Oblogitory

Spring.  The time when thoughts turn to warmer weather, shedding layers of confining garments and nature’s decorating beautification.  Spring Break.  The time of the school year when thoughts turn to everything and anything but school.  College students become giddy with excitement while anticipating their final class before the textbooks are thrown in the corner and their fantasy trip becomes the end-of -all-preconceived reality.  Trips are taken to exotic locations where bodies are bared, strong beverages are consumed, medicinal plants are deleafed and inhaled, and time becomes oblivious except to the next desire.  Cognitive Surplus?  It’s everywhere!

My spring break was nothing to write home about.  Why?  Because I didn’t go away.  I was not so fortunate enough to have fled the scene of normality for the dream scene of hot bodies and sunscreen.  My fantasy was served by the fact that there was no classes for the week.  The only cold ones I knocked back were cold showers.  That does not mean that I didn’t go anywhere.  I went somewhere: to the same place I’ve been going for the previous two and a half months prior, to Baruch.  Everyday, except for two, found me halfheartedly yet fully committed to a book, computer or notes.  Cognitive Surplus?  It’s anywhere!

You see, whether you are having the time of your (presumably) young life roaming the unique, picturesque locale of a foreign destination, national or international, or you are locked into the everyday, mundane routine of’ ‘Work, Home, Repeat’, there is the connection to cognitive surplus.  The few, the crowds, the extreme of us who found enjoyment in mass organizations of  half-naked ‘citizens’, indulging in countless beach-side/poolside contests livened up with loud, thumping music were, uncaringly, contributing to a form of constructive use of creativity, collectively shared by hundreds of thousands nationally and millions internationally.  In the meantime, majority of society as a whole was consumed by the bustle of workforce traffic, crowded sidewalks, crappy coffee and time ticking towards the bosses deadline.  Yet,  we are also, unrewardedly, contributing to the creative surplus of Fortune 500 companies, Mom-and-Pop shops and the GNP of whichever country we call home.  As Clay Shirky commented “The enormous choices are collective ones, an accumulation of those tiny choices by the millions; the cumulative shift toward participation across a whole population….” (“Cognitive Surplus” 11-12).

So whether your spring break was the stuff of dreams, or the continuing saga of reality, you have contributed to shaping constructive thought hours.  I guess that Spring Break did the World some good after all.

The idea that Mass Media remains a “One -way access ‘street’, with major network broadcasting companies as traffic agents and crossing guards controlling pedestrian (audience) access” has come to an end.  The creation of interactive media, including the Internet, Cable and Satellite TV, Satellite/HD Radio, i-Pads, Smartphones and the numerous venues summarily made available from these outlets have forced the Major Media companies to redirect its traffic pattern.

This idea that all media is now open to everyone is not exactly a novel approach.  Take newspapers as an example.  We all know of  The Daily News, The New York Post, Newsday, The New York Times, and in finance, The Wall Street Journal.  Yet at every midtown newsstand there are a multitude of  print media, including, locally, The New York Amsterdam News, The Final Call (Nation of Islam paper), The Queens Courier as well as many small, foreign print publications  vying for the attention of commuters.  I have read The Queens Courier before and, while most of its articles cover issues central to Queens residents, they write about the major happenings in NYC.  Not only do they relate stories that are not covered by the major publications,  they attempt to keep the personal biases out of  reporting.

On an individual level, the ability of the ordinary citizen consumer to make public his/her information has grown by leaps and bounds.  The internet allows foreign correspondents to record live reports from dangerous locations like Iraq and Afghanistan during the gulf war, civil uprisings in Libya, Egypt and Syria as well as first hand comments from locals caught in the battle.  A good example is Sohaib Athar.  Better recognized by the twitter handle @ReallyVirtual, he is world famous for, unknowingly, tweeting live the raid on Osama Bin Laden’s compound.  For “An IT consultant taking a break from the rat race by hiding in the mountains with his laptops”, he now has over 73,000 followers.  Instant media messaging at its best!  I can’t help but wonder how many were following before he text messaged history.

On the personal level, I have the ability to broadcast this blog through creative commons.  Looking at the amount of topics circulating around the world wide web and the correspondance generated between parties, there is a fanbase with my name (presumably, somewhere out there) just waiting to be “loaded up and driven towards ‘Infotainment’.”    I have not employed it yet, but the important idea is that I have the ability.  We all do.  This means that we now have access to what was ‘Formerly the Road Less Traveled.’

     Clay Shirky’s introduction of cognitive surplus is very informative.  The comparison of 100 million human thought hours in Wikipedia versus 200 billion hours watching Television is absurdly disturbing.  I have read one or two Wikipedia articles, outside of Will Smith in class, and I have never edited any articles so I would consider that no contribution towards those human thought hours.  On the other hand, I have definitely boosted TV’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product) use over the years.  Still, I can associate personally with the idea of cognitive surplus.

     Since June 2009, when the U.S. Government implemented the switch of the Television signal broadcast from analog-to-digital conversion, I let go of Television.  I have seen some TV since that time, but it’s been consequential, like at the laundromat, the barbershop or at my previous job.  It has been a literal blessing in disguise.  My cognitive surplus, especially at home, has increased by an effective amount.  I am still in awe over how much I was enamored over ‘nothing’.  I can remember being tired after watching so much TV, not doing anything but watching.

Now I feel better physically and my thinking and concentration has improved.  The amount of time, free time, available for creative use like studying for school has materialized from out of the blue.  Like today for instance.  I woke up, I did my exercises, finished reading chapter 2 of Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus, ran to the barbershop for a trim and ran back, washed up, wrote this blog out on notebook paper and the time is only 12:42 p.m.  Honestly, I feel like this used more time than it actually did.

I occasionally miss sports.  I have not seen a Super Bowl since the digital conversion, but I don’t feel like I missed anything.  As I appreciate the need for study and preparation for school, I relish this abundance of time.  This is my version of cognitive surplus.

P.S.: Maybe my abundance of cognitive surplus is affecting me more than I realize: I forgot to give this blog a title.

Good day, everyone.  How are all my classmates doing?  This tutorial is a lesson on how to change a flat tire.  For most of you, this may be as simple as:

1. Pull over and park vehicle safely.
2. Turn on hazard lights (four-way flashers).
3. ‘Call Triple A’ (probably on speed dial).

However, for those of us who don’t have the patience, or the deep pockets, to wait two hours for a half-hour task, this is a simple guide to getting you back on the road faster than you can say”What tha H#!! is taking that tow truck driver so long?

1. If you are driving and a tire goes flat, grasp the steering wheel with both hands, slow down and pull over to the side of the road. This should be flat, level road.   Be sure that there is ample safe space between your vehicle and moving traffic.
2. Turn on hazard lights (four-way flashers), and turn off engine.
3. Important: Set Your Parking Brakes!  The last thing you want is for the vehicle to start rolling away, especially when you have exited it.
4. Remove spare tire, lift jack and tire iron from the trunk.
5. Set the lift jack in the appropriate car lift space nearest to the flat tire, but do not jack up the vehicle.
6. Loosen all tire lugs using the tire iron.  Ladies, this may take lots of elbow grease…but men keep grease under their fingernails specifically for this purpose!
7. Now, use the car jack (not robbery) to lift the vehicle to a height where the flat tire is off the ground.  The reason this is done after loosening all tire lugs is because the lugs are tight on the tire.  Removing them with the tire in the air is difficult and will only turn the tire, not loosen the lugs.
8. Remove all the lugs and remove the flat tire.
9. Place the spare tire on the vehicle.  Replace the lugs on their bolts by hand and tighten.  The correct way to do this is to tighten every other lug until all lugs have been tightened.
10. Lower the vehicle using the lift jack.  When the vehicle is down and the tire is contacting the ground, make sure you re-tighten each lug so that they hold the tire securely in place.  Replace flat tire, lift jack and tire iron in the trunk.

There you have it .  Faster than I can type a 140 character message on Twitter, you have changed a flat tire.  Once you are back on the road and thinking about it, if you had chosen the first option- you’d (probably) still be waiting for that tow truck driver.

I found the principle of interactivity to be an interesting subject.  Manovich’s assertion number 6 categorizes New Media as “interactive.  In contract to old media where the order of presentation is fixed, the user can now interact with a media object.”  This is misleading.  The term interactive reflects action between two forms.  The manner of interaction does not even have to admit humans.  We are mislead with respect to the idea of ‘old media being fixed’ not being considered as interactive.  The industrial era printed numerous  newspapers, set up neighborhood bulletin boards and used word of mouth to spread news and important topics and all these forms included interaction, especially with John Q. Public.

We could always interact with the media object, whether it was radio, telegraph, or letter writing.  Did not the manner of ‘Smoke Signals’ involve some elbow grease and interaction with fire and smoke (This is not meant as a joke, so please do not take offense)? When Television was invented it was ‘New Media’ without any consideration of the label, yet families gathered many evenings to be informed and entertained.  The only difference was that this was not categorized as interactivity as it reflected media.

Associating the newest wave of technological advances including Internet, Satellite/Digital TV, Satellite Radio and GPS (and our personal cellular ‘tracking device’) as interactive is more of a marketing plan than it is an actual truth.  Introducing the interactive title is marketing’s attempt to brand the connective abilities of these devices, basically in order to increase the bottom line price point.  Technology today has many features compared to previous, outdated components.  Between websites, cable/digital channels and cellphone, uh, smartphones, our ways of personalizing communication and functionality has increased in ridiculous ways.  However, interactivity was not recently invented as the newest form of linking these tools.  Apparently, it has been around since the proverbial ‘Caveman and his club’.   Interactivity, with respect to new media,  has only been enhanced due to technological innovation.

Hello, peers and fellow classmates.  My experience with social networks online is quite extensively limited.  Of all the social networks listed on the blog prompt picture (flickr, digg, del.icio.us, etc…), I have only used one: You Tube, http://www.youtube.com (Editor’s note:  Of all the other networks in the picture, I have never ‘used’ any).  I know about YouTube mainly from word of mouth.  Many students would rave on about things they watched on YouTube.  There are many forms of news that have links to YouTube’s URl site, like magazines, newspapers, broadcasts and other venues.

I first started to use YouTube to look for items related to the news program “60 Minutes” regarding the dangers of amalgam fillings. Since I have had cavatives, which was not a long time, I have always been apprehensive of getting any amalgam, or silver, fillings.  After doing personal research on the computer, I came up on a link to a ’60 Minutes’ episode regarding the mercury amalgam filling issue :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trWTCEIPdfY&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PL9A92876AB428B4F1

Since I was a fan of ’60 Minutes’, back when I had a TV, I watched it on YouTube.  I was already certain that no silver filling was going into my teeth.  This episode only helped confirm my fears about mercury amalgam fillings.  It also help me see some of the benefits of YouTube.  The ability to pull up specific videos in full or part at a moments notice is crucial for today’s culture of on the go pedestrians and commuteers.

Now I use YouTube to watch some sports, like boxing, mma and bodybuilding, though I don’ t use it often.  I am not hooked on YouTube, like how some people are hooked to their phones.  I just feel that it has some good uses.  Did you know that there are links to videos tutoring candidates on how to interview for a job?