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.