Portfolio Input

The portfolios are technically due the 14th of May.

For portfolio answer:

SO WHAT?

What issues have come up for you?

- Don't have to incorporate theory

- Working with other - (weird new experience - not bad ~Miriam)

- group dynamic (group as a group or in relation to the course, broader area of discussion.  Social factors?  Linked to participation, consensus,)

- Concepts of micro, macro, mezzo (mediating factors in the middle)

- micro me my friends (good way to learn from what you did) what does that tell you when you look outwards

- macro - the community - more than the people I know

- mezzo - can't account for societ at large but you can speculate (other people like me) makes sense of it, the "so what"

- Annika's 3 areas of the portfolio What expected, what found, what learned.

- what is my baggage coming in

- reflective, descriptive, reflective

- descriptive (this is what happened, it's the easy part)

- the reflective (what I learned is more important)  It's harder because we don't always know what we learned.  Not just me and my people, but something broader

- should you account for everything or account in detail for one particular thing

- For each one I'm going to pick an area and have the spectrum.

- Conclusion (big picture)

- grouping things together in terms of description

How do you know you wrote enough.

- if you read it over a few days after and its just a description

- what does it show me

Podcasts

- you have to know who you are

- may not be as eloquent a speaker as I thought

- audiences - what are they gonna get out of it

- impact of the audience

- easy to abandon (all these tools are easy and free etc)

- not much too it, you can play around with the tools not the same as being invested.   Could do or not do.  Why bother?

- if you sit and think about who you are creating for

- perceived what others want

- constraints

- limits: tech, skill etc

File Formats

- disconnect

- some don't care about the nuances in the difference in them

Blogs

- preparation?  Belief that spontaneous things happen

- If you happen to be the right place at right time - great

- for the most part, the mindset you develop

- tech isn't just objects - way of looking and thinking of things

- sound magnificent can write anything

- by nature, structures what you do

- work to general

- vehicle of democracy?

What is the impact of templates

- then you format what you want to do accordingly.

- encourages a particular type of presentation / constrained thought

- aesthetic of what something looks like and content

Slick looking site vs ugly site with content

- aesthetic vs content

-if you think about think about things on the web, there are compartments that organise what you produce and what looks good

-

The portfolio is a point of organisation

- implications (translate personal reflection into something useful)

- connections

- so what is the cumulative impact over time

- what do things mean?

- investment you put it (do I buy, rent, try this product etc) you have to find it yourself

- what are you willing to invest in

Certain credibility to someone who makes stuff, it sucks but keeps making stuff

- that power and politics

- question of mimicry

- we defer back to things we already know

Work time

Photo Scavenger Hunt!

Find a space that is 'personal' and share it with the class.

One of the elements of this sharing is that you often discover things because you're forced to look at them again.  It's because they were routine.  

As the become part of your routine, do you think about them?

Do you think about them?

Should you think about them?

You become blinded by the specific/various features.

The more you engage the less you see the features.  Does going to it again bring up something?

Does introducing people to your space, does it change?

When you to the same places over and over, the space changes.  The consequences of sharing.

How do you benefit as the party doing the sharing?

Benevolence?

Affirmation?  Ego?

Share and share alike?  Hope to get back?

Share now and hope someone will share with me later?

Do people always share back?

Greedy with free stuff.

I'm willing to take but not to give back.

Implicates a certain, interpretation of what free means.

If you let something be free:

- take away limits --> Implies more choices

- control of ownership 

What does it mean with something free:

- no cost

- no formal obligations

Fiduciary responsibility.

- don't have to be explicit about but mutually understands.

If you get something free say it's all about cost / obligations / restrictions

Is there anything else?

Does it is suggest that there isn't thing else that is free?  Time / energy.

If you have this notion of free and free of cost.  Nothing is legitimately free, everything has some sort of cost.  Does free mean something has no value or is free the absence of cost.  No cost or is worthless?

Does free mean that is without worth?

Does worth imply ownership?  if there is ownership is there freedom in the exchange?

You don't directly get any financial compensation.

Social value vs financial value

Is it predicated on equal concepts of giver / receivers 

Relative to who you are, depending on your position.

If we're engaged in participatory means, especially in social.

Moves from verb sense to noun sense.

Can associate freely online?

Illusion that you can.

Depending on service.

Possible, but mediated by invisible layer - software, host etc

Level of responsibility - moral to self, integrity

Great idea that this influx of freedom.

With email in the 90's they found it was more freeing.  People found that they could be more terse.  How the immediacy places out.   Less formal.

Illusion of democratising element of the internet.  Want to believe that they can do without restriction.  

Lormer and Gasher

- one to many

- mass communication not because one to many but because so many are connected.  (everyone is doing it)

What happens in large act of freedom?

- market capitialisation

- perhaps place to make money.

- element of freedom removed?

- less and less free as more do it

- external factors - capture attention

- ie YouTube/ Facebook over the course of time, become less freeing because more rules

- ('89) freedom is a road rarely travelled the multitude

- The more people know about it, the more it's diminished.

- when anyone can go, theoretically everyone will go

- as more people do it, more regulation - by norms and culture

- in the end freedom allows you to do anything, but also lays groundwork to be restricted.

- as more pursue the freedom of digital democracy, along the way more rules will be enforced - common rules of practice

- the freedom that started it starts to get squelched or disappears

- by sharing we ruin the product

- maintenance of elitism.

- by moving to new tech / platforms

- in the waves of the future are the seas of demise

- through sharing you alter it.

Paul Virilio

Should we freely share because that it the will of the people or should we keep it to ourselves

Why tag a door that no one will see?

Or is that effective?  You just want those who will see it to take know?

Does the ownership of the space change by virtue of who's in it?

By association?

Manufacture of consent

- bombardment from multiple angles

- adopt those roles ourselves

- rather than manufactures trying to produce, how to get us to think we came up with the idea ourselves

- when you buy something, and you speak as you own it

- if you can't tell you didn't come up with it in the first place it's a hard sell

 

Momentum

Momentum

- ebb & flows - how it relates to some remote activity.

--> Micro to mega

How it plays a role in any form of collective activity, enterprise.  How it transforms participation.

ie Facebook friendships

- you reconnect, you talk all the time and then you have long stretched out conversations

- if it dips in users, can't it survive?

- means of interaction may change

- is replacement the only way to get rid of something.

- people who abstain in small numbers may not make a difference

- based on potential of interaction / possibility

- I could if I wanted to - in a scalable manner.  Part of the momentum

Momentum in terms of participation is artificial.

Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell

-how somethings stay small and some blow up

- can't plan for everything, somethings just happen

How do you harness the power of momentum?

- you can hope for

- requires external validation

- unless you want to do it for yourself, you need others to buy in

- ie Hush Puppies trend

- is arbitrary

- how do you get this power?  (Foucaltian sense)

- how do you  get this to work?

- how do you figure out right place right time?

- how do you not give up out frustration if things don't work

Momentum often happens in the background

Is a very powerful force.

Conga Time!

Imagined expectations. 

What do you want them to get out of it?

Goal in mind with certain degree of interaction around you.

If it looks like a unified mass, no one wants to join.  If it belongs to everyone, they want to have to believe that they own it too.

Thoughtful of 'tagging' of gathering others - attracting viewers, comments.  Inviting others to participate is your motivation to keep going.

There is a momentum to silence to active inclusion.

Now these days, it is hard to be in middle (in terms of participation)

If you don't comment on other's blog, how will they know about yours?  Reciprocity?

In order a forward there needs to be a back and forth.  Momentum.

We can all be a part of an online identity.

Notion of participation predicated on the notion of ownership.

We share things that we don't own.

We don't care if we don't own.

Don't feel restricted by the notion of ownership... we can do whatever we want

Then why would we make anything if anyone can participate.

Transfer of ownership if it was seen by someone other than the creator itself.

Free as is beer is something we take for granted.

The question for can we freely circulate music isn't on our minds so much.  We don't see it as stealing, we are 'downloading.'  It is a question of how free circulates.

Portfolio (one organising principle)  Most important thing to articulate is what you learn.

- this is what I expected to happen (about the medium and more generally, about communication in your learning)

- this is what happened. what you did.  what you found.

- analysis.  This is what it taught me about the phenomenon.

- Overall you can link it to a greater picture.

- ie blogging to a greater connection, new wave etc.  So I... etc

- if you can and it makes sense, add academic theory.  but you have to offer a sufficient explanation.

- send a description of what you made as well

-MOST IMPORTANT - what you learned

- 

You are the interface between geek and people. 

If you aren't, you are developing a facility to be that interface.  How the possibilities can work.  If you can learn that from the processes now...

what are the benefits, outcomes - that's the take home from the portfolio.  It's time consuming but easy to do.

Photo Scavenger hunt will be done next time.  To find hidden things.  To expose hidden things.  The less likely things can hide.  Takes the obscure and makes it more visible.  

Once you open the hidden, it becomes public and no longer special.  Especially when you have participation - my things become our things.

Bring your camera!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/videohub/esptest.shtml

"Hate them not me"

If you circulate the test and the cheat concurrently.  There is chance for some cross contamination.  The art of misdirection.

The circulation is more important.  Flow.

Circulation vs

Collaboration vs

Consensus vs

Co-Creation

many can overlap, but they are all separate and distinct.

Collaboration vs consensus

- is someone in charge?  

- collaboration with the illusion of consensus

- who brought it up?

Consensus

- everyone gives up something but doesn't feel like they lose

- fewer forms of communication work this way

- further developed than collaboration

- equal part of everybody

Circulation - I make something and if it passes on it passes on

Co-Creation

- Twitter novels, poems

- Other external factors, power influence regret

- overall enterprise

Consequences of participation.

- Start to question what they are.

- Especially if you get deeply invested in it.

- the more deeply invested the greater the consequences good or bad

You betray the solemnness of public space by sharing them.

- lack of community

Photo Scavenger hunt

- see how many hidden spaces that you know

- don't tag but see if others can see

- geomap

Video:

The Future of Communication

Building technology for the sake of it?

what did we do if we don't have easy access to something?  Be creative??

What does mind mean?

- typically thought as thing in yor head

- notion of understanding various forms of info

- interaction and interdependency

- processes that help you understand

- external brain function 

- ecology of mind

- information interacting

- your relation to world around you

- you're co-dependent

- does it diminish your internal

- what are the benefits?  

Emphasize Efficiency?

Orphan Technology?

Doesn't have to be fair if you make money off it.  

Someone makes a choice along the way and makes it so you can't.

Learning process

- inventory your abilities to makes sense what you can do

- predicates what you will do

- amateur production

- expectations of what you can do and what you are able to do

- feeling of amateurishness - what is that feeling, where does it come from?

- pressures of comparing to others

- we just have to make stuff (but we still compare) but we just have to demonstrate what we learn

- accessing resources, accessing what you don't know, filling gaps

- capstone - opportunity to bring everything before and make sense of it.  Culminating skills in an enterprise.

- I can try this, but it won't meet my expectation of ourselves

- I have nothing worth saying / making / even if I did no one will care so why bother

- 

http://theory.org.uk

Can you find the gaps in his video?

We don't think about the majority that suck, but we think about the few that are spectacular as benchmarks.

Tired of seeing everything on a webpage.

http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/

Creative Commons

- doesn't translate too much into real world

- conceptions of copyright and ownership

Twitter

Follow pgmilo our class story

http://twitter.com/pgmilo

Homework:

Bring a camera for our scavenger hunt