Final Day

Motivation to do it something

why did we stop doing our projects

if there is a rough structure why don't we just put it out there?

What qualifies something as being so bad that we abondon?

- personal standard vs external motivation

- comparison to outside stuff

- reciprocal

- preconceived notions

In participation what's more important?

- consumption

- production

- feedback

Consumption

- someone will see it eventually

Audience

- passive aggressive audience?

- what they didn't say was worse

If you aim high and give up vs low quality but keeps going - what's worse?

- if you aim low and inspire other low

- aren't you also inspiring the person who will never reach the high end?

- low quality may play into ego (I can do better)

- more people are making crap

Globally you'll be within top 5-10% of the population for graduation.

- but you still think you're not as good

Content being bad

- but everyone has seen it

- the sharing is more important

When you get into higher number of visits chances are someone shared it.

Maybe participation is sharing.

then you are not necessarily producing or consuming

the act of others letting others know.

The good producer is that 'gold standard'

- but it's part of a hierarchy

is there a hierarchy for sharing?

- you don't evaluate the content

- you do go to your friends and will trust

- theoretically you know which ones to follow

The curator of this act of sharing is someone who is an expert that I trust.

Chaos and Complexity theories.

War in the Age of Intelligent Machines

How the Leopard Got Its Spots

Self organising systems -those experts win out.

Based on rhetoric of democratising media.

- is really a falsity

- you have the option and participation but is selective

- illusion

- we want to believe?

media effects

- we "know" certain cannons even if it's false

- why do we present these false realities

How does the illusion benefit

- to distract between the truth

Can you participate any way you want?

- rules govern how you can interact

- rule of property

- intellectual property

- depends on the notion of ownership

Offline rules have not caught up with online rules

Most laws are based on the notion of private property.

- if I own, I decided

- if you own, I have to ask for permission to share

If you're circulating a link via email is the message or the content of the link being circulated?

Group Share on our portfolios:

1) Biggest think I learned

2) What it means

3) What now?

Disconnects from what you're learning now and what your academic career

Most people think of the internet as a metaphor:

- freedom / limitlessness

Infinite possibilities sound great until you are asked to do something

- million things that can go wrong - how do you pick

The internet as a way of thinking - epistemology

predisposed set of rules

- writing for a class is different than writing on self

- self imposed limits

I have and idea:

- do i make my idea with the tech

- do i create the tech to do what I want

- do i transform my idea to something new

Most of us will defer to what is already there.

Second last class

Reflection as a meta-analysis

- what is this process and how do I go about doing it?

- exercise as autoethnography

- looking at self doing things

- thinking about doing thing as a process

- reflecting on learning from the projects as opposed to doing the projects

Jobs:

www.charityvillage.com

www.mediajobsearchcanada.com

How do you make your own job?

You pitch to the right people.

How do I know what I know?  How do I know?

How do I connect it to others?

The Last Word:

- 1 page to 2 page

- letter format

- Generally give an overall, what my experience was.  Not quite an evaluation.

- Links to you as an individual

- self assessment of your participation.

- To make it easier do it for Ravi, use a number.

- How do you evaluate participation?

- what elements?

- Contribution that stimulates conversation (relevant)

- People sharing outside sources

- Time (inside and out)

- thoughtfulness (the amount of care)

- how you shared your knowledge / skills

Participation according to Ravi:

- did I come as often as I could / should?

- when I was here did I actively pay attention to what was going on

- was I sufficiently prepared to come to class to contribute?

- how do I come prepared without a reading list?

- noticed things around in the world to bring things in

- when I had something to say did I say it? Share it?

- Did I say too much so that others didn't say anything?

- Ultimately, the point of this class is did I actively endeavour to connect this to the rest of the world?

- even things you shared with the class

When you self evaluate get two scenarios:

- too low

- too high

Podcasts:

- Content?

- Method of Distribution?

- Business Model?

How are newspapers going to survive?

- incremental payment

- pay per article

- iTunes Store style --> iNews

- because of the way we do things

- create a new market for a product

- means to an economic end

Gamers

- understand archiving and sharing

- the need to work together

- why do we have the ability to play old games on new systems?

- because gamers love the games that they used to play

- they love the games they play now

- backtrack

- if there is a desire, they work in community - in order to get the games to play - because they want to

- Co-creation - doesn't seem like work anymore

- participation through pleasure is different than participation through profit

Conversation of the day:

Me: My notes aren't that good.

R: I know you're notes aren't good,  I read them over today.  ... grammatically and such... 

Me: But they're notes!

R: ...if you are going to share, you have a responsibility...  

Me: (Thinking to self: Oh burn)

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

4PM Give or Take

Why copyright something if you sampled it in the first place?

Is it good enough to to just cite the source?

Who owns the right to something?

If you came up with something for a company, they own it.  Even if they throw it away.  If you want it, you have to buy it.  It's because you work for them.

How do we go forward if everything is owned and we can't borrow.  How do we work if we don't get compensated for our work?

What are the benefits and consequences of using a template?

- looks like everyone else's 

- facade?

What am I actually doing?  Is it an art project because of what I produce or because of the modes of production?

- is me being on Twitter activism if I mobilise people or am I just venting?

- mode, purpose, intention, 

Some rhetoric is self fulling.  Then we become more open to change and then we do.

Technological determinism

4:02PM

Element and dynamic as size and scale.  Trying to engage in acts of artificial balance / equilibrium.  Big business is imploding.  Rationalize and throw money at the problem.  Eventually things will be back.

Altnerative perspective, why don't we give 40 million people 1 million a piece with the expectations that they buy:

• home 
  
• car
  
• some other things
  

Will it solve housing and automotive crises?

Speculation that if we throw money at business it might effect individuals.  However, throwing money at individuals certainly effects individuals.

why are we not skipping the big part and not just focusing on the business?

Problem is not the business but the size.

Finish: 4:05PM

Homework:

Read Creative Commons Licensing