This week hosted the topic Taylor (his blog is here: http://taylorcasu.blogspot.com/ - he talks a lot about music which I can relate to) and I did our presentation on New Media, Beliefs, Politics and Ethics, so I feel like I have extra to talk about here. I can post the links I talked about but obviously couldn't post in the speech.
Top 15 Web Hoaxes: http://mashable.com/2009/07/15/internet-hoaxes/
Walken for President: www.Walken2008.com
I find this online culture of sorts to be very interesting. Once, mankind had myths and legends where now we have online hoaxes. I've had probably too many conversations with friends about methods of fixing scratched game CDs or building makeshift weaponry (jokingly, of course) which were discovered online. Naturally, I've decided that putting toothpaste all over my old San Andreas disc isn't worth the risk. I thought about this in conjunction with the politics-focused first reading for the week. Clearly there's been plenty of passionately organised meetings focused on various political stances and beliefs, but I wonder if any that have been empowered by New Media turned out to be hoaxes too (similar to Walken2008 but more serious). It seems to me that there's significant risk if this is the case, as history shows how politics without New Media can be so devastating.
20110328
20110321
Week 3 Readings
This week's topic reading was entitled "The New Media Amusement Arcade: Music, Games & Films". Just reading the title gets me interested in this topic as I'm an avid gamer, love music and films too (and I also study film).
I found the article from Time the more interesting of the two. I've never had much experience with Bollywood cinema and find it an interesting, almost exotic topic. The idea discussed in the article is that Bollywood movie producers are doing what Hollywood producers won't by making their films available for download worldwide. This reaches a very wide audience and helps to stop streams of movie piracy which causes "33% of Indian film companies' revenues" to be lost. This kind of forward thinking, I believe is very important in the world of new media. Indeed, it's this kind of thinking that keeps it "new," and constantly changing and staying as advanced and amazing as ever. There's a line about the producers using YouTube to distribute clips and trailers revealing that "its clips have been viewed 15 million times". I just found this interesting because it reminds me just how effective YouTube (and similar new media outlets) can be.
I found the article from Time the more interesting of the two. I've never had much experience with Bollywood cinema and find it an interesting, almost exotic topic. The idea discussed in the article is that Bollywood movie producers are doing what Hollywood producers won't by making their films available for download worldwide. This reaches a very wide audience and helps to stop streams of movie piracy which causes "33% of Indian film companies' revenues" to be lost. This kind of forward thinking, I believe is very important in the world of new media. Indeed, it's this kind of thinking that keeps it "new," and constantly changing and staying as advanced and amazing as ever. There's a line about the producers using YouTube to distribute clips and trailers revealing that "its clips have been viewed 15 million times". I just found this interesting because it reminds me just how effective YouTube (and similar new media outlets) can be.
20110313
Week 2 Readings
This week's readings present some interesting views on social networking which are refreshing. Normally, social networking sites present nothing to think about with regards to modern society and relationships, but these papers are the beginning of a new viewpoint that I, at least, had never considered.
Donath and Boyd's Public Displays of Connection, seems like the less relevant of the two readings, perhaps because of its age, being published in 2004. Some of the social networking sites they talk about, namely Friendster, Orkut, Tribe.net, Ryze and LinkedIn, have since sunk into obscurity. Before reading the paper I'd actually never heard of either Orkut or Ryze and was even a little surprised to find they're still running. This fact, in a way, contradicts one of the paper's final statements that social networking sites follow "a typical fashion diffusion pattern," (Donath & Boyd, 2004).
Erika Pearson's All the World Wide Web's a Stage felt more contemporary and interesting, claiming that social networkers "perform" to an extent in their online profiles. This seems an apt analysis as Facebook, for instance allows users to write about themselves in whatever fashion and to any capacity they choose.
Donath and Boyd's Public Displays of Connection, seems like the less relevant of the two readings, perhaps because of its age, being published in 2004. Some of the social networking sites they talk about, namely Friendster, Orkut, Tribe.net, Ryze and LinkedIn, have since sunk into obscurity. Before reading the paper I'd actually never heard of either Orkut or Ryze and was even a little surprised to find they're still running. This fact, in a way, contradicts one of the paper's final statements that social networking sites follow "a typical fashion diffusion pattern," (Donath & Boyd, 2004).
Erika Pearson's All the World Wide Web's a Stage felt more contemporary and interesting, claiming that social networkers "perform" to an extent in their online profiles. This seems an apt analysis as Facebook, for instance allows users to write about themselves in whatever fashion and to any capacity they choose.
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