Enter World: exploring mediated cultures

Saturday, June 07, 2008

The concept of a truly democratic internet culture is being eroded by access. Although large corporations have been building sites and trying to take over the internet terrain for years, at least users still have the choice of what to visit—or we did.

Our limited options for accessing the internet are beginning to take even that decision away. I’m staying at a place right now that uses Comcast, and it’s like constantly hitting my head against the wall. I work from home, so I need to be able to upload and download large files. But the more you use, the slower your service gets. I’ve also noticed a significant difference in accessing lowes.com and homedepot.com—Home Depot’s site works and Lowe’s doesn’t. This makes me feisty and annoyed, so I drive to Lowe’s and buy things there since I can’t compare prices online and the stores are in opposite directions. I don’t like the idea that Comcast might be partnering with Home Depot to slow down my access to competitors. So Lowe’s wins. Another company site I’ve noticed is extremely slow is Netflix. Could it be because Comcast has Fancast—a competitor to Netflix?

What really are our options for internet access? It seems like any smaller company providing access is just renting the lines from Comcast or Verizon, so the services will still have the same limitations. Here’s what I can come up with ...

Comcast. High speed, unless you use it. Don’t be fooled by the connections they offer, since they admit to “managing” your access.

3G wireless internet access anywhere you roam. ATT (also available through other providers). Limited to a single computer, but accessible from anywhere with satellite, radio, or cell phone signals. Drawback: ATT sells wire tapping of phone lines, so prepare to sign up for exhibitionism along with service.

Verizon FiOS. This is my choice for now. I’m sure there are problems with Verizon just like any other company, but at least they won’t tell me what I can and can’t access. Plus the FiOS option, as opposed to DSL, finally brings their service up to a competitive speed with cable service providers.

Are there other options I’m missing?

Friday, May 23, 2008

PBS did an excellent piece on Braddock that is available to view online: Green Industry Hub Rises From Rust Belt Ruins. There are streaming video, audio, and text options available on the site.

Monday, May 05, 2008

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’s argument supports being 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.

Saturday, April 26, 2008

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. 

I’m not sure how much more I can read, and I’m just starting. If it doesn’t flesh out into something more than the desperate ranting of a man frightened of losing his imagined cultural control, I may not make it to the last half of the book.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

I was shocked and angered to see Jakob Nielsen’s response (below) to a student highlighted in his April 21, 2008, Alertbox email:

I WON’T DO YOUR HOMEWORK

Last week I got this email:

“My name is Donald Duck, and I am currently a junior psychology major at Duckburg College. For my senior thesis, I would like to conduct some usability studies in the process of redesigning my old high school’s website. In making this my senior thesis, part of what I have to do is find out what research is currently being done in the field, in order to build upon it. I do not know much about usability or interface design from a research perspective. I am wondering if you might be able to point me in the right direction for where I can get started learning about this field.”

Sorry - I am not going to do your homework for you. Even today, there is such a thing as the library. Or search engines that rapidly will turn up articles such as “Usability 101” to serve as a starting point for online research if you can’t be bothered to crack open a book or research journal:  > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030825.html

What good is a usable site if you refuse to connect with the readers? The ability to contact people otherwise remote is at the center of the internet’s democratization of networking. Unless more than the name, “Donald Duck” is surely not the sender, was edited by Nielsen, it appears that the student was asking for resource suggestions to start researching not a 250-word essay to plagiarize.

On top of that, although I am an avid fan of libraries—why discount the student for contacting the most notable primary resource on the topic rather than relying on secondhand information watered down by publishing houses and buried in the stacks? Yet another thing that a usable internet gives us is access to the source.

Nielsen was flat out rude and inconsistent with usability—on top of which, he downplays his own site by referring to it only as a source to use as a last, lazy, resort. Poor form.

Just got out of the SNCR forum presentation by the creator of Pandora, Tim Westergren. I remember loving Pandora back in 2000-2001 when I worked in Tallahassee. Then it disappeared. Then it reappeared. I’m glad it’s back, even though it’s nowhere near as awesome in its new formation (can’t click through more than a certain number per hour, ads) ... at least they are able to keep it up and running.

The parallels between news media and music were touched on, and that got me thinking. The internet has definitely made a more (genuinely) democratic means of networking available, moving away from leaders and toward multiple centers rather than following one big talking head. That scares the shit out of the people who like working in the crumbling network structure based on figureheads and fraternities. But it excites the hell out of me. Why let one corporation take 90% of the insane profits of the 1% of musicians who make it, all the while keeping down 99% of the people with music (or art or news or whatever) in their souls when that insane profit can be split up amongst all of the people who want to work at making and sharing music—giving them all enough to live even if no one gets filthy rich? Fuck the man. Here’s to the many.

But, conversation kept meandering away from music and opportunities for independent musicians toward business models. It seems like a lot of the people at this conference are here to be told how to make money with XY&Z—even at the expense of attending a later presentation on Net Neutrality, which could make or break their ability to even use social networking.

I’m going to enjoy going to the smaller presentations on the two tracks that everyone else is missing. (I’m also thinking no one will show up to mine tomorrow, because not only am I not going to tell them how to make money but it’s the last session and it’s beautiful here, who wants to be inside?)

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

I’ve had “media psychology” in my google news since 2004. Typically 4 or 5 headlines show up that are slightly related. Today was the first day when there were more headlines in this category than any other. 

Friday, April 11, 2008

Shelter is being filmed in Pittsburgh now, and will soon be taking over Braddock. At some point they will be in Mayor John’s house, the Braddock library, and even in Jodi’s bank.

They offered Mayor John a part in the film, I think he’ll be meeting Julianne Moore and wheeling her on a gurney. Cindy told me her sister went to school with Moore at JDHS, so that’s an interesting twist.

Monday, February 11, 2008

My article titled Understanding Media Psychology was published in the January issue of the APS Observer.