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?