In 2007 Henry Jenkins wrote a blog piece titled, Nine Propositions Towards a Cultural Theory of YouTube, where he talked about the uses and possibilities of YouTube and how it is changing online interactivity. He describes it as a “meeting point” and “hybrid media space” where commercial, non profit, governmental, educational, individual, activist and other types of content and interests co-exist with each other. It is a user friendly site as just about anyone with a camcorder option on their phone can upload video to YouTube, and because of this, many parts of life that may not have been seen otherwise receive much more exposure. Some videos on YouTube come as a result of blogs and other social media outlets that eventually transition onto YouTube type blogs. Jenkins also mentioned how the digital divide is also in effect on YouTube as minorities are underrepresented at least among the most viewed videos, and there are still many who don’t have access to such social media sites.

I think today, YouTube has definitely grown bigger than from five years ago. More people have access, and the site connects to other social media more seamlessly than before. YouTube is not a typical social networking site like Facebook, but it has its own community and connectivity that is on par with the likes of Facebook, especially since they are linked to each other. Even on television there are entire shows dedicated to just viewing the best or funniest clips from YouTube such as Ridiculousness on MTV or Tosh.0 on Comedy Central. Today YouTube represents a shift in how information is transmitted. It is more accessible, and newspaper companies such as The New York times are catching on and using it as another medium to bring the news.

From the shows on tv that broadcast the best videos from YouTube, many everyday activities that people normally wouldn’t give a second thought, are exploding and becoming popular. Today just about anyone can be caught on camera and become famous or infamous instantly because many people have access to the internet and a means to get their media on the internet. These types of videos can change lives for better or worse. For example, recently a video was posted where a Cleveland bus driver hits a passenger. Without the people taping this incident, maybe the bus driver would not have been suspended and there would be no visual evidence other than the witnesses, but there is no doubt this type of video will become popular and possibly end up on television.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmqUlXQCAz8[/youtube]

In Daryl Paranada’s excerpt from his book Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, Paranada talks about  the increasing number of gamers around the world, and the large amounts of time spent playing games and analyzes why its not all necessarily a negative trend. He argues because of this growing trend, the ways people socialize and behave in the physical world in general will see a significant change as people become more comfortable with online video games and gaming in general. He describes this new wave as

The exodus of these
people from the real world, from our normal daily life, will
create a change in social climate that makes global warming
look like a tempest in a teacup.
–edward castronova,
Exodus to the Virtual World1
Gamers have had enough of reality.
They are abandoning it in droves–a few hours here, an entire
weekend there, sometimes every spare minute of every day for stretches
at a time–in favor of simulated environments and online games. Maybe you
are one of these gamers. If not, then you definitely know some of them.

These gamers he talks about are your average people with jobs, families and other responsibilities  but use online video games to fill a void that the physical world may leave them. I can attest to this because I used to play a lot of video games and its the sense of not being limited by the rules of the physical world and in a way living out your imagination without any consequences. There are also rewards you get for completing certain goals and its the sense of accomplishment that keeps people coming back for more.

The number of gamers is increasing also due to the use of mobile devices where games are more accessible and there is a lot of profit in the industry as it is an estimated $68 billion industry.

I think games like any other form of entertainment is just a way for people to escape the stresses of the real world. Video games are just one outlet to do this, movies, books, art and more are another form that people take to escape and entertain themselves, but the stigma that comes with movies and books is more accepted and not considered a waste of time like playing video games. That being said, do you think video games will every be accepted as a form of art and not a waste of time?

Danah Boyd is the author of the article Why Youth (Heart) Socal Network Sites: The Role of the Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life. In the article she discusses why young people in particular seem to be infatuated with social networking sites. The article was published in 2007, but many of its themes and ideas still resonate with today’s youth culture of social networking infatuation.  She discusses some of the demographics of social network usage such as younger males using these sites more to flirt and meet people more their age than girls in the same age group, while older females are more likely to use the sites to communicate with friends they see in person. Despite the differences in usage by both genders, what she discusses in her article regards practices common between both boys and girls.

Social network sites are based around Profiles, a form of individual (or, less frequently, group) home page, which offers a description of each member. In addition to text, images, and video created by the member, the social network site profile also contains comments from other members, and a public list of the people that one identifies as Friends within the network. Because the popularized style of these sites emerged out of dating services, the profile often contains material typical of those sites: demographic details (age, sex, location, etc.), tastes (interests, favorite bands, etc.), a photograph, and an open-ended description of who the person would like to meet.  Profiles are constructed by filling out forms on the site.

It becomes clear that these social networking sites were inspired from dating sites due to the set up their profiles where users put up their basic information and they make themselves look appealing or approachable. I found it interesting that no one seems to put up any information or pictures of themselves sad, crying or “ugly” because it wouldn’t look good from outside users, but rather what is put up are pictures and statuses of people happy or looking “good”, which no one does all the time. I also found it interesting how there was a shift from testimonials to comments which are the norm today. Where testimonials were more messages about the user, the comments were more private messages, which could be seen by the public. This adds to the issue of privacy in these social networks, where people post plans on other peoples walls, that the public can see. This  brings up the question of if users want their privacy, then why post what seems to be private conversations or messages in public online places.

Whether you’re a teen or not, I think people use social networking sites for the same general reason, and that is to stay connected with those who may be not be in physical proximity with them, and to also stay updated on whats going on with the world. I feel like sometimes my newsfeed on Facebook or Twitter can replace the news, because if one or a few people see or read something on the news, whether local or national, when it is posted, it alerts others of issues going around them. But in the end, reasons vary from user to user.

Andrew Keen is the author of Digital Vertigo: How Today’s Online Social Revolution is Dividing, Diminishing and Disorienting Us, a book where like the title, he talks about how online social networks are breaking up society, which today is not a very original argument. He believes people do not really live outside of social networks, but rather that people do everything on these online sites.

           through services like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn. Rather than virtual or second life, social media is actually becoming life itself—the central and increasingly transparent stage of human existence, what silicon valley venture capitalists are now calling an “internet of people” As the fictionalized version of Facebook president Sean Parker—played with such panache by Justin Timberlake—predicted in the 2010 Oscar nominated movie The Social Network: “We lived in farms, then we lived in cities, and now we’re gonna live on the Internet!” Social media is, thus, like home

I don’t agree with Keen’s argument because although it may seem from a quick glance that people do “live” on the internet, I think its just another medium of connecting and socializing. People can be as involved or connected as they wish, and some people are definitely more online than other and it does seem that some people actually do live online, but at the end of the day, when people aren’t physically together, the internet and sites like Facebook begin to bridge the physical gap.

Remix is a book written by Lawrence Leesig which discusses the effects of the internet. He writes about how the copyright laws of today seem outdated and unfit to deal with the way the internet changes culture and creativity. He states that every time “you use a creative work in a digital context, the technology is making a copy”.  Leesig claims that what reading and writing used to be for past generations, has now transitioned into knowing and manipulating multi-media technologies as they become more saturated within society and it becomes the new “literacy”. He also claims that people growing up in this generation will be committing crimes they do not know are illegal because those are the norms they will grow up around. Early on he gives an example of this where a mother, Stephanie Lenz posts up a video on YouTube of her child dancing to a song by Prince, only to later have that video removed and gets sued by Universal Music Group because the video contained an unauthorized performance of the artist Prince.

This sort of thing happens all the time today. Companies like
YouTube are deluged with demands to remove material from their
systems. No doubt a signifi cant portion of those demands are fair
and justifi ed. If you’re Viacom, funding a new television series with
high- priced ads, it is perfectly understandable that when a perfect
copy of the latest episode is made available on YouTube, you would
be keen to have it taken down. Copyright law gives Viacom that
power by giving it a quick and inexpensive way to get the YouTube’s
of the world to help it protect its rights.

As time goes on and new technologies and media come about, I believe it will become increasingly difficult for entertainment companies to keep their properties from the internet, but at the same time, there will be more lawsuits against those who unknowingly post, copy or view copyrighted material.

Reading Cyberbultures discusses the many ways internet culture mirrors life outside the digital world. It covers topics from globalization to race and gender and also the gap between those who have access to the digital world known as the digital divide. Cybercultures as described by the book are, “cultures formed in or associated with online social spaces” which include “the networked electronic, and wired cultures of the last three decades of the twentieth century”. This includes videogames, email, online chats and even spaces from mobile devices. Cyberspace refers to the worlds and domains generated by digital information and communication technologies. Within the cyberspace, users are represented though an avatar which is described as an online identity usually with a graphic representation of the user within the virtual environment. This avatar can be seen as an extension or augmentation of one’s life. I believe the non digital world is increasing transitioning is marketplace into the cyberspace as according with the book:

“Cybercultures are driven by material considerations of profit and power, and affect people in their real lives. All this goes to show how technology must always be seen as contextual, and treated as technoculture where meanings, values, and functions are integrally associated with the object. Culture and technology are thereforenot distinct but linked.”

A prime example of this and the concept of globalization is with Amazon.com. Although Amazon does not have a brick and mortar store, the company is still able to be local and global at the same time through technology and commerce. Rather than going to physical stores, consumers are increasingly using online stores and shops for commerce which saves time, travel and many times money.

As with the physical world, there is a divide among those who these cyberspaces are available to. With 14.7% of the world population, Africa only makes up 3.5% of the world’s internet use although they do have the largest growth between 2000 and 2007. Europe with 12.3% of the world’s population it has 27.2% of world internet use. Coming in with the smallest world population percentage is North America with 5.1%, but has nearly 70% of all the internet usage. There is a dramatic disparity among who has access to these cyberspaces and it is clearly more prevalent in Western nations, and much less so in developing nations.

With just about every aspect of the physical world able to be somehow represented in the digital world, cybercultures are a transforming the way people communicate and only seem to be getting stronger with time.

I chose to visit the blog of Aaron Weiss which features movie and film reviews. The home screen of the blog features movies and films in order of how recenlty they were released, although there are still a number of recenlty released movies missing from the list. As you scroll down you see more films and movies and he has 84 pages of movies. At the top there are different links for Movie Reviews, Film Criticism, Film Blog, Contact and an About page. His film blog contains blogs about film festivals, suggestions on his favorite films, theater reviews and much more.

The site itself is pretty straightforeward and his has a search bar to quickly find what you are looking for. One thing I didnt like about the site were all the ads on the side and sometimes in the middle of a review which was a bit of a distraction for me, but overall, the blog was solid and well made. His blog can be found at the following link: http://www.cinemafunk.com/.