Zittrain’s The Future of the Internet--And How to Stop It

Control. Management. Surveillance.

The average internet user probably rarly thinks of these memes when they’re surfing their favorite webpages, tweeting, and shopping on etsy.com (oh wait that’s what I was doing earlier and I did think of those terms...hmm).

Zittrain was a really interesting read. He took the topic of internet beyond what I ever really considered even since getting in this class I hadn’t pushed my thought process quite where he went. The basic history is that PCs were once more creatively constructed so that the user could contribute to the experience, not just be subject to it. Yet since it’s public arrival, the internet and technology itself has become dependent on the manufacturer's specifications. For example, the iPhone isn’t an interface that a user can change or modify to their needs. It’s required to be on the AT&T network (my main pet peeve against it), there are a set number of applications that do only certain functions, etc. etc. It is “locked down” so to speak. This locked-down technology leaves a lot of room for the user’s activity to be controlled and monitored.

Part One basically sums up Zittrain’s arguments on how the Net was formed on a principle of generativity which has since gone to the way-side with new non-generative technologies that strive on control and surveillance. His main arguments for a better future, are that information technology works best when it is generative. He believes Wikipedia to be a generative enterprise and a successful example of how flexibility in content creation can work.

The big question I had though was the “how to stop it” part of the book title. I guess I just didn’t quite understand how anything would be stopped, and maybe this is me being nit picky about terms. I think what he’s talking about is actually how to change it, or redirect it, something like that. This book seems to be a call to action, more so than I think any of our other reads this semester. It’s not just a manifesto but I feel Zittrain is trying to really get at something. So that probably affects the language use, using more action terms and such. I guess what I had a hard time understanding, was how do we keep generative technologies from becoming non-generative. Maybe this is a pitfall of the human condition. The internet in it’s infancy was open and innovative and now it has fallen prey to security issues, abuse, and harmful acts. Isn't that so human of us to ruin things? We've done this through out history, no?

And also I don’t see all recent technology as being as non-generative and harmful as Zittrain does. Take TiVo for instance, which I find to be more against the control of the system than any other TV technology. Sure there is still limitation to it, but it allows the user to be free of the schedules of broadcast television. There is not the need to sit and watch a show at the required time of 8/7c every a wednesday night. And being able to skip the commercials means that you are not subject to the advertiser’s suggestions of what to wear, who to be, where to shop and eat. Sure, you get that kind of socialization through TV shows just as often as the commercials, but there is something about commercials I just find obnoxious for the most part.

In the end I do see the potential and real existence of maintenance and control in all the technologies we use. Even in something like Wikipedia though it has it’s own type of control. Anyone can change what you post. Who’s to say that anyone should be able to do that? Just like who’s to say that only AT&T can provide you with phone service on your iPhone? In both situations an other has a contribution in your actions and your life. You are not a completely free agent in this world.

Thacker & Galloway

This week’s reading, The Exploit by Galloway and Thacker, was definitely an interesting juxtaposition to last week’s 6 Degrees by Watts. Watts talked about networks using scientific method and computation, showing the ability of networks to spread and multiply. Between the two writings, there’s a common theme that networks are powerful. Whether its a file sharing system, a community of people, a virus (the computer kind or the biological kind), we interact with networks everyday.

My fellow movie buffs and I enjoy playing a little 6 Degrees of [insert actor of choice] to see who knows more movie trivia. We used to only play using Kevin Bacon but we found that we knew more movies by Tom Hanks than Kevin Bacon (incidentally both were in Apollo 13, so you can always connect the Baconator by that route if you choose). I’m sure I’m not the only one who has met a person and immediately started talking and name dropping to see what kind of mutual acquaintances we can discover between us. In talking with my dad this weekend, he vented about the frustrations of Microsoft and PCs because his home computer just up and died a couple weeks ago. Once again I tried to give him the ‘mac talk,’ alas, to no avail. Beginning last week, I became very familiar with a biological kind of network. Call it ‘the bug’ or ‘flu’ or ‘that annual winter cold-like thing,’ it started with a co-worker and has now spread pretty much through my whole store. Yayy networks!

Now The Exploit goes further. To me it seemed like, for G&T, there’s a danger to the power of networks because the information is widely available now online. Basically everything has become searchable. Your entire life’s work can be tagged, organized into a streamlined hierarchy, and small enough to fit on flash drive the size of a bluetooth ear piece. The title is a good indication to the book. ‘Exploiting‘ is to take advantage of something. G&T explain that networks are increasingly easier to exploit the bigger they get. Part of me loves that Macs are becoming more popular, but then at the same time I don’t want to be targeted by viruses like the PCs are.

‘Nodes’ and ‘edges’ was a recurring set of terms. Nodes being the businesses of networks, like Google. The Edges are the potential of the network to distribute information to people, and for them to use these businesses for their own benefits. I don’t know what to make of this completely. Thanks to the power of the flu-network, my head is still in a fog so this was an extra tough read. I guess it’s again about the potential of networks, and the tendency of networks to kind of monopolize, which then makes them more susceptible.

The main thing I picked up in these network readings is that there is a tremendous amount of potential ability of networks to spread knowledge, to spread a cause, but at the same time, using the same tools, a network can be very malicious. Thinking of that as a concept or theme for this whole class, I think you could compare the good/bad potential of networks to the good/bad potential of ‘old media.’ Newspapers can distribute useful information, or they can print slander (or libel?). The same goes for television, movies that pretend to be ‘based on a true story,’ and yes, blogs like this. Basically, you should look at everything with an open mind that is explorative, and not just a sponge for every bit of info you come across; if you are a conscious consumer, then you have a good start to navigating the maze that is the media, and the world.

Networked Publics, Profiles, and Facebook

In her dissertation (oh my, is 400 pages what I have to look forward to?), Boyd addresses the “networked publics” specifically in teenagers use of social networks. Chapter 4 looks at how identity is created, and managed, on social sites. She references several examples of teenagers’ profiles on Myspace. She talks about the “first generation to publicly articulate itself, to have to write itself into being as a precondition of social participation.” Referring to Foucault, whom we are familiar with from this class, the identities created on social networks are subject to “self-monitoring.”

And despite “all that is reveled [in profiles], there is much more that is not.” I can see her point here. Looking through my own Facebook friend’s profiles, I don’t see too many ‘strong opinions’ expressed. People are pretty moderate and not likely to put anything up that is likely to be offensive. That might reflect who my own friends are, although some of them I do know to have very strong, maybe “radical” opinions. No, I think for the most part people are just not usually looking to get in a large debate or argument about controversial topics in the Facebook format. That could be based on what people my age use social networks for, which is mainly keeping up with friends.

I reference Facebook because that is what most people I know use, as opposed to Myspace which I do not use because I know very few people who do. Membership on sites is largely based on the real world, which Boyd did address in her paper, and she also pointed out that profile information is largely based in the physical space also. So Facebook started in 2004, and by spring 2005 as I was gearing up for college, many of my friends were joining because that was a good way to keep in touch as we all went off to different schools. In the physical space, we were going to be separated, so to keep in touch we created profiles in the internet space.

I wish I had taken a snapshot of my ‘first’ profile, just to see how I organized it back then compared to now. I remember I use to list every movie and band I liked, creating these long long lists that I don’t know who would bother to read. I don’t know one single reason why I did this. Partially out of indecisiveness on what a single favorite or short list would be because I do have varied interests. Part of me probably hoped out of such a long list that most people would see something in common with me. Now I don’t think about the majority so much when I share a link or write a note. My links and notes are pretty specific to a smaller circle of friends who I know will enjoy it or comment, like when I want to share an amazing video. Every once in a while I post something with the intention that it could help a cause and I hope that many people check it out - like posting about PAC-We, or freerice.com, or promoting a friend's band.

There are elements of identity that Facebook doesn’t ask, I’m sure out of fear of backlash and lawsuits. They don’t ask race, for instance. Very few of the answers to the elements on your profile are limited to a few choices, which I think most people appreciate. Like in Political Views, it is blank so that you can refer to yourself as anything, like: (these are real examples) “Bipolar moderate.” “I think what I want,” “Screw parties, unless they have games,” “Revolutionary republicanism, abuse of power comes as no surprise.” In a way, not limiting choices to Democrat/Republican/Libertarian suggests that people are aware that those are not the only ideas about politics. It allows the user to be really specific about their ideas At the same time, it allows people to be silly or to try to show they nonconformity to an ideology.

I have around 300 “friends” on Facebook, a fraction of which I converse with regularly in the Facebook medium, and even fewer I probably see on a regular basis. I could go and delete those I really never talk to, but there is a part of me who wants to keep the option of going to view their profile and see what they’re up to. I don’t think I’m the only one who thinks like that, or things like TMZ wouldn’t exist. What is that about human nature that we like to pry into others lives? Right after the chapter on creating and managing identity in social network profiles, I really wanted a whole sub-chapter about how people look at other’s profiles. Call it “Spying in the Social Network Sphere.”

Foucault & Nakamura: Who’s got power?

I guess the hope of the internet, kind of like what Clay Shirky was getting at in his book, is that the open design of the internet can somehow transcend all barriers and be completely fair in an ideal world. It’s very optimistic and idealic, and I think the Foucault and Nakamura readings this week completely grounded us after reading Shirky. They argue that other side, that the internet is just another tool, and that the hegemony of society doesn’t necessarily go away with the internet.

From what I know about Foucault, for him, everything is about power. Speaking truth to power, who has power, who wants power, etc. He sees power as the core to all relationships. And knowledge and truth exist because of power. Having knowledge is a power over those who do not. Which leads to the divide between the haves and the have-nots.

“It is not the activity of the subject of knowledge that produces a corpus of knowldge, useful or resistant to power; but power-knowledge, the processes and struggles that traverse it and which it is made up, that determines the forms and possible domains of knowledge...” (Foucault)

It’s a dichotomy: Knowledge exists with power. One can’t exist without the other (for Foucault). Those in power control individuals to keep the society regulated and in control.

Power takes the form of discipline with the Panopticon, which to my understanding, represents how people are controlled and managed. The prison and the penitentiary manage people’s behavior, efficiently. In the Panopticon, the power is visible, it is a surveillance system that doesn’t try to hide. Think of the red-light cameras. They all have signs up that tell drivers that they are at an intersection with red-light cameras. The signs are visible reminders of the power that the officials have over drivers. They have that power to fine you for running the light at all times, and because that camera is visible, the power is maintained. The internet doesn’t work outside this concept. There are ways in which every click you make is tracked. And it’s not really secret either, thus acting the same as the red-light cameras, playing the part of that visible watch-dog, happily wagging it’s power tail.

Cybertyping reminds me of remediation to borrow from our previous readings. The internet ‘cybertypes’ people just as in prvious mediums. Minorities are remastered to be different or to at least seem different. This is a similar hegemony to Foucault. Putting people into ‘us vs. them,’ ‘others,’ or ‘haves and have-nots.’ No matter what you want to call the groups, it’s still a result of who has power and who doesn’t, and the power is always based on those-who-have-it’s standard of power.

How Foucault and Nakamura relate to new and emerging technologies, is that technology can be a tool of power and control.

“Power is exercised rather than possessed; it is not the ‘privilege.’ acquired or preserved, of the dominate class, but the overall effect of its strategic position of those who are dominated.” (Foucault)

You might think that power is a numbers game, but Foucault seems to say that it is more a strategy game. Its not just the largest group who holds power, and we can see that in just about any government system. Those in power are of a small portion of the population. The wealthy, the educated, the well connected. Even the systems that call themselves ‘democracies.’ They should be open and free so that theoretically everyone holds power, but look at our system, it’s not a pure democracy, but a representational one. There are steps to ensure that the people do not have complete control. The Electoral College is a prime example. The people cannot directly elect their national leader. The system exists as a kind of barrier, kind of like a Panopticon designed to manage the people. I suppose on the one side you might say that it is a way of maintaining some consistency, or keeping the system stable. Stability is a worry for those designing a government, and if you think about democracy is just one step away from anarchy. Pure democracy could be the equivalent of a ‘pure internet.’ where ideally everything works smoothly without management, and hegemony doesn’t exist. Whether that is truly ever possible, well it doesn’t seem likely to me, but then again all I know is hegemony because I live in the current, and power is unescapable.

Shirky and Group Formation

Over the weekend I went and saw the movie Amelia, directed by Mira Nair and starring Hillary Swank in the title role. The film was alright. The aerial photography was beautiful and everything looks great. The art direction and the costumes all work together to put you in the 30s. But the story itself feels anticlimactic; it kind of coasts along but it never soars. I think it is safe to say that 99.9% of people know what happens to Amelia in the end, so there’s not a whole lot to build up to, but still I think she’s interesting enough that in the hands of a different director and writer this movie could have been a lot better. I felt a little like I did after seeing Valkyrie last year. After that film I wanted to write the producers and tell them, “I know they don’t kill Hitler, so stop trying to convince me your movie is a thriller and supposed to keep me guessing! There’s no guesswork here!”

Alas historical movies continually get made, and it seems that filmmakers like to take the approach that people don’t know their history, so they spell it out, which just makes me feel a little insulted.

Now coincidentally, tonight on the news, there was a short story pointing out the box office success of the film Paranormal Activity. It is the number movie in the country right now, with a total gross so far of about 33 million. The estimated budget was $15,000. It stars a handful of unknown actors. It was written, directed, and edited by one person. The total cast and crew listed on Imdb is about 25. In contrast, Amelia had a high-profile award winning cast and crew, yet made (granted this is only its first opening weekend) 4 million. According to the news program I saw, it had a budget of $100,000 million. It’s got a ways to go before it even breaks even.

There’s a lot of contrasting points that could be made between the films. Paranaormal was shot on a very low budget, Amelia a typical high Hollywood budget. Paranormal was shot in digital, Amelia was shot on 35mm. Paranormal plays off a documentary storytelling style, Amelia is a standard classical Hollywood bio-pic. You could say that the difference between these two movies is a generational gap in how to make a movie. Low budget films are finding ways to distribute themselves cheaper and more easily than ever before now, with greater success than ever.

This relates directly to what Shirky talks about in Here Comes Everybody. In the opening story about the lost cell phone, we see the power of group effort as people rallied behind Evan’s efforts to get his friend’s cell phone back. As people found his site through word of mouth, some marketing, and probably some random findings, they connected and communicated. Group effort is not new, and Shirky recognizes this, he just notes that the modes of how the group forms have changed/are changing. For cult movies, the distribution of the film is usually limited. However a ‘cult following’ develops mostly out of communication, by word-of-mouth. Someone sees the movie, they tell their friends they like it, and pretty soon the movie gets a reputation and it’s still talked about for years to come. Now with social networks, people can self-promote to their followers until the sun comes up, via something like Twitter for instance. Then someone else can RT (retweet) and thus promote them to a new set of followers and the cycle continues...

Shirky explains how group formation and group promotion is easier than ever with the internet. And he seems to have great faith in people to not only form groups but act on them. All this organizing happens outside established institutions. I think the main point of the book is that community can work easier than managerial corporations with these new technologies. There is a downside though. On the one hand, independent films can be promoted easier with fewer pricey advertisements. Bands can put their music up through creative commons or free downloads and thus gain a fan base without ever coming near a record company. People can find other people who share their interests and communicate and collaborate with each other. In the best examples, people collaborate and bring about social change and act out in the world like ARGs or the recent PAC-We.Then again groups can form that are malicious to their members, like the pro-anorexia groups. It seems that it is in their right to have websites under free speech, but to what degree is that ok? I don’t think Shirky really addresses these kind of issues where group formation is harmful to others.

But when it comes to the state of movies at the box office. When a $15,000 independent movie can find itself at a film festival and be seen by Spielberg and thus hit theaters nationwide to make millions and millions of dollars, I have to wonder what the future state of film promotion will be. The amateur film can be made better and easier than ever, and can compare to the high-tech big productions of Hollywood films. (I mean something like the Canon 5D Mark II is visually stunning at a fraction of the price of most film cameras). So maybe even an institution like Hollywood isn’t safe from this social change that is occurring with internet revolution. (yup, i’m starting to think revolution now)

From Habermas’ “Public Sphere” to DeLuca & Peeple’s “Public Screen”

In this shortened version of Habermas’ outlining of public sphere, we get a definition of the concept public sphere as: “a realm of our social life in which something approaching public opinion can be formed.” The concept is that in a public sphere, people assemble together as one acting public body, leading to public reason which contrasts to the governing state body. It is essentially organized discussion, creating public consensus which then can in turn influences political action. Habermas also argues that with the historical change from a feudal constitutional society the public sphere was able to come about and as it did, public broadcast media like newspapers played a vital role.

Historically, public sphere is associated with the “coffeehouse discussions” where you see groups assembling for debate and discussion. It was open, disregarded status, and based on rational thought with a goal of reaching consensus. Although on the surface the sphere is understood as open and free to anyone, of course it wasn’t like modern society. The sphere was free to white educated middle class males as far as my understanding goes. But that aside, the public sphere is still where the people have the position to influence action and influence the governing bodies. Other important historical events that you see as the public sphere emerges is the growing idea of a separation of church and state, which arguably only came about after the Reformation and the idea of a person having an individual and direct relationship with God, taking away much of the power of the Church.

The public sphere has and is continually changing. It was once about a physical space that could be occupied, now there are fewer coffeehouse meetings. Media was once just a source of information, but as the capitalistic society grew, the more the media realized it’s value as another capital-making system through advertisement and news-managing. If you follow along the arguments of intellectuals like Noam Chomsky, the broadcast medias [newspapers, news stations] are purely a medium of “manufacturing consent.” They exhibit the news in the interests of their monetary-backbone, the corporations who own them. In our society, the majority of media is controlled by a few companies, and their interests correlate with the products of their medias.

In my past studies, I came across this concept of public sphere through “From Public Sphere to Public Screen: Democracy, Activism, and the Lessons of Seattle” (2002) by DeLuca and Peeples, which looks at the transitioning of the concept of public sphere with the onset of new media. They use the common definition of public sphere as an open, public, physical space where public opinion is formed. The transition is that public opinion is formed out of a new, pseudo-physical “public screen.” They talk about how the way information is shared nowadays, that you can’t really distinguish between public and private spheres. The separation between public and private is slimmer because of the mobility of our technology, as you can carry the “screens” with you. This new way of information transfer is based around the inception of new media.

One of the other points to DeLuca and Peeple’s argument, is that events can be staged for the screen, as another way of manufacturing consent, or just drawing attention to something. “Image Events” can be very persuasive, cause the public to empathize with an event, or make them hardened against a subject (like violence). Image events exist to ask the public to watch and to see their point of view. And the audience isn’t just an objective public observer, but they are immersed in the images and thus will form an opinion of the situation. DeLuca and Peeples talk about the 1999 WTO protest and riots in Seattle in their article. The media predominantly showed images of violence instead of debate and delegation, which does grab the attention of the viewers, so whether that’s good or bad, it is successful in getting viewership. Not as much information was given to the public as the event happened so any kind of hope for public consensus is lost.

The contributions of new media to the public sphere are varied. For one thing, “screens” are widely available, and can lead to instantaneous social action. Social movement can happen much more rapidly than ever, and be more widespread. There is also some difficulty in getting social action to spread, like for instance when the topic of action is against established structures which people are hesitant to change. New media doesn’t work face-to-face, it does not necessarily occupy a physical space like the public sphere did. With the screen you don’t have to necessarily plan or produce flyers or anything tangible. There are less limits on who can be a member of the public screen - basically anyone with a screen. And anyone can be both a sender and a receiver. This can be seen in the alternate reality game “World Without Oil" where the spectators were also producers.

Do these differences lead to more consensus? Hard to say. The principles of how people come to a consensus don’t necessarily change with new media, however it does lead to more shared information, and increased availability of information. When working at it’s full potential, the screen works like the media used to work, as an information sharing medium. There is still a danger that the screens can become what old forms of broadcast media have, and there can still be bias in the information, and still some consent manufacturing. The ability to be more free though, is still there, and that is a positive difference.

Man o' Manovich...

One of the questions Manovich discusses, is what makes new media different from old media? He points out that scholarship has yet to define new media (at least in the ways he feels it should be defined as) and he proceeds to explain some basic principles of new media. He talks about new media as ‘objects’ which exist in some kind of numerical data. There is modularity between the different parts of new media. New media is created through automation. There are variable versions that can exist of new media. And finally, new media can be transcoded.

Manovich talks about new media in a revolutionary sense. He argues how just as the printing press and the photograph each had their own revolutionary culture shifts, new media is the current catalyst of cultural revolution in the present-day. He seems to argue that this new media revolution is more far-reaching. He says compared to the press and photography, “the computer media revolution affects all stages of communication, including acquisition, manipulation, storage, and distribution; it also affects all types of media -- texts, still images, moving images, sound, and spatial constructions” (19). Then later when he’s talking about the metalanguage, he says “it will be at least as significant as the printed and cinema before it” (93). It seems like Manovich puts new media at the same level as the printing press and photograph sometimes, and then at others he seems to favor new media as being even more revolutionary. This is something that stuck out to me as I was reading, and which I will present a few thoughts about.

On the first quote I inserted, I feel like the same statement could be made with both the printing press and the photograph. The printing press allowed for storage and distribution of knowledge in ways more profound than pre-press. Printing can be easily manipulated - insert a type-block here, rearrange there...Next thing you know you have the “sin” commandments. The spread of literacy affected how language was acquired. Photography affected the way we communicate, as they say “a picture tells a thousand words.” Clearly, photography can be distributed and manipulated (especially, even more so).

Manipulation is not a new concept with the transition from analog to digital, as many of us have pointed out in our previous blogs. The issue is the frequency of ‘retouching, but I think the existence of manipulation even in analog is proof that the technology is just an enabler to the ideology that drives the need to retouch an image. I guess I take the angle that a technology is how you choose to use it. Why did the first movies look like plays? Why did computer technology follow in the footsteps of cinema, which followed in the footsteps of photography?

I have a hard time seeing a new media as being anything profoundly different than previous mediums. The printing press was an new media in its day, and there will be some other kind of new media in 2 years, 10 years, 20 years. In my opinion ideas rarely, if at all, just fantantiscally and radically change from the previous. And if they are so different, they’re not going to be understand in the moment by any sort of mass of people, because most people don’t accept beyond their capacity of knowledge. Originality is the building upon previous work, using different parts to create new whole. But the important thing is that those parts exist and came from something before them. Movies wouldn’t exist without photography and theater, which wouldn’t exist withought painting, and the simple need of humans to tell stories. “There’s nothing new under the sun.” New media is different than old media. Digital is different than analog, but they’re both ways of communicating, of creating, distributing, and translating knowledge.


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I’ll say one thing about this class’ readings: nothing is as simple as it seems, this weeks especially. In some ways I found Manovich an easier read than others we’ve had. The language seems easily understood, but then I found myself reading something and being like, “yea, yea that makes sense, wait, what did he really mean there” and then I would have to re-read. Maybe it was because I kept starting to read at 10-11 pm the last couple nights, when I was least mentally strong. Maybe it’s because I’m not used to talking about databases and interfaces and feel a little like I’ll never fully grasp these concepts. This blogging thing is helpful though. I really like reading everyone else’s blogs before going to class; it's a nice jump start to Parry’s lessons.

The Mystery of ‘Aura’

On the issue of aura, in some ways I disagree that mechanical reproduction removes the aura away from a piece of art. Prof. Parry shared with us the story about the print of Guernica hanging in the UN’s Security Council room in New York City. The UN version is a tapestry copy, a replication “less monochromatic” than the original, with shades of brown. Being covered up during a speech for war increases the credibility of the meaning of the painting. It’s supposed to show the horrors of war and thus it has become a symbol of peace. The incident speaks to the power of art, and the abstraction of reality as an artform and a political message.

And that wasn’t the original. That was a mechanical reproduction, yet still as powerful as the original, at least in that context. I think a well-placed copy, in the right context, and for the right reasons can still maintain an aura about the art. That’s not to say that I think that there should be mass-copies of every important artwork out there (oh wait there is a lot already). Greeting card- and magnet-reproductions of a famous painting do little to further the aura of that work.

Benjamin’s use of aura refers to the awe someone feels towards an art, and to the authenticity of an art -- since film and photography manipulate their subjects, film especially through cutting and montage, the aura of seeing the image-event is lost. I feel like he argues that the aura is lost in reproduction, whereas I see it as reproduction creates a different kind of aura. I think the aura of actually being at an event versus seeing a photo of the event are very different in the feelings and amount of awe that you feel when seeing them.

There still exists an aura when seeing the image-reproduction of an event, however the aura of an image is limited in it’s ability to show the big picture or context of an event. As with Eddie Adams’ famous photo (I again use an example that Parry referenced mainly because it illustrates my point so precisely) of General Leon executing a Viet Cong prisoner. After the aftershock of his most famous photo, Adams felt that the photo was an incomplete story and didn’t explain that the General was shooting out of revenge:

"The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths. What the photograph didn't say was, 'What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American soldiers?'" (see article here)

The ability of film to stretch the truth and take events out of context could arguably be greater than that of the photo. In some ways, it is better than the photo because it can show the before and after, as with the Adams’ photo. In other ways however, through cutting and editing, a film can create a montage of images that tell a different story than perhaps what was real. A good example being by the brilliant director Alfred Hitchcock. In his 1960 film, Psycho, he uses the technology of montage to create his famous shower-murder scene. At the time, production codes limited director’s use of “violence” and “gore” (can you imagine what that scene would look like if made in 2009 by a director like, say, Quentin Tarantino?). Yet there is still a violent nature to that scene as Janet Leigh’s character is stabbed a dozen times in the shower. If you were to break down the scene into each cut however, each short cut by itself would not look very violent. (I unfortunately could not find a good set of screenshots from that scene online to show you) It’s only when the cuts are placed in a certain order, in a montage, that the violence is created, thus exemplifying the ability of film to create an aura out of a series of images. It's a horrific scene; even by our standards of violence I think that scene still frightens the viewer.

The aura of the event and the aura of the image, or series of images like in a montage, are very different. I see the reproduction of an event as creating a different aura than the event by removing it from its context and manipulating the viewer’s perspective. Film and photography illustrate this well, but mechanized copies of a painting, like Guernica, can show that in certain cases an aura can be maintained.

You say you want a revolution...well, you know...

Reading Eisenstein reminded me of what I think we’re largely trying to do in this class. She acknowledges that scholars and theorists have noted that the invention of Printing was vital in spreading literacy. However, she also thinks that scholars have left our any discussion about how printing really changed the cultural environment of the day, including the already literate. So she dives in. She looks at the specifics of how printing was a revolution in all aspects. Print standardized knowledge in ways that writing never could, and it also allowed knowledge to be preserved. It’s no coincidence that the Renaissance and Reformation, as well as the growth in Scientific thought occurred post-printing press.

A lot of the concepts in Printing Revolution, are familiar to us with the other ideas we’ve discussed in class. Eisenstein talks about the onset of printing as being evolutionary and revolutionary. On the one hand it begun, kind of like in Remediation, as “woodblock printing only better” or “writing only better.” And then as it became an agent of change, as Eisenstein says, she talks about printing as a revolution. The internet, as have other new medias in their time, in some ways evolve and in other ways revolutionize (revolve).

Another part I liked, was how the writer Montaigne took into account that his audience would be widely diverse and wrote in an informal tone to meet the needs of such readers. We recognize that as an important step in writing: knowing your audience. Plato and the Sophists also knew that was important in speech-making. I could see how if books were handwritten and expensive then few would own more than a small splattering of books. And if that was all the reading you had to digest, the kind of writing you would produce would be thus limited. They say that is you want to learn new “better” words, it’s better to read more than to just try to memorize from a dictionary. Almost arguing that being exposed to different writings can make you a better writer. Of course the flip side of that could be that reading other’s writings could limit your ability to create original work. Then you have to discuss what is original? Is being evolutionary or revolutionary more original? Can you have one and not the other? Which I don’t believe you can. Kind of like immediacy and hypermediacy, both always exist.

I think the best part of Eisenstein’s critique is the idea that the printing press was an agent of change. I think we can take that idea and spread it to new media, and social media, and how those are also agents of change. They’ve changed the way we meet and talk to one another. We’re moving from analog to digital. Google, for instance, is working diligently to have all books published online. In some sense there is a feeling of accomplishment for some writers knowing that their book is on Google Books. An old professor of mine for instance recently found that her yet to be published book was on Google. In some ways we’re already at the stage that there are writings available only in digital and no paper copy exists. I’m sure that will become more frequent.

On a side note, I wonder what people would think if I said I was a published writer...I do after all, have to click “publish” when I finish a blog... But I guess the publishing revolution hasn’t quite occurred yet.

Remediation in Film (and Digital Photography)

I thought Remediation: Understanding New Media (Bolter & Grusin), laid a good foundation for talking about new media, being that this was the first reading for class that really could address more modern forms of media. Of course, it’s easy to see that media at it’s very core is basically the same through history, whether it is the technology of writing or the world wide web. I chose to focus on read about two of my interests: digital photography and film. I will focus on the film chapter, as I felt that my concluding thoughts on film were similar to digital photography.

Bolter & Grusin cite film theorist Gunning who explained an audience view with a sense of immediacy and being aware of it at the same time. They call it the “duality of looking at and looking through.” Another duality they explain, is that there exists a cinema of attractions and a cinema of narratives. They say the cinema of attractions was what existed at first in the movies and the cinema of narrative was what came about second with the development of Hollywood-cinema. The cinema of attractions did show things in real time and the audience enjoyed them for the reason that they were amazed at the dual hypermediacy and immediacy they experienced when watching real events on the screen. I would extend that this is the same idea that news programs use and how television primarily started out as. That same fascination with watching real world events yet being aware of the medium of the screen is presenting the event to you in the safety of your living room has now developed into the other mediums we get news form like the internet.

There is also a duality in watching narrative film, since the audience understands that they are not watching real people and that it is “just a movie.” I think this book was written a little before “reality television” really took off. But the same thing applies to reality TV -- the programs are set-up to be real people, behaving and talking without scripts and without interference, or so they say. But let’s give the producers the benefit of the doubt and say that these programs are unscripted, does that mean there aren’t other ways the show is mediated? Well the people on the show, the “real people” were chosen for certain reasons (that they were good looking or really types of personalities that would cause drama) and they are put into situations that are set up to have certain outcomes. So the shows blatantly claiming to be reality are very much hypermediated. And I think most people watching recognize this so again there is that duality of immediacy and hypermediacy. The same argument is made for digital photography, as the viewer experiences a sense of immediacy at the same time as recognizing the influence of the medium. That duality exists in both mediums.

So will movies (or digital photography) become more hypermediate or immediate? Can film ever reach full realism/immediacy? I don’t think so, because of many issues with the medium itself. In a broad sense, if we’re talking about narrative film (which for this reading I think so) then film tells a story, either set in the past or the future. FIlm can try to set its story in the “present-day” but because of the medium itself, there can be no accurate way to present “real-time” stories. Otherwise it would just be a play again, and not film, and the good thing about film (as opposed to plays and the theater) and the authors touched on this, is that film can cut and not show everything that happens in real time. Audiences have been trained through watching hours and hours of movies and they don’t want to see things in real time for very long. The average shot-length of a movie is mere seconds for a reason. As for the past and future, a there are so many details that can be overlooked (purposely or not) when making films about the past, it’s impossible to not have some historical inaccuracies. And who’s to say what the future will be exactly? So there is no immediacy there. The same goes with digital photography as a photo can only capture something of the past, something that has already occurred, so really there is no potential for total immediacy in a photo, only a perception of realism.

As B&G showed, there is a duality in remediation between hypermediacy and immediacy. I like their dichotomy explanation, that immediacy can only exist because hypermediacy exists, and vice versa. This argument could be remediated about any subject. We define things by their opposite. I am a redhead because I am not a brunette. I am tall because I am not short. If everyone was the same height, there would be no “short” and “tall.” You have to look at the context of something to understand what it is, basically. This is true for movies as well as other mediums of media.

One thing I think the authors could have also addressed, is the cultural attitude and bias of the public towards certain kinds of remediations. For example, in literature remediation is commonly accepted and often praised. Shakespeare wrote very little “original” work; in fact I believe he only wrote 2 plays that did not come from an older source in literature or storytelling. Yet Shakespeare unquestionably contributed to literature and language in ways that was profound. For the average person, questions of his originality are just mostly looked over.

Then again with cinema, because it is a widely seen medium and popular with the masses, public opinion is very common. FIlm is constantly remediating literature, video games, previously made films, radio programs, etc etc. When a film is based on a book - I’ll stick with fiction lit for right now - it is understandable, based on the way the medium of film works, that it will inevitably leave something out from the novel, much like a film about the past will always have some historical inaccuracies. To me, each step that a medium takes in remediating a given subject is a step towards increased hypermediacy, as much as the medium wants to show immediacy, yet there can never be just one or the other. To reiterate B&G, neither can exist without the other.

Whoa...harry potter?

McLuhan and Twitterisms

I’ll be honest, I had a hard time with McLuhan’s theories on media. With just two of his readings, I put him on level with Chomsky or Foucault. I only get about half of what they say, but damn I feel smarter for reading them.

Part of McLuhan’s argument is that technology is an extension of ourselves. He’s famous for saying “the medium is the message,” that is to say, that a medium (a technology) is the part that affects the world, not the content that the medium is communicating. This I understood (I think). Culture is built upon technology. Each new technology is built upon a previous technology. (Of course I then wonder wouldn’t there be an “original technology”? Something that started off everything that exists now? But that’s another blog...) For McLuhan, the invention of the phonetic alphabet, an arbitrary system as we know from Saussure, was the catalyst that took the ancient cultures from multi-sensory to visually focused, and set off a series of technological innovations leading us to the present and the internet. McLuhan though, believes that there are these technologies/mediums that communicate their own content, but the message isn’t in the content. It is in the medium itself. The medium is what influences us.

So, I tried to apply this to the media/technology that I use and know and what the mediums themselves teach me, and not their content. I only recently began tweeting, although I’ve known of it for a long time and had done some browsing to see what it was about. At first glance it seemed frivolous to me. People were having incomplete conversations, making observations and sending them out in to the internet void to be commented on not. (Enter made-up example tweets off the top of my head: “Going to the movies later with Jordan!,” “Saw a Sarah Palin look alike today and really wanted to break her glasses in two” etc. etc.)

Ok so while that was what I thought was the content of the majority of tweets out there, and the reason I avoided tweeting until it was asked of me for class, I have to admit, since I have begun using twitter I’ve become fascinated with the process of it.

Most of the tweets out there are conversational. A large number are self-promotional. A good amount is the sharing of information such as youtube, news stories, blogs. Then there’s this guy. Some *twitteres are actually trying to produce literature in 140 characters? That’s interesting since many fear the internet for making us illiterate.

What I find intriguing is how many different ways there are to fill 140 characters with. This to me is the epitome of the “medium is message” argument. I would say that the medium of twitter is the 140 character limit, the content varies from person to person. What then can we make of such short snippets of story? Stories have a long history in the world. Stories existed long before written language, in the oral traditions of ancient civilizations. In fact, the way I see it, most of the mediums that McLuhan discusses (newspapers, movies, television in particular) are story-telling mediums. Human communication, and maybe this is my Western-based perspective, is about story-telling.

So, if the medium limits our story-telling ability, what does that do to our culture? Do we adapt and learn to bottom-line stories? Does it limit our thoughts or teach us to think quicker on our feet? Do debates get shortened to one-line blurbs? I think these things already happen in many instances and the danger I see is that the world is not so black-and-white. And while 140 characters is a nice bit to start off a conversation or a debate, I ask is it enough to fully explain the world? One of the things that McLuhan also contends is that we are largely unaware of the affect that media has on us. Luckily though, as a student in this program, we are learning to explore the mediums of new media and analyze them and pick them apart. And that’s largely what McLuhan was also getting at in his writings. He said that there are a few who don’t just sit as on the sidelines as media changes our minds and culture and that the only trick with “new media” is the speed of it. We have to think quicker because the medium changes so quickly. Maybe that’s something that the twitter-medium is preparing us for. To think quicker and more concisely, in fewer characters.

My opinion of the affects of shortened messages is not complete and I would love to hear some others thoughts on the matter.



*Side note: What is the noun of a person who tweets? Tweeterer?

Saussure & Plato

Saussure: the internet's impact on literacy

Have you heard that the internet is making us stupid? That kids today read and write less than they used to and things like facebook are permanently ruining our society? OMG!

What I find humorous about the backlash against texting is that there is just as much abbreviation and shortening of words in speaking as there is in writing. Shoulda’ Coulda’ Gonna’ Ain’t - While these are not “proper” words (at least if you asked a typical English teacher), the thing about a Linguist is they will recognize that people use those contractions everyday and understand them so therefore they are linguistically sound.

If we think about it, spoken language came before written. Writing was the afterthought. Letters as we know them now are very abstract. Originally though, there was some attempt to make them representative, but by creating an abstract alphabet there is actually more possibilities of combinations. But the important thing is that language existed before writing. Socrates even, regarded writings as a copy of ideas that already exist. Writing’s role is basically as a medium of expressing ideas, and one that is based on the spoken word.

Saussure, being a linguist, understands language is fluid, not fixed by society or time. Words and sounds are abstract and arbitrary representations of the ideas of humans. And because language changes over time, it adapts to the communicative needs of its society. Understanding that, it’s easy to see that new words will enter a language and existing words will change. That kind of change has existed since the existence of language in general.

A linguist would also point out that writing is slower to change than speaking. But what the internet seems to do, is expedite the process some. Now knowledge is available to anyone with an internet connection. The increase in resources also has an affect on how linguists look at language. With the internet there is an infinite amount of possible linguistic data available for study, just as there are many unlimited resources available for those who want to learn. Yet there is this exaggerated hype around this change, and how it’s “ruining us.” To borrow from the editor of the Official Dictionary of Unofficial English:

“It's a natural instinct to be a little, I guess not really frightened but a little frustrated by the language changing around you. You think, I've just mastered this thing. I've just got it down pat, and here you go pulling the rug out from under me yet again. But the thing Morgan that I would say is, you still have the comprehension. You do understand what they're talking about. The forms might vary from what you prefer, but you're still getting the message.”

People who are upset at these new modes of writing - texting, etc. - need to stop and recognize that at its very core, language is arbitrary and will change eventually.



Plato: where does the public converse?

In Plato's Phaedrus, Socrates and Phaedrus discuss themes of love and poetry. I will focus on their conversations about the art of rhetoric and speaking. They each make different arguments about what it means to be a good speaker. For example, Phaedrus argues that a good speaker can persuade, and Socrates responds that a speaker must also know the truth. What sticks out to me however, is the way that Socrates and Phaedrus discuss these ideas through question-and-answer dialectics. What Plato has put together is basically this dialogue between two great thinkers, each trying to persuade the other by questioning their arguments. And through this cross-examination they find truth, in this case regarding the art of speaking.

Deluca and Peeples’ idea that the world has transitioned from a public sphere to a public screen is interesting compared with the dialectics of Soc/Phaed. The idea of public sphere comes from Habermas, who explained that public discussion was done out in the world, in face-to-face contact, in a pubic “arena.” D&P recognize, and want others to recognize, that public communication is now occurring through screens - television, cellphones, computers, etc. And its not that these screens are any less sophisticated, but they are just different modes of communicating.

I think if Socrates was alive today, he would use whichever means there was for dialectics and to continue his pursuit of truth and knowledge. He would host a blog to discuss “the art of internet-rhetoric.” Is it an art? Can it be taught? Is it better to be persuasive or truthful? Also with the transition from sphere to screen, there is increased opportunity for everyone to be involved in the discussions of the time. You don’t have to worry about getting to the right place at the right time; you don’t have to be a professional rhetorician. All you need is an opinion, a site to voice it on, and a screen! LOL!

First blog!

This is the site for future postings connecting scholar's ideas and my own regarding social media.

Plato's Phaedrus coming soon...