The Pirate’s Dilemna-Ch.3

The 3^rd chapter of Matt Mason’s book The Pirate’s Dilemma covers the history of the remix. Mason raises the question “Is youth reinventing capitalism?” and looks at how appropriation has evolved over time by looking at the remixing of music, film and fashion. He mentions that the music industry, though it generally sees remixing as an infringement of copyright, is in a way being forced to accept it. Is our “cut and paste” culture propelling industries forward or hurting them? By looking back a few years at political movements and messages propelled by music, film and images created by the people, it is clear the remix is not only enhancing the fashion, music, film and art industries but creating a fusion of cultures with common interests that allows these groups that would formerly operate individually to create mass messages and movements collectively. Mason uses the format Star Wars and uses it to write the chapter in order to show us what remixing and reinventing is; which is effective in demonstrating that remixing is not just evident in music. It is the act of taking an idea or concept and building on it to change the message/content. 

For a capitalist society to function ideally, it allows for only a certain number of individuals “make it”. It is these affluent and influent minority groups that have the power to decide what we see, hear and wear (among other things.) The remix is slowly shifting this power between the “powers that be” and the mass population; and therefore may be reinventing a new form of capitalism in our society. Mason quotes Preston Nevins speaking about the abundance of creative outlets we have with today’s technology.

“Being a professional used to be the only way to go. Now that’s just one nice option you can choose. That’s a huge difference that I think is going to inevitably modify the way society structures itself.”

To create music that would reach people beyond your basement or garage was formerly reserved for mainstream record companies and the elite. Now anyone can do it. There are debates about whether using other people’s work is stealing and unoriginal. This again raises the question “who is the author” and really, is there ever just one?

“The past is now public property for us to do with as we see fit. It has been said that ‘history is written by the winners’-but these days, we can all have a shot.” (71)

I stand by the view that no idea is “original” today, in the true sense of that word. Each new idea has evolved from someone else’s, and that is inevitable in art and everything else. For art to evolve it needs a past, present and future and all of its history and development influences each other.

As copyright laws are becoming more lax, and corporate giants are getting lashed back at for punishing remixed art; we need to consider the political and social platforms and implications of our newfound power as citizens.

Personal Connections in the Digital Age-Ch.2

In the second chapter of Nancy Baym’s book Personal Connections in the Digital Age, she introduces the different views people have historically had towards technology which lead to either a utopian or dystopian prediction for our culture. There are four different views she has brought up: technological determinism (technology is the one and only influence on us and society), social construction of technology (it is only us, humans, who shape society and technology), social shaping of technology (we influence each other) and domestication of technology (we get used to it; it becomes banal and gets taken for granted.) If technological determinism is completely valid, then we are not free beings. It's a bit of a depressing thought I think. This would mean that technology determines our every move. Just as people believe in scientific determinism (every cause has an effect) or religious determinism (God knows all, and has a plan for all of us); technological determinism would mean that we have no choice in our actions and that they are completely determined by the effect of technology on us. I do think we have made a free choice in the use of the medium and therefore we have an effect on technology just as much as it has an effect on us.  It is evident that something between social shaping theory and determinism theory is most applicable in our society. Our culture is heavily influenced by technology but we still have the power to choose in which direction it takes. We have taken the materials available to us and appropriated them to fit our needs.This is evident because technology is not used in the same way nor has the same degree of influence in every culture. Technology does not have a universal influence.

We live in a culture that is predominantly driven by technology which means it is incorporated into each of our daily activities, speech, writing and thinking. It is important not to think of it as a separate driver, but as a part of our culture. Still, we are drivers of it just as much as it drives us.   Baym uses the example of people blaming their relationship failures on the internet and concludes with this:

“The social concerns we voice with technology are concerns we would have even if there was no technology around. They are questions of what it means to be truly yourself, to have meaningful relationships with others and to be situated in a world of others who are very different than the people by whom we were raised.” (48)

Can we blame a rise in divorce solely on the facilitation of cheating by the internet? No. Someone who cheats via or as a result of the internet would have cheated regardless of its invention. I guess if we think about what we use to describe and differentiate between different cultures we would talk about language, alphabet, clothing and tools which are all technology; but we would also think about non technology oriented drivers such as religion, ideologies, signs and symbols, ways of thinking, rituals, traditions and so on which are still important influencers as well. I do feel overwhelmed by the boom of technology at every turn and it is right now the biggest influencer of our culture but those other factors of our culture influence it as well; which enforces the idea of technology as “soft determinism.” Influence on our culture flows in both directions from us and technology in the sense that we live in a society that takes what we are given and make it our own. If we only think of technology as the sole driver of our society we are in a sense throwing up our hands and handing over our freedom to corporations, government and the machines they generate. Is that something you want to do? 

T.M.I (Too Much Information)

It seems as though new forms of communication, especially social media and portable communication devices, force us to re-evaluate what a friend is. Traditionally a friend was someone to confide in, someone who will listen to your problems and offer advice, someone you would want to hang out with one-on-one without any other distractions and someone that would do the same for you, among other things. Social dynamics seem to have changed, such that now, people are literally posting their problems online, open for discussion and feedback from any of their 500 Facebook friends. People are writing down personal experiences and posting them online for the world to see, interpret and comment on. They are posting photos of events (no matter how boring, traumatic or embarrassing) that in the past may have only been shared with very VERY close friends for a laugh, cringe or cry. These are now on display for judgement or comment (hopefully a laugh or a compliment!)

“Digital media are becoming increasingly mobile as the internet and mobile phone converge into single devices, meaning that these technologies make communication possible in places where it wasn’t before, but also that they can intrude into face to face conversations where they never could before.” (Baym, Nancy. Personal Connections in the Digital Age, p. 12.)

People talking on their cell phones in public areas are laughing, crying and screaming out loud for all those within ear shot and are still somewhat under the illusion that the conversation is ‘private’ because they are talking into a device that is connected to one other person. As if we can’t all hear you...I have actually seen Facebook statuses asking ‘Has anyone tried ecstasy? Should I do it tonight?’ or ‘don’t know if I should have sex with this new guy or not...such a dilemma!!’ A 2009 study shows our desire as humans to communicate. Given the opportunity, we will talk. Or write. Or Tweet.

“Electronic messages are frequently portrayed as vacuous. A 2009 study by market research firm Pear Analytics, for instance, created a category called ‘pointless babble’ into which they placed 40 percent of Twitter messages, echoing oft-heard complaints that mobile phones lead to empty conversation, sustained for the sake of interacting even when we have nothing to say.” (Baym, Nancy. Personal Connections in the Digital Age, p. 30.)

Does the mobility of communication prompt us to share a constant stream of every thought? People are raising discussions on Facebook over what meds they have been prescribed from their shrinks and what kinds of guys or girls they like to have sex with. Wasn’t this the kind of stuff we used to talk about with close friends?  In private? It seems that there has been a lowering of standards for what it takes to be considered a friend worthy of knowing everything going on in your life. Tweets become reiterations of people’s days; from their morning shower to the exciting act of brushing their teeth at night. I’m not sure whether it’s the use of mobile communication devices that causes this or if it is simply something we do as humans beings and there is just additional outlets for it now, causing us to blame it for our self-obsession. Maybe we just have a drive to communicate and will use anything available to us to do so. 

Personal Connections in the Digital Age-Ch.1

Nancy Baym’s book Personal Connections in the Digital Age discusses the effects of the different aspects of communication technology on our lives. The first chapter gives an overview of the main arguments presented in the book such as: who uses the internet, what is its effect on us and what are the specific capabilities of particular forms of communication and how these change the way we connect with people.

 So...we now have multifaceted personalities. Is this ‘online persona’ we all assume just breeding an entire society with Dissociative Identity Disorder? It seems all these means of communication can confuse our perception and understanding of ourselves. These questions are raised in the chapter in a broader sense: What does it mean to be me anymore?

“How can we be present yet also absent? What is a self if it is not in a body? How can we have so much control yet lose so much freedom?” (3)

Can we really think of our online selves and our ‘real selves’ as different people? I say no. They are essentially the same and will undoubtedly have consequences on each other. Evolving forms of communications are changing the way in which we relate to others in the sense that we almost have no choice in communicating as people can communicate with us without us even knowing (voicemail, email, writing on our Facebook wall...). Your real self will eventually have to respond to all the communicating your online self has been a part of. Times have changed. We used to be able to shut out the world when we were alone, and now we can never really shut off anymore. We can...but we don’t seem to want to. We are now held accountable for things that we couldn’t possibly be held accountable for in the past. As Baym mentions in her book, when people use asynchronous communication through technology (emails, voicemail...) they are held accountable if they do not respond because it is something permanent, unlike face-to-face communication. If someone leaves you a voicemail about a work emergency you will be held accountable when you do not return it. In the past, one could just make themselves ‘unreachable’ and therefore unaccountable.  The invention of portable communication technology has changed the way we relate to others because it makes us constantly available to relate. However, although we are able to take all of our hundred of ‘friends’ around in our pockets, along with all our music, games and videos, I am not sure we can blame internet for procrastination or lack of attention. As Baym mentions in the conclusion of the book, there are factors that can affect how much someone will gain from internet usage such as socio-economic status, geographical location, education, age and gender.

“As adapters or non-adapters, throughout history, we come to media with social agendas, social commitments, and deeply ingrained social practices that are largely replicated and enacted through new technologies.” (153)

Maybe it is true that the next generations will have a different kind of intelligence, but procrastination has always existed in many forms and if people are not interested in something, they will always find a way to distract themselves. Saying that people having a different kind of intelligence is a negative thing makes no sense. Of course humans today have a different kind of intelligence than the philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome, but that makes neither of us stupider than the other.  People have always been looking for a short cut or the easiest and fastest way to do something. Portable technology just makes certain tasks that much more efficient. It is this efficiency, profit and ability to promote ourselves (look how great I am) that may be stopping us from being able to step back from it all, if only momentarily to self-reflect and understand what are the boundaries and capabilities of new media and how they affect our relationships. Young people’s tendency to favour technology to reality is criticized because when used for social use, people are neglecting academia in favour for what they think is relevant to them today. It seems as though books, research, reading and academic pursuit will no longer be relevant in the future and that intelligence will be replaced by short attention spans and minds filled with images, advertisements and celebrity gossip only. I don’t think this is our fate. As Baym puts it “the people have the power.” 

You can find the entire text online in PDF form here: http://www.tvo.org/theagenda/resources/pdf/2010-04-26_BAYMexcerpt.pdf

Web Squared: Web 2.0 Five Years On

After reading the article Web Squared: Web 2.0 Five Years On http://www.web2summit.com/web2009/public/schedule/detail/10194, I can say that I have a better understanding of what the term Web 2.0 means as well as a basic idea as to where it is predicted to go in the future. The way in which the article was written, by explaining how it came about, where it is now and where it is going was very useful in introducing me, or I should say re-introducing me, formally, to the concept of Web 2.0, a term created by the authors of this article in order to explain today’s Web capabilities.

            The Web has become a regular household member, a friend, a colleague, a business partner that enables us to enhance almost everything we are mentally capable of doing as human beings. Tim O’Reilly and John Battelle describe Web 2.0 as a newborn baby learning how to use its senses. From this analogy, we can understand that the Web has not nearly hit its full potential but is just beginning to grow up. I am critical of this notion that the Web seems to be growing up without us and ‘could leave us behind’ and would rather say that to actively participate in our society, a technological culture moving forward, we do have to at least understand its current applications and foresee where the Web is going. We have to recognize its power, appreciate what it can do for us but beware of the implications and costs.

We are no longer describing it as a service that is available to us, but as O’Reilly and Battelle put it, a platform that we contribute to, help grow and share with other people.

“Chief among our insights was that "the network as platform" means far more than just offering old applications via the network ("software as a service"); it means building applications that literally get better the more people use them, harnessing network effects not only to acquire users, but also to learn from them and build on their contributions”

There has seemingly never been a better platform to practice our right of freedom of speech (as always, with limitations.) It gives us as ‘audiences’ as we were previously considered, the power to put our own advertisements out there, create art that people can appreciate on a large scale and even start political movements. Media giants, governments and massive companies are not the only mass communicators anymore...

Web 2.0 goes hand in hand with Roland Barthes’ Death of the Author http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/barthes06.htm in which he wrote that meaning is only what the reader makes it. Regardless of the author’s intentions, a text will be interpreted in so many different ways depending on the socio-economic, historical, cultural background of who is interpreting it. Today, we are seeing and reading content on the web, but we as the readers and viewers become the authors as we interpret what we see, comment on it and even rewrite is as our own interpretation of its meaning.

On the other hand, I wonder, are these applications creating a generation that is perhaps a bit full of themselves? Are we taking this freedom to express our ideas a little bit too far; where it is no longer knowledge and ideas that we share but meaningless jabber about our personal lives...and where does it stop?