit around and tweet every hour?

As you may have assumed, its not actually Ms Gillard herself tweeting, but it sure does sound like it.

But if she’s not tweeting, what’s the point of having a page? Shouldn’t it just be put under her social media person who is the actual person sitting there tweeting?

This is the problem with such relationships between politics and social media: they’re just another campaigning tool. Such social media accounts make people feel closer to their leaders, it almost humanizes them. But it doesn't not make them any closer than they physically are. It doesn't mean they care more. It doesn't mean they're being more salient to us. All it means is that they want us to think they are all these things. At the end of the day, its nothing more than just another campaigning tool, not just for politics, but for everyone in general.

As much as us Gen Y’ers want to believe that our new tool of social media is changing the world, it isn’t. It is, however, helping change the world. Like our politicians, it’s just another tool to help our cause. Yes, it may have “expanded the space and power of the individual” (Mason, 2011), but it hasn’t single handedly changed the world, let alone our politics. Social media is used to report political news, create conversation and debate our politicians and their causes, organize movements and protests, try and personally understand our politicians, and let our voices be heard, but most of these things can be done through the radio, television and newspaper. The only differences are social medias ability be easily accessed and its ability to grow and spread like wildfire. But this is also its problem. With so many people posting and tweeting and sharing and commenting, it’s so hard to find decent content and decipher what content is worthy, let alone to actually getting noticed. 

This is a trend when considering politics and social media- it has its positives and negatives. And most of the time, the negatives win.

Another example of this is transparency.

We all want our politicians and government to be truthful and salient with us, but at what cost? As Lawrence Lessig (2009) describes, “We are not thinking critically enough about where and when transparency works, and where and when it may lead to confusion, or to worse”. He points out that all we think about is that we want transparency, not when or where its appropriate, and when we find out the absolute truth it will not liberate us, but disgust us. “It will simply push any faith in our political system over the cliff”.

The question is, does it have the power to eventually push politics as we know it over the edge as well?

  Bibliography

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

Mason, Paul (2011) ‘Twenty reasons why it’s kicking off everywhere’, Idle Scrawls BBC, <http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/paulmason/2011/02/twenty_reasons_why_its_kicking.html >

        Lecture Word: transversally

[twocentsay]

Facebook: The Virtual Reality

It is so easy to confuse actual reality with another form.  It is so easy to get confused which ‘world’ we’re actually living in, which one real life.

Don’t believe me? Here’s an example.

Open this link, plug in your headphones and listen: 

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

Did it trick you? Did you scrunch your neck to the side when the clippers came on? Did your heart start beating nervously when it sounded like they were cutting the back of your hair? I sure did!

That’s how easy it is to get real reality confused with other realities, and I believe that as the Internet and technology in general evolve, we are getting more and more tricked by alternate realities.

As I sit here thinking about realities, in particular virtual realities, I can’t help but pay attention to the idea of Facebook being a of virtual reality. I know it doesn’t fit typical definitions of virtual realty such as “virtual reality is an alternate world filled with computer- generated images that respond to human movements. These stimulated environments are usually visited with the aid of an expensive data suit which features stereophonic video goggles and fiber- optic gloves” (Greenbaum, 1992, p. 58), but this doesn’t necessarily mean my idea is incorrect. Rather, I take a similar stance with Jonathan Steur (1992), who defines virtual reality as “ a real or stimulated environment in which a perceiver experiences telepresence” (pp. 76- 77). The key reason I believe this is the term ‘telepresence,’ which is “the extent to which one feels present in the mediated environment, rather than in the immediate physical environment” (Steur, 1992, p. 76). This is also what makes me believe that Facebook is an example of virtual reality, as Facebook, a mediated environment, allows us to have this sense of ‘presence’. It allows us to have this virtual environment where we have friends, groups, likes, events, notes, family and even allows us to ‘check in’ where we are. All these tools enable us to create a virtual world where we control the content.

It also allows us to be whoever we want to be, and say whatever we want to say, and this is where such virtual realities are becoming a problem. More and more, controversies over comments said on social networking sites such as Facebook. A recent example is when Prime Minister Julia Gillard was attacked with derogatory terms in an open forum on Facebook (you can read about the event in Sally Whyte’s article). I can’t help but think whether these people would say such remarks in person as well, or is it just through their virtual reality on Facebook that they have such willingness? The answer could lead back to Steur’s description of virtual reality as being an environment where a person experiences the preference of a mediated environment rather than the immediate physical environment.

Maybe this is the key problem with virtual realities- the fact that many people can’t seem separate a virtual reality from the real. Its definitely something all us Facebook user can think about.

Bibliography

Greenbaum, P., 1992. The Lawnmower Man. Film and Video, 9(3), pp.58- 62.

Steuer, J., 1992. Defining Virtual Reality: Dimensions Determining Telepresence. Journal of Communication, 42(4), pp.73- 93.

Lecture word- experience

[twocentsay]

The Involuntary Memory and the Media

Lets do a small exercise.

What words, phrases and events do you think about when you see this image? Are they positive or negative?

In a tutorial of mine today, we were given an article about Kyle Sandilands defending what he said about Magda Szubanski's weight. Even before we had read the article, we all had already made our minds up about him, regardless of what he or the journalist had to say in the article. Funnily enough, the article placed Kyle in a pessimistic, unremorseful, negative light, which reflected our own perceptions of him.

This is a perfect example of what Proust described as our ‘involuntary memory’- memory that “involve recollection of an entire nexus of sensations, thoughts, and impressions from the past” (Epstein, 2004, p. 217. It is a memory that we don’t choose to recall, instead surfacing without our will. We see an image of Sandilands and instantly remember all those controversies he’s caused over the years. These are memories which we don’t choose to have, we don’t sit down and go ‘okay, I must remember that he said this bad thing’ and start studying. They’re just something we seem to remember, and the media knows it.

Such articles rely on the premise that we remember such negativity towards him, and so they reflect it, right? Is this why biased articles exist, because of our perceptions established in the past? Or is because the media want us to think a certain thing? 

This comes back to the age-old question of does the media influence us, or do we influence the media?

I tend to think it’s a bit of both. I believe that we are presented with situations that, based on our experiences, we are going to think positively or negatively about, and in most cases, a large proportion of society has the same perception. As a result, the media reflects this common perception, even though they’re supposed to be neutral. This is where the media starts to publish a certain slant on a situation and we begin to believe it.

Therefore, my question is what comes first- our perception, or the medias perception?

Either way, once it’s there, it’s there, even if we don’t realize it.

Bibliography

Epstein, R 2004, 'Consciousness, art, and the brain: Lessons from Marcel Proust', Consciousness and Cognition, vol 13, no. 2, pp. 213- 240.

   Lecture word- metacommunication

[twocentsay]

The Co-operation of Print and Digital

It has been well known for a while now that the face of media as we know it is changing. We are seeing a transition from print to digital, which is questioning the existence of newspapers, books, magazines and mediums alike.

            But will this really ever happen? I find myself skeptical.

Instead, I tend to lean towards what Deleuze and Guattari described as the ‘machinic phylum’. This theory “provides a way of thinking through how elements of complex medial systems “cooperate” to produce something more than the sum of their parts.. finding ways to conceptualize and use the interplay between such states, rather than reduce them to two grand isolates” (Fuller, 2005, p. 6).

As I look around and study our existing media ecology, I notice not a transition from digital to print, but a cooperation of the two. I start to see how the two are complimenting each other, combining to create a whole new landscape in between, where print and digital are actually working together to create a whole new powerful form of media. 

            Think of QR codes placed in advertisements and product packaging, online previews of books and magazines which require you to buy the hard copy to see the full text; textbooks with interactive CDs and hybrid books. They all connect print and digital, and their combination makes them arguably more powerful than individually, by giving that little bit of extra information that only one cannot provide. It creates a whole new world of media, where Nick Ruffilo explans, something called metadata can not only change the interaction between media and consumer, but also save the print world.

            I guess two is always better than one.

Bibliography

Fuller, Matthew (2005) ‘Introduction: Media Ecologies’ in Media Ecologies: Materialist Energies in Art and Technoculture Cambridge, MA; MIT Press: 1-12

‘Hybrid Books’, Melville House Publishing <http://www.mhpbooks.com/about/hybrid-books/?id=613>

Ruffilo, Nick (2010) ‘Metadata, Not E-Books, Can Save Publishing…’, O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference <http://toc.oreilly.com/2010/07/metadata-not-e-books-can-save.html>

    Lecture word- machinic

[twocentsay]

Do We Really Want to Make Up Our Own Minds?

McLuhan has gone down in history for being the man who believed that ‘the medium is the message’. He describe how it wasn’t what a technology was saying that was changing society, but rather the technology itself was changing society. They were an extension of our human capacities, something that we could use that made our lives different,that caused change in how we lived.

            As far as I’m concerned, what he is saying is right. Look at the way video has changed the world. We can watch a video and it can evoke endless feelings, perceptions and information. But is it what is in the video that changes us, or the video itself? If someone were to describe exact same thing, it can be argued that it wouldn’t be as believable. What strikes us about a video is that this is actually real, we can see a real moment happening and that’s what differentiates a video from a description. Anyone could have sat down and described this moment and made it up easily. But video captures what’s real.

            What I’m more concerned with is the way he understands how culture has changed. McLuhan believes that the “cultural effects of the print medium were rationality and social fragmentation; audio- visual mass media, by contrast, provided a continuous and instantaneous stream of information from an enormous variety of sources” (Murphie and Potts, 2003, p. 14). He argues that this deduction of social fragmentation and rationality have lead us to no longer be determined by what it in print media, and its true. We have become a society where people are presented with different forms of opinion (think newspapers, blogs, friends on social media, forums). We are all able to make our own opinions and look for information to decide them. But have we really changed? Aren’t the majority of us still believe what we not only hear and see in the media, but read as well?

         The technology of audio- visual has been around for a long time still, but hasn’t dramatically changed our culture. We are still a culture that relies on the media for information and what we should think. The majority of us still believe exactly what we read or hear in the news, without giving it a second thought. And even when we do, is it too late to look at any other similar information objectively? The resources are out there, but how many of us actually use them? We love our technology for the ease it brings to our everyday lives, but if we still have to go searching for the ‘right’ answer, is there even a point in our love for technology’s ease? 

Bibliography

Murphie, Andrew and Potts, John (2003) ‘Theoretical Frameworks’ in Culture and Technology London: Palgrave Macmillan: 11-38 

  Lecture word- event

[twocentsay]

Long Live Publishing

The birth of the Internet has produced a world where gathering and producing information is quick, easy and simple. No longer are authors and journalists the only people that are able to publish information. It has become a power that almost anyone can use. It has in fact come to the point where it has been argued that “it makes increasingly less sense to even talk about the publishing industry because of the core problem publishing industry because of the core problem publishing solves- the incredible difficulty, complexity and expense of making something available to the public- has stopped being a problem” (Shirky, 2009). But this isn’t necessarily true. The publishing industry is becoming an industry that isn’t just being on the web, but rather using it as a tool of the trade. By using the Internet especially for the collection of data and as a platform for new branches of distribution, publishing has been able to acknowledge that there is still a market and a desire for print publishing and therefore a need for the industry to exist.

The core problem of the existence of the publishing industry is the issue of conforming to the web, instead of using to it as another medium. The Actor- Network Theory acknowledges that human and non-human actants have equal capability to affect a network (Latour, 2005). This means that where people choose to publish has just as much of an influence on the publishing industry than the Internet does. There are a few problems with this. One is that if the majority of people choose to publish to online media only, then the publishing industry will eventually going under. Another problem is with the digital revolution itself. Danah Boyd (2009) illustrated that due to the vast amount of content on the Internet, people consume the content that is the most stimulating, not what is the most informative or qualitative.  Add these two problems together what is left is a movement where people are choosing only to publish to online media, and most qualitative content isn’t being received because it may not be as appealing to stand out from the rest of the information mess. This is where publishing is beginning to use the Internet to its advantage. They are no longer just conforming to it and simply being ‘on’ it, but are rather using it as an instrument of the industry. They are starting to recognize these problems and are using the Internet to collect data that can help with publishing and are connecting traditional forms of publishing distribution with the Internet.

The Internet has proved to be a popular place for businesses to collect data due to the proficiency and the vast number of people that use it. Similarly, publishing is starting to use the web as a tool to determine what aspects of content people find most appealing. In the past, publishers had to go with their gut feeling and intuition on what content they should produce for the public. However, “publishers need to know what content will perform well tomorrow, not just what did well last month” (Kamdar, 2012) and are beginning to use the web to do so. By analyzing what content makes an article to go viral, they are able to establish what they need to publish to optimize the information people actually receive.  This is not only benefitting the industry, but also the public, as they are able to receive the information they find appealing without having to search for it. This data can not only be applied to information published in online media, but also in print forms such as newspapers and magazines as well. This gives such print forms the potential to restore the appeal of being a condensed, qualitative source of information. This will produce more revenue into the industry, which will assist in it keeping alive.

Publishing is not only using online media as a gadget for data collection, but also as an opportunity for new forms of distribution to blossom. More so, the publishing industry is bringing traditional forms of publishing online. Printing on demand is something that is proving to be quite progressive and innovative. It allows for an individual to go online and request a book to be printed and mailed to them, allowing for the ability to obtain basically any book that an individual wants (Higgins, 2003). It additionally allows publishers to print books based on what people want instead of just a hunch. This has benefitted large publishing houses in particular, as “although it still is pricier to print books digitally, the overall cost of printing on demand is lower, since books are printed only when there is a buyer, and thus do not languish in a warehouse merely to be destroyed later” (The Economist, 2010). However, it has also proved to be quite successful for smaller companies for reducing the money wastage on unsold printed books. “For lower distribution academic presses, and self-publishing imprints, the benefits of a technology designed to remove almost all risk from the decision to publish lower profile titles has been welcomed with open arms” (Dammann, 2008), as it allows for the company to publish more titles and more authors without running the risk of them not selling. This technology has not only helped the sales of current books, but past books as well. The printing method allows for even books that aren’t current to be reprinted, which allows books to continue to produce revenue when they otherwise would have been out of print (Shatzkin, 2010).  This is especially notable as it is bringing a new branch of revenue into the industry. Print on demand is not only beneficial for the publishers, but the industry as well. By basing the process from the Internet, it is allowing the industry to reach a much larger amount of people, as the geographical ground and the time and effort required to go to a bookstore are illuminated. It is using what the Internet is well known for, and applying it as a tool for the publishing industry.

Another form of distribution that the publishing industry has used as a tool for adapting to online media is the connection between hard copy forms of publishing and digital forms. Instead of the two mediums fighting against each other, publishing are linking soft copy publishing to hard copy publishing and vice versa. Many books now have the capability to connect the individual to content online that provides them with extra information, facts, details etc. Melville House is an example of the publishing industry putting this concept into practice. When an individual buys a printed book printed by Melville House, a Quick Response barcode is provided by the company which can then be scanned by a smart phone to access “supplemental material that the publisher is calling “illuminations.”” (Witt, 2011). Such ‘illuminations’ or supplementary material are extra information about the book including essays, poems, videos, lessons and even rules to games that appear in the book. The best part about these types of printed books are that they are an example of “an innovative publishing program that gives print books the features of enhanced eBooks” (Witt, 2011), giving them the interactivity that eBooks have whilst still being published. They likewise provide further motivation to buy hard copy books instead of soft copies. Such motivation is also evident in the linking of soft copy information to hard copy. Most books and publishing companies have formed websites to convince an individual to purchase the printed book. But many have taken this concept one-step further and created information teasers, especially in the form of videos. An example of this is a YouTube video created by David Gauntlett on his book ‘Making is Connecting’. The video he created provides the basic themes and concepts of the book that allow an individual to receive just enough information to not only understand what the book is about, but to want to find out more. Such methods not only create a stimulating way of finding out about a book, but also have the capability to connect what is considered the soft copy version of the book to the hardcopy version.

However, as history goes, new forms of technology never go without controversy, and publishing using the Internet as an instrument of adaptation is no exception. Whilst books have been quite successful in connecting hard copies and soft copies forms of publishing, magazines and newspapers in particular have not been as successful. Many magazines and newspapers have created paywalls on their websites, which basically allow an individual to view content up to a certain point. After this, they cannot access further information without paying/ subscribing. There are many debates regarding the effectiveness of paywalls in producing revenue for the industry. The New York Times found that by “erecting a paywall that that requires users to pony up digital subscription money after viewing more than 40 stories in a month actually helped the New York Times boost its Sunday print subscriptions – the first increase in print home delivery for the newspaper in five years” (Maurer, 2011). This is a positive for the print publishing industry, as it proves the paywalls potential to increase print revenue. However, others have lashed back at the paywall believing that people will instead just go to another website once they’ve reached the paywall threshold, with the newspaper making no money. The Guardian editor- in- chief, Alan Rusbridger also noted that the problem with paywalls is that they turn away from a world of openly shared content, which he believes is “about the most fundamental statement anyone could make about how newspapers see themselves in relation to the newly-shaped world" (Busfield, 2010). Despite their controversy, paywalls are still an example of how the publishing industry is converging online publishing and print publishing as a tool to adapting to the Internet.

The Internet and its power to gather, produce and spread information in a quick, easy and simple manner has caused quite a lot of speculation as to whether the need for the publishing industry still exists. However, the publishing industry is starting to prove that it in fact can still co-exist with the Internet without it being replaced. Instead of conforming and only publishing on online media, they are now using it as a tool for the industry. Publishing are using the Internets powerful capability to collect data in order to analyze the type of content that the public find most appealing. This is not only to give the public what they want, but additionally give them the best information without it being lost in white noise. Publishing is also creating new branches of distribution through the use of print on demand services that enable publishers to minimize the cost problems associated with printing books. Such services also allow consumers to save time and have a wider variety of books to choose from.  Connections between online and print publishing have also been established to benefit the publishing industry. Concepts that connect books to online media and vice versa are already in play and are continuing to grow, whilst models such as paywalls are in existence, but are yet to prove their success. Nevertheless, all these tactics are practiced by the publishing industry and demonstrate that they are not being replaced but are instead slowly but surely finding ways to adapt to the powerful movement that is the Internet.

Bibliography

Boyd, D. (2009, November 17). Streams of Content, Limited Attention: The Flow of Information through Social Media. Retrieved June 4, 2012, from Danah Boyd: http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/Web2Expo.html

Busfield, S. (2010, January 25). Guardian editor hits back at paywalls. Retrieved June 5, 2012, from The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jan/25/guardian-editor-paywalls

Dammann, G. (2008, May 2). Faber Launches Print-On-Demand Classics. Retrieved June 4, 2012, from The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/may/02/ebooks.technology?INTCMP=SRCH

Gauntlett, D. (2012, January 2012). Making is Connecting: The 4-minute presentation (2012). Retrieved June 5, 2012, from YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA-IYHM7u6A&hd=1

 Gilmor, D. (2011, August 3). The New York Times paywall: the faint scent of success. Retrieved June 5, 2012, from The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/aug/03/new-york-times-paywall

 Guillaud, H. (2010, January 6). What Is Implied by Living in a World of Flow. Retrieved June 4, 2012, from Truthout: http://archive.truthout.org/what-implied-living-a-world-flow56203

Higgins, S. W. (2003). Print On-Demand. Serials: The Journal for the Serials Community , 16 (1), 99- 100. 

Kamdar, S. (2012, January 17). Why Publishers Are About to Go Data Crazy. Retrieved June 4, 2012, from Media Shift: http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2012/01/why-publishers-are-about-to-go-data-crazy017.html

Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to the Actor- Network Theory. New York: Oxford University Press.

Maurer, A. (2011, November 1). New York Times sees increase in print subscriptions after erecting paywall. Retrieved June 5, 2012, from Tech Journal: http://www.techjournal.org/2011/11/new-york-times-sees-increase-in-print-subscriptions-after-erecting-paywall/ 

Salmon, F. (2011, August 14). How The New York Times Paywall Is Working. Retrieved June 5, 2012, from Wired: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/08/new-york-times-paywall/

Shatzkin, M. (2010, September 30). Three Fledglings That Really Should Fly. Retrieved june 4, 2012, from The Idea Logical Company: http://www.idealog.com/blog/three-fledglings-that-really-should-fly/

Shirky, C. (2009). Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable. Retrieved June 4, 2012, from Clay Shirky: http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/

The Economist. (2010, February 25). The Boom in Printing On Demand: Just Press Print. Retrieved June 4, 2012, from The Economist: http://www.economist.com/node/15580856

 Witt, E. (2011, August 4). Melville House Goes Hybrid with Novellas by Chekov, Conrad. Retrieved June 4, 2012, from New York Observer: http://observer.com/2011/08/melville-house-goes-hybrid-with-novellas-by-chekov-conrad/

[twocentsay]

Wek 2.0 : Are we really in control?

We are all aware of the different platforms of media and social interaction. Many of us are obsessed with their spell binding ability to allow us to personalize their content according to our needs, and there’s no surprise as to why. These platforms, or Web 2.0, allow individuals to create and distribute their own content and aggregate content and choose what they want to be exposed to. It also makes bringing together these people and their personalizations much easier.

One of the most fundamental reasons for people making and choosing content is that it allows people to connect. David Gauntlett explores this idea in his book ‘Making is Connecting’. He explains in this brief 4-minute video that there are three reasons why people like making and sharing things online and offline:

it offers pleasure, thought and reflection and helps cultivate a sense of self as an active, creative agent

people spend time creating things because they want to feel alive in the world; to be an active participant in dialogues and communities

a wish to be recognized within a community of interesting people

He explores the idea of ‘making’ in a positive and essential component of society. He explains that “its not just a nice thing for individuals to be creative, its essential for society to flourish, for people to get the opportunity to make and share things rather than just being mere consumers”. His point makes sense, as if people don’t make and create, then information, ideas, art, inventions etc. would eventually run out. So we need a constant flow of creativity for society to continue to grow and thrive and the online platforms of Web 2.0 enable this. If we wanted to share an idea, opinion, photo, painting etc., platforms such as blogs (Tumblr, Blogger, Wordpress) and social networking sites (Twitter, Facebook, Myspace) make this a possibility. And more than ever, sharing/distributing our creations is easy. All you need is the Internet, a computer/phone/tablet and a basic knowledge of how to use these platforms and you’re set. It is no longer just artists, politics, journalist or authors that can create and share.

            However, Web 2.0 does have its downfalls. Because everyone is creating and distributing information, Web 2.0 becomes a place of information overload. Hubert Guillaud has written an article called What is Implied by Living in a World of Flow that explains the primary points of a presentation by sociologist Danah Boyd. Guillaud explains that in her presentation, Boyd describes this notion of information being everywhere as ‘flows’, where we create a stream that we constantly add to, consume and redirect. She also describes 4 problems that exist in these flows in the digital revolution:

Democratization- the idea that just because everyone has the ability to get information into the stream, doesn’t mean that the attention will be divided equally.

Stimulation- the idea that “people consume the content that stimulates their mind and their senses”. This content may not be most reliable or informative, but instead content that captures and holds attention.

Homophily- the idea that people are only connecting with people whom are similar to them socially or in view/opinion.  This is a problem as “we lose the common rhetorical ground that allow us to converse”.

Power- the idea that it is no longer the people who create the content who are in power, but rather the people who aggregate and distribute it. 

I think that currently, Web 2.0 as a platform of creation, aggregation and distribution has not been tamed by society. It is currently a bit of a mess, where distribution is beating aggregation. Even within my university, there are numerous ways where sharing, distribution and aggregation are available on numerous platforms (Blackboard, Moodle, personal unit websites), making it confusing for students. But this is even evident in broader society, where we have different forms of news sources, both formal and informal, producing ‘facts’ that aren’t coherent. Like many other forms of publishing, we have created a new platform for publishing, but haven’t learnt to control our own creation. A little like Frankenstein and his monster..

[twocentsay]

For university, we were in groups of three challenged with the task of creating a visualization. In the past few weeks, we have been looking at how publishing has the ability to 'make the invisible visible’. We were to make a visualization on information that if not put into a visual form, may not actually be seen or noticed. It also had to have some type of significance. In other words, we had to ask ourselves the question: why would people care about this? Of course there is plenty of information that is invisible, that we never come across or search for in our lifetime, so we had create something that not only would people care about, but something that they would actually bother to look at.

In the end, my group decided to create our visualization about the revenue of certain Apple products. Like good little communication students, we collected sales information releases from Apples international Media Information website and compared certain product information form 2007- 2012.

We believe that the importance of our information was that it demonstrated how the convergence of technology forms was affecting companies, even powerful companies such as Apple. This was particularly evident through the declining revenue of iPods, especially when the iPhone and the iPad were released.

What we found interesting was the fact that the iPod sales were in fact decreasing, especially after the release of the iPhone. Even though it wasn’t as dramatic as the iPod, it also showed the slowly declining revenue percentage of Apple laptops.

Our key inspiration for our visualization was a visualization from a Tumblr post that I came across. The post was about Toby Ng’s collection of created posters called ”A World of 100”. As the name implies, Ng’s posters cleverly depict a simple appealing image which he has then cleverly used pieces of the image to represent percentages about matters such as skin, colour, age, sexual orientation and nationality. I was inspired by the simplicity and the impact that the images had and wanted our visualization to have similar characteristics.

As a result, our visualization contained an image of each product, a percentage in the middle of its screen and gold coins to represent 1% and a gold bullion bar to represent 100%. In doing this, like Ngs posters, we hoped that the percentages would have more of an impact if they could be seen visually, not just read as numbers. I believe our visualization succeeded in doing this, as the trends between the products were much easily seen compared to looking at just numbers on a document.

[twocentsay]

picture power

Our world has never been simple. It has never just been a matter of black and white equal grey. It has always been a world where there are complex systems and methods that take time to understand and interpret. And with technology becoming starter and smarter and these systems becoming more complex, its amazing that the average person is able to keep up.

            So what has allowed us to keep up with the world we are creating? One of the tools has been the invention of information graphics. Information graphics cannot just be thought of as diagrams, because they are so much more than that. They are as innovative as the things they illustrate. They allow us to easily get through life without having to stop for hours on end just to get over one simple step. Information graphics are unique to other types of graphics is the sense that they aren’t just pretty things to look at, they have a much more informational purpose. They turn complex ideas into something that can be easily interpreted and understood. In other words, they make the invisible visible.

There are countless examples of information graphics in our everyday lives. Think of instructions on road signs, icons in computers, instructions diagrams on how to open a can, instruction manuals, maps. All you have to do is stop and think what images in my everyday life visually give me information on something else? Tis amazing to think about the power that these graphics have to mean so much by saying so little.

One of the most history defying information graphics was representation of the London Underground map. 

Danielle Cull has written a great paper about its history, design, application and influence. But basically, Harry Beck started to design a much more simple map f the London underground railway map that was at the time very confusing. Influenced by electrical circuits, he came up with a map that less true to geographic location, but much more easier to understand he railway system. It allowed passengers to easier see where they wanted to be and how they could get there. It became a railway map that made way for the creation of our railway maps and other transportation maps that we see today, and not just in London, but also internationally.

Another information graphic concept that has made its stance in the world is the dashed line. I among others overlooked the power of this graphic tool until reading Touch’s article The Dashed Line in Use. This article brings recognition and importance to this simple concept and its “ability to express something three-or four- dimensional in two dimensions”. Its magic is also shown in its many uses. The article collects its many uses into:

The dashed line as hidden geometry- revealing something internal by using the dashed lines to represent the outline of a hidden item.

The dashed line as movement- representing temporary positions/ movements

The dashed line as paths- revealing a path of movement

The dashed line as expectation- where an image will take you, what “action will be followed by another action”

The dashed line as ephemeral material- representing a temporary material such as water, steam etc.

The dashed line as border or seams- representing an invisible border, especially geographically

Even through these examples of dashed line information graphics, it is evident that the power of the information graphic is immense. The London Underground map example further enhances this. Such a power to make a complex notion much simpler or even its ability to completely illuminate words using a few basic images and lines is nothing less than remarkable. It is a form of information that makes our society run smoother. It basically makes life easier to live.

The power of information graphics or images in general should not be underestimated. 

It may not be recognized, but never underestimated.

[twocentsay]

What you don't know can't hurt you.... right?

So this week was about the idea of making the invisible visible. Making something that wouldn’t be usually seen, visible. Seems like a nice concept, right? It reduces ambiguity and allows us to discover. It also enables the extension of knowledge through finding out information that wouldn’t usually be seen if there wasn’t an effort to unhide it.

Now, does this notion sound controversially familiar at all?

What if I said the word wikileaks?

Wikileaks at its basic foundational structure was about making the invisible visible. Yes, what they were making visible was highly disputed and frowned upon, but it still had this basic concept. 

Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, has been highly criticized for releasing information that the public wasn’t supposed to see. This most publicized leaks were a very large quantity of confidential diplomatic cables and military dispatch belonging to the US government. The data not only contained confidential information, but information that was arguably hidden from the public from the government for a good reason- it made the people in power appear incompetent.

However, I’m not here to discuss the content that Wikileaks got its hands on. If you would like an interesting source of information about the content, Bill Keller has written an interesting (but long!) article called Dealing With Assange and the WikiLeaks Secrets on his recollection of his first hand encounter with the data.

What I am interested in is what the whole controversy of Wikileaks represents. It represents our modern world where we are all curious to know everything and through the Internet especially, this idea is quite possible. Now more than ever, our curiosity to find out information has been fed by the Internet. With its possibility to get information at a few clicks of a button, it has arguably lead to a society where information is not only freely available, but easy to create and share. And social media is encouraging this idea of sharing and following (think of following on Twitter, sharing your pictures and thoughts on Facebooks and blogs). So in a society where ideas of sharing and following are casually encouraged, what was the big problem with Wikileaks basically doing the same?

I believe that its because Wikileaks brings this concept to another level. It demonstrated that what we know and what we think we know is very much different. For example, we know that there are (or was) troops in Afghanistan and Iraq representing countries. We think we know exactly what’s going over there and we think we know that our governments are being completely transparent. So once we discover information that challenges this belief, it tends to get confusing. People think they want to know everything. But do we really want this? Do we really need to know everything? What happened to the saying “what you don’t know can’t hurt you?”

This thought comes after reading Ross Cameron’s article Can’t hide love for Wikileaks. He believes that “Assange is forcing us to rethink our assumptions about how much protection the ordinary person needs from the truth. He is arguing that the democratic project was founded on the principles of transparency and trust but has been overtaken by a culture of secrecy and spin”. Despite very much agreeing with Cameron’s argument, I don’t believe that we have become a “culture of secrecy and spin”. As mentioned before, we are very much a culture of sharing and wanting to find out the truth. But I do believe that Assange is forcing us to think about just how much protection from information we need. How much information do we want made visible until we think its too much. Where is the line drawn? Some might argue that its drawn at information that’s confidential or owned, but the leaked information about the US government was confidential information owned by the government and people still were outraged that it wasn’t released to them. Cameron also noted that due to this concept of confidentiality and ownership, governments, including ours, were proclaiming that 'the foundation of WikiLeaks is an illegal act”.

Another article by Tom Cowie called Could WikiLeaks be prosecuted under copyright law? coincides with this idea of copyright and piracy forbidding the fundamentals of Wikileaks. Cowie discusses how any form of copyright law used against Wikileaks would be a “grotesque misuse”. This is especially due to the fact that the US constitution recognizes freedom of speech and that copyright material can be used fairly without permission for news reporting. Australia has an almost identical act.

So if Wikileaks isn’t illegal under any sort of copyright or piracy law, and is basically just revealing information that arguably should be known by the public, why was it so negatively portrayed? The jouro’s had an absolute ball with it, so it can’t be because it damaged them. I believe its because, like Cameron noted, Wikileaks challenged the public sentiment of just how much information should be made visible.

Does making the invisible visible still seem like a nice concept?

[twocentsay]

Archive Fever

To be honest, once I had started doing my weekly readings about 'archive fever', I couldn't wait to write a blog post about it (I guess you could say I got archive fever!). I couldn't help but get caught in the beautiful idea that it represents anything we consider important or worth preserving.

But the problem was that I had no idea where to start. Archives are such a fruitful topic that has so many branches of discussion, which is what I think the beauty of it is. They're something that we take for granted until it's brought to our attention on how complex and important they are.

My first thoughts of archives are mountains of ancients papers and books collecting dust, waiting for someone to pay attention to them. but as I began to look more closely into archives, I began to realise archives in fact are part of our everyday life, without us realising it.

Its something that is involved in our past, present and future.

Basics of archive fever

Summed up, 'archive fever' is basically thinking about how different modes of publishing affect how we live, who we are and our institutions. It's thinking about the different ways that publishing structures information/media for preservation, distribution and access.

However, archive fever can also be a term used to describe our odd relationship with archives. As Sharon Howard discussed in her article Reposted: Archive Fever: A dusty digression, we tend to have this love-hate relationship with archives, switching between "utter boredom and an overwhelming desire to pack it in NOW (several times a day, usually), to the rising excitement of the latest find". As a studying student, I have experienced this many times, putting up with scanning through mounds of useless words for the excitement of that finally finding that one piece of information that appears to make it all worth wile. Seems a bit 'feverish', doesn't it.

Archive Obsession

Us, as humans are obsessed with archives.

Now before you disagree with me, hear me out. Think about history. History is basically a study of archives. We look back through moments in time to understand our present and future with the aid of different forms of archives. These range from writings of Tacitus, Plutarch and Cassius Dio to scrolls found in the Villa of Papyri in Herculaneum and the hieroglyphics of Ancient Egypt. They are all forms of archives.

Even our modern homes, schools and work places are filled with archives. For the most part, they're things we consider important or useful in the future. Collections of books, magazines, paperwork, study notes, trophy cabinets are all stored or arranged for us to access later (i.e. archived).

However, our biggest archive obsession is the Internet. Its vast variety of academic journals/papers, encyclopedias, blogs, articles etc ready to be read at the click of a button has made it easier and more efficient than ever to to access archives. And the creation of search engines such as Google have become the perfect platform to retrieve this information, fast. But it is another form of publishing on the Internet that has taken our modern worlds by storm.

Social Media as an Archive 

As I mentioned before, archives are part of our everyday life without us even knowing it, and forms of social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr are one of them. Social media platforms such as these allow us to publish our thoughts, photos etc. - basically anything we consider important or worth knowing about (which is what I consider the beauty of archives). But as Matthew Ogle describes in his post A Love Letter to the Post Real-Time Web, this form of archiving/social media require further establishment as they make it difficult to access previous posts. He explains that the problem is "ultimately one of attitude. The current philosophy underlying most of the real-time web is that if it’s not recent, it’s not important. This is what we need to change". 

However, social media is beginning to show signs of change towards making archived information more accessible. An example of this is Facebook's new profile Timeline. 

So with archives taking another step towards the future, the question of why we play around with these different forms comes about. They have such potential to change not only how we access our information, but also how the information is created/published in the first place (social media is an example of this). They also have the potential to creature and destroy other forms of archives (e.g ereaders vs books). So why do we put ourselves through such complex yet fascinating changes? Is it this obsession/ fascination with archives that drives us to do this? Either way, archive fever is something society can't be cured of.

[twocentsay]

assembling assemblage

After briefly scanning through the readings about Actor-Network Theory (ANT) based on assemblages, I really had no idea as to why the hell we were having a look at this type of information. But I began to think:

'What does this all have to do with publishing?'

'What does this have to do with recent weeks of looking at the changing modes of publishing?'

In fact, it has everything to do with how publishing is changing. From my understanding, an assemblage is a collection of entities formed together. Manuel De Landa's book A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity  briefly tries to define this ontology, explaining that each of these entities/elements have the capability to be 'unplugged' from one assemblage and 'plugged' into another. This means that they can affect an assemblage, but remain individual entities or 'actants'.

Now, what does this all have to do with publishing?

Well the Actor-Network Theory (which is based on the idea of assemblage) recognises that both human and non human actants have equal capability to affect a network. Therefore, non-human entities such as iPads and ebooks have just as much effect on publishing as   journalists, for example.

A little complex to comprehend in the beginning, I know. But it is a practical method of analysing the shifts in publishing and media.

[twocentsay]

why is there a war or battle?

With all the information available to us these days, there is no wonder why there is an uproar about what is going to happen to the printing press as the world of digitisation and technology rises out of the horizon.

However with all the modes of publishing becoming available to us, I believe it's not where things are being published, but more so how people want to receive their information.

Back in the heydays of the newspaper, people had to physically sit down and read it content. and besides the television and radio, that was basically how consumed your headlines. 

But with our age and time, you can choose how you receive your information.

If you want to gain a casual and rumouristic idea of whats happening in the world, meet Twitter or Facebook.

If you want your news spoken to you by everyday people who don't sound like they've been behind a desk or makeup brush all day, meet YouTube.

If you want a mixed cauldron of entertainment, news, pop up advertising and weather, meet Yahoo or Ninemsn.

If you want undertones of serious, business and political based headlines, meet The Guardian or The Sydney Morning Herald.

If you're faced with places where you're forced to sit and wait (waiting rooms, trains, toilets) and you need your iPhone battery to call your cousin, meet the newspaper or magazine.

There are so many ways of actually receiving published information these days, that I believe the media industry should be looking more at how to integrate these nodes, rather than getting them to compete with each other.

[twocentsay]

" good books any way you want them, now. "

- Peter Osnos