The New We

Digital Technologies have taken the World to the next step in telecommunications and virtual interactivity. During the semester we tried to analyze the role these technologies played in our daily lives, whether noticed or unnoticed. We’ve seen the impact that new media has on conventional economic and power systems which have been slow to adapt to the digital age. One example of this election of President Elect Barack Obama. This was a man who had no prominence in the old guard of the Democratic party which might have slowed or stifled his growth in the 20th century landscape of politics.

Picking up from Howard Deans’ cue Barack Obama amassed the most successful campaign in history, largley because of there foresight and understanding of the changing dynamics in the world. Barack Obama raised a half a billion dollars from online donations and another quarter billion apx. through conventional donars. President Elects winning the election confirmed a power shift in American society.

We often discussed the nature of the uptopian vision vs. the dystopian vision with regards to technology. My belief is that this election confirms that the internet can be a force for empowerment through networking, organization, promotion of important views, as well as raising the actual funds to compete with the status quo. Only time will tell if the candidate is as different as his campaign.

I was fortunate enough to be in Grant Park with the crown during the election night coverage where I also brought a digital video camera to document the event. This prosumerism that has evolved do to cheaper cost of technology has allowed for me to film the even from my perspective and then to share it with a global audience for absolutely free.

Just as the movable type printing press revolutionized Europe and shook up the conventional power structure I believe the internet is doing  the same. The independence of new media from corporate control is one of the main reasons why my faith in justice and transparency is still intact.

I’m not sure where the line is between new media and old but what I am sure is that the way we are using these technologies are new and potentially revolutionary. A republican pundit on CNN made an analogy that might hold some truth. He said that Barack Obama is going to be the first open source president.

I think that the transparency and accessibility that was found in his campaign is the reason why it was successfull. The best part is that he took a lineur system, where the powerfull raised money and recruited foot soldiers to knock on doors, and turned it into a more cyclicar interactive system. In the same way the internet has taken the old model of linear distribution of content, (be it news, enterntainment etc.) and turned it on it’s head.

Here is an article from MIT discussing the impact of the digital medium on our politics.

Here is our project on online idenity;

The Digital Divide and The Nature of Digital Infinite

The Digital Divide as described in New Media is a gap of limited access to the internet depending on social and economic status. It’s not only true that minorities within the U.S. have far less access to the internet but the chapter illustrates how people in developing nations have very little access to the internet. For instance in the diagram about Africa’s fiber optic cable infrastructure it turns out that not one African country or african company took part in the business of creating it. We see that even today less then 10% of the world has access to internet, a tool that has the potential of leveling the playing field in terms of education accessibility and market growth. I know that with one lap top and a large enough screen or projector, a person could teach a classroom of students and keep them interested and enthusiastic because of the visual history and illustrative nature of a/v streaming and graphic diagrams. 

The fact that the internet hasn’t yet been able to reach these developing countries in the way that it should leads me to believe that the status quo is fine for the corporate media. They might view the equality of access to information as big competition that could and would make it a lot harder for the U.S. media to maintain hegemony over T.V. and the internet. As suggested in the chapters the media on the internet largley mirrors the ownership of media on television. Corporations like Sony, AOL-Time Warner, Microsoft and others all have websites and media production firms and distubutors. Though this is true the internet is offering a leveling effect for two reasons. 

After having access to the internet you can visit any site on the web. This is a huge advantage to smaller companies too because they have an oppurtunity for web visiabilty as much as many other established cross over sites like abc.com.  Though googles ranking system perpetuates the popularity of corporate media it also gives grass roots media a equal chance. Secondly, digital media production and consumption has blurred. Certainly mash-ups are an example of that. Internet memes as well, which can take on new meaning by remediating old media.  Digital production is becoming so ubiquitous that we are now at a point where it gives people with a good idea a fighting chance to make a business out of it. I point to www.digg.com as a good example of that as well as www.revision3.com. Digg.com is a social news site where people submit and rank stories found on the web. Revision3 is a internet t.v. network that offers professionally created content tailored to the Generation Y.

The digital infinite refers to the fact that the digital revolution is a double edged sword. Yes it makes production of content cheap and accessible which promotes more practice and innovation in digital arts. Of course this also means that distribution of these arts; be it videos, music, photos, are now easily pirated. This is a problem for someone who is trying to get a band started and can’t sell many records because people copy each-others. Similarly if the people who produce content don’t get paid then they won’t do it anymore. The companies will eventually stop producing good content and resort to cheaply made quick cash productions. The nature of digital is that is can be copied without degradation and shared fairly easily. I think the goods outweigh the bad provided we all promote individual respect for content creators and responsible consumption. The other part of digital infinite that I was referring to is that these digital artifacts, i.e. pictures of ourselves from face book, will exist forever in one place of another.

Identity in the age of virtual communities

“…In previous ages identity was in part guaranteed through embodiment, the body and identity being coterminous…(Now,) we have used technology to communicate ourselves over a distance.”-Pg. 167, New Media, LIster

I think that identity has always been created as a result of our relationships to others. This historically meant that we derived who we think we are from our physical, emotional bonds shared with our parents, siblings, and friends. Moreover we also can understand that we take on different identities in different situations. For example at work I may not say “Awesome” and I may tuck in my shirt and try to appear as my “professional self.” Similarly when I go out on the weekend I may not worry about the language I use and I may not interact with people in the way I would at world. These are two example but one could argue that we have as many identities as we have new situations to deal with. I think in a new situation we are forced to become someone who we don’t know yet. We may be forced to taking an identity that is new and that is a reflection of how I think someone in that situation would behave.

Group identity is a large factor in the new media communities that have sprouted up since the ubiquity of the internet has become reality. In forums or bulletain boards people come together with a common factor to discuss an interst that they share. This is an example of the change between identity as a result of phsyical proximity and relationships therein, to a formation of identities based on virtual communities and interactions occur through the internet medium. Like Stone suggest in the New Media text, the relationship between our own sense of self and body.

The question of weather the internet is a seperate reality in itself could be debated. On one had the internet does provide a framework where we are not subject to the same rules of “facticity” as online. We can take on seperate roles and change who we see ourselves as. On the other hand the internet could be said to exist in what is already an existing social structure.

Group communications and the collective intelligence within is a huge change to how we interact with each other. Places like www.vimeo.com or www.gomagicgo.com are online communities that offer a place to share ideas and ask questions. As someon states in the New Media text, “Nobody knows everything but everybody knows something.” This is the premise that allows for shared knowledge to spread. The benefits of this are evident in the creative fields such as video production or card magic but the results are still being applied to politics. We see the attempt of Barack Obama advocates to collectively share information and to organize each other in the realm of national politics. Here is a community that literally is looking out for their virtual neighbor. This link leads to a chat that is a live A/V stream of a person’s front lawn who had their Obama-Biden sign stolen  multiple times. Now the community gets together and watches the sign while chatting about politics.

The Survivor spoilers are an example of an organized community based online that has shaped the outcome of the show by leaking information that has been deduced. As Jenkins said, if this were to be replicated in the realm of corporations or keeping the government in check we might see some real changes in the established status quo.

Comics and Visual Sequencing

I found Scott McCloud’s book amazing in revealing the layers of our symbol driven world. I had never thought of comics as pictographic symbols. I had traditional notions about what a “comic” could deliver, and now I come away with a different understanding. I now see comics as a pictographic language that uses icon abstraction to entertain and deliver information. Similar to the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, comics are “juxtaposed pictorial and other images in a deliberate sequence.”

Sometimes I think we can lose the forest in the trees. Meaning that we can forget that we are using approximations of reality when we use words, the the real things the represent. Words are only an abstraction or reality. As Marshall McCluhan in quoted as saying “Words are totally abstract icons, that is, they bear no resemblance at all to the real McCoy.” pg 28 To take this statement to a conclusion might be to say that we merely approximate reality through our language. 30 People may be in a bank when it gets robbed, and they might have as many different versions of the same event, different wordings and different realities based on each person’s individual experience.

Another idea I found interesting was that we often come to conclusions through assumptions. The idea of closure, of coming to conclusions on the subliminal level was fascinating. It reminds me of people who find Jesus in an image of burned toast or mother Mary in a stain on a New York City wall. The fact is that their minds force them to a conclusion, thereby transforming “a fragmented image into reality.” And notice the power of the interpreted abstraction, many calling it a sign from God. This is why we must understand the subliminal minds tendency to want closure.

Closure isn’t just found with meaning but with the practical nuts and bolts of the audio and visual experience. Film and video is in fact a series of frames or images set in a sequence at a particular speed, (24 frames per second), in order to give the illusion of motion and naturalness. We also can take emotions away from those sequential images that affect us beyond our time watching them.
Another thing I thought was interesting was the former divide between “comics” and cartoons and Western literature. The conventional timeline of history acknowledges pictographic language while still considering the comic art form as a trivial artform. The fact is that comics have shaped all media in their aim to incorporate the reader into the art form. They want identifications and involvement. This is knows as the invisible “partnership between the reader and creator, creating something out of nothing, time and time again.”

-Ryan Ramtin

The Totally Rad Show at Comic Con

Pictorial Language: Broken Down

Rhetoric of New Media and Utopian Vision

The collective “technological imaginary” is the idealistic driving force of the internet. I think that the rhetoric adopted for the narrative about new media and the internet is woven with phrases like “global village,” and “collective brain.” The unspoken insinuations about the internet when it first arrived was that it could be a virtual meeting place for people where you could live out your ideals and have infinite accessibility to other people around the world. The post structuralist idea that the discourse or language dictates our reality makes some sense. I don’t think that it dictates our reality as much as it shapes and guides it.

Einstein ounce said something to the effect of “Sunday Newspapers have replaced sermons,” according to David Crowely of History of Communications. This is to say that communication with our neighbors and commmunity members used to be neccassary and the effect of that was the bonding of communities. Now in a digital age where people commute to work, shop and larger corporate owned faceless stores, there is a void in the individual that is being filled. Somewhere in these reading it said that the new media is merely finding a different avenue to fullfill the needs that the previous media was fulfilling. I think that this is illustrated by the social networking site like facebook, myspace, and twitter. Not only those but through instant messengers and other sites, we are all looking for connections.

Instead of being a Mass Audience we seem to be more individualized. The former mass media is having trouble tailoring it’s programming to giant monolithic demographic blocks. Hence the rise of Niche-Casting, web casting/Podcasting. We are witnessing a revolution in niche targeted programming, coupled with the drop in price to produce/host such content and the accessibility factor, old media is being forced to rethink it’s delivery system. The early adopters have shifted and now the masses are beginning to become engaged in cyber space. Be it youtube and consumer based content or Hulu.com which is forced to provide add supported “free” content. The web has democratized media in a way previously unthinkable. The rush to monotize this is well underway with newly found Goliath’s like Apple’s iTunes online store that is the biggest Music seller in the world.

I think that the world is essentially the same on the web as in real life. Though people may behave differently there are still authentic people as well as trolls. I don’t believe the net offers a utopia but it does democratize our media in a new way. Do you think it offers a Utopian underpinning to our lives? Also do you feel that the internet has made information more accessible to people? If so how do you think it will change society?

I think it does offer a bit of a level playing field. Things like the Guttenberg press online and Google books allow for all people, no matter their country or language, to access materials from the finest libraries of our world. It will continue to hasten globalization and allow intense competition.

Click here for a look at the effects of the New Medium.

-Ryan Ramtin

Check out my blog for the Digital Media Lab Here

“We the Digital People”

As discussed in Lister’s book New Media a critical introduction, we see that the gap between the producers of media content and consumers is shrinking. This is partly due to globalization and technological breakthroughs that enabled the traditional consumers to become producers of media as well. In the book they used an example of a digital video camera, which now can be bought for roughly $3,500, can be used to capture footage that is better than traditional broadcast standards and thus acceptable for T.V. and net distribution.

My personal experience as a Digital Media Lab Advisor for Loyola and a enthusiastic digital video producer has lead me to believe that with one lap top, one $700 camera, and a good idea you can produce content that rivals the travel channel and many others. I personally think that these digital art forms will be revolutionized in years to come because of this accessibility and the fact that it’s free so to speak. Years ago if you wanted to film something you had to plan it out and in many cases the most fleeting, interesting, passionate ideas get over thought and underinvested until they become nothing. Now we can act and record for free with $3 MiniDV tapes and compact flash cards that can be reused after you’ve copied the video from them.

In a way I agree with Lister’s idea that this so called “new media” is really just old media refashioned and trasmitted differently to the people. I agree with the fact that video and audio existed before this but what he fails to mention is that many inventions are merely refashioned older ideas. That doesn’t negate the fact that they are themselves new inventions. I agree with McLuhan when he said that “it’s the medium not the message.” It’s not the video/audio or page viewing that’s new, it’s how we use them.

Here is a spot where a lot of revolutionary Digital Video and Photo artist post their stuff.

Producing Digital Media content is FREE for you if your a Loyola student. Rent out Prosumer camera, Mics, Mixers, Laptops, all for free. CLICK HERE for the Loyola Digital Media Lab.