Coinciding with this digital revolution in society, so with it comes many parts on online expression. The Internet is no longer just made up of explanatory websites, or places to buy merchandise. The Internet has become an online forum of ideas, suggestions, personal expression, and editorials to name a few of the many. Sites like Tumblr, Xanga, and blogger have made it so simplistic to create your own website and blog, that millions of people do it.

For some, these blogs are simply a way to express their feelings, for others a way to display personal artistic talent, and for others a virtual podium in an online square where they can stand and shout their discrepancies. But what makes these blogs so unique is that anyone can create them and display whatever they want to display. Blogs have become integral in many parts of the art world, allowing artists to display their personal works, and the works of other in a public forum. The need for a pop up art gallery has gone.

Musicians, painters and photographers alike utilize this online display case to showcase what they create, in the hopes of attracting enough attention to then sell their work. An online community between bloggers exists, where bloggers communicate with each other asking for site space on another’s blog, or even a space on their blog roll. A blog roll is a small portion of a blog where links to other blogs are displayed. Maybe a musician wants to add more traffic to his sight. He might ask a fellow blogger to place the name of his sight on their blog roll to increase more traffic, will to do the same for the other person.

The revolution of online blogs has sparked a communicating, evolving community between those who operate these blogs. They share information, content and even techniques. For those who wish to share site space, there is a world of opportunity out there. It has become a way for artists to help other artist in a way that seems to wish everyone the best of luck.

My personal experience has been with a music blog that I operate. Every day I am emailed by some new artist, or blogger promising my site, or my music more promotion if I’m willing to team up with them and give them ad space, or a space on my blog roll. In every case I have to decided if it would make sense to give away precious space on my website in the hope of boosting traffic from theirs. This has become a sort of online bartering system for exposure. I find it interesting how many people desire how precious site space. While doing my best to help other artists, I always have to look out for my own neck in these situations. It’s something that I will only continue to approve on.

In the last few years social media sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter have certainly left their footprint in both online and offline universes. The explosion of these sites and their staggring number of users has moved virtually every facet of human interaction online, and made it easier. With Ichat components to Facebook chat, the ability to tag people in Twitter and Facebook posts, etc. online interaction is at an all time high. These platforms have made it easier than ever to close gaps across the world for loved ones, creating what some call a Global Village. For musicians and music lovers alike, social media platforms have become instrumental in the music industry, in more ways than people realize.

The first big breakthrough came when MySpace introduces ‘MySpace Music’, a way for artists, and bands to create profiles for the alter egos they assumed when creating music. Allowing for free online promotion of music, tour dates, and up to the second profile updates, MySpace music fostered an environment that not only brought people closer together, but brought people closer to the music and artists they love. After just 5 months of operation, MySpace music hosted, “over 5 million bands with music on the streaming-and-discovery music service, and more than 100 million playlists created by users,” MySpace music president Courtney Holt told CNET news in an interview in 2009. The days of hanging up fliers in the quad are long gone.

Facebook has seen an even larger music presence. With virtually the same capabilities that MySpace posses, but with an even larger user basis, Facebook has become the hot new place for online promotion. And Promotion is one of the most important things when starting out as an amateur musician. Printing up promotional flyers and posters for your band can be a tough expense for the starving artist. Facebook and MySpace present a way for free promotion of music and events to users worldwide. Facebook has event developed a way for users to have to “like” an artists page before they can download their music from the artists Facebook page.

Showing support for artists simply by liking their page have also come to be quite important. Musicians present their case to record label owners, and club promoters in a way that heavily stresses their amount of social media presence. Online sites like ‘Clout’, which monitor how large your online following is, have become a way for upper management to see if you have the following that it takes to sell out a show.

It’s incredible to think that all of these things did not exist ten years ago. Social media interaction has not only changed the game for up and coming musicians, it has changed the game of music altogether.

When writing the Hypertexts I often found myself editing my sentences and paragraphs more that I would have if I were writing a short paper about a similar subject. With the constraints of an online website I didn’t want to run the text too long in an effort to keep my viewers interested. I think that websites with too much text appear lop-sided and lost aesthetic value.

I knew relatively little about web design before this class, apart from using wordpress for a blog that I update. My actual website fabrication skills are not fine tuned by any means, but I see these practices to be very essential in the world after college so I definitely plan on continuing to use similar software. I really liked learning about how to create a page, and how to link pages through to other pages. I still need to work on how to make the lay out of my web pages look cleaner and prettier.

I really like the way that my hypertexts appear to tell a story, but I think that there are a few things I need to work on before handing in the final copy. Though a story is being told, the transitions between the pages is a big rough, so I plan on adding transitional sentences with a link to the next page at the bottom of each previous page so that the pages flow more like a story, and readers don’t have to scroll back up to the top of the page to find the link for the next page.

I’m used to having my works publicly accessible. The blog I was referring to earlier is for public view, seeing over 30,000 unique views a month. My blog also has a comments section where anyone can speak their mind on the works I have posted. I was offended by criticism at first, but now I look at it as a way to train myself to write and blog better. Having your work on a public forum was definitely daunting at first, and I didn’t want to show it to anyone for fear of being criticized. But I look at it as a way to learn more about your writing that you would in class discussion. The anonymity of the web allows people to really tell you what they think of your writing, without any sugar coating. I think that is essential to really push yourself when it comes to making strides in your writing ability.

This is a blog I did on my own.

On September 28^th Journalists and Policy Makers met at the U.S. Institute of Peace to discuss how social media has, and will continue to affect accurate journalism. Social media like Twitter and journalists have used Facebook very effectively over the past few years as a way to spread up to date information across the world. Alec Ross of the State Department said that it “Heralds democratization, while bringing the threat of misinformation.” He spoke of a very real concern in today’s world of journalism.

Because of the explosion in the number of users of these platforms, people have become accustomed to receiving information at a rate that traditional news organizations simply cannot keep up with. To put it in short, the days of picking up the daily newspaper at the local newsstand have come and gone.

Many journalists use what citizens post on Twitter and Facebook as a way to compile information across thousands of miles into one concise report. The positives of this are that journalists can report on situations that are happening right this second, at virtually no cost to their organization. These platforms can aloes be used in organizing revolutions and protests in countries that are abusing their citizens. Citizen journalists used social media to organize protests throughout the Middle East and Northern Africa during the Arab Spring. And the Syrian and Arab crackdown on the freedom of expression via these platforms is a testament to how dangerous they can be.

The problem with this is the credibility of these citizen journalists. With no real way to verify the legitimacy of the content, it has become very easy for journalists to report misinformation relayed to them but un-credible sources. Now the journalists don’t know which citizen sources to trust. There was one instance where fake tweets about a bombing in Mexico led to a countrywide panic of families pulling their children out of school. The panic actually caused injury to many people in panicked car crashes during this time.

Because of the anonymity that makes these platform so instrumental when used in social protest against harmful governments, there is no way to check the legitimacy of other sources of information. The meeting only concluded that until these issues are sorted out, it’s likely that tweets and posts will only be of historical use, as an archive of events for future reflection.

source: http://www.mobiledia.com/news/110080.html

Micah L Sifry wrote a book called “WikiLeaks and the Age of Transparency,” that has received a lot of attention as of late. Sifry wrote this book to inform people about the necessity of digital transparency in the constantly changing digital world. His focus was on how technology is influencing government, and the way legislation is being carried out because of this. It has become virtually impossible to hide anymore, with everything being recorded and archived. Wikileaks, a team of journalists who investigate and expose controversial subjects in society and government, have dedicated their lives to push for totally transparency in all party of society. Their goal is to reach an age where all aspects of government are of file for public view. While most believe this is a noble ambition, but an unattainable one. Expecting complete government transparency is seen as unrealistic.

Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, has stated that his goal with the enterprise is to keep governments and authoritative figures honest. The days of having enough power to sweep scandal under the rug are perceived to be over. I personally don’t see this age of transparency to be unrealistic. Twitter and Facebook are used by billions of people who are constantly sharing information worldwide on a second to second basis. Information spreads through there forums like wildfire, making it virtually impossible to keep information under wraps. Even in countries like China and Egypt we have seen and uproar in online knowledge profiling the injustices of their nation’s governments.

While I whole-heartedly believe that transparency is essential for a nation to trust their government, at the same time I believe that some things need to be kept under wraps. Military strategy, and foreign policy are two big things that don’t need to be brought into the public light until they have been safely executed. While freedom of speech is part of what makes our nation so great, sometimes the public should be kept in the dark. There will never come a day where the government is completely transparent, but I certainly hope a day comes when scandal is brought to the surface immediately.

source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/micah-sifry/wikileaks-assange-micah-sifry_b_820671.html

The story progresses, and Connor Prikkel develops a way to exploit the game’s design, and make money collecting gold very quickly. Boss wing declares a lock it so that he can exploit this before they are shut down, but the boys go on strike to protest this. They attempt to talk to the media and spread word about the injustices. The strike progresses to the online realm, and many are very angry for the start of the strike. There is an online battle between the two sides that many spectate. one of the boys is arrested and sent to a real life labor camp. The others are beaten by bullies and tormented by local police.

This fiction novel profiles an extreme world of online money exchange via video games. This is an extreme example of what is currently happening in the world of online gaming. Many companies that create MMORPGs have discovered that they can earn more money than what the game costs. By selling short cuts in the form on online money, armor, swords, etc., they can make money off players who don’t want to go through the game the hard way. World of Warcraft has another bartering community that was not anticipated when the game was originally created. Players who have logged hundred of hours to create strong character with a high level can then sell their character to other players online. People have begun to pay money to be able to breeze through games easier, and this has become big business for some gamers.

Blog I did on my own accord.

With the explosion of technology not only in the newsroom, but also all over the world, many news organizations have had to redesign how they present the news to the public. Online news organizations like the Huffington Post, as well as social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have essentially changed the game of information sharing in our world today. Offering up-to-the-second breaking news, they offer the reader speed and accuracy never before achievable with the traditional news organization. Many are left to wonder if the days of picking the family newspaper up from the newsstand is on its last leg. Not wanting to be left in the dust, traditional news organizations like the New York Times and the San Jose Mercury News are doing everything they can to stay relevant.

The problem is that with news organizations doing everything they can to keep ahead of the curve, they have begun to slack in other areas. With teams that are typically very small, it has become easier for these people to make mistakes. competing with a news force of billions of people, traditional news organizations have to work exponentially harder to get the story to their readers first, often sacrificing journalism ethics and accuracy in the process. A few weeks ago a CBS news reporter picked up misinformation about the death of Joe Paterno, and reported it as fact. A local college news paper printed a story without proper citations that Joe Paterno had died prematurely, and after big budget CBS news reported it, the public was not happy. This was a career ending move for this CBS reporter, but he was only trying to be the first on the scene and report the news first for his hungry readers.

It has become true that traditional reporters are being out-manned by digital citizen reporters, and it is becoming harder and harder to report accurate information at a breaking news pace. Facebook and Twitter have created the biggest user information web of all time, and the truth is, traditional news organizations are fighting a losing battle. They are doing all they can to stay relevant in this constantly evolving and changing world of technology, but it’s becoming increasingly hard to teach old dogs new tricks.

My podcast was titled “Interview with San Francisco Concert Goers”. In my interview I spoke with several people who attended a show with me in San Francisco. I asked them about how they came to be interested in that particular kind of music, and what they thought of the music industry as a whole. The responses I received were very different and very interesting. Thomas Harding was a man living in San Francisco who has become interested in underground music after he became tired of the commercialism that had become so important in todays big budget music. A quote that really stuck with me was, “[The Artists] just tend to stifle their creativity more than they normally would. These artists that become really popular have a tendency to stick with what made them famous. And in my opinion, music is an art form that should never cease to push the boundaries of what we as a society define as ‘music’, you know? It should be an ever-evolving organism that is constantly changing. Sometimes when an artist blows up they feel like they have a certain role that they feel like they need to continue to fulfill.”

It was strange confronting different people in that environment. Though a few of the people I spoke with were friends of mine, I spoke with several people whom i had never met before. They seemed very taken aback at first, but once I got them talking they seemed to want to continue to talk. The people at the concert i attended were all very friendly, and i kind of knew that coming in. The kind of people that follow the Dirty Bird label are all very relaxed and mellow, that’s why I wanted to profile that specific scene.

When it came time to edit there was a format I wanted to follow. I wanted to set up the scene in the beginning and set up who I was interviewing. After that I followed with the interviews of the people I spoke with, and edited the questions in a specific order as to tell a story. Then I added a musical interlude and began the part of the podcast where i profiled the electronic music scene as a whole. I spoke of the controversy revolving around what has become a very hot issue in music right now. I also quoted other interviews of important people in the music industry, and their opinions about the direction that everything was going. I finally tied everything together with an interview that Pasquale Rotella did for the Los Angeles Times where he essentially debunked all the negative attacks that had been brought upon him for creating the Electric Daisy Carnival event. I really did my best to have the podcast run full circle, and paint a full picture about what has been going on in this particular facet of the music industry.

“For the Win” by Cory Doctorow is a fictional novel that is available for free download from the internet. Doctorow is a writer who believes that sharing laws are too strict, and works to make them less strict with his works. This belief has led him to release the majority of his works for free, to anyone. he has received a lot of applause at criticism for releasing his work in this way. But it is evident to the majority of his readers that he is producing his work solely for the enjoyment of his readers. He believes that his works, and others like it are for the enjoyment of the reader, and should be released for free so that all can enjoy them.

Many other artists have taken the path that Doctorow has. There are music producers like Pretty Lights, and Radiohead who release there work online for free, and only ask what you can afford in return. Whether a fan can donate one cent, or twenty dollars for the full album of tracks, it doesn’t matter. These musicians believe that music and are should be for enjoyment, not financial gain. They leave the financial benefit to be gained through touring and playing concerts. Many artists hold this noble philosophy and release their art, music, and writing not only for fans, but in a protest to the way that commercialism has begun to become the priority when creating. Hopefully their efforts with reinstate the love for creation, rather than the love for money that has become so prevalent in modern society.