Google Island

For anyone interested in learning more about Google and Googlization, this article is a fantastic read!

Mat Honan takes a dramatic look at what the future of Google and, perhaps more interestingly  our interactions with Google could look like. On Google Island, they don't wait for you to discover what your interested in. They use their vast array of knowledge to inform you of what you may find interesting. They are better at being you than you are. The closing line:

"We stood, naked, before each other with no secrets, 
no rules, and no shame. 
And I knew I never wanted to leave Google Island. 
Even if I could."

(Note: This article is much funnier if read allowed in the voice of Morgan Freeman!)

Mixbit REVISED

In the chapter, the Entrepreneurial Vlogger: Participatory Culture, Beyond the Professional-Amateur Divide, Burgess and Green address the different way the YouTube community and user base has developed. They lay out five different kinds of users, "1) formal participants; 2) casual users; 3) active participants; 4) YouTube or "tubers"; and 5) YouTube "celebrities"" (93) The participatory culture creates a variety of individuals who fall under the umbrella of "ordinary user", who - in varying ways - play off the idea of 'broadcast yourself'. Some are not broadcasting themselves; some are broadcasting an idea or a product.The common thread being that they use the blurred line between amateur and professional to participate in and draw an audience from the community. The community aspect created by YouTube means it once again blurs the line between a content/information source and a social site.

And then along came MixBit - with the tag line "The future of video is launching soon." As outlined in this article, MixBit is created by the founders of YouTube. They announced the sight in light of the April Fools joke about Youtube shutting down.

It has yet to launch. Currently if you go the site, you have the option to sign up for their newsletter and receive an invite when the site is officially launched.

Chad Hurley, one of YouTube's three co-founders, describes the purpose of the site as having "flexibility for people to work together and create content." 

This takes the community and amateur aspects of YouTube to a whole new level. Looking at the place hold picture on the site displays that all by itself. The mobile phone as the mode for capture and creation puts the site in the hands of the user - quite literally. The breakdown of Youtube users laid out by Burgess and Green are blurred and collapsed as there are only amateur users - anyone with a smart phone! Additionally, Hurley uses the words 'work together', this tags the site as a place for social creative interaction. So while the community and blurred intersecting sectors present may have been a bit of an accident or social evolution.  MixBit is very purposefully embracing the social and creative Amateur. While, as mentioned earlier, YouTube users may be amateurs presenting themselves, ideas or a product, Mixbit users with presenting their world view, their reality, the reality of the amateur.

(The original version of this post can be found here)

The Innocent Age of Reputation

In The Future of Reputation, Solove discusses how social media and networks have invaded and completely interconnected our lives. The Boston experiment of mailing letters showed that even before the advent of the internet and social media, it was indeed "a small world after all." If it was true then, it has only been amplified and the gossip chain has been shortened with today's social media. But, many think we are only starting to see the implications of those never ending connections. Solove says that social media is changing the way gossip, rumors, drama and therefore reputation circulates and functions. He says "Information that was once scattered, forgettable, and localized is becoming permanent and searchable  Ironically, the free flow of information threatens to undermine our freedom in the future." (4) The changing speedways of information are also changing the interacts between people - their views of themselves and each other.

Celebrity Emma Watson thinks she is starting to see these effects, at least for the younger inhabitants of the World Wide Web. In a speech at the launch of her new movie The Bling Ring, she gave, what this article called "a scathing attack on social media." She purported that young girls are becoming concerned about their physical appearance at a younger age, and that is hyper awareness is caused by the infatuation with social media, specifically posting pictures. She said "I think it’s amazing how self-aware people are becoming as a result of constantly posting images on Facebook and Instagram...They’re blissfully unaware their childhoods are being shortened. That period of time when you’re not self-conscious is sped up." Watson's comments are not out of line with the subject of the movie. The Bling Ring, based on a true story, is a movie that catalogs the impact of social media and the to achieve that perfect image of stardom has on a group of young teens. The director, Sofia Coppola, originally read the story in magazine said,'I think their quotes really struck me; how they didn't seem to think they had done anything wrong, and how they were most interested in the fame the robberies had brought them.' 

Watson's idea totes that what Solove that the world is shrinking and that people are being pushed together - is having a real impact on how we interact with each other. Maybe it isn't in the form of a viral attack on 'Poop Girl', perhaps it is instead in the form of how this constant connection and comment changes our vision of ourselves. Solove says "We used to worry about big brother - the state - but now of course it's our neighbors, or people on the subway" (9) or our image of ourselves. Together these forces are completely altering the way we function socially. Watson's observations are probably just the beginning. The age of innocence may well be over.

Talking TO Us, Talking FOR Us - Google's Never Ending Expansion

In The Googlization of Everything, Vaidhyanathan lays out the quandary and rather complicated conversation surrounding the growing scope of Google. Google's mission statement is "To organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible." (10) This has expanded past just a efficient and effective search engine, but to a little bit of everything, everywhere. 

Vaidhyanathan argues that this posses serious issues for our perspective on the world and everything in it. Sure, Google has given us great products and given us greater access to a connected world. Vaidhyanathan doesn't deny this; "Google figured out how to manage abundance while every other media company in the world was trying to manufacture scarcity, and for that we should be grateful" (11). But he also tries to draw our attention to the other, less shiny, effects of 'googlization'; "It's a process of collecting, ranking, linking and displaying knowledge determines what we consider to be good, valuable and relevant. The stakes could not be higher" (7). As we discussed in class, Google is sticking its toe in every pond - perhaps falling into the (modified) cliche 'Jack of all Trades - Master of some.' According to Vaidhyanathan, this means that all our information, knowledge and even interactions are being processed through Google and that this is too many of our eggs in one basket.

These two Huffington post articles show two more of these vertical expansion of Google. The technology of the "smart shoes" revealed at South by Southwest conference. They use several different technologies to create, basically, a personal trainer in your shoes. This may seem a little ridiculous, Google even acknowledges this, saying of the prototype, "Our goal is really to figure out how you marry innovation in technology with marketing and advertising." But, it is undeniably cool technology and won't just disappear from Google and the tech world's radar. Nor will the mindset of mixing tech and profit.

Google Now was also recently released. It is a voice command system for smart phones. Interestingly it is available on Apple devices as well. It functions much like Apple's Siri voice assistant. Though Jesdanun says "its power lies in giving you information you need to know before you have to ask." Tapping into your Google account to give more specialized and 'better' results. 

Both of these technologies demonstrate Google's ever expanding reach. Infiltrating every aspect of our interaction with technology. This is exactly what Vaidhyanathan is afraid of - that we will be so caught up in the cool and ease of it all that we will forget to calculate the costs, however distant. Additionally, Google has moved beyond its mission statement from so long ago. As we have discussed, they are not giving us a product but rather we are their product and they will continue to expand within the bounds we as consumers and producers of their product allow. If we are not careful, as Vaidhyanathan urges, soon they will not only be talking at us, but for us. And perhaps worst of all, we may not know the difference.

(Apologies: I continually tried to insert a video but it wouldn't work, so you can find it here.)

Copyright vs. Creative Commons

In "Six Faces of Piracy", Lobato puts forward the idea that piracy is not a black or white issue - good versus bad - but a complex stack of reasoning and outcomes. Additionally, those varying approaches need to be taken into account when forming opinions as well as policy.

Two of the types of piracy outlined are "Piracy as Access" and "Piracy as Free Enterprise". Piracy as free enterprise is based around the idea that there are holes in the current economic structure. Savy users as well as everyday consumers find ways to fill those holes and jump through those hoops; "In the laissez-faire imaginary, piracy fills gaps in the market with maximum efficiency, catering to demand when and where legitimate industries are unwilling or unable to do so." (75) Piracy as access is the idea that piracy, or borrowed content, exposes people to the music, movies, industry, culture that they wouldn't otherwise have been able to interact with; "This approach is interested in the transformative aspects of piracy, in piracy’s capacity to disseminate culture, knowledge and capital." (82) This expands the influence of said industry while also giving the general populous the content they want.

In this article, Alyssa Rosenberg looks at former president Bill Clinton's views on piracy. Clinton outlines the advantages of 'Creative Commons' and creating new ways to connect the artist to compensation as well as connecting the audience to content. He cites Saint Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital as an example of a more connect market. Saint Jude's does not charge patients for their services but rather asks that those who can pay do. He points to a system that doesn't have to be driven by profit but can rather be driven by a desire to share ideas. He used Bridegroom, a short film about a gay couple. “It’s a gripping portrait of how people are grappling with all of these identity questions. It was 100 percent crowd-funded,...I think there are a lot of these kinds of films about gender discrimination, girls sold into sexual slavery, boys sold into bondage. There would be a plethora of things where you don’t want intellectual property to get in the way of immediate and powerful exposition of problems the world all over that can be dealt with by people on the ground, NGOs, who also will be crowd-funded because of this.” He doesn't give concrete or practical ways of accomplishing this but says “We need to have a more explicit framework to nurture and support creativity”.

Clinton's approach to the copyright debate combines the Access and Free Enterprise portions of Lobato's article. The example of Saint Jude's helps to fill a flaw in the system that interferes with certain people's access to content (in this case, medical care). The Bridegroom is about access - being able to spread ideas without being restricted by cooperation or copyright control. Clinton's ideas enhance Lobato's idea that there are many ways to approach the copyright discussion. Clinton seems to agree that it will never go away but instead needs to be directed and understood. Clinton's ideas also show that Lobato's 'Six Faces' aren't enough - or at least they aren't distinct. This discussion needs to continue, the layers need to grow and our understanding needs to change in order for us to move forward in this issue.

MixBit -> Moving Forward with the Amateur

In the chapter, the Entrepreneurial Vlogger: Participatory Culture, Beyond the Professional-Amateur Divide, Burgess and Green address the different way the YouTube community and user base has developed. They lay out five different kinds of users, "1) formal participants; 2) casual users; 3) active participants; 4) YouTube or "tubers"; and 5) YouTube "celebrities"" (93) The participatory culture creates a variety of individuals who fall under the umbrella of "ordinary user", who - in varying ways - play off the idea of 'broadcast yourself'. Some are not broadcasting themselves; some are broadcasting an idea or a product.The common thread being that they use the blurred line between amateur and professional to participate in and draw an audience from the community. The community aspect created by YouTube means it once again blurs the line between a content/information source and a social site.

And then along came MixBit - with the tag line "The future of video is launching soon." As outlined in this article, MixBit is created by the founders of YouTube. They announced the sight in light of the April Fools joke about Youtube shutting down.

It has yet to launch. Currently if you go the site, you have the option to sign up for their newsletter and receive an invite when the site is officially launched.

Chad Hurley, one of YouTube's three co-founders, describes the purpose of the site as having "flexibility for people to work together and create content." 

This takes the community and amateur aspects of YouTube to a whole new level. Looking at the place hold picture on the site displays that all by itself. The mobile phone as the mode for capture and creation puts the site in the hands of the user - quite literally. Additionally Hurley uses the words 'work together', this tags the site as a place for social creative interaction. So while the community and blurred intersecting sectors present may have been a bit of an accident or social evolution  MixBit is very purposefully embracing the social and creative Amateur.

Losing the Leash and Embracing the Tether

In the chapter "Growing up Tethered" from her book Alone Together, Sherry Turkle discusses how tied, and even dependent, teenagers are on their favorite technological device - their cellphone. Under the heading "Degrees of Separation", Turkle discusses the contract parents pair with the 'gift' of a phone to teens; "the gift typically comes with a contract: children are expected to answer their parent's calls." It is a way for the parents to maintain some control while setting their kids loose in the big-wide-world. But, this is not always followed by teens. In fact, some teens ignoring the contract (not answering their parents calls) is seen as a way to show independence.

In "Teens rule mobile Web, parents play catch-up", Katie Humphrey looks at a different aspect of the cellphone, more specifically smartphone, invasion - privacy. Humphrey outlines how parents are struggling to find a balance to both keep their teens connected (to them and the outside world) but also keep a leash on their time and where teens are going on the internet. For teens the smartphone is a catch-all for all their tech needs. Using their smartphone a teen "texts, talks, posts to Instagram and Facebook, plays word games, even tracks practical stuff like schedules." But for parents it is a screen they can't see and time they can't monitor and that makes them uncomfortable. “It can be a great tool and it can also be a really scary thing for a parent,” Postuma said. “We are learning and figuring this out as we go.” Postuma is a parent who recognizes the usefulness and practical application but struggles to fit it into her parenting schema.

The article shows another aspect of the parent-teen phone contract that is still in the draft stage. While the answering aspect from Turkle most likely still stands, parents are struggling how to incorporate this next issue into their contract. Will parents let go of the leash and learn to embrace the tether? Moving forward, parents and teens alike will be watching, waiting and negotiating to see how this new element gets inked in the contract. 

Trouble with Twitter

In the chapter Trouble Brewing in Cyberspace, Sternberg names spamming as one of the "triad of troublesome online behavior" (80). Most anyone who has spent time online has at some point experienced spam, it's like an annoying pest that won't go away and leave you in peace. Sternberg demonstrates that this has been an issue online since the beginning - giving examples of issues with advertising on inappropriate subsections of Usernet. Additionally, Sternberg also talks about how controlling spam has been dealt with outside the wires and virtual spaces. While user of the new web were trying to discover how to handle the issues of spamming years ago, today it proves to still be an issue that has emerged in the realm of social media.

Forbes recently published an article "Twitter's growing spam problem", in which journalist Tristan Louis looks at the issue of spamming via fake twitter accounts. Louis looks at the numbers reported by Twitter as to their user base, but he also analysis his own numbers on what kinda of users those really are. He focuses on the top 25 followed users (including accounts like Lady Gaga, Barack Obama and The Ellen Show). Using sites like Fake Follower Check, he finds that possibly 42.44% of the users following such big names are fake and that in the general user base of Twitter possibly 31.83% of accounts are fake. Louis believes this to be an issue because it is messing with the reliability and credibility of the audience and Twitter seems to be doing little to nothing to fix it; "But as it keeps delaying dealing with the issue, the problem will become larger and more ingrained, making it more difficult to deal with further down the line...Social spam, as it already exists on Twitter, will continue to grow and unless the company addresses the problem quickly, it may be the one thing that sinks it." With follower buying becoming increasingly common and important, 'user spamming' may prove to be a make-or-break scenario.

While the type of spamming has evolved from the instances demonstrated in Sternberg's chapter, it is still an instance where an online community and the more general public are struggling to find a way to handle an emerging issue. Both are taking advantage of an captive audience. In the cases Sternberg presents, the online community we looking for ways to mediate the issue and the large companies were seeking outside legal action. It seems the twin issues on Twitter are similarly searching for a solution. So, those of us who still wish to brave the web, will have to deal a little longer with swatting at that all-too-familiar pest.

Hello all!

Hello World,

For those of you who weren't directed here on purpose - this is my blog for a class at Lawrence University: Digital Cultures taught by Professor Bakioglu. I will be posting at least once a week with my thoughts and analysis on our class readings. Please feel free to comment, as I love a good discussion!