Sunday, May 1, 2011

Blog#12

1:The first connection that i saw between the movie and the reading was that they both discussed the limitations that the past has on what we can do now. Both talked about how modern copyright laws are restrictive and out of touch with the times, tailored to an era before the digital revolution allowed for freedom of distribution and the spreading of creativity. Lessig touches on this while discussing hybrid economies, while the movie thoroughly talks about this by following the remix artist Girl Talk

2:Another connection made by both Lessig and the film was the fact that the advances made by technology are here to stay. No matter how many laws are placed against remixing, it will continue to exist, driven to the underground. This is shown in Rip by the Brazilian company that broke medical patent laws in order to develop an aids medication that was affordable to their people. Lessig discussed this by going in depth about fan sites, specifically one about Harry Potter, that received legal actions by Warner.

3:The final connection is intellectual property. Both talk about the absurdity that somebody can have control over an idea to the extent that it inhibits the creativity of others. In the movie, companies are called out on how they constantly attempt to have greater control over properties and enforcing this control to excessive extents, such as the preschool that was threatened with legal action because they had painted Disney characters on their buildings. Lessig believes that such restrictions hinder the creative process of the populous and ill eventually lead to the stagnation of media.

Blog#9

1: Lessig's key argument revolves around how the outdated copyright laws are restrictive to the growth of creativity, and in turn hinder the progression of our culture. The "Copyright Wars" does greater harm to regular individuals than big name artists, who have been remixing others works for decades. And while necessary to ensure the rights of those who produce new works, they need to be changes in order to adjust to the shifts in technology and the growth of the remixing culture.

2: Read only culture is when a small portion of the community controls the majority of media. Regular people consume parts of the culture without contributing to it. This form ends up being detrimental because it lacks new additions to keep things from stagnating and keep it growing.

Read, write culture is when people absorb media that is produced by various companies, and then use those as inspiration to create new things and contribute to the culture. This includes things like remixes, parodies, and other such things.

These two things are important to Lessig's argument because they form the basis of his argument. RO culture is what the current copyright system  is tailored towards, but the culture itself has shifted towards a RW perspective. This has caused conflicts between the law and consumers/producers who are being prosecuted for doing what has always been done: building upon the foundations of the past to create the future.

3:  Lessig quotes Suza on his view of record playing technology, claiming that thees "infernal machines" would eventually lead to a read only culture,in which people consumed rather then created. His prediction has come true, and coincides with Lessigs view of today's situation

blog# 6

There are 3 keypoints from Jenkins

#1: Convrgence: This is when different form of media converge, overlap, or cooperate with one another. It is a natyral evolution of information that follows the advances in technology. This can be seen with the increased shift from analog to digital format, such as with books. Today, electronic books are becoming more prevalent thanks to e-readers and i-pads. And before that audio books were available to the consumer, spreading the influence of literature from paper, to audio and eventually digital. This ties into Weinberger's 3rd order, which essentialy discribes digital media in which there is a lack of physical analogs for information.


#2: Collective Intelligence: This is when many contribute towards a goal, each adding a valuable portion that creates something greater than what an individual could do on their own, similar ti Weinberger's idea of croudsourcing. An example of this wold be Wikipedia, in which many contribute bits of info of from a variety of sources. In Jenkin's view, no one individual knows everything, so by harnessing the knowledge of a large group of people, more intelligence can be contributed, with a greater likelihood of accuracy.


#3: Participatory Culture: IT is basically a culture in which individual can contribute forms of media instead of just consuming the products of companies and corporations. The advances of technology has allowed for nearly any with a computer to create video, music, images, web pages, stories, and so on while reaching a large number of people. This directly leads to crowd sourcing and collective intelligence.

Blog#11

A commercial economy is on in which the basic tenants of a market, in which products and services have a tangible vale, such as money or service. Sites such as Amazon, Netflix, and EB Games follow this form of economy, as each provides goods/services in echange for monetary gain.

A sharing economy is one in which information and services are user generated by users with no tangible compensation for the work put into the product. They do so in order to benefit themselves, such as a feeling of satisfaction or notoriety, or to benefit others by spreading information and ideas. A good example of such an economy would be Wikipedia, where the information provided is user generated, with no money being exchanged for the service provided. Another example would be the various fan-sites dedicated to popular media, which are done to express affection for said media and to connect with those of like interest, all for free.

This distinction matters to Lessig's argument because it sets the foundation of his proposal for a hybrid economy, in which the expression of the shared is combined with the incentive of the commercial. Neither one can survive without the other, and Lessig argues that a compromised fusion of both would be the ideal outcome in order to take full advantage of modern technology.

blog # 5

Weinberger quoted the German philosopher Heidegger, who said "the meaning of a particular thing is enabled by the web of implicit meanings we call the world" i believe that what he meant by this is that the meaning of something is shaped by the meanings and subjects that surround it. In order to understand what something means, you need to have an understanding of the context and connections that it has to other things.

This is seen through images, literature, and music all of the time, as both rel on an inherent understanding of what the symbols and objects surrounding them mean. A sentence won't make any sense if there is a word in it that one doesn't understand, the symbolism of the colors on the American flag won't mean anything unless you know what red white and blue means to our country, and the lyrics of the song Dust in the Wind have no meaning unless you connect the metaphor with the frailty, futility, and briefness of life.

The 3rd order objects are categorized by comparing them to other objects. Looking for a book categorizes it by type (fiction, non fiction), genre (crime, drama, romance, fantasy, sci-fi, horror, biography, etc), authors, publications, characters, themes, length, etc, etc. We implicitly know where the book we want fits into these categories, based on our previous experiences with that specific book and books in general. The book itself is defined by each of these subjects, helping one to better understand what the are specifically looking for.

For my picture (which i wasn't able to post due to various reasons) I chose the song Through the Fire and the Flames by Dragon Force. It is a fast pasted song that always gets my blood pumping and makes me fell good and like i'm on some epic journey. It always make me feel better whenever I'm down. A computer would need to know that it is an epic fantasy sounding song, that it gets my blood pumping, and that it is just plain awesome.

blog#4

While reading both the articles and the reading, the connection  that stood out the most to me was the progression of technology as time moved on, particularly the method in which we create and retrieve information. In Web 2.0, it described a shift towards more user generated content, in which anybody could post and organize information and how its distributed.

The reading by Weinberger discussed the organization of information, which i touched on in the second blog assignment. The articles go more in depth on this, describing how users are organizing content in the new web 2.0. New programs and sites have sprung up in the new internet era that make classifications easier, such as the tagging system or specific algorithms that allow for better retrieval and growth.

Blog#3

In the last blog, i described organizing images that i use as references and inspiration for my art. There are many ways to organize such things, and others might choose to do so if given the same situation. For example, the images could be organized based on the style of the image itself. Items like cars that are based on modern vehicles could be seporated from those with more of a fantasy feel, ore a steampun, or turn of the centrury style, or horror motif,  and so on and so forth. they may also be organized via make, color pallet, original artist, and so on into many different folders.

my personal way is less complicated then that, with everything in broad subjects, like a folder with cars would have cars with little or no sub folders. This shows that i have a preference for simplicity, and finer details don't matter to me when it comes to organization. If i want a picture of a long sword, i go to the weapons folder, then sword folder, instead of having them organized by each type of sword (long, short, broad, 1 handed, 2 handed, sword style, etc.) I prefer a simple, strait forward filing system, because I'm a simple strait forward guy.