Enter World: exploring mediated cultures

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Risk of Loss: A Series of Folly

"Cycling was so popular that in 1896 The New York Journal of Commerce estimated bicycling was costing theaters, restaurants and other businesses over 100 million dollars per year.”—Mental Floss How the Bicycle Emancipated Women

This line made me laugh. The Journal of Commerce‘s logic summarizes so beautifully the way dominant businesses would treat emerging entertainment and information technology in the next century and beyond. If it’s not loss of profits, it’s cultural collapse. In fact, this fear of loss and publicity about how new ideas are killing the old ways was a popular method of dealing with inventions such as the Gutenberg press back in the mid-1400s as well.

Since this entertains me so much, I am going to begin collecting quotes, statistics, and opinions from other industries that cried out to the public that the new toys were destroying the old and post them here in this Risk of Loss series.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

No Time To Read

Mail arrived today from my old address in Portland, carrying with it three journals, two psychology magazines, and one art magazine. On top of this, five books I had requested at the library came in yesterday. An intimidating amount of reading that I just can’t get to right now. Tonight is the community potluck, 40 minutes and counting. Our house is closing this week, we should be signing and paying tomorrow! So much excitement, there’s no time to curl up and read ...

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Journal of e-Media Studies

Found the Journal of e-Media Studies today and have been perusing the contents. Looks like an interesting new journal out of Dartmouth.

Also have been reading a research paper on how much people trust libraries and museums. Turns out they are more trusted than news sources. This begs for a post of its own that is still brewing. 

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Personal Space on Twitter

Today a friend of mine had a problem with Comcast and posted about it on Twitter. They responded, and her internet is working again.

I had heard that the company is monitoring tweets with its name in it when I was at the New Comm Forum, so I replied to her about it. I added in a little criticism of Comcast too, as much as my 140 characters would allow. Even though following Twitter is a smart move for a company to put out the small fires before they become something more, it isn’t a substitute for improving their overall support.

Some background: I have never been a direct subscriber to Comcast, but I was forced into servitude while renting in Portland, OR. We rented two different places from the same property manager and had vastly different experiences with Comcast service in each. It was enough of a difference to make me question if the address on the bill shaped the quality of service available to customers.

Before heading back to Juneau for a month in December, we were staying at apartments on NE Prescott & NE 20th. During that time we shared an internet connection through a quadraplex and not once did we have a problem with Comcast. When we returned in January we moved into a house on NE Rosa Parks Way. We did not have consistent internet service for longer than a week during the three months we were there. In fact, when we arrived both the cable tv and internet were down even though the owner had been paying Comcast when the house was empty. It was a non-stop battle with the worst customer service I’ve experienced the entire time we were there, and enough to make us swear off Comcast at the expense of potentially slower internet service in the future.

So when wscottw3 and comcastcares responded to my response to my friend, rather than feeling all warm and fuzzy from the attention I got a case of the creeps. It turns out I’m not alone, there are other tweets about this type of invasion of personal space by Comcast on Twitter.

Can a tweet really go that far? Twitter isn’t private—it’s very public. Watching tweets is not so much eavesdropping on conversations, it’s more like perusing blogs. We all know our Twitter messages are all over the web for anyone to see, unless we chose to lock it down.

There is a definite need to explore the concept of personal space online. Is it different when a representative of a corporation contacts you than when a person finds you because of similar interests?

Perhaps our spaces on the internet can be understood in a similar way to how anthropologist Edward T. Hall looks at interpersonal spaces. It becomes more acceptable to be (physically and digitally?) close to someone the more you like that individual.

My friend can certainly respond to my tweet, others that I know or who have similar experiences can as well. And Comcast helped her, as a customer, fix a problem so their interaction was not invasive. But when it extends beyond the social realm, and turns into brand management, that does feel like an invasion of personal space despite the public nature of the conversation.

Sites to use to search Twitter posts:

• TerraMinds
• TweetScan
• Google Beta Twitter Search

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Tangible Gifts Through Blogs

Back in January Jan Cartier had a birthday drawing offering to paint a dessert of the winner’s choice. I came across her painting a day blog in one of my art feeds and was drawn especially to her chaos paintings from New Orleans. What luck that the day I first came across her site she was offering this prize, because I tossed my name in the hat and won!

In an effort to pay it forward, the April issue of MetaPaint’s newsletter offered tickets to Juneau Jazz & Classics in a similar raffle.

Right around my birthday she posted the finished painting of my wedding cake for Naughty Friday. I’m excited to get the original in the mail and see the detail.

She also placed one of her Chaos paintings, Water Lily Chaos, up on eBay for Zoo-To-Do. The entire purchase price goes to restore the New Orleans zoo Audubon’s bird house.

Her site is an excellent example of connecting people, causes, and art through blogging.

Monday, May 05, 2008

Information overload & cultural collapse: old fears

Reading The Cult of the Amateur has made me mad. I guess that’s one thing to be said in favor of the author: his writing can incite emotion. There are so many flaws in his logic that I am going to break down this post with subtitles to keep myself from rambling on and on and writing my own 205-page diatribe.

The overwhelming feeling I get from this book is fear. Fear of too much information to sift through. Fear that the professional is losing control. Fear that the masses are uneducated and unable or unwilling to embrace quality media.

Information Overload
All of these fears have arisen with other societal changes and are not new to the web. Technology and change seem to have this effect. The press and mass production of books incited similar grandiloquences about information overload: How will the people (and the experts, as a separate entity of course) ever wade through the innumerable tomes?

Information overload is not a new concept. And perhaps not surprisingly, it seems to affect those who were raised in the old system of information more than those born into the newer, differently structured, information network. It has been shown that kids have the ability to mutli-task better than adults. While adults may feel they are multi-tasking, they are actually less adept at each of their tasks as they attempt to juggle them. Kids’ brains are able to nimbly handle all those things they’re doing: chat on IM, search the web, listen to music, text on the phone, and type up a homework assignment—without the struggle their elders face.

Blaming New Technology for Failures
One of Keen’s main criticisms falls on Wikipedia. However, this is a case where his flawed factual backup is such a stretch that I can only use his own words against him: “The 232-year-old Britannica went through a series of painful layoffs in 2001 and 2002, cutting its 300-person staff in the United States almost by half; with the advent of Wikipedia, no doubt more layoffs are to come.” Wikipedia started in 2004. The old system was failing before the new arose. Although other arguments he poses against Wikipedia hold some value, this leaping accusation deteriorates the value of all other statements near it.

Assumptions About Mainstream Media
Keen also supports the mainstream media and states that it has “reinforced American values and made our culture the envy of the world” for 200 years.

Sure, the AP wire started in the 1840s, and in 1800 the Sedition Act forbidding criticism of the government by the media expired. However, it wasn’t until 1920 that our modern interpretation of journalism arose. Four journalism schools were formed in 1920 (Columbia, Northwestern, Missouri, and Indiana) because of the lack of faith the general population had in a media system run for profit, before this professionalization of journalism the media was based on sensationalism and yellow journalism. Prior to this, it was not even acceptable for a journalist to take notes. This change in journalism did separate the United States media from other countries, but it certainly wasn’t 200 years ago. It also was not the glorious and value-ridden idealistic media that Keen seems to imply.

Media has always been questioned in the United States. Training journalists and following ethical codes was an attempt to create unbiased media in the face of a profit-driven industry, but the credibility of media continued to be questioned. By 1996 the media was “seen as part of a strongly disliked governing elite” according to a U.S. News and World Report survey. Where is the motivation to save an institution that has been taken over by corporations despite the efforts to professionalize it, one that is seen not as the reinforcer of values but instead as one big advertisement?

Cultural Collapse
If generations of information jugglers are able to find all of the information they want, then why would they depend on a talking head to tell them what to think? This is where the next fear arises. If no one listens to the professional, is there still such a thing?

Keen prefers to be told by someone else what to think, or at least what to think about. His assumption is that mainstream media provide this service. Keen fears that without mainstream media as the middle man, we will not be able to recognize, or find in the marsh of information, true genius.

This concept reminds me of a presentation at the New Communications Forum by Tim Westergren’s, of Pandora.com, and Milton Olin, Jr., Altschul & Olin, LLP, on the fall of the hierarchy in the music industry. Musicians no longer need to know who is the head of a major record label and bow to the lackeys below to struggle to the top. When that was the case, 1% of musicians actually made it to a label. Even fewer made it to the public. They may have been signed but if their music sales weren’t projected to cover the expenses of recording and marketing, they were shelved and no one was able to hear them. Even the ones who made it big handed over most of their profits to that label to cover expenses.

You tell me, which is better:

Old men in suits deciding what good music is and allowing the masses to hear a small percentage of what is out there, while hoarding the profits even at the expense of the musician?
Or
Everyone being able to find music they like no matter what other people think of it, at the expense of taking the time and energy to find it?

There may still be a need for people to find quality information and entertainment, but rather than controlling it they will be sharing it.

Sunday, May 04, 2008

Bloggers’ moods can tell their own tales

Move over mood rings, MoodViews is using data instead of heat to reveal moods.

As I write this the collective mood is calm, mischievous, envious, creative, and cheerful.

MoodGrapher turns the data visual by charting moods, and when combined with other features MoodView also predicts moods, looks for peaks and compares the moods to news, offers a search by date and keyword to find linked moods, and predicts mood prevalence. Although it currently only evaluates LiveJournal users, and those who post moods, it provides the opportunity to have an overview of collective moods in relation to any number of things. Seasonal moods, length of time the moods last, mood fluctuation by holidays and events.

This last category has already been charted for some global events in 2005 and 2006. Worried moods increased during Hurricane Katrina and persisted at a higher level after the natural disaster. Around New Year’s Eve people are more nostalgic, excited, drunk, lonely, and groggy but less frustrated.

I ran a MoodSpotter of my own: Let’s see how people felt when talking about media over the past few months.

February, 2008

Spiked red lines indicate “tired” and the flat yellow is for “bitchy.” Others that showed up on the pie graph were bored, amused, and sleepy.

March, 2008

March was much more active. I left the color key in the screenshot since there were so many, but for easier reading the categories making up the bars are (L to R) accomplished, amused, awake, bitchy, blah, bored, busy, calm, contemplative, lazy, thoughtful, and tired.

April, 2008

Back to simplicity, green is awake, yellow happy, and the flat red line bitchy.

What does this tell us? Nothing really at this level, but it’s fun.

Networking the networks, rising from the dead

Last October I posted about the lack of software available to integrate the many niche online social networks. It’s six months later and Six Apart news announced a cross-platform blogging application for Facebook called Blog It. This is a wonderful example of how fast technology changes, and in this case meets demands of users. (I’ll admit I’m not as enthusiastic when Adobe updates their software every year and charges me.)

While the Blog It application may not answer all my online prayers, if I can ever find anything more than an announcement from September 07 on their Social Graph the two combined might come close.

It looks like the Facebook application turns its normal method of feeding around and supplies rather than ingests information. The accounts that are currently supported include typepad, blogger, livejournal, moveable type, pownce, tumblr, twitter, vox, and the wordpress sites. It’s a start. But even though I can feed this blog into my Facebook account, I can’t update it from there since my blogging software is none of the above.

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Changes in travel

When I moved from Florida to Seattle, and then on to Alaska, in 2001 I started a blog to keep my family and friends informed. We were in an accident the second day, and even though I took digital photos we had to go to Kinko’s to load them onto a computer and email them. Internet wasn’t common, there was no such thing as wifi or broadband. Our only hope of connecting was a local phone number for a dial up connection through one of our provider—but the catch was that we had to check for the numbers before we were in the location and write them down to bring with us.

Even after paying for time at the copy shop to get the photos up there, hosting was hard to find. The blog I was using didn’t offer space for photos, and when I tried to upload them to a site I had hosting space on my account was frozen for pulling it from an outside page.

Fast forward to my road trip out of Alaska, through the Yukon, into Portland and then across to Pittsburgh over six years later. Wifi or broadband in every hotel and most places we stop for coffee or food as well. Cell phone coverage through the entire trip, plus cell phones that send photos and videos and audio clips. GPS to find what city will have dinner and an available hotel room.

Wow, things are so much easier now. 

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Exploration after my presentation

A participant in my media agendas presentation (yes, there were a couple) made an excellent point that I need to explore further. She said she has been reading alternative media for their positive coverage of things such as the government as opposed to coverage only of mistakes. Past research has shown that mainstream media has a bias toward negativity, but it’s more than that. My research was limited in that I stuck to established categories that show links between topics in the media and in public opinion polls. Although they were broken down into many subcategories, the categories themselves are very general.

Is there a difference in the topic of what government has done right versus what it has done wrong? I would say yes. Especially if it’s not the same policy being evaluated from opposite sides of the political spectrum, which would make it more a matter of framing.