The Chair Just Called Me Fat - Web 3.0

In a world where anything can start, maintain and be a critical attractor in conversation (Bleecker 2006, p1), how will we know when we are interacting with human. It is al really sci fi and seems unrealistic but after the video that was played in the lecture about the futuristic networked home, it seems anything will be possible.

As Ted pointed out in the lecture, there are now more things on the internet than people and that number will be sure to sky rocket once everyone adopts the ability to talk to their home/car/other. So where do we draw the line? Granted there are some very cool ideas on display. The ability of an alarm clock to know your bus is running late so there is no need to rush and lets you sleep in 5 minutes, to come home and already have a meal being precooked and the TV pre-programmed. It would certainly take the hassle out of things. But what if objects start to feel mistreated? Will that be possible?

Say for instance a car is networked to thousands of other cars and learns how their owners change their oil regularly and reads the car next door's tweet "just got washed :P" and get angry at their owner? For a chair to tweet "geez just got sat on by a big one". Now that would be a hilarious world. But certainly a dangerous one.



Bleecker, J. 2006, 'Why Things Matter: A Manifesto for networked objects', near futurelaboratory, accessed 22/10/2011 http://www.nearfuturelaboratory.com/files/WhyThingsMatter.pdf

Mitew, T. 2011, Case Study: Case: The internet of things: from networked objects to ubiquitous computing, DIGC202, Global Networks, University Of Wollongong, delivered 24 October.

Google vs Apple. Freedom vs Comfort.

It is very interesting to see how the landscape of technology slowly changes and the businesses that run them change along with it. When apple first entered the world is it heralded the Think different, be different attitude in order to compete. Now that it is a global giant, it seems as though it's tagline doesn't count any more, but no one seems to care.

As Daniel Roth says the Android is 'a free, open source mobile platform that any coder could write for and any handset maker could install....would have the spirit of Linux and the reach of Windows' (2008 p.1). It is now Google of all people pretending to be "free" and support the grassroots nature of the internet. It seems as though Google, who seem to go one way by trying their hardest to commercialize YouTube and then do a complete 180 turn by creating (supporting) such an open source software.



Seems to me Apple have lost their identity as the smashers of Big Brother and have now become Big Brother themselves. Even more interesting is that even after all the talk in class about how everyone likes the idea of "free information" and back people fighting the establishments, over 80% of the students laptops are apple, probably 90% of their phones are iPhones...so does freedom really mean anything to the general population?

Roth, Daniel 2008, 'Google's Open Source Android OS Will Free the Wireless Web', 23 June, Wired, accessed 14/10/2011, http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/16-07/ff_android

Twitter is for over consumeristic Americans...

About 2 weeks ago I blogged about the ever changing platform twitter has become form it's early days of a "day in the life of nobody" to now being used by political activists and gaining credibility as a source of news and sharing information. Although we seem to share the same sentiments, Morozov (2011) seems to then become very anti-American in his stance on twitter and how responsible it is in helping grass roots movements.

As stated during the tutorial twitter and Facebook are used as organisation tools that help to organise real world movements that in turn create change. There is no use having a completely online movement as the government don't seem to take notice. Morozov himself says 'the internet can be effective tool for political change when used by grassroots organisations' (2011, p1). However he then goes on to discredit places such as twitter and Facebook saying it is all about the peoples motives and rive and not the technology, which is where is argument is lost.

Bringing in Gladwell who follows his train of thought in his article Twitter, You're No Martin Luther King, claims that revolutions tend to be overlooked by the tools the activists use such as 'the role of the telegraph in the 1917 Bolshevik revolution...tape-recorder in the 1979 Iranian Revolution (highly recommend further research, it is fascinating) and fax machine in the 1989 revolutions' (Morozov 2011, p2). This I agree with in essence that activism doesn't not spring from its tools but rather activists use tools to spread their ideas. This however does not mean the tool was not vital in the act.

The final nail in this particular argument for me was when he stated 'by emphasising the liberating role of tools and downplaying the role of human agency, such accounts make Americans feel proud of their own contribution to events in the Middle East...Silicon Valley deserves a lion's share of the credit'. His ideas are truly interesting, but the fact he is so extreme in his view, makes it hard, for me at least, to take his argument criticising it heavily. After 2 pages of a well argues point, he suddenly falls into a 'screw you America' mentality. That isn't to say however that his points do not have their own merit.



Morozov, Evgeny 2011, 'Facebook and Twitter are just places revolutionaries go', 7 March, The Guardian, accessed 8/10/2011.

A fine line...

Activism has always tread a fine line on the issue of legality and usually it is the ends that justify the means. Most people judge activism by motives rather than actions and see something that starts a revolution as courageous rather than illegal. But where do hackers stand?

The internet is a political tool used by many already with 12.6% of blogs on the internet are of a a political nature (Herring, Kouper et al. 2005). However there is a difference between simply blogging about politics and actual doing something about it.

Hacking is a much misunderstand "medium" for expression as early movies about hackers proves. The public as a whole are continually driven by media-hype in believing that hacking is 100% bad and illegal. People such as Julian Assange divide opinion wherever you go (Khatchadourian 2010), so is hacking to uncover the truth or to help democracy really just?

Take the recent attack on the Playstation Network. A supposed statement from hackers rebelling against Sony's actions to track down those people who have cracked their PS3's in order to charge them. However whilst they were in the system they just decide to steal a few thousand credit card details? This is a case where I am sure everyone agrees, the message definitely got lost.

So what about hackers that don't leave a trace, don't ruin or destroy anything, and don't "steal" but rather copy. It is interesting to note how stealing now does not cover online technology. Stealing used to refer to when one thing was taken from one by another. However now it is possible for someone to simply take a copy whilst leaving the original intact and freely available to the owner. But that is a side note.
So if you agree people such as Julian Assange who simply uncover the truth are in their rights to do so, then surely organisation such as the CIA and ASIO have the right to monitor computers for threats and the like? An interesting discussion in class found that this was not the class that rather, people tend to like the idea of people standing up against governments through hacking, but do not like the idea of the government retaliation with the same tool. Food for thought.

Hacktivism, is it a justified crime?

Crabtree, J. 2003, 'Civic Hacking: A New Agenda for E-democracy', 6 March, Open Democracy, accessed 13/9/2011, http://www.opendemocracy.net/media-edemocracy/article_1025.jsp

Herring, S, Kouper, I, Paolillo, J, Scheidt, L, Tyworth, M, Welsch, P, Wright, E, & Ning, Y 2005, ‘Conversations in the blogosphere: An analysis “from the bottom up”’, Proceedings of the 38th Hawai’i International Conference on System Sciences, vol.4, pp.1-11, accessed 10/8/2011, http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/HICSS.2005.167

Khatchadourian, R. 2010, 'No Secrets: Julian Assange's mission for total transparency', 7 June, New Yorker, accessed 13/9/2011, http://newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100604fa_fact_khatchadourian#ixzz1Y7jrtkW7

The Evolution Of Twitter

From humble beginnings, Twitter was ridiculed by most as a network for people to share their favourite cereal. However it has evolved to become an integral part of no only world news but also activism and an agent for change.

The idea of using twitter as a medium for activism has been met with differing attitudes and results. There are several famous events that have taken place thanks to twitter such as political activists in Egypt and China using the site to break through censorship barriers. There is even a guide about how to effectively use twitter to start a an activists movement. It certainly has come a long way from the twouble with twitter.



One of Johnsons main points is how twitter is continually being used in new and creative ways (giving the example of all the end-user applications designed for it
). An interesting idea was developed after people in New York were reading tweets about an earthquake hitting before feeling the vibrations themselves. The idea is that people use twitter as a warning system with real-time alerts and updates. This idea was used and carried out by people in Bangkok during the rioting to keep people out of areas that were filled with rioting and violence as pointed out by Ted (2011) in the lecture.

Despite some believing that online activisms and petitions are useless such as Clay Johnson from InfoVegan who said that online organizing is a great lie and does not work (Horn 2010). However I believe he is completely wrong. Although online activism seems like the easy way out, I see it as a tool to get like minded people to work together and although a lot of it is simply playing to the crowd and acting socially aware by changing your twitter page green, there are those who are willing to do more and use twitter to meet others who feel the same.

Horn, H. 2010, 'Your Online Petition Is Useless', The Atlantic Wire, 12 August, accessed 7/9/2011, http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2010/08/your-online-petition-is-useless/19146/

Johnson, S. 2009, 'How Twitter Will Change The Way We Live', Time, 5 June, accessed 10/9/2011, http://www/time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1902604,00.html.

Mitew, T. 2011, Citizen Journalism and New Media Audiences, DIGC202, Global Networks, University Of Wollongong, delivered 12 September.

Blogs are poisoning the air supply

'Oxygen is more vital to human like than gold, but because are is abundant, oxygen is free. Weblogs make writing as abundant as air, with the same effect on price' (Shirky 2002, p.2). As such instead of a handful of news sources we can now find thousands if not millions of blogs on different topics around the web. But with such an abundance of people publishing items, he likelihood of it being incorrect is growing higher.

Epitomised by Gus Cirola (2011) when he said 'you found it on a credible site not just some persons blog'. Shirky's argument about online blogging killing print media is true in a sense, however it is not killing the Giants of the news world. People still visit big newscorp websites to receive their news than other we resources. Granted places such a reddit and ohmynews are growing in popularity but even things on those "trusted" sites need to be fact checked before sharing them.

Kevin Kelly put it best when he said 'trust is an intangible that has increasing value in a copy saturated world...you'll pay for authenticity'. The relationship built up by big news networks through years of being the only news source does not simply wash away once free items and other sources become available. Humans are creatures of habit and stick to those habits as much as possible. I am not saying that newspapers and big news companies are "authentic" simply that they are trusted by most. Big media companies tend to avoid having egg on their face by reporting wrong facts as much as possible, that isn't to say theyw on't spin it to suit their own agenda.

Cirola, G. 2011, podcast, The Drunk Tank, RoosterTeeth, 9 June, accessed 6/10/2011, http://roosterteeth.com/podcast/

Kelly, K. 2008, Better Than Free, accessed 3/9/2011, http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kelly08/kelly08_index.html

Shirky, C. 2002, Webligs and the Mass Amateurization of Publishing, accessed 3/9/2011, http://shirky.com/writings/weblogs_publishing.html

Convergence - shifting control to the people?

New media has always been touted as the hero of the user (or prosumer), where we control 'what we watch and what we hear, what we keep, discard or forward' (Deuze 2005, p246). But is convergence really doing this?

To that one controls every aspect of what hey hear or see is a bold statement. In this new age of media what exactly are the tools which allow such freedom. Online streaming? Email? Granted a lot of people no longer have pay tv as most of what they want is now available online. But as Henry Jenkins says, convergence does not mean the new replacing the old, it simply means the new and old meeting and finding a way to co-exist. We already see signs of that.

The once free videos now have unskippable ads at the start of them, which if you are really fussed about can download things such as adskip and adblock to stop it, but that doesn't mean you have escaped. I do not think I have been to a website in the past few years that hasn't had some kind of banner ad. It seems that convergence simply means the same old stuff just on a different platform.

Looking at it from a philosophical point of view, you can even say the new media has taken away our ability to watch what we want. There are several studies, on-going and concluded which state that people who watch a screen (TV, Computer, phone etc...) for excess of 2 hours per day have a lower attention span than those who don't (Grohol 2010). With a lessened attention span it makes it quite difficult to focus on things, even though you want to watch them. For example, although The Godfather is a great movie, it is hard to sit through the whole thing for me. TV shows that go for an hour have a hard time keeping my attention, even ones that I record and want to watch.

So what is the real effect of convergence?

Deuse, M. 2007, 'Convergence culture in the creative industries', internationsal journal of cultural studies, vol.10, no.2, pp.243-263.

Grohol, J. 2010, 'Video Games and TV Linked to Decreased Attention Span', PsychCentral, July 5, weblog, accessed 30/8/2011, http://www.suite101.com/content/attention-spans-decreasing-with-too-much-technology-a258607

Jenkins, H. 2006, 'Introduction: "Worship at the Alter of Convergene"', in Convergence Culture: where old and new media collide, New York University Press, New York, pp.1-24.

Pytel, B. 2010, 'Attention Span Decreasing With Too Much Technology', Educational Issues, July 7, accessed 30/8/2011, http://www.suite101.com/content/attention-spans-decreasing-with-too-much-technology-a258607

Patents: unnecessary evil or tool of the people?

Copyrights and patents are usually argued to protect the right of the creator so they can make some kind of money from their creation. But the issue goes deeper than people having the right to make money from their own idea.

Boldrin and Levine (2007) argue that patents actually do the opposite of what they were purposed for, and hinder economic growth through lawsuits and not allowing others to add to the idea for years if not decades. Using the example of the steam engine and how it was not Watt's first patent that made the steam engine what it is, but rather a combination of 3 or 4 ideas that made the steam engine a viable source of propulsion and good for widespread adoption.

However this idea that patents are evil since they don't protect their owners anyway overlooks the 2nd main purpose of a patent system: 'promoting public disclosure of new ideas' (Pol and Carroll 2007, p60). Had Watt not patented his plans for a steam engine, had he not made it public, than no one would have had the basis for which to make it better. The only way others would be able to create steam engines (without Watt's basis) would be to reverse engineer Watt’s engines when he sold them publicly. However this would have added many more years of research and design than the patent of a forced monopoly did.

Trade Secrets, although hard to keep, allow businesses to stay as a monopoly forever (or until someone reverse engineers or discovers the product by themselves randomly). Coca-Cola keep the recipe a trade secret which means, although they have no patent, no one it seems is able to match their flavour. This is a minor example, but imaging if say a medical engineer invented a new tool that made heart surgery 10x safer but decided not to patent his idea but instead allow doctors to use it but never keep it (to save it from reverse engineering). He would have a limitless potential to make money from it but there would be no point where his idea became freely public and allowed others to produce this new device. Granted the example is farfetched it proves the point that patents, although creating forced monopolies, do have the potential for good.

Although it is sometimes used to simply keep market control. Things such as Bogus patents where an extremely minor insignificant thing of a product is changed in order to get is passed for a new patent (known as a bogus patent) (Pol and Carroll 2007, p65). So although there are some negatives to the system, the greater good it can do makes it a viable system and one to keep.



REFERENCES

Boldrin, M. and Levine, D.K. 2007, 'introduction' in Against Intellectual Monopoly, Cambridge University Press, Cabridge, UK, pp1-15.

Pol, E. and Carroll, P. 2007, 'The Creative Economy: First Principles', in An Introduction to the Creative Economy, McGraw Hill, North Ryde, NSW, pp.33-78.

All Work And No Play Is A Matter Of Perspective

With the industrial age and the traditional 9 to 5 job came the idea of leisure time (Mitew 2011). When time wasn't spent working it was said to be leisure time, but now with the lines between work not even blurring, realistically they have already gone with almost every single person doing more and more work related activities outside of work hours and in the home. So why is this new form of work suddenly acceptable?

This 'function creep' (Gregg N.D., p14) describes many behaviours such as monitoring and finishing tasks at home that many people would not consider "work". Today's technology has made it possible and therefore necessary to work from home in order to 'keep ones sanity'. Even the new system of networks (rather than hierarchies) thought to bring more power to the worker is actually believed to have created more problems as people tend towards 'self-blaming' and feel like 'failures' if work isn't a success rather than blaming other factors (Banks 2007, p11 in Gregg N.D., p15). So the increased power in the workplace from the shift in responsibility and communication means that people now feel as though they are in control of their entire work life and therefore take the blame when things go awry...?

Bringing work home is the norm and as such people now need a home office, Smartphone, laptop and any other device to make their life "easier". As Gershuny (2000) suggests, it seems as though leisure has become something that you have to work hard for. As shown by the increase in consumption of goods and services, people are still moving at 110% during leisure time in order to fit in all the leisure activities they have worked so hard to obtain. Even now what was once a pure leisure activity has become work-related. Companies even have business meetings on Second Life (Wagner 2007, Pattison 2008).

The most interesting point of all this is the idea that people have become internet addicts and so do not mind doing the extra work simply because they love to be on the net. It may not be as rational as that in their minds but put simply, people like being on the net surfing, looking at web pages, answering emails etc...It is almost as if whilst working online their minds have gone off into cyberspace. I know whilst writing this blog I have become oblivious to things around me, which is in its own way sort of calming. The world narrows as you focus on the screen and not the problems outside it.

Maybe that is the power of technology. Work has become leisure. People stating they can get a good night sleep after working on emails all night because their mind can rest easy. Rather than leisure being the absence of work, it is now the activities which make us feel most at ease.

References

Banks, M. 2007, The Politics of Cultural Work, London, Palgrave, cited in Gregg, M. N.D., Function Creep: Communication technologies and anticipatory labout in the information workplace, accessed 8/8/11, http://homecookedtheory.com/wp-content/uploads/functioncreepnms.doc, p14.

Gregg, M. N.D., Function Creep: Communication technologies and anticipatory labout in the information workplace, accessed 8/8/11, http://homecookedtheory.com/wp-content/uploads/functioncreepnms.doc

Mitew, T. 2011, Global Media Busniesses and Immaterial Production, DIGC202, Global Networks, University of Wollongong, delivered 15 August.

Pattison, K. 2008, 'Why You Should Have Your Next Business Meeting in Second Life', Fast Company, August 5, accessed 18/8/11, http://www.fastcompany.com/articles/2008/08/interview-philip-rosedale.html

Wagner, M. 2007, 'Using Second Life For Meetings And Collaborations', weblog post, InformationWeek, Febreuary 8, accessed 18/8/11, http://www.informationweek.com/blog/229216663

Hierarchy to Networks - A Change in Government?

As mentioned in the lecture there has been a movement in the workplace and life in general to a more networked system of connection from the traditional hierarchy. From the behemoth that was IBM to the now giant Google.

The economy has followed this shift, although not as dramatically as some might suggest, from industrial production to the knowledge production (. This new "Knowledge Economy" (Pol and Carroll 2007, p3) is based around the use of knowledge as both an input and output. What companies are best equipped to thrive in such an economy? One with a very quick feedback cycle.

The OODA loop shows the steps before an action can be (or should be) taken. With the example of World War 1, Ted showed how when this loop takes longer to go through the outcomes becomes less positive. Hence why companies now have very quick communication between members and have shifted from hierarchies to networks of individuals. Although this may be seen as a problem in some respects, it does pose the question, why hasn't government changed?

Granted the government now has to deal with issues such as twitter and they have their own twitter page and facebook page etc...but the government itself has hardly shifted at all. It is obvious to most if not all that for years if not decades, the people have felt the government is out of touch with its people. What better way to get in touch again then by integrating them into a network? I'm not suggesting we become some socialistic utopian dreamland where everyone is equal, merely stating that the hierarchy in place by which the government stands is at its core doomed to stay out of touch with the people. Should they not opt to change a flawed system? Many would say that the system now is unchangeable, that it is the best we can do, but the same was said about previous companies. They were untouchable giants (IBM), which were eventually killed off by disruptive innovations (Pol and Carroll 2007, p17). Perhaps the government will one day face the same fate?

Anonymous 2010 'How you can Opt for Ethical Search engine optimisation programs', weblog post, Webfolio Concepts, August 25, accessed 18/8/2011 http://blog.webfolioconcepts.com/2010/08/25/how-you-can-opt-for-ethical-search-engine-optimisation-programs/

Pol, E. and Carroll, P. 2007, 'New Economy', in An Introduction to the Creative Economy, McGraw Hill, NSW, North Ryde.

Mitew, T 2011, Global Media Busniesses and Immaterial Production, DIGC202, Global Networks, University of Wollongong, delivered 15 August.

The New Economy - Change or Fade Away

"As each realm is overtaken by complex techniques, the usual order is inverted, and new rules established. The mighty tumble, the once confident are left desperate for guidance, and the nimble are given a chance to prevail!" (Kelly 1999, p1) - a metaphor for America?

Kelly talks of a new world order where in the future almost everything will be automatic, that the physical labour of today will become not so physical labour of tomorrow. The hard becoming soft. In fact some even believe that the technological age should or will be described in the future as the "3rd Industrial Revolution" (Pol and Carroll 2007, p5).

Maybe in America the average person is moving into softer and softer industries but I'm sure world wide the average number of people in "hard industries" to those in "soft" will stay relatively equal. It just means that most if not all manufacturing and other labour intensive (non-communication) jobs will be outsourced to Africa and the sub-continent. Eventually the idea of outsourcing will not be so taboo, if it has not changed already, and in the future as technology changes our society, are people really going to be willing to do the work.

In the future, with such a fundamental shift in the economy and society those blue-collar jobs are becoming less and less desirable. Even today the government has to subsidise apprenticeships and open trade schools in order to increase recruitment. So who is to say that in the future, the great Western powers will be very little more than information traders? The age of technology, surely Japan and China will have a say about who will be doing the physical labour in the end.

Kelly, K. 1999, 'This New Economy', in New Rules for the New Economy, accessed 3/8/2011, http://www.kk.org/newrules/newrules-intro.html

Pol, E. and Carroll, P. 2007, 'New Economy', in An Introduction to the Creative Economy, McGraw Hill, NSW, North Ryde.

What do we own?

Despite being a slightly outdated paper, Lessig (2006) "Four puzzles from cyber space" brings up some interesting points about the internet and regulation and what defines "space". Describing his (probably non-fictional) idea as a worm that sniffs, Lessig discusses the legality and morality behind secretly spying on others.

Do you own your internet space? Why aren’t things such as WoW account hacking considered just as bad as theft? If you pay for something such as a computer, an account or anything else for that matter, shouldn't the same legal protections be applied to it as applied to a house or car?



In the case Lessig puts forward, that the worm gets around normal laws by simply being "unobtrusive" and "undetectable", but if I were to walk into a home undetected and unseen would it not be a crime? (no because you didn't get caught, but in principle, yes?).

Despite his best attempts, it is quite hard to agree with Lessig that the internet is still "regaulatable" (2006, p27). The number of internet users has since more than doubled to over 2 billion people worldwide (http://www.internetworldstats.com/emarketing.htm), and any form of regulation such as the proposed one in Australia and the current one in China and other countries are already being seen as an invasion of rights and no government would be able to employ such an act without either drastically changing the attitude of the people or committing political suicide.

Lessig, L. 2006, "Four puzzles from cyber space" In L. Lessig Code version 2.0, pp 9-30, New York.

DIGC202 : Only The Beginning

My name is Robert, I am in my 3rd year of a Bachelor of Media and Communications and Bachelor of Commerce. I am majoring in Digital Communications and Public Relations with a minor in Marketing. I play the real football on weekends although it has been a while since the rain has ruined the weekends.

 

I am thinking about doing the major project on something to do with online marketing or maybe how online networks have changed PR (bringing in my other studies).

 

Blog: http://robertuow.blogspot.com/
Twitter: @Robert_UOW
Delicious: http://www.delicious.com/Robert_UOW