Month: March 2012

The People Formerly Known as the People Formerly Known as the Audience.

It seems like the little man is making a lot more of a splash in the media pool. With the advancements of the Internet and the plethora of information we can find, we are able to shift from traditional media to a more wide spread interactive media we find with the web.

Jay Rosen’s example of the passengers who got their own boat is a perfect analogy. Everyone feels confident in their ability to operate their own boat and not have someone drive them around for God knows how long.

Why is this exactly? I feel like it has a lot to do with trust. We just can’t believe anyone anymore, we have to do our own fact checking. This article in NPR about disagreeing gives you some insight about how controversial we are. With the internet, we can fact check from thousands of different sources, not just the Big Six. The internet has made us all smarter, but also a lot more skeptical.

This horizontal shift in power gives us a voice, and it scares the hell out of people working in traditional media. Like Dave Winer said, “Once the user takes control, they never give it back.” I know I definitely won’t give it back.

The traditional media can’t familiarize themselves with all the different interests and passions that we all have. The Internet can. They’re appealing to the people who love the topic, written/created by the people who also love the topic. The public doesn’t care about profit, they care about sharing  and appealing to the small market of people just like them. And with the Internet, you can find someone who has the same interests as you.

There is porn interest of it, NO EXCEPTIONS.

 

Scumbag Student

 

While Professor G is going to go through these posts, he’s going to sort through the good and bad. Shirky wrote, “There have always been people willing to argue that an increase in freedom to publish isn’t worth the decrease in average quality”(Shirky, 47).  Slowly but surely, the sorting process of the good and bad is going to take a lot longer. Luckily for us, there are no more than 30 students in the class making one meme/original post so there is a finite time that the sorting process will take. But with the ease and popularity of making memes, there are hundreds of people making them on a daily basis (see 4chan.org).

Even though you might not appreciate the meme, I hope you can appreciate the quality – or lack there of.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel, but it’s being blacked out by the garbage we find on the web.

The Consumer vs. the Producer

In Cognitive Surplus, Shirky writes, “When someone buys a TV, the number of consumers goes up by one, but the number of producers stays the same. On the other hand, when someone buys a computer or a mobile phone, the number of consumers and producers both increase by one.” (Shirky, 55)

When I was a child, I used to watch hours upon hours of TV. I grew up with TV all my life. I learned the English language watching the Hercules TV show (See! It’s not all bad for you).  I watched TV while doing everything; homework, chores, getting ready for school, etc. Even though it’s a bad habit, it taught me how to multitask. I learned how to give the TV my divided attention. Whether that meant I half-assed everything is something I’ll leave for another debate. When me and my friends weren’t outside playing manhunt or sports, we were home either watching TV or playing video games.

I watched so much TV because it was all I knew. After we got our healthy dose of exercise, me and my friends would go to one of our houses and either watch TV or play video games. I remember one of my birthdays when me and all of my friends took turns and beat Super Mario Bros. Even though we just consumed, we consumed as a collective effort. We would give each other tips and help one another out. It was an offline forum so to speak.

I had some knowledge of the Internet, but I didn’t know how powerful it was – or would become at least. One important thing the the World Wide Web has done is that it made helping a lot easier. Whether it’s helping someone by posting tips in a forum, or creating a DIY video. It gave you the ability to help someone, and actually enjoy the whole process. It’s made these things so easy that you can’t help but do them. When your work helps or entertains someone, it makes it that much more valuable. That value can translate into a sense of belonging. The best part about it is that with almost 2 billion people online, someone will find some sort of value or entertainment in you work; whether it be a how-to video, or a Baruch meme you shared on Facebook.