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

Old Media and New Media

ie VCR, stone tablets, newspapers etc

What makes old media "old"

- something newer has replaced it

- obsolete?  Not necessarily...

- different layers of participation / dimensions

- analogue vs digital

How many don't use analogue media?  None.

What differentiates?

- difference in participation

- difference in quality

- temporal

- degrees of control (on demand PVR)

- distribution

- production and receiving content

- knowledge difference (technology skills)

- ie required to know how to read off a screen, typing, internet, --> different level of entry

- Certain degree of literacy (not just read and write, but understand the medium, and difference in ways we understand things)

The ability to choose is a fundamental difference.

How do we understand old to new if our concepts of understanding is from a historical perspective?

- potentially the technology shift (ie tuning via dial vs typing in the number)

- ie URL can be wrong, and you can still guess it, but it is still wrong

- same concept as wrong phone number by one digit

- how do we go forward and develop the tools to makes sense of it

- think about it in a new way?  Not just a continuum?

- New media emerges as its own niches.  But are they really that different?

Is it fundamentally different in the study of new vs old media?

- if you can't get a book, you put it on reserve and you wait, or you try new sources

- value availability more?

- it does affect and impact many things: time, control, sense of participation, sense of value

- organisation and planning

What would you lose if you went offline for a day/a week/

- time?

- email

- how do you organise / communicate with people

- give up degree of external scrutiny

What would gain for a day/ a week

- more creative

Are you not creating if you're just surfing?

- could be learning

- page hits and traffic

Is it creative to be passive going site to site?

- Could be, if you get inspiration

- everything becomes part of your memory for future use

- you do create a value for it

- a level of importance

- the possibility that others will find it as well

- a record, a trail, data, used for different reasons

Just a matter of how purposeful it is

Old and new monikers are unhelpful, maybe just think about media and where it comes from and where it's going. 

Rather than thinking a shift in mindset to a change in form.

Realising that different models don't work off and on line.  How things work differently.  Material properties that surround this transition.

Major networks tried to retain viewers, now trying to squish the form into something new without rethinking.  

ie webisodes

- contributes to the narratives

- most doesn't make it to television

Is tv the box or the content?

you're watching content, but not television.  TV is content attached to a medium.

What is important, the physical interaction or the content.

If I'm interested in the content, does it matter what the platform is?  Does the hardware matter?  What difference does it make? If the hardware doesn't matter, why would people continue to make it.

Now tv is less about the hardware but of the content.

Consider if it's not about the hardware and more about the content it can produce how do we need to hardware to change to reflect this?

Analogue to digital only one small part.  Interface between hardware and people.

Transition from old to new?  How do we interface?  How do we make it meaningful?

We participated with television and it was profoundly changing of the world.

ie Vietnam war

produced a different set of consciousness that couldn't be provided by radio or papers.

In the age of the internet, you get another avenue.  Also provides opportunity for divisiveness vs the collective and lots of small groupings.  A lot more dispersed.

Dominating modes of communication impacts how society acts, thinks etc.

If it impacts sub-collective, but if about interacting you separate those groups

Global Society

- western concept not everyone has access to internet

- shift is not imagining access of things but being everywhere

- can't remove the local

Do we live locally?

- how much value is in the local?

- school, classes

- do you know your neighbours

What is the benefit to have those extra friends ie Facebook?

- depth and breadth of friends

- reorganisation of society that predicates itself on you being in charge of your own choices?

- are you wise enough?

- If we are moving from a society where the local checks on you then how do you make choices with those not around you?

Transformation of where knowledge comes from and how work gets done.

- makes sense that a degree can be bought if you know how to manipulate the system to acquire something.  The question is what do you want to acquire?  A degree or knowledge?

- it is being resourceful.

Why is there a difference between a degree in medicine and diploma in auto mechanics?

- what is the fundamental difference?

Practical knowledge vs having credentials.

- value judgements doctors vs labourers

If it is just a volume of knowledge to digest in a certain amount of time, why not divide the labour?

New practice on old standard?  Old standards with new phenomena?  What should we do?

Value in status?

What is the value you get back from doing something?

Solitude and Privacy what are the differences?

- solitude -

- isolation

- are are smart enough/ strong enough to know when we're alone?

the ability to be unplugged.

Solitude needs to be accounted for in this transition.  Omnipresence, we always feel the need to be connected.  Should have the ability to connect.  Even though I'm away, I should still be there.  We want to be somewhere physically and connected elsewhere.  Subject to always being connect.

Causes us to value solitude as a consequence.  Negative condition vs positive necessity.

It's hard to be alone.  Even if your mind wanders to having to be available somewhere.

What is privacy?

- something that access is restricted

- something that belongs to you

- don't want others to know / have

- the ability to control how others access what you have / what you know

- when we surrender our private lives that were previously private and put them out there ie talking via cellphone on the bus

- are there things we lose?  or is it this just a shift in personal space?  The idea of privacy is just out personal bubble?

- range of implications and consequences

- perhaps we have erased the markers differences and increased mark of sameness

- if you don't have the same sense of same shame /guilt, how does that change society.  Keeping it private, does it do more benefit.  Larger scale?

- being physically removed alters the consequences to being private

- sometimes if others know they may be able to make more informed choices or could have more prejudice

- could increase / perpetuate stereotypes

What is my personal space and how do I define?

Global?

Physical?

Privacy?

As things change, there are always trade offs.

Case Study Themes and Topics

Potential 

- opportunity to participate, but my usurp your participation in another format

- maybe it is a waste of potential

- not always for 'good' or 'bad'

- changing models of production

- lack of direction / leadership / accountability

- reciprocity

- ideas (difference between inspiration and idea is work)

- from these ideas generated, more chance of inclusion and exclusion

- new technological development 

- changing mindsets (encouraging participation)

- 'participaction'

- new affinities (friends online but not in real life or cyberbullying)

- investment (to have different values, because we think we can't avoid the investment.  The less we think about it as a choice the more we think of it as a necessity.  Involves a re-organisation of your life.)

- new concept of "self"

- shifting of cultural territory

Ravi Recommends: CBC Massey Lectures - A Short History of Progress

Progress is overrated

Reorientation of going backwards

Most societies built on community but moved away because of mass production etc.  Rather than making artifacts we are now selling our labour for others.

Perhaps progress is the recognition that we have to go back to be more sustainable.

Participation and collaboration is a return to those eras.

Poor vs rich --> at least poor were stuck to get together

Marx: Class consciousness, "this what I do"

Collaboration as a potential

What other source of potential comes out of this:

- networking with like-minded or different

- uniting in action

- changing industry (Maybe just responded to different cues in the environment)

- different tools of listening 

Newspapers

- if the industry goes

- the structure goes with it

- citizen journalist doesn't work in dangerous situations

- what about different perspective

Fallout of CanWest

- no can afford such a large corporation

- now can break themselves out

- perhaps better, to have more voices and independent

Blogging

- a lot of people in last year's class didn't blog because they compared themselves to the 'real deal'

- downfall of the news industry?

- with a diffusion of inputs you have a diffusion of responsibility

- do we need accountability be traced back to an individual

Can't live off of goodwill on its own

If goodwill makes the world go 'round, how do you translate goodwill into food?

What does Satire offer?

- why are people going to things like the Stewart and Colbert?

- when they are doing it, it is highlighting certain issues.

- a filtering of 24 hours of news to something you can connect to

- recognising power of how we interact and relate

Views

- out of extremes comes negotiations of the middle ground

- the hidden extremes may hide what you should be aware about

Some Research indicates that people only have a certain capacity to maintain friends and relationships.

How does marketing work in the new media environment?

- how do you layer marketing?

- not about applying something existing to something new

- how does it transform?

- create a particular type messaging and integrate into their decision making process

- in new media, does it work the same way?

- where do they get their ideas from?  and is it about getting that message on the right platform?

- Competing for attention?

- Consumers can participate on the meaning of the brand.

- Give the right clues and let the consumer think it was their idea.

- understanding that old media to new is not just transition of platform.  Who is the expert, recognise filter

- not really an audience in the traditional sense where they just receive, they negotiate

Next Week:

Can we move from old media to new

Fantastic Quote of the day:

I'm bullying you right now! 

Homework:

Bring something to share - describe the process of production, be reflective and tell us what you are learning.

Answer the "SO WHAT?"

What do you see as implications and connections.  

Sharing our Case Studies.

Case Study

 

Things we want to know:

Why this subject? / So What?

Background

-       Do

-       Description

Role of audience

Nature of “participation”

Impact of user ß à phenomenon

Convergence of Facebook

Given participation is becoming smaller and smaller pockets.

 Urban Dictionary

The fact that there are 200 new words a day what does it mean about our language.

Temporal existence in those words/phrases

Micro-celebrity – tied to culture of self branding.  A lot of these words or phrases that are produced for branding. 

Shaadi.com

More of a south asian match maker

----

Costs for user

How does site make $$

User’s beliefs with law vs traditional laws – should laws reflect the people or the traditions

Barriers/ hierarchies

 

--- -

 

Culture Jamming techniques being used by mainstream

What about mediated participation

Bizarre impetus of ownership  à how do you say who owns what in social media?

Owners try to blend in.

Restriction comes with ownership. 

Anonymity can work for benefit and be progressive ie protests

Transformation of communication à participation does not always have to be a good thing.

Ie Those who are moderately ignorant can be more ignorant quickly

Perhaps participation can be the downfall as well.  

Gift Economy

Giving Status by giving.

Do you do it because you get status??

Communal.

Collective behaviour as opposed to the individual

Whole the collective supports the whole.

The Gift Economy:

Off Wikipedia:

Reciprocal Altruism – oxymoronic

Don’t really work well together.  Counter intuitive.

Altruism does explain some parts, you are always giving.  But if you don’t get back it’s not an economy.

Almost like Karma, what you do will come back to you.

Have to deal with you give to people because it’s the right thing to do.

What do you get out of it.  Get thanks?

Reciprocity.  Expectation of gratitude?

Scale of return.

Some people will give the whole and some just a small part.  It’s not equal.  

Another aspect:

Creative Commons

Can put conditions on the work.  Then it’s not truly altruistic.

Is competition a natural force?

It’s instilled, that might not matter if it’s natural or not.

But for everything that you find is free, you will have to find someone that has paid in labour or in some kind of capital.  In doing so, the have put themselves a debt to provide for others.

For the most part, most don’t know who/ if they have benefited others.

Some people with the 1000’s of posts on discussion boards have a particular reason for doing so.

Perhaps for the sheer fact to amuse – if not monetize the content.

Do you have to do anything for their motivation to continue?

What about the illusion that you get something

The altruistic reason is the fictional audience.

It’s fictional and who we think we write for.

Gift economy as a potentially transformational moment.

What are some motivational factors:

• - filling a void
• - amuse etc

People mostly give for the cause to be better or because it makes them feel better.  How do you move from intrinsic motivation to external.

Purpose of most social movements – change.

At the end of the day you hope that the change occurs.

If you are actually good at what you do, you put yourself out of business, then you don’t need to do it anymore.

There are few social movements that legitimately put themselves out.

There has to be a deficiency as a motivational factor.

You’re always doing for others, because for some reason can’t do for themselves.

Obligation or deficiency.

If we are working for optimization, it is very hard because of the multitude of views.

Assumptions that within capitalist system we are actually looking to maximize.  

What ever you looking to do you’re looking to maximize, more edu, most stuff etc.

If the gift economy is based on collaboration, then not competitive.

Even open source is regulated:

• - built on computers
• - subject to language
• - cultural norms
• - bodies of knowledge

As much as there is the potential and dispensing of it, almost neuter it for other capacities.  Is it detrimental to the cause?

Do you have a right to dictate what a person can do with a gift?

Why should you be able to do that?

Gift Economy is giving conditionally.

Issues of how you determine conditions.

Just give and eventually something to come back.

No negotiation of a fair exchange.

Presumption that it’s a valueless enterprise.

About the amount of labour.

Can expect that my giving will eventually get others to do same

All engaged in economy in some way.

Transformative tool for our system of exchange.

“Doesn’t guarantee and optimize a sustainable life.”

Unless it’s the Holland pick up a bicycle if you need.

Private property predicates all our laws and how we know things.

What is yours and what is shared.

Constriction of transfer ability of things. (value)

So then find a way.

Society of rugged individualism

Why will some not take something for free.

Participation requires some sharing.  System of exchange, power, social levels of exchange.

How do we encourage people to continue, how do we widen to from limited view.

After the break think about:

• - giving and getting back
• - what did you learn about doing what you’ve been doing.
• - Sharing so colleagues can let you know

(And a great suggestion from Rob)

Homework:

Share /Present your case study

More on Waste - Hey! It's Wang Chung!

Examples of waste on the internet:

 

Cornify.com – seems like a waste of time.  Maybe not wasteful if you change it to notes.  It’s fairly sophisticated technology. 

 

Time is not only a commodity.  It’s cause we think of it as in volume.  Two ways to think of: commodity or experience.  It’s the underlying connecting feature is experience.

 

Is local emails a waste?

No: sharing without interruption. 

Yes: might be more efficient to talk.

 

There are complications to the technology.  When we assume that the technology can do everything, we don’t think about perhaps think about what’s the best technology.

 

Is there a benefit to “wasting” time.

 

What kind of waste can we think of?

Time

Energy – Physical (biometric, cognitive etc), electrical

Resource – material, Financial

Potential - opportunity

 

What’s more wasteful, using something fully for a short period of time or using something rarely over a long period of time?

-       is it more physical waste or more waste of resource

 

To a certain extent there are trade off’s are good for the power of tech.

 

Shifting focus and change of technique. 

 

Waste is relative / is universal?

When holding on to legacy things (ie qwerty keyboard) does it serve a purpose?  With the legacy issues can we let go and change?

 

We collectively made the decisions to keep things the same way.  Ie keyboard.

 

Efficiency at the design level are built in way before we decide to use it.  We dumb your body to use it.  Someone along the way someone made a decision that impacts our participation.  We just think of what we do as what we do without thinking back.

 

Some types of waste are universal.  Some waste just can’t be used.

 

Ie Gillet business model.  à printers and ink.

We perpetuate the model when we engage.  Levels of comfort.

 

You can teach yourself to do but might not enjoy. 

When we felt compelled to do something we might not actually have done something.  Ie product red.  But we feel comfortable when we have an object that says we did do something.

 

If we feel fulfilled by a passive action we won’t take on an active one.

 

Petition don’t do anything.  Passive action placate ourselves, do they equal participation. 

 

There is this idea what when we ‘engage’ in the passive activities, they might lessen the impact of the active.  There is a social badge of honour.

 

Often the structure and institutional aspects of organizing turn people off the whole active idea.  It’s not what they expected and move on.

 

In the end, it doesn’t matter whether or not it had anything to do with you or not.  So long as you believe you did something, you might continue with the active participation. 

 

How waste translates to the gift economy.  Various manifestations like creative commons, open source à economy of excess.

 

Exchange without having a direct and tangible return.  So that because you have shared things, when you need things it’ll be there.  à the spirit of sharing.

 

How do people maximum that potential to make something to do something etc.

 

Participation not just in interaction with others but also with getting further than what you could on your own.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First class back after the strike

When looking portfolio, isn’t description of what you did.  It’s not the artist accompliament. 

 

Engate in autoethnography.  Graded on what you learned. 

What sorts of things you consider for participation in modern tech.

Through the force of being forced to make things in groups.

Can work with anybody.  Not just in the class.  Can talk about that process. 

 

You write your blog to this phatom reader who is yourself. 

 

Downfall: Nothing I love to read myself.

Have own inhibitions.

Can talk about what gets in the way?  What enables?  What contributes to my engagement to the media.  Can be many different things, technically, academic etc.

 

Can be:

Why did I use a public blogger?

Why did I choose this subject?

 

Nature of knowledge acquistion.  How does it fit in the model of education?  If it’s your model for journals and books, what difference is there?  How do you categorise?

 

Portfolio:

Beginning: Overarching thing about what you learned about the course.

Can be organised however you want.

Each section must be 1 page.

Last year some 10-15 pages.  Some went to 60 pages.  Describe what you did is not enough.  What you learned is the most important.  About the broader phenomena.

Each portfolio is individual regardless if you do everything in a group.

 

Participation is more than showing up.  It’s how you:

-       learned on your own

-       take things and help others

 

 

Can do all of the projects in one weekend.  Just explain why you did / didn’t do all of the projects and what you learned.  How did you reflect on your engagement of the excerise in the notion of participatory communication.

 

Facebook Group.

Did you check the credentials for the leader of a Facebook group? 

So some guy starts a group.  Then everyone says, “I should have start a group”

 

Participation on another level

-       being active

-       just being a member

 

We go to the places that are more like us than anywhere else.

 

We can go anywhere in the world, but we don’t.  The chances are that despite the fact that we may engage with blogs from all over the world, the chances are you aren’t getting outside views.  You’ll probably doing what you’re doing.  You really aren’t sharing with anything new.

 

Expand your networks.

-       talk to different people

-       join different groups

-       do different things

-       parties / friends

 

Research is that most people don’t make it past the 1^st page in Google, even less go past 2^nd page.

 

Unless you go to a party that’s good, it’s usually your same circle.  You tend to meet people through a connection.  We follow our blind paths.  The more we think we are expanding our network, we are only expanding through number but not perspective.

 

Those networks are a replication of another connection you’ve already have.  But are all actually quite similar.

 

The ultimate in social media is to become a ‘source.’  When people come to you for information. 

 

Harder to see what the social efficacy versus the political… some social may translate political.

 

Difference between social participation about a political vs social participation around political (organizing to do something vs organizing while doing something)

 

We lost a lot of cognitive energy.  But when we aren’t purposely doing anything it’s called waste.  But some say that is when we get the most done because we can recuperate or come up with new things.

 

It may not be a waste if you still learn from it.  You may not need to take away something tangible. 

 

What is the broader outcome of participation if nothing tangible comes from it?

 

What are the outputs?  What do we get from our participation?

Micro-celebrity à most famous person in a room of 100 of people they’ll never know

 

We are willing to suspend in our belief in waste so we can keep up in our lives.

 

 

 

 

YorkU on Strike? Here's something uh, different.

A few weeks back, a friend and I were in a bit of a spot. We were talking about the future of the world and other larger than life matters. Of course, I'm just lying because that never happened. However, we did manage to create a cheap and dirty spoof on the Christmas song, The 12 Days of Christmas. I thought it would be fitting to share that song here. Especially since this was supposed to be a class blog.

Of course the Strike has hit Day 14, but that's beside the point. We made this before the strike and now it's complete. It probably would have been up on the 12th day if we finished it, but we got stuck. So I sent it around and had another friend help out with one of the verses.

This is a complete change from the 'class lecture notes' that I have been posting. But I realised that meh! Who cares! How about something different?

So here it is, and remember, this is one big joke. Not the strike, the song spoof. I'm still quite undecided about the whole strike situation as I can't seem to get enough information about it.


The 12 Days of Striking

On the first day of striking,
YorkU forced on me
a raise in tuition fees

On the second day of Striking,
YorkU forced on me,
Two student loans,
And a raise in tuition fees.

On the third day of Striking,
YorkU forced on me,
Three side jobs,
Two student loans,
And a raise in tuition fees.

On the fourth day of Striking,
YorkU forced on me,
Four extra courses,
Three side jobs,
Two student loans,
And a raise in tuition fees.

On the fifth day of Striking,
YorkU forced on me,
FIVE WASTED YEARS
Four extra courses,
Three side jobs,
Two student loans,
And a raise in tuition fees.

On the sixth day of Striking,
YorkU forced on me,
Six fees a-paying
FIVE WASTED YEARS
Four extra courses,
Three side jobs,
Two student loans,
And a raise in tuition fees.

On the seventh day of Striking,
YorkU forced on me,
Seven hit and running's
Six fees a-paying
FIVE WASTED YEARS
Four extra courses,
Three side jobs,
Two student loans,
And a raise in tuition fees.

On the eighth day of Striking,
YorkU forced on me,
Eight grades a-failing
Seven hit and running's
Six fees a-paying
FIVE WASTED YEARS
Four extra courses,
Three side jobs,
Two student loans,
And a raise in tuition fees.

On the ninth day of Striking,
YorkU forced on me,
Nine jobs a-leaving
Eight grades a-failing
Seven hit and running's
Six fees a-paying
FIVE WASTED YEARS
Four extra courses,
Three side jobs,
Two student loans,
And a raise in tuition fees.

On the tenth day of Striking,
YorkU forced on me,
Ten cars a-beeping
Nine jobs a-leaving
Eight grades a-failing
Seven hit and running's
Six fees a-paying
FIVE WASTED YEARS
Four extra courses,
Three side jobs,
Two student loans,
And a raise in tuition fees.

On the eleventh day of Striking,
YorkU forced on me,
Eleven strikers striking
Ten cars a-beeping
Nine jobs a-leaving
Eight grades a-failing
Seven hit and running's
Six fees a-paying
FIVE WASTED YEARS
Four extra courses,
Three side jobs,
Two student loans,
And a raise in tuition fees.

On the twelfth day of Striking,
YorkU forced on me,
Twelve buses bussing
Eleven strikers striking
Ten cars a-beeping
Nine jobs a-leaving
Eight grades a-failing
Seven hit and running's
Six fees a-paying
FIVE WASTED YEARS
Four extra courses,
Three side jobs,
Two student loans,
And a raise in tuition fees.

What are we doing now??

¬¬speculative industry
what about the people that buy domains to sell
when you buy you don’t get anything but a name
we think most of it’s free but it’s not. The internet is free, so people have found opportunity to make money

Wiki – online collaborative environment
Problems if anyone can make changes
Can have some good collaboration
Seed ideas – people to come to your idea. It can go into any direction

If you trying to transfer ideas from one model to the next, it might not work. Participation is always limited by something else. Are we just participating with like minded people?

Radical Nounism
One word description.
Noun to describe something we have seen grown in. Emphasis on noun-laden rhetoric. Syntax is garbled and speaks in terms of nouns. Talking in negative / positive doesn’t work. Any reference, it’s a form a name-calling. Way used in negotiations and identity. Come to understand why we focus on things when there are so few. Difficult to draw the line between radical and non-radical. It’s hypocritical to do so. Started approx 10 years ago and drawn when of formula for always being right.

Case study
Specific
Description
Defines case/ membership
Provides context, historical
Provides theoretical context to understand
And provides outlet.

www.cbc.ca/thepoint
Radical nounism, part 2
Alternative from of a case study


Strike
For more info:
YorkU website search contract negotiation CUPE

Flash Mob time!

Notion of Viral Media

Flow and relationship in production.
Which one is more important, if you are participating, producer or redistributors more important.

Power and responsibility, increasing spread of trivialization of info.

• What is the impact of us gate keeping
• How do you find what you shared
• What bout stuff you don’t want
• Think about how stuff that you delete, what sort of power is that?
• Who are gate keepers
o Whole range, from advertiser to readers to shareholders, to owners, producers, editors etc
• By pressing del, you are occupying many of those roles. You are doing what traditionally place of authority. If in another context, making important decision.
• The connection between yourself and the others who also got that message.
o Have you claimed your Nigerian lottery?? Etc
o Still have power to get rid of or forward
o Have power to send both fluff and real stuff
• When you do send, you recognize whom you can send to. Filtering
• How does information spread?
• The more power if distribute, the more the effigy of the message has
• You are participating your endorsement via sending
• Because so many more things to spread, we all need to spread
• Not much different from niche channels
• You are engaged as a distributor through viral spreading

- why would you hide distribution list
o responsibility to protect privacy
- Do you care about who saw the thing? Or do you just want to see it?
- To present yourself in certain manner, by what you send
- Some use that distribution to be middle man

- What makes it powerful is that people send it
- you give it cultural currency
- production doesn’t presuppose the distribution
- is it the content itself or the distribution that makes it popular
- Do you have reciprocal responsibilities
- Snowballs participation, forced collaboration
- Creative Commons; distribution caveats
- Rules to distribution and re-distribution
- Built around sending links and not giving material
- To where the video is hosted and everything encompassing it
- New form of participatory distribution
- Pre-existing?
- Structure engineered to encouraged to share, open as possible
- If equal, the more we click the link the higher up in search

Why not burn those videos to disk?
- everyone we want to share it with, has access
- thus distribution list is limited to those with access
- certain transience to YouTube
- transience part is distribution
- things that don’t last very long

YouTube Justice
- you can film something
- it can be really important only if someone picks it up

Citizen Journalism
- if you have something that can be visualized, and you can provide cheap/free content then we want it

Camcorder Revolution
- transformed event
- turned into inflammatory, not just video tapped but distributed
- distribution created the spectacle
- political economy surrounds distribution networks

To a certain extent we produce fictional audience when we make our distribution list

When you produce for someone else, your produce within a template. We don’t make our own stuff that often. We’re plug-in to templates. Creating audience within a set of tools. When you make for yourself, you’re limited to your own tools.

When you’re distributor, your limited to your constrained environment.

Indy Media
- gaps in mainstream
- but usually to only like minded people
- rare that those in the network distribute to anyone outside of it
- it’s because if you are talking to someone who already believes, you may be fueling their passion
- if you want to change the world, but if no one looks than that participation is lost.

Spreading the word isn’t always the best idea
- copycats

Often it’s the fact that everyone talks about it makes it important. The substance doesn’t matter or who’s talking about it.
What does it mean to be successful
- how do you know whether or not it is good
- how do you mean success
- not just as authorship but about distribution


Why is there a sense of hurt if something is rejected that you share
- personal
- question yourself
- offensive, you take time to do something
- not that you were wrong, you assume they were wrong - judgment
- more about you and not them
- Well that just blew in my face, next time I won’t send. You self edit.
- Every now and then, you email and say don’t send

- You are a producer in a regular channel but not necessarily in content
- Notion of participatory, if we are doing multiple things. Production, distribution, redistribution.
- When you get to the same point again and again, you’ve reached saturation.
- If you start to recognize the people in your distribution – 6 degrees
- Doesn’t’ have linear beginning and end

Next Class:
We’re going to make something. Think about authorship and distribution.

More Media Bios

We starteed with media biographies. More great projects on how people use media in their life.

- Gamers have a lot contribute to meda; largely by their participation
- Imitating real life media
- Train soldiers
- simulators
- Whole new market, new funding
- new hardware
- social impact (addictions)
- recruitment tool

- element of play important to participation
- only works if a lot are doing it
- transformative environment
- play as in plugging in to something or creativity

Question - Who am I? Who am I writing for? What do I have to say?
- Why are we blogging?
- Walter Ong, student of McLuhan
- Developed oral societies framework
- He was a practising Catholic Priest
- Transformation from oral to print
- Author's Audience is Always Fiction
- I don't know who they are, I don't know if they'll like me
- Audience imaginaire, you have to make up the audience
- you alwasy have one. who did you imagine
- anticipate who you want
- the "outsider" could be anybody (nameless, faceless)
- it's hard to write for
- act of creating the audience is harder
- creating audience creates the content
- made up who the audience is, because you don't know who they're gonna be
- in imagining an audience differently, you write differently

What is the role of the producer? What is your impact?
- sell them an idea
- not necessarily about selling
- convicing / compelling
- what influence
- insight
- "I don't blog b/c what's so important about me"
- many start with "I don't know who I"m writing for or if anyone will read..."
- as they get picked up, they change
- on very many levels we will
- by linking / not linking you create a community for sharing
- conditions for participation
- once there is a collision of blogs, there is a clash in audience
- not jsut interested in when theyr with you
- when you just put something out there, someone will read it
- or programmed a computer to link to other things

- If blog about self
- exposed
- defensive
- reliable (having to post) responsible, if you post something, post more
- self organising system, network
- not necessarily linear
- some linear, some orphaned, some non heirarchtical
- choice of platform pre-disposes type of participation

- platform determines behaviour - not in techno determinative way
- engaged a particular audience
- blogs regulated? ELUA CCRF HR

- Net Neutrality
- Who controls the internet?
- The owners of the servers?
- The owners of the content?
- What about network owner?
- multi layers of ownership
- EULA there to protect their business
- vast majority of users don't read EULA
- limited factors - set rules / parameters of participation
- us or the market that makes the demands
- what creates the conditions for change
- participation impacts for a limited time.
- those restrictions may be more important than what you are allowed
- make you self edit
- evolves sometimes out of interest

- no course in audience studies at York
- you don't own the content once you publish according to some EULA
- sometimes we imagine the audience two fold: who we want to see it, and whose rules we have to abide by
- different layers - audience we don't want to offend when we find the audience we want to
- imagine that the restrictive audience is a thing. But no more real than anything else. just as made up.

-Engaging in the participation - audeince, content, production
- transform yoursleve from this is a wide open thing to an active participation uadience
- it will be perfect for your audience

-if there is grnad narraive judging you - you do nothing

- Question of flow
- where do the things you see/read come from

Participation
- Internal vs External participant
- How do you define participation
- Do you have to be a professional / amateur?
- How do you gauge participation?
- How many layers are there?
- What depth?
- Transformation of how we work with the mediums
- Social difference?
- knowledge difference?
- http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i04/04b00701.htm
- Arguably the kids now are physiologically different
- Digital Native vs Digital Immigrant
- Participation by engaging by traffic? Do you have to be in and there? Not just driing by like everyone else? Not part of the traffic
- If everyone else is doing it and I don't, am I still participating? What if everyone is doing it and I question it?
- What if I don't do it on purpose?

- Is there a fundamental difference between how we communicate? Big words vs txt speak

Class exercise:
Link to everyone's blog.
Rules:
Cannot pass notes.
Cannot yell across the room.

Solution:
Facebook group: SOSC 4330 on the York University Network

First Post

It has been a very tumultuous start to the school year. I've already feel like I'm under a mountain of stress. Although I'm not behind, it certainly feels that way.

As most people that know me already know, I'm not one to stick it out to write things down. (Unless it's something important that I need to remind myself of later. Or it's a "to do" item.) I have owned several blogs over the last few years. All of them have been because of school. I have never felt the urge to write, so this 'assignment' is not different. And if you really must know, those blogs have all fallen into a virtual graveyard. I have no idea what happened to them, nor do I feel the need to resurrect them. At the same time, I really don't remember most of them. But the most recent one can be found at:

www.fuzzytravel.com/fngo

Feel free to request posts on any topic that relates to the course. The last blog was the most successful of all the other blogs as I wrote in it more than five times. Let's hope this one is better than the last.