blog 11

Commercial Economy:

The commercial economy is how we understand an “economy” in general. “…an economy in which money or “price” is a central term of the ordinary, or normal, exchange.” (118) Products and services within a commercial economy have tangible economic values. We pay for a CD/Movie at a store; we buy food from a restaurant; we pay handymen to fix our furnace. There are infinite amounts of examples here and I think it is pretty easy to understand.

Sharing Economy:

Lessig defines a sharing economy “…as an economy, where access to culture is regulated not by price, but by a complex set of social relations.” (145) It’s a bit more complicated and can be a confusing system to understand, especially when people from different cultures are interacting with each other. The basic idea is that within a community you understand when you should take and give to that community. The sharing community is built around exchange, but this exchange is built on balance and favors, not on set prices and money. If you help people in the community and don’t get anything in return from a certain person, then that person will probably not last within the community.

Lessig wants us to understand that no society could survive with just one or the other. Both a commercial and sharing economy go hand in hand to making this world go around. He also states that the Internet has revolutionized business and economies as well. His examples range from Netflix to Wikipedia. 

blog 10

Pixar compilation:

http://bit.ly/eDxrhY

While browsing the video subreddit of Reddit.com I found this awesome compilation video dedicated to the 25 years of Pixar. I decided to use this as my remix because I think it is “calmer” then most remix videos. (I feel like people think remixes have to be some crazy techno/pop song with tons of editing) It’s an example of how remixing can be used, in a way, to actually promote the original product. People will watch this video and think of it as a trailer and remember how amazing their favorite Pixar animation was/is. (On a side note, it could almost be argued that a trailer to a movie is a remix. It takes part of the original movie, edits and mixes it down, and adds music that is usually not in the final movie. Sometimes it even creates this false idea of what the movie actually will be; thus creating new content.)

 When the general public gets hold of videos similar to this, I don’t think many of them would even categorize it as a remix. They would think it was a well-made trailer to promote Pixar. The general public only knows remixes as music. When we think of a remix the first thing we think of is music, there is no denying that. Lessig points out to us at the beginning of chapter four that literature can be a remix. I believe film can also be a remix and the combination of film, music and literature can create the ultimate remix.

I think it is very interesting the laws that follow remixing. Obviously when writing and quoting it is less of a hassle and people understand the rules of citing.  “We understand quoting is an essential part of that writing. It would be impossible to construct and support that practice if permission were required every time a quote was made.” (Lessig, 53) What I wonder is… Why can’t we just cite in the world of music and film? For the most part I think society does. The amateur music video remixes you see on YouTube usually say it is a remix, and this seems to work. When things start to get out of hand is when people start to make money off of other these remixes, or if already known artist are sampling and remixing. This bugs me! As long as the people cite what they used, then they deserve all the rewards that follow. 

blog 9

Lessig’s argument is that the digital age has brought upon us a new idea of creativity. He uses four different examples that use this digital creativity in different ways, but all circle around the idea of copyright. The examples he uses imply that this age of digitalism has made viewing and using other peoples work more accessible. It is as simple as videotaping your eighteen-month-old son dancing to a Prince and putting it on YouTube; gathering people around the world to sing along to their favorite artist; to sampling, blending, and mixing music into its own unique song.  The main emphasis he wants people to understand and, I am sure we are going to learn much more about, is that the copyright is an ancient technique that needs to be examined further so our creativity does not get obliterated.

With the examples that he has shown us so far, I whole heartedly agree with him. We, as the audience, have to remember that there are always two sides to each story. Yes copyright needs to be up updated for the digital age, but it isn’t as cut and dry as it looks.

RO stands for Read-Only, or the read only culture. Read-Only culture stems from analog technologies. It is a term that defines an age before digitalism. A society where we are all consumers and only take things in; consumers are consuming. “Professionals” produced stuff for society to consume. RW stands for Read-Write culture. This is more of a reciprocal relationship between the producer and the consumer. Society now has the ability to produce for ourselves. I'm not saying in an RO society people are not creative and make things, but now with digital technologies and the Internet, we can produce and let others see are work instantly and easily. This RW culture brings us back to Web 2.0 and how the user is the focus of the online world. 

Blog 8

Rhythmic Cinema

“To name, to call, to upload, to download… So I’m sitting here and writing—creating a new time zone out of widely dispersed geographic regions—reflect and reflecting on the same ideas using the net to focus our attention on a world rapidly moving into what I like to call prosthetic realism.” (85)

This quote struck me for the fact that you forget sometimes how the Internet has eliminated physical space in many different aspects. You can be physically located in Australia, but the next moment be Skyping with someone in the United States creating this false sense of realism, or as he calls it, prosthetic realism.

Rhythmic Space

“It all seems more and more that the creative act itself is becoming a source-code like Linux where people create and add modules of thought-ware to the mix, making it all a little more interesting.” (89)

This goes along with what the books theme is; we live in a digitized world where the creative world works in cahoots with each other.

Errata Erratum

“In the remix, single notes are assigned not to playing cards, but rather to digitized “roto-reliefs,” on-line representations of the engraved cards that Duchamp made throughout his career and gave away randomly to people.” (96)

This is in reference to Duchamp’s Erratum Musical. The digital world is a network of entwined cultural movements that are made by the people involved.  

“It’s a milieu where each “musical sculpture” is unique yet completely dependent on the system that created the context.” (97)

Very straightforward quote we having going on here. The virtual artifact someone creates mirrors the digitized world we live in today. This mirror is not always as direct as we think, but the influence of our society and the technological determined world is evident.

The Future is here

“In a moment like that, the strangeness (strange-mess) of global culture, hip-hop, and of operating as a Dj on a global level crystallized before my eyes.”  (105)

Context here is that mixed cultures are coming together and finding common ground. The digital world has brought communities together that, in the past, would have never existed. We have created new cultures that are breaking the boundaries of creativity.

The Prostitute

“The sample is an interrogation of the meaning we see in a song, of its emotional content lifted away like a shroud from a dead corpse, only to be refitted and placed on another body.” (113)

New meaning is brought to life through past work. The emotional content some kind of work originally had can be flipped and remixed into a new creative work.

WhoSampled.com

Very interesting tool we have going on here. I wanted to explore it in a little bit of a different way. We have been focused on Hip-hop so I decided to go with a rock band and see if they have sampled or if they have been sampled by hip-hop. Searched Modest Mouse and found both examples. I wanted to see if they have sampled and I found one example, Modest Mouse-Workin’ on Leavin’ the Livin’. The sampled song was from a movie which surprised me and I found the clip to be very creepy. I liked the song (musical wise), but it was very creepy none the less. Charles Hamilton, a hip-hop artist, also sampled one of my favorite MM songs and I thought it was a very interesting choice, “Ocean Breaths Salty”.  I wasn’t very surprised to see “Float On” sampled by Lupe Fiasco, or any other hip-hop artist for that matter, because it was the first single from the album that brought MM to more of a mainstream stage. This song is just coming out (March 8^th) and will probably become very popular. Music enthusiast will recognize the hook and beat, but many people will not even realize that it is a sample from MM. Some samples will include the original artist, like the Hamilton sample, but this Lupe song doesn’t even mention MM. Going through some of the YouTube comments people are wondering why it sounds like “Float On” and “how come Issac doesn’t get any credit? It is interesting how artist can get away with this, there has to be some kind of pay out to record companies. 

Blog Transmedia

Summarize the arguments of the deBourgoing piece and connect to first half of the course

The digital world has obviously changed the way society communicates. DeBourgoing is sharing with the audience specific examples of how social media and networking in the digital world has shaped the world of hip-hop. Trying to connect this to pre-midterm studies one connection that came to mind is that of technological determinism. The new social media world we live in has influenced these hip-hop artists to take a different approach at gaining “street cred” and making it in the world of music. Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other social media outlets have helped spread the word of one’s rapping influence. If you want to gain any kind of recognition you must not only go to open Mic, but must establish an identity online. You have to make a story for yourself and collaborate with the other artist around you.

Summarize Paul D Miller 56-77 and connect with deBourgoing and or any of the topics we have discussed in class

                Paul D Miller’s book “Rhythm Science” definitely caught me off guard! I was not expecting it to be this heavy and in depth with examples that range from W.E.B Du Bois to Nietzsche to Edison and Emerson.  In trying to understand this, what I got out of it, is that Miller is saying that nothing is original. He compares writing to DJ-ing. DJ-ing uses a lot of different works to create its own kind of unique sound. He thinks that written work is just recycled from previous people which also create its own unique voice. “Rhythm science is not so much a new language as a new way of pronouncing the ancient syntaxes that we inherit from history and evolution, a new way of enunciating the basic primal languages that slip through the fabric of rational though and infect our psyche at another, deeper level.” I agree and disagree with what I think he is trying to say… in all honesty I could be totally getting the wrong message from him… I agree that ideas from the past can influence the present and future. Evolution is a key aspect in the world we live in today. But, I also believe in originality. Somewhere, sometime, somebody has to take a leap in a new direction.

blog 6

The KEY point that Jenkins wanted to let his audience know is that the world we live in is a participatory culture and the history has told us that that the world we live in is an every changing human network. He believes that how schools are handling the rise of social networking is wrong. Our societal view is that young people can’t take on responsibility or make an impact. Jenkins wants the audience to understand that this generation of people can make a difference in the world we live in today. He believes social networking is for the better and having the ability to interact with one another and collaborate can solve problems and bring this world together. The various points he backs this up with range from harry potter group fundraising to invisible children and Darfur.

This relates to Weinberger in many ways, but the most important idea they share together is the idea of a user focused web. This also happens to be the main idea of Web 2.0. Weinberger talks about the digital order and categorization being centered around the user, well Jenkins focuses more on how users come together on the web. These are different ideas, but they surround the idea that we, as the people who use the internet, create content as well as collaboratively come together to contribute to the vast knowledge of the web.

I think Jenkins brings up very good points about how social networking has brought people together. A great example of this is Reddit.com. I have actually just started going to this website this semester, so when I saw your video on Mr. Splashy Pants I knew exactly the kind of community discussed in the video. After some more research I found out the Reddit members have come together and raised money for various charities. (185,350 to Haiti relief; 600,000 to Donor’s Choose; 45,000 World Vision’s Clean Water Fund) This surprised me because I have always just assumed the kind of people in the Reddit community wouldn’t contribute like they have. I am not saying bad people post on this website, but it just seems difficult to believe hundreds of thousands of dollars can be raised through mostly twenty and thirty year olds.

When you sit behind your screen and see reports of horrible problems in this world you sometimes forget that it is actually REAL. It is easy to join a group on Facebook and “like” something, but what does that actually accomplish? Many people come together and talk and argue about various problems within various communities, but whatever gets done? We can talk all we want over the Internet, but more action must take place. It’s good to communicate and get ideas out, but it seems too many people just read the problem, and then click on the next news article or story. It is comforting to see actual internet communities coming together in real life (see rally at Washington DC with redditers) and raising money. 

blog 5- implicit and explicit

Weinberger, relying on German philosopher Heidegger, says that "the meaning of a particular thing is enabled by the web of implicit meanings we call the world"


 Great example used: “Almost always when we hear a word, we don’t translate it into its definition—we don’t turn every “hello” into “n., a common greeting”—but instead hear its overtones, resonances, intentions, and connections.”  Implicit information is information that comes naturally to the culture it belongs. Different cultures infer meaning in different ways.  Slang, body movements, posture, attitude, sarcasm all have an effect on how a person is viewed and the meaning they want to portray. In the digital world, and dealing with computers, it has to do more with hits, tags, location and connection. It is harder for a computer to read what the user wants, needs and means. The advancement in technology has definitely improved in understanding the user, but it is not perfect yet. (I am a little scared if it gets to be perfect though… can anyone say robotic uprising? The machines are learning!! Haha)

Song I choose was Tiny Dancer by Elton John. The images I choose reflect the song. I choose specific parts form the song, as well as my memory I have with the song; that memory being the movie Almost Famous with the famous scene on the tour bus where everyone joins in singing this song after some rough moments together. I also play the piano and this song is heavy on the piano so i decided to add an image of a piano. I pasted the images on old Polaroid outlines to emphasize that these are memories or the past; a road trip of some sort. Obviously Elton is the center of attention here. I emphasized Elton's photo with color/vibrance. 

Blue jean baby, L.A. lady, seamstress for the band
Pretty eyed, pirate smile, you'll marry a music man
Ballerina, you must have seen her dancing in the sand
And now she's in me, always with me, tiny dancer in my hand

Jesus freaks out in the street
Handing tickets out for God
Turning back she just laughs
The boulevard is not that bad

Piano man he makes his stand
In the auditorium
Looking on she sings the songs
The words she knows the tune she hums

But oh how it feels so real 
Lying here with no one near
Only you and you can hear me
When I say softly slowly

Hold me closer tiny dancer
Count the headlights on the highway
Lay me down in sheets of linen
you had a busy day today

Blue jean baby, L.A. lady, seamstress for the band
Pretty eyed, pirate smile, you'll marry a music man
Ballerina, you must have seen her dancing in the sand
And now she's in me, always with me, tiny dancer in my hand 

Blog 4 the laws of the jungle...

Since I seem to have missed points on earlier blogs about answering the prompt and looking through what we should focus on in the reading. I am going to leave out fluff.

Political:

                “Classification is a power struggle—it is political—because the first two orders of the order require that there be a winner.” Organizing in the first two orders bounds us into ranking where certain “things” should be put. It’s a political struggle between if one item should be put on one leaf or the other.

Tagging:

                Classification in the digital world consists of tagging. Letting people create their own tags allows them to find online resources faster. “…in a traditional tree, an object can be only one branch, at Delicious, tagging a Web address with multiple tags in effect puts it on many branches.” This relates to Web 2.0 for the fact that the users of Delicious are creating the content. Web 2.0 is about the user and how he/she interacts with the web. Tagging is a perfect example of interactivity within the web.

Four new strategic principles

1)      Filter on the way out, not on the way in. Within this section they even mentioned two Web 2.0 terms; blogoshpere and the Long Tail. In referring to blogoshphere the author is saying that the digital world has changed how publishing works. For example, you no longer need to have some kind of scholarly publishing company, like the Harvard business Review, accept your piece of work. We as a user have the capability of publishing online for anyone to see. This ties in to the long tail for the fact that people are now able to have personal niche markets on the internet. “…filtering on the way in decreases the value of that abundance by ruling out items that might be of great value to few people.”

2)      Put each leaf on as many branches as possible. This one is pretty self explanatory. “Hanging a leaf on multiple branches makes it more findable by customers.” It is to our advantage that we tag correctly and have items and things labeled on multiple branches.

3)      Everything is metadata and everything can be a label. The author has a great example about searching online for information about a book. The basic idea here is that everything is connected and therefore everything is metadata. You can search for a book and find the title or have a line in a book, search that, and come with the title. Metadata is what you already know and data is why you’re trying to find out. The more labels you have for items, the easier it is to find.

4)      Give up control. Enabling the users of the web to label and tag gives the user the ultimate control over a website. “Put simply, the owners of information no longer own the organization of that information.”

All in all, this book, so far, is focused on letting us know that the digital order of categorization and organization is user focused. One of the main focuses of Web 2.0 is that the user is in control. Customization is a key aspect in the world we live in today. So, as you can see Weinberger and Web 2.0 go hand in hand.

Random kind of relating thing haha. Well procrastinating this assignment with StumbleUpon I ran into this website: http://static.echonest.com/musicmaze/MusicMaze.html When I saw it i knew I was going to have to post it on my blog.  Check it out for your self and play around. It only give you a little preview of the song. I just think it is interesting how they choose bands of the branches. Good or Bad choices? 

                

Trees! Blog 3

The basics of this reading come down to: "A lumper takes things that seem disparate and combines them because they have something similar. A splitter tends to take two thins that are lumped together and separate them into smaller categories." Personally, I believe no one can be a lumper. If you think about when your organizing and categorizing, your splitting something eventually, even if it is just two branches off the main subject. People can be extraordinary splitters and keep making and defining new branches off the tree, but there is no lumping. Lumping is just the definition of someone that hasn't even started the organization process. Lumpers are just lazy splitters! 


The most interesting part of this reading was when the author started to talk about digital "trees". If Aristotle was around in the digital world I think his head would have probably explode. He helped pioneer the the pre digital way of categorization. The pre digital way of categorization consisted of starting with something basic, like an insect, and splitting insects into different branches, i.e flying, non-flying. From there you would break it up into even more branches/categories. In the digital world categorizing, searching, and organizing is built around you. The tree consist of you defining where you want to start and you wouldn't be limited to certain branches. Instead of having to categorize some kind of flying insect under just insects, you are now able to jump around the "tree of knowledge" and have flying insects under flying and insects. The last paragraph from chapter three sums it up perfectly!


When looking at myself within this world of organization I would have to say that in the digital world I am more of a splitter, but in the physical world I would come off more of as a lumper. In the digital world I have to have organization. I can't just have a file that says "Homework" and put all of my assignments in it. On my computer at work I will split it up the Homework folder into sub-folders with names of the classes. On my external hard drive it opens with Washington State University-> The semester of school-> The course registered for-> HW assignment. An example of the physical world, and why i'm a lumper, would be that of my cloths. A true lumper would have his/her cloths in a big pile to sort through everyday. Personally I like to at least hang some up or put in draws. The draws don't really matter that much and i'm not to picky. Technically you could call me a splitter... but whatever! 


People that aren't in the a technical major/field could find my way of digital organizing over the top. Its all about personal preference. Having a organized digital life shows people what my priorities are. I have to admit though, sometimes the digital world can become too overwhelming with information. I definitely need to do a major clean up of certain areas on my hard drive. 

Organization Blog 2

What caught my attention the most out of the beginning of Everything is Miscellaneous- the power of the new digital disorder was the idea of tagging and cataloging digital items. The prologue to this book caught my attention immediately; i was hooked. The idea of organizing in the physical world is kind of a humorous idea now. We as a society are moving more and more closely to a pure digital world. Personally, I cant decide yet if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Anyways, I even laughed a little out loud at this point "... the solution to the overabundance of information is more information." It seems funny that in order to be organized we have to add information (tagging) to digital artifacts. But, it makes total since. Instead of having to have a physical label and a physical location, we know have the opportunity to tag and find the same digital artifact in millions of different "places". "Instead of everything having its place, it's better if things can get assigned multiple places simultaneously."


Personally I am not the more organized person... I will be the first to admit that. I feel that if I actually organized I can make my life easier. Maybe I find it fun and it works the brain having to remember where i put certain things digitally and physically. I guess I can say I organize better in the digital world then the real world. I have my Google calendar plugged and ready to go as well as a semi-organized work hours sheet to keep track of my job. I like to label folders and I have an external hard drive that has music and school work organized. But, for the real world, I really need to get better at keeping things organized and neat. I know where the important stuff is at all times: cellphone, wallet, keys, and my watch. 

Web 2.0 Five Years On

When I look at the advancements of the web from when the original Web 2.0 idea came around the main difference I see is that of the improvement of the actual hardware and technology. One of the main focuses in this article is that of mobile devices and the applications they run. Smartphone’s and PDA’s have been around for years, but within the last 3-5 years they have transformed how communication and social networking work. I bring hardware into this discussion for the fact that people have great ideas, but without the development of better equipment, it only stays an idea, a theory. The building of cell towers, Internet connections, and advancement in computers, Smartphone’s, and now tablets make it easier to interact with people around the world, as well as develop amazing ideas we would have never thought possible. These devices are also becoming cheaper and more people are able to afford them; thus connecting people to the online world and contributing to the ever growing human network.

A part of the article I found very interesting was that of Photosynth, Gigapixle Photography, and Infinite Images. This idea of combing thousands of photos and making 3D worlds is very interesting and amazing. Infinite Images gives, “the ability of the computer to synthesize imaginary worlds that never existed, extrapolating a complete 3D experience from a set of photos.” This idea will be played into geo-tagging photos. Millions of people around the world will come together and design amazing 3D images. It’s not just about the beautiful images they create, but about the exploration of this idea that really excites me.

Deciding the most exciting web application I have seen this past year is pretty difficult. Overall I just think it is interesting how social networking has developed and how big the industry has gotten these past couple years. I would have never thought of my mom having a Facebook account, but now I am used to the idea. It’s interesting to see where the media goes with this social networking phenomenon. Companies no longer just advertise their website or physical location; they want the consumer to know that they are on Facebook, or have a Twitter account.

Mobility is the future!

Thought this was kind of funny… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iz4GwLpxAhc