Monthly Archives: September 2012

Social media is, thus, like home; it is the architecture in which we now live.

Andrew Keen is a business man in the tech industry of Silicon Valley. He is also very opinionated on the current Internet Culture, as his work is based in this. This excerpt from Digital Vertigo shows how culture has been changed from increased forms of social media, as well as internet usage in general. He presents a very basic look at the digital age, and demonstrates how his involvement in this industry has linked him to many influential individuals.

Keen argues that in the past, there has been a distinct “Real World” and “Social Media World” but now the latter is becoming the former. As people spend more and more time online, that becomes their world; their Avatars are their real selves. Everything we need is online. You can shop for virtually anything, be entertained with movies, tv, and other sites, and even cure loneliness, as is the aim of social media. This is becoming the world we live in, as we are constantly connected to it.

This constant connectedness is aided by the sharing of ones “Location” by many devices. With our cell phones, tablets, iProducts, and the like, constantly showing out location, we can never truly escape from social media and the digital world.

But  no, rather than uniting us between the digital pillars of an Aristotelian polis, today’s social media is actually splintering our identities so that we always exist outside ourselves, unable to concentrate on the here-and-now, too wedded in our own image, perpetually revealing our current location, our privacy sacrificed to the utilitarian tyranny of a collective network.

This concept of sharing one’s current location can also be seen in an interview with Andrew Keen and Ted Morgan, CEO of Skyhook Wireless.

Ted Morgan- Why Skyhook Has Become A Harvard Business School Case Study

Skyhook was the first company to develop the technology of “Current Location” through WiFi. They have revolutionized the advertising industry because of this, collecting data from users on their location and behavior on their device embedded with this technology. As more companies have developed their own version of this technology, Skyhook has been the most successful, and is on millions of devices.

So if we are to blame and individual or organization for knowing our locations, behaviors, or the apps we frequent, it’s Ted Morgan and Skyhook. Having grown up in a time where the world was not yet connected to the internet, and therefore not connected with each other, I can say that we have come a long way. Keen dramatically implies how our lives are becoming progressively more “web-intensive”, that we thrive to share our ideas, videos, pictures, etc. in a way that is almost narcissistic. Although I wish that this weren’t true of myself, I do indulge in many a social media site, and share my thoughts, ideas, and cute cat videos that I come across. But in the grand scheme of things, is this my “real” life? I don’t think so. There are times when I feel suffocated by technology and my constant connectedness to people. An introvert in nature, I don’t always feel the need to post on a friend’s wall just for the heck of it, or retweet something funny said by a celeb that I follow, because I don’t think its necessary. And although there are great things that can be found on the internet, somethings are best enjoyed out in the mountains at my Colorado home, where I have zero cell servies and questionable WiFi coverage (although I may instagram my pictures when I return to the land of internet usage).

Remix by Lawrence Lessig

This book describes the changes in copyright law as technology and access to coprighted materials has grown over time. The book is introduced with personal accounts of the struggles of individuals with copyright infringement issues, whether it be for their own artistic creation, or the sharing of information on the internet and other similar devices. Lessig helps us to sympathize with individuals that have been mistreated by these laws, as well as shows us how our own lives are affected by such issues. The time, hassle, and not to mention, financial strain placed on these individuals, as well as the organizations that must carry these actions out, is ludacris.

Picture the meeting: four, maybe more, participants. Most of them lawyers, billing hundreds of dollars an hour. All of them wearing thousand-dollar suits, sitting around looking serious, drinking coffee brewed by an assistant, reading a memo drafted by a first-year associate about the various rights that had been violated by the pirate, Stephanie Lenz. After thirty minutes, maybe an hour, the executives come to their solemn decision. A meeting that cost Universal $10,000? $50,000? (when you count the value of the lawyers’ time and the time to prepare the legal materials); a meeting resolved to invoke the laws of Congress against a mother merely giddy with love for her thirteen-month-old.

The author demonstrates that there are more important issues than this, and that time and money could and should be allocated toward more important and severe infractions.

The progression of technology is never ending, and has come far in the past one hundred years. Therefore, laws have had to change as well to accommodate new forms of technology as well as the various new ways to access it. Culture has been drastically changed by this advancement, and advancement in technology has only promoted more competition to create “the next big thing”.

Digital technologies will thus shift the expectations surrounding access. Those changes will change other markets as well. Think of the iPod– perfectly integrating all forms of RO culture into a single device. That integration will increasingly lead us to see the device not as music player, or video player, but as a universal access point, facilitating simple access to whatever we want whenever we want. Many devices will compete to become this device. And that competition is certain to produce an extraordinarily efficient tool to facilitate, and meter, and police our access to a wide range of culture.

One topic of this reading of which I had no prior knowledge was RO and RW (Read Only and Read/Write) cultures. RO is defined as the “professional” side of culture, demanding respect. This type of culture is unchangeable, and must be accepted as is. On the other hand RW is the consumer friendly side of culture. It involves consumers and looks for their input, allowing individuals to contribute to culture and to learn from it. I find this interesting because I had never thought about culture in such a way. The static and dynamic, the unchangeable and ever-changing.

This excerpt helped me to learn more about culture, how it’s influenced by technology, and the ways in which it affects people on an individual basis. The ever changing creative forces are hindered by copyright laws, but this only stimulates more creative thinking in attempt to create something enjoyable, but legal.

This text presents an in depth look at the cybercultural world and its many characteristics. With the progression of technological advancement and the increasing integration of the physical (i.e. real) world and the technological world, there have been many cybercultures that have been created. It is this integration of technology and real life the fosters creative thinking and technological advancement.

This text is the beginning of a book, and it introduces Cyberspace in an educational way. It defines the need-to-know terms and allows individuals who may not know a lot about the digital world to become informed. What I find particularly interesting is that the real world and digital world both rely on each other, and shape each other’s progress and advancement.

This excerpt does a good job of identifying the key aspects of cyberspace and showing how our lives are increasingly influenced by technological advancement. The concepts of identity, race, governance, access,etc. are being drastically changed and the digital world allows such concepts to be as present (or not) as each person pleases.

For the first assignment, I chose a blog that I have been reading for a very long time. This is a women’s fashion blog about different styles, trends, and articles of clothing that tend to repel the opposite sex. While most fashion blogs glamorize the fashion world, this blog does exactly the opposite. The blogger’s crass language and lack of fear in dressing herself are unique. She isn’t afraid to evaluate trends that most women would find unflattering. She tells it like it is, evaluates and analyzes designer’s collections, and critiques them where she sees fit. This unique approach to fashion blogging is an admirable, and successful, attempt at making her viewpoint known to the world.