Google Docs

I have been going between my house and my girlfriends house a lot lately and have been having to deal with multiple versions of papers. I save one to my laptop then copy it back to my desktop. So I decided to try google docs, its actually one of the only google apps that I don't use. But this week, with 4 papers due I didn't want to have 8 versions a week to keep track of. So I am using google docs to keep things straight. At first I was sure to copy my work from docs to my computer, just in case. I still do on larger papers, but now I just use it, type in it, and save it there. I can also share my docs with people so they can see where I am in the process and give it a quick once over proofing wise. It has streamlined my workflow. I look forward to google wave as well to use as a collaborative time saving tool.

Research

In one of the Elluminate calls I brought what I thought was an interesting point about research. This is my first graduate level class so this level of reasrch and writing is new to me. I am begining to understand how to research, but sometimes I am not sure what is a good, or valid piece of literature to use. I mentioned that a good class would be one that covers methods of research, and more importantly, what makes a piece of research better than another.

Elluminate

Am in a elluminate chat right now for class. Its my first meeting using this program, and I think it is a great asset to an online class. It fills that void of not feeling as it you are a part of a group. It is nice to hear Nick speaking and other members of the class. the topics are interesting as I am just getting used to research and annotation tools. Very good tool.

YouTube

The Youtube video, “The Machine is Changing Us: YouTube and the Politics of Authenticity” should be retained as part of the web 2.0 reading packet proposed by Professor Bill Wolff. (Wesch, 2009) In the video presentation Wesch maps the changes in society to the development of new technologies focusing on the social media site YouTube.com.
In his presentation Wesch posed the question, is society heading towards the world of Orwell’s 1984, where people are controlled by the state and told what to do, to think and to feel, or that of Huxley’s A Brave New World, where people don’t need to be told what to do, because they just do not care about anything. They are apathetic, they have all the technology but do nothing with it but provide themselves with pleasure. By tracking small trends and larger ones, such as Mtv, Wesch does an expert job in posing the question, “Is that where we are now, have we entered the world of Huxley.” He does this by juxtaposing images and quotes from different eras to try and prove his point. One of the more humorous ones is when he shows a picture of his class, obviously bored out of their minds in a class on technological participation, then, he shows a group of kids at an American Idol audition. The kids there are on their feet, screaming, and excited. (Wesch, 2009) He then uses a quote he found to illustrate why this could be, “What we are encountering is a panicky, an almost hysterical, attempt to escape from the deadly anonymity of modern life… and the prime cause is not vanity…but the craving of people who feel their personality sinking lower into the whirl of indistinguishable atoms to be lost in a mass of civilization.” (Wesch, 2009) I believe this quote sums up the widespread use social networking sites. What makes the quote most interesting is that it was then attributed to Henry Canby who was talking about the loneliness and anonymity of living in large cites opposed to rural living. Both can be seen in parallel, a large impersonal city where individuals blend into the crowd directly relates to the large mass of information that is transmitted over the internet everyday. But how is it different? On the web people choose to be anonymous, they use anonymity to be able to say what they want. But is it used for political or social discourse? As Wesch showed more than once, instead of using social networking and Web 2.0 tools for change, they use them for making YouTube videos of their cats wearing pajamas.
YouTube has an amazing ability to bring people together as seen in the person posing as Guy Faulk and asking people to write on their hands a message they wanted to world to see. This post received over 600,000 replies with people holding up their hands promoting ideas. (Wesch, 2009) It is in this example that I believe Wesch does show that YouTube and other social networking sites can tie people together though ideas, small in this example, but as the web grows, so may the participation.

Finland

Just saw why Finland had so much online political participation this week. Heard and NPR story on a new law enacted there, where ALL homes are to be wired with high speed internet connections. Most already are. An this will be paid by the government, free to the public. I wonder if that would spark greater political activism in this country, or just a lot more YouTube videos.

Viral

I find the idea of viral information flow one of the more interesting aspects of Internet culture. I first learned this term from marketing books by the marketing guru Seth Godin. Especially in books, Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers Into Friends and Friends Into Customers, Unleashing the ideavirus, and Free Prize Inside: The Next Big Marketing Idea.

I think this is one of the more unique ideas and phenomenon of the web. We all get caught up with these "viral memes" as Anderson refers to them in the Lister book, "New Media". Things catch on, people key into something that resonates with them or the movement of society at the time. These viral trends travel throughout the first adaptors and make it into the minds of everyday people through other pop culture filters.

But does viral marketing have staying power. I believe used as a tool to introduce a new company or product or to liven up an old brand it is useful. A powerful tool. But as with most pop culture trends it does not build brand loyalty. It is a starting point, or a point of action when what you are doing is failing and you need to jump start things.

Unfortunately it is not as easy as putting an ad in the newspaper or running commercials. You must have an intimate knowledge of your customers and never cross the line of "looking" like you are trying to do exactly what you are trying to do, sell them something.

Avatars/Identity

One of the things I mentioned in my paper was how people only show what they want. I thought the idea of that identity is fluid on the web and uncertain, but I believe that is the case everywhere, in the real world as well. Who knows anyone. It reminds me of movies and stories of the fifties where everyone seemed to live cookie cutter lives but had a hidden lives or were just different than they appeared. The more I read about how different the web is in regards to identity and community the more I think that they are actually exactly the same.

New/old media

One of the more interesting things I go out of a recent reading was how old media takes bits of the new technology and media and tries to incorprorate them. I think photography and film has done this well. Photographers have embraced computers and Photoshop to create new kinds of at, and have used it to augment and "fix" their pics through color correction, lighting, and sometimes composition. Its interesting how things feed off each other.

Peeps

Hey i think I have almost everyone added to my blog role, if you are hitting my blog and I don't have yours shoot me an email or post it here so I can add it and comment on your posts. Thanks.

Assignment 2: New Media & Key Theoretical Concepts

The Silver reading, Where Is Internet Studies was just what I needed to read at this point in my new carrier as a graduate student. I found myself asking the same question last, and this week. Where is this class located, where is the teacher, and what is I suppose to do exactly. Yes, those are very micro level concerns, but they can be extrapolated to the larger question that Silver is asking.

I found two points especially interesting in, Where is Internet Studies. The first being how Beaubien, Hogan and George described the growth of an academic discipline in there book, Learning the Library, and secondly, how much this field of “new media” builds upon older studies.

The four stages of the growth of an academic discipline very much mirrors the growth of an Internet community that revolves around an interest or hobby. In the pioneering stage you have the new adopters that have stumbled across this “new thing”, that only they know about. They get to study it, learn all they can about it and then begin to disseminate the information to others. In the elaboration phase the first adopters get to share how cool they were to discover this “new thing” with others, this increases attention on the subject. The more people involved the greater the scrutiny and the development of rules. In the proliferation stage the group has expanded and several web sites about the “new thing” have begun to spring up and a community is born, with it’s own rules, terminology and culture. Lastly in the establishment phase you begin to see not only a web presence for this “new thing” but print publications, conventions and possibly graduate and undergraduate studies. I think primarily of comic book culture when writing this. Comics went from nothing to a billion dollar business, but also an area of study. There are several texts that explore how comics and comic heroes affect American culture. There are also several colleges in the United States that offer undergraduate as well as graduate degrees in sequential storytelling.

In his book Silver tells us that “new media” studies is many times incorporated in other disciplines’ such as American studies, anthropology, psychology and the like. He poses that this cross-pollination, as he calls it, suggests that the study of “new media” is a rich field. But I wonder if that is also what makes us ask the question, “What Is Internet Studies”. Not that we should, or could examine the world of new media without these other disciplines’, they are necessary and without them we would just be navel gazing about how “cool” the internet is and not have any academic tools to draw upon. I have found myself having a difficult time explaining to people what I am studying. At first I was nervous about this, but as I read more, and examine it more, I am developing a vocabulary that I lacked. This is not unlike how this academic discipline is being developed.

In the Silver book, Where Is Internet Studies the author poses and answers many questions as to what Internet studies are. As I surfed the web looking up some of the journals and organization that were in the reading, I realized that this field is widespread and always growing. The more we understand how it relates to other disciplines and other modes of thinking it develops itself, frames how we study it, and expands outward like the web itself.

Silvers, D. (2003). Where is Internet Studies , pp. 1-12.

Assignment 1 - So tell me about yourself.

I have been a graphic designer and photographer for 15 years. In that time I have also taught photography at Herkimer County Communality College and Design and Flash at The School of Communication Arts in Raleigh, North Carolina. I am also a comic book colorist who has done work for DC and Marvel comics as well as many independent publishers. For fun I run a web comic site that I created 3 years ago called Pixelstrips.com. On Pixelstrips.com I offer free web comics, tutorials and artist blog space in the upcoming version.

My main objectives are to learn how to better use new technologies to further my online and teaching knowledge. Also, I currently do many different things to “get the word out” on Pixelstrips.com, and am looking forward to gaining new insights on how I can use mediums like Twitter and newer social networking sites to get more visitors.

Teaching is also another love. I hope to secure a teaching position when I finish my degree at either the high school or college level. Tying technology and learning is something that I want to be the keystone of all my lessons.

I have a few ideas for my seminar paper; one is on how schools and teachers can better communicate with parents. I am a parent of a 5 year old and divorced, so when I do not have my son I do not get messages from school. With the many different digital mediums available there must be a better way then a hand written note on a note card.

My second idea for a paper would have to do with how blogs and online communities can drive traffic to sites, what makes a community thrive and support a site, and how do you then branch out and convert more people.

My main objectives are to better understand some of the new technologies and how they can be incorporated in teaching and marketing. Sometimes I think that the two are the same. In both you are trying to get an idea across to a group of people that may or not be very interested at first but that’s our jobs, to make it interesting for them to want to learn.