Here are some links to the video that I did for my final. At this time instructables.con does not like the embed code from Google videos, so I will put a direct link here.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=540768824522891871&hl=en
Homogenous Blob
As the article on cybertyping puts it, there is no race. There is no distinction on being white, black, male female. However, no matter what you are in real life, it is assumed through the internet that you are white. Avatars can be customized with almost any color combination or body part combination, but everyone assumes that you are white. Everyone is able to hide their true identity on the internet and assume a new or different persona. Who is to say that the nice girl you are talking to is really not an old fat balding guy with no social life outside the house? Is that person that you are talking to really an innocent guy? Which leads me to another assumption that is based on the gender of your avatar- if you pick a male avatar it is assumed that you are male in real life, even if you are actually female. If you have a female avatar, people make assumptions on your real life gender based on your language patterns. I know one person who plays an mmorpg that is in real life female- but her avatar is male-everyone assumes that she is male in real life- just because she has a male avatar. In the same mmorpg I know of several people that are female avatars, but unless I have heard their voice, they could be either male or female, just because their language patterns fall in the middle.
Derr-ida papers…get em
As Derrida puts it, you are not thought to exist without a paper saying that you are alive. We have papers ranging from telling us that we have been born, letting us drive, all the way to telling us that we’re dead. We must have a little piece of paper to validate our all. We think therefore we are, but we must have a piece of paper first that shows us we have the ability to think, but even then, we need a paper to show that what we think proves that we are. If we want to prove that something exists, we write a paper about it. If we want people to know of history and news, we write a paper. We show our feelings by writing notes.. on paper.
Giving the internet to the highest bidder
According to the video on net neutrality, phone companies want owner ship[governance] of the net because they put in the infrastructure to access the internet. They want to be paid twice- for something they promised to do years ago[putting in the fiber optics, which they are just now getting to] and to be the exclusive gateway to the net. Giving them such control would mean that they would also have control over anything that gets put on it, and they would also have control over any copyrights. Ha, if that’s their reason to own the internet, then they have a few entities to get past that also have a claim to the internet:
1. The government, why? because in WWII, the governments of a few countries had a network of small machines that were connected to each other, sharing information of secrets and breaking codes. Also many parts to the computer where made at this time too:
Sage was conceived as an answer to the Soviet atomic fleet and it brought us everything today’s computer users have come to love: from the monitor to networking to mass storage
So that means that the government could lay claim to the internet because it made the monitor on which you see the internet, the ability for computers to talk, as well as the ability for the site you access to be a server that holds information on almost anything. The phone companies want the keys to the door, when it was the government that built the door in the first place.
Speaking of keys, this leads me to another entity that wanted control of the internet, but for a weak reason: the UN. Why did they want control? because the internet reaches all over the globe touching any country that has access. Part of the problem here is that the UN wants to govern the internet and what is published on it, without having done anything to gain it-they did not invent it but they want to control it. Another part of the problem? It gives despotic countries such as China, Cuba and Iran, control over the internet worldwide. The worry is that repressive governments such as these will put a foot down on the creativity of the internet, thereby squashing a tenet of the internet.
Cuba, Iran, China–rank among the world’s most repressive. The worry: If those governments have their way, the current, virtually limitless amount of free expression on the Internet may come to an end. The Paris-based advocacy group Reporters Without Borders last week called those reform proposals alarming and asked: “Do we really want the countries that censor the Internet and jail cyberdissidents to be in charge of the online flow of information?”
If allowed to, the phone companies would essentially do the same thing, but with a different method: by having exclusive[and highly expensive] access to the internet then only those who can afford to get on the internet will create for the internet. Which in time will dilute the overall creativity of the net, as you can only squeeze so much from a stone.
Foucalt
From reading the section of “What is an author” it seems that Foucalt is talking about different things that actually define what an author is and how they are different from other ordinary people in their community. He talks about how the author is immortalized by the very act of writing, where his thoughts and ideas will live long after he dies because his words are written down. Foucalt does remark that after the author dies, what do we put into a collection that could be his work? What of everything he has written is considered part of an author’s work? Foucalt also talks a little about how an author’s upbringing does play a part in how the author puts his ideas to paper. One section that I was not sure of is why he talks about how an author’s name plays a role in who is considered an author. Does a person’s name really matter? I mean we read the works of Homer-which might be a collection of people, but we would still read them even if it was called by another name, because we like the stories of Homer, which are the Iliad and the Odyssey. I’m also not sure as why he makes a distinction that only some things have authors, while others, like a declaration or a letter, only have writers…..
It’s my idea.. you can have it after I’m dead
Copyright protection should only last for as long as the original creator can make a living off their works. Why? Because anyone who comes after who did not create the work tries to get their grubby little hands on it and keep others from reproducing it or creating derivatives, thereby generating a profit and living from it. After Walt Disney took the Brother’s Grimm stories to use, the Disney company, through the extension of the copyright time frame, is keeping anyone else from publishing or creating a derivative. Why? because Disney makes a profit from it and they don’t want to share it with you, or want you to be able to make a profitable derivative of their bogarted works. Publishers are just as bad:
The publisher’s goals in the licensing of subsidiary rights are to disseminate the article as widely as possible in order to encourage citation by the scholarly community; to stimulate submissions and subscriptions to the journal; to encourage researchers to act responsibly when citing and reusing the work of others by enforcing copyright; to encourage students to accept the premise that scholarly work has value; and to bring in additional revenues to contribute to publication costs of the journal. To most publishers, the first goal is the most important. The last is the least important, because these transactions are generally worth small amounts and are very labor intensive.
While noble as it all may sound, there is one underlying thing here- they want the money. Publishers do the same thing-they want all the profits with none of the competition. Yes, distribution of articles is a way to encourage citation, but if it were truly the goal of the publishers, then they would make the cost of licensing and distribution far cheaper/easier than what it is now. Cheap things spread farther and quicker than tightly controlled information. Their zeal on licenses even hurts librarians, who are also champions of copyright but for a different reason: to allow works to be researched without the information being tainted by everyone’s “two cents.”
To librarians this situation means that they must ask publishers for permission to use articles beyond that allowed by the fair use guidelines. When they order copies through interlibrary loan beyond that allowed by fair use, they must report the use and pay any associated copyright fees.
What would researchers do without these products? What would librarians do without these products? Librarians would no longer have the option to cancel and still have the full-text available to their clients in other media. Access points would still exist in the indexing and abstracting publications, but full- text would not. If librarians chose not to subscribe to the print journal, they would have to rely exclusively on interlibary loan to give their clients access to journal articles they do not receive through subscription. As the ARL /RLG Interlibrary Loan Cost Study confirmed, interlibrary loan costs are not trivial, particularly for the supplying library.
How are people supposed to advance science and society if they cannot come up with an idea that is based on a smaller idea from the past? Sorry can’t make this item because it is based on a previously patented/copyrighted idea and has a microscopic resemblance to it.
Another industry that is as bad as Disney is the music industry. They all want to get all the profits and don’t want you to make copies/parodies because it hurts them, when as the Pachelbel’s Rant shows that quite a few songs take the same chords from Pachelbel’s Canon. They got to steal it but they don’t want you to steal it too.
Wein-Burger, yumm
In his article about the New Order of Order, David Weinberger talks about how stores and everything else are shifting to a new form of organization that encourages people to seek rather than to browse:
They prefer seekers over browsers…works well for people trying to find what they came in for.
This works in almost any retail environment, whether it be online or brick and mortar stores. While being in alphabetical order does have its perks, its easier to find something even if you don’t know the name of the item but you know what its about. I know many times I have gone into a bookstore, not remembering the title to a book, but remembered what it was about or at the very least who wrote it-I can find stuff in the store with very little to go on. It works the same way online too, I just type in a keyword that might describe it and see what pops up. Sometimes I have to try several words to find what I am looking for, but I usually find it in the end, primarily because the web is not organized A-Z, but brings up what you are looking for based on the criteria that you put in.
Keen out of business
Andrew Keen is a whiner. After he attended FOO Camp(Friends of O’Reilly), and learned of the democratization of the web, he decided not to participate anymore and sits back watching all of us “monkeys” typing away on our keyboards.
The new internet was about self-made music, not Bob Dylan or the Brandenburg Concertos. Audience and author had become one, and we were transforming culture into cacophony.
Why does he say this? Simply because the online music distributing business he wanted to run was sunk because internet users are now able to make, publish and share their own music. Essentially his complaint is that his music business no longer remains unique because everyone can do it, for free. He complains that the multitude of “monkeys” will only dilute the creativity stream. What he doesn’t realize is that people will actually pay for music that they like or will procure it in some fashion. People won’t pay for trash- if they don’t really like it, they are not going to buy it, hence all of the garbage in a lot of places being given away for free. Sure there are a few interesting videos on Youtube, but for the most part, as long as they aren’t charging to see the pejorative of trash, people are going to go check it out because there is nothing stopping them. If enough people like something, then it could be turned into profit of some form. There has to be enough want in order to stem the demand for something with a charge for the supply.
If people aren’t paying for music, then how are all the big bands still making money? As far as I know, the Eagles, Bob Dylan, etc., and many orchestras(who are the Brandenburg Concertos anyway?) are not claiming bankruptcy now are they? Why? because people still like the music and pay to have it in some form, whether it be on CD or now in easy to carry MPEG form
Everyone was simultaneously broadcasting themselves, but nobody was listening…what was governing the infinite monkeys now inputting away on the internet was the law of digital Darwinism, survival of the loudest and most opinionated. Under these rules, the only way to intellectually prevail is by infinite filibustering.
Keen also notes that we will all be chatting but no one will listen. We didn’t listen to each other much before the internet came along anyway. Here he is just using the now open ended nature of the internet as another complaint that no one will “hear” his music business over all the other music makers out there, thereby rendering his business unprofitable. I could go on about Shakespeare’s work being compared to a 1000 monkeys at a 1000 typewriters, but I will end it here.
A Thousand mouths all babbling
Assignment Zero is interesting in that it is open to anyone who wants to contribute their time and their knowledge to assignments that are posted on the board or discussion. Given that the project is so open ended, there exists the possibility that there are people out there who have the time to work on it, but can do so with malicious intent.
The only real limits to participation in Assignment Zero are the choices you make, as well as your time, interest, and imagination. If there are areas we should be researching, tell us. If there are other ways to get the work done, share. This is your project as much as it is ours, so please take it where you think it should go.
According to the outlining pages of the project, there will be editors and fact checkers, and a registry/login for all those who want to participate. With the editors there, most anything will be filtered first before it is posted for the world to see, however if someone signs on who “intends to be funny,” then the fact checkers have to spend time to clean up the mess. This would be problematic in a few ways, that combined, would spiral out of control. First of all, malicious postings have to be checked for accuracy, leading to wasting the editors time and effort to clean it up. Second, if enough people are maliciously posting, it eats the editor’s time even more, allowing more inaccurate information to sit on the site for longer periods of time until the editors can get to it. The longer the information has to sit there, the more it will spread to those who partake of the site for information, leading to widespread inaccuracies. If it remains for too long unchecked, many newer posters might come to rely on the previous as being true information. Another thing that hurts the open ended part is that many you can fool the registering part of the website, remaining totally anonymous in this day and age, making it harder to catch any pranksters posting funny information. Many people will post this way, either because they truly don’t know any better, or they are doing so to be mean, and some might want the project to fail.
One way to keep this from happening is to see how many regular non-journalistic people have registered for the site and make sure that either there is a certain ratio of editors to people or to see to it that there are more certified editors than posters if possible.
Mobbing you for your phone
In Howard Rheingold’s own blog he talks about an argument that Scott Sanders has about smart mobs not being all that common even today. In part of Scott’s article, Scott cites that people will only gather into a smart mob if the text being sent to them relates to them in some manner:
People will not respond to any message, just the ones that they feel are relevant to them. Second, while the social identities that could potentially lead to a smart mob likely persist over time, the social climate must be exact in order for smart mobs to develop. Social identities must be activated via the process of social-categorization by contextual features in the environment or by interaction with others.
He also states that we must first be socialized individuals as well. In either case people will respond to things, even if it doesn’t relate to them. Many people will respond to a text to do something because “everyone is doing it,” thereby showing that they are not acting individually either(usually seen most often with teenagers who want to fit into the clique- defined popularity contest). Chain letters/emails work in much the same fashion, spreading because their friends sent it to them or because they might get something for it. How do you explain the myriad of computer viruses that spread due to people thinking they’ve won something based on a message they’ve just received? Just because it is not directly related to the situation of the person receiving the message does not mean that the person is not going to respond in some manner. There also does not really need to be any social unrest going on to make people want to gather based on a text message. Take college students as an example- many students will attend functions that they’ve been told about, but doesn’t relate to them purely on the idea that there might be free food/stuff. I know I’ve attended many a function, not because I was interested in the subject matter or that it involved something about me, but merely because there might be free food. In a few cases, I’ve attended just because there might be some form of entertainment value for me. Anyway, people will click on something/attend an event just to satisfy the natural curiosity inherent in human nature- they don’t need a reason- they just want to find out what is going on, and in some cases it just happens to end up bringing a social change or government upset. How many times have you gone somewhere/attended a function just because the way it was worded piqued your interest?
