Cognitive Surplus - Response 8

High School.  I can confidently say that those two words simultaneously bring about feelings of both love and hate.  I have never loved hating something in my entire life, but then again, who doesn’t love to hate high school?  There’s so much to say about this place I once referred to as ‘hell,’ but as a more mature version of myself, I can honestly say I am grateful for the experience, which in turn helped me grow out of my prepubescent ‘know-it-all’ stage.

It was here that I had many of my “firsts.”  The first time I tried alcohol.  The first time I developed a real crush.  The first time I got a C on a paper.  The first time I rebelled against my parents.  And the first time I obsessed about a television show. 

Around the time I entered High School as a measly freshman, The O.C. had quickly become the highest rated show on television, peaking with 9.7 million viewers.  The show skyrocketed into stardom within months of the shows airing in 2003, generating a loyal following of groupies, due in large part because of its references to pop culture.  In short, the show was relatable.  This is not to say that producers didn’t take the plot too far, but in terms of music, film and even comic books, there was something every highschooler could connect with.  Fridays at school were designated for OC discussions about the episode that aired the night before.  My friends and I would sit around the lunch table discussing Marissa’s latest drug overdose, or Seth and Summer’s first kiss, even Ryan’s brooding personality. 

I’ll openly admit, I spent a lot of my free time in High School watching the show, not to mention I watched a whole lot of reruns.  But in the book Cognitive Surplus, author Clay Shirky points out that as Americans, it is our duty to spend our free time watching television.  I stupidly chose to watch The O.C. but that’s beside the point. 

“TV quickly took up the largest chunk of our free time: an average of over twenty hours a week, worldwide.  In the history of media, only radio has been as omnipresent, and much radio listening accompanies other activities, like work or travel.  For most people of the time, watching TV is the activity.”

As a result of the emphasis placed on television, we have morphed into a visually dominated and isolated society.  A majority of the population consciously spends the largest chunk of time consuming this visual stimulus, resulting in a decline in social interaction.  We spend less quality time with family and friends, and thus stress the importance of material satisfaction.  Shirky takes this further and describes the effects as “under-investing in relational activities.”

Shirky shifts our attention to help us evaluate how we allocate our free time.  For example, take Wikipedia as an entire unit, where a unit is equivalent to the totally amount of time spent using the site.  According to Shirky, Wikipedia therefore represents about one hundred million hours of thought.  This immediately seems like an insane amount of time to have spent in one place.  However, he compares that amount of thought time to the thought time allocated to watching television.  We watch about two hundred billion hours of TV each year.  According to Shirky, this excess time is considered a surplus.  This enormous amount of free time devoted to TV watching is a surplus that we as humans don’t know what to do with.  Yet, as technology changes, our allocation of time has evolved as well.

“But now for the first time in the history of television, some cohorts of young people are watching TV less than their elders.  Several population studies – of high school students, broadband users, YouTube users – have noticed the change, and their basic observation is always the same: young populations with access to fast, interactive media are shifting their behavior away from media that presupposes pure consumption.”

Today, people would rather spend their free time interactively online, where commenting, sharing, outsourcing, rating, and discussing are all available.  According to Shirky, it is our human nature to share and collaborate ideas, stories, and information.  We have instincts to be heard, to tell a story even if no ones listening. It is from this idea, that Websites such as Wikipedia were successful. 

I will definitely admit to allocating my time differently now than I did in high school.  Thank god I don’t spend my Thursday nights watching The O.C. live (or better yet thank god that show is not on television anymore).  Nowadays, I usually watch the TV shows I like online, giving me the ability to participate interactively if I choose.  Clay Shirky describes this as architecture of participation.

Wikipedia is based on this idea of architectures of participation, where consumers have the ability to edit any page at any moment in time.  This user-generated index is free, and thus can be accessed by anyone.  Wikipedia encourages sharing and teamwork, and ultimately the site promotes a collaborative tomorrow.  Other sites built interactively, make it possible for us to collectively make a difference and create/develop ideas together.  Shirky thinks, and Ill end with this just as he did…

“The world’s people, and the connections among us, provide the raw material for cognitive surplus.  The technology will continue to improve, and the population will continue to grow, but change in the direction of more participation has already happened.  What matters most now is our imaginations.  The opportunity before us, individually and collectively, is enormous; what we do with it will be determined largely by how well we are able to imagine and reward public creativity, participation, and sharing.”

You Are Not A Gadget - Response 7

Graduation is quickly approaching and the pressure to find a job is intensifying.  I have focused all my time and energy on getting an entry-level position in the social media arena and am hoping to pursue a career working for a progressive Internet company.  The way I see it, the Internet has positively changed business transactions, customer service, and the way we, as ‘users,’ develop and foster relationships.  I see the Web as a world of interconnectivity, yet author Jaron Lanier is telling me otherwise.  After reading his book You Are Not A Gadget, I feel as though everything I once thought and believed was thrown out the window.  He criticizes the Internet and its effects on humanism entirely.

As someone who’s fascinated with the development of the Internet and beyond intrigued with the idea of Web 2.0 and the transition into a web-based society, I thought the book was difficult to read as Lanier criticized the new digital era and everything I once thought was positively revolutionizing.  According to Lanier, people have completely abandoned humanism and adopted robotic-like personality traits, where digital powerhouses mold our likes, wants and needs.  He feels that the introduction of the Internet has encouraged individuals to conform to the online environment that was created, thus forcing society to behave mob-like.

“When people are told that a computer is intelligent, they become prone to changing themselves in order to make the computer appear to work better, instead of demanding that the computer be changed to become more useful.   People already tend to defer to computers, blaming themselves when a digital gadget or service is hard to use.”

Lanier claims that we as humans are not giving ourselves enough credit, and that we rely on the system, the gadget, also known as the Internet, too much.  He thinks that the computer “under values humans,” claiming that as computers become more and more rich of information, that people will become more and more obsolete.  In sum, technology changes people.

Search Engines such as Google and Wikipedia give people the ability to access an unlimited amount of information.  Ideally, we could filter these search engines to only produce information of worth and value, but unfortunately that is not always the case.  According to Lanier, artificial intelligence does not exist, thus it is impossible to create a computer to think exactly like a human would.  Therefore, we dumb ourselves down to accommodate what Lanier refers to as pseudo engines (Google, Wikipedia, Amazon etc).

Lanier later points out that an informationally-free world may sound good at first, but if you look more closely you may find that having everything immediately accessible creates a "mediocre mush."  People lose their identities.

“It is astonishing how much of the chatter online is driven by fan responses to expression that was originally created within the sphere of old media and that is now being destroyed by the net.  Comments about TV shows, major movies, commercial music releases, and video games must be responsible for almost as much bit traffic as porn.  There is certainly nothing wrong with that, but since the web is killing the old media, we face a situation in which culture is effectively eating its own seed stick.”

According to Lanier, America is losing their creative middle class.  He thinks that our online culture is STILL fixated on the world as we once had it before and that we’ve resorted to crowd-sourcing.

As I previously mentioned, I don’t necessarily agree with the claims he’s making, I believe quite the opposite in fact.  As far as I’m concerned, the Internet has opened up society to a world of endless possibilities in terms of creativity.  We have the ability to expose ourselves to a myriad of cultural phenomenons and the way I see it, we can benefit from those that came before us.  On the contrary, Lanier thinks the Internet has hindered the ability to be original.

“Some of the youngest brightest minds have been trapped in a 1970s intellectual framework because they are hypnotized into accepting old software designs as if they were in fact of nature.”

I can’t help but think of my parents when reading Lanier’s book.  My mom, fascinated by social media on one hand, is equally as agitated by it on the other.  She grew up in the pre-digital generation, before computers, before the Internet, and never acclimated herself appropriately.  It’s like trying to teach a child how to read.  My mom, proud of how she grew up without the crutch of the computer, might agree with Lamier out of pure spite.  Who knows.  All I know is that, greatness has in fact stemmed from the Web, despite what Lanier may believe.

 

I did in general like Lanier’s book.  It definitely made me think.  It stretched my mind.  And more importantly it required me to use more analytical thinking with regards to the digital online world.  I do realize that the Internet is not perfect and that there are MANY hindrances in fact, not to mention dangers as result of limitless accessibility.  However, I can’t help but see the positives out weigh the negatives.   

Taking on the System- Response 6

MTV, which originally stood for Music Television, was once the powerhouse of the music industry, popularized in the 80’s as a network strictly devoted to playing music videos.  They introduced some of the biggest names on the music scene, including Justin Timberlake, Nirvana, and Men at Work.  After a decade or so, MTV eventually exploded and developed into something much more than an outlet for solely videos, incorporating conventional television into their prime time segments.  This decline in music videos and rise in reality TV is directly correlated to the rise of the Internet, which acted as a trouble-free outlet for viewing and listening to the music videos that were once featured on the MTV network.

Taking on the System, by author and blogger extraordinaire Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, is based on the evolutionary idea that technological change and more specifically the introduction of the Internet, is breaking down societal barriers.  We as citizens, and active members of society, are participating in this never-ending conversation we call the Internet and must bypass traditional barriers of mass communication.  These barriers refer to new medias devoid of gatekeepers.  YouTube, blogs, and podcasts, are all user-friendly and user-generated medias that allow the average citizen to set the agenda for the news.  In order to bring about change, one must learn to adopt these revolutionizing ideas and embrace this new informational age.  

“Technology has unlocked the doors and facilitated a genuine democratization of our culture.  No longer content to sit on the sidelines as spectators, a new generation of participants is taking an active role in our culture and democracy.  This has left the original gatekeepers and the elites they guard with few choices.  Some are embracing this democratization, welcoming the new participants.  Others are simply tolerating the interlopers, acknowledging the process as an inevitable evolution in our culture.  Then there are those digging in their heels, and fighting a losing battle to protect their domain.”

Now more than ever, user-generated content is driving big business.  In terms of entertainment, music, fashion and politics, the average citizen has the ability to facilitate the conversations taking place.  In the past, powerhouse networks and fortune 500 companies were the only ones setting the news agenda.  We, the public, now have the ability to generate the news ourselves. 

Take MTV for example.  As previously mentioned, MTV was the gatekeeper for the music industry, and we as consumers relied on this network to tell us what to listen to and when to listen to what. There was once a time when a band or artist could expect their CD sales to rise and their concerts and tours to be sold out, if they were featured on an MTV segment.  I for one am guilty of watching MTV when I wanted new music, and I’m talking about old school MTV when there were still music video reels.  In short, MTV was in charge of the dissemination of music. 

Now, years later, in the middle of the technological age, we have the ability to introduce music ourselves.  No longer is MTV the gatekeeper.  Outlets such as YouTube, and MySpace allow average citizens to contribute their own examples of musical excellence.  Take Rebecca Black or Justin Beiber (yes, I know the amount of times we’ve talked about these two people in this class is absurd, but then again, they are the perfect examples.)  Anyway, both these two artists (if you will) were discovered via the Internet, more specifically YouTube.  MTV took no part in popularizing these two individuals and thus, MTV did not act as a gatekeeper.  This barrier was broken. 

“And its not just music.  These new empowering technologies are allowing “amateur” filmmaker to use inexpensive video and editing equipment to create content, then post it on sites like YouTube for free and instant worldwide distribution.”

The afore mentioned passage applies specifically to Rebecca Black.  As far as I am concerned the girl’s mother rented out an inexpensive recording studio, filmed the video for dirt cheap and voila… uploaded it to YouTube, only to receive instantaneous recognition.  Now a billionaire from advertisements on YouTube alone, Rebecca Black was able bypass the gatekeepers of the music industry entirely.  Believe it or not, (and by no means did I mean to upset or offend anybody with what I am about to tell them) I did in fact hear “Friday” on the radio earlier this week.  This is even more of an indication that as technology changes, we must adapt with it in order to contribute to the never-ending conversation on the Internet. 

In the book, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga talks about MySpace rather than YouTube with regards to the music industry, and how artists such as Radiohead and the Arctic Monkeys exploded on the music scene due to a fan’s MySpace page.  Zuniga describes in his book how a fan of the group the Arctic Monkeys uploaded all their music to his MySpace page.  This fans entire social network thus had access to the uploaded music.  In theory, the music was passed from consumer to consumer and so on, until it got into the hands of a production company which wanted to help promote Arctic Monkeys as a group.  Here, MTV and other gatekeepers in the music industry such as VH1, were cut out of the equation.  The musical group was popularized by an innocent fan’s online profile. 

Today, MTV is still associated with musical talent, however it will never be the musical powerhouse it once was.  Sure MTV is still the proud sponsor of the VMA’s and creator of Unplugged, but today, media outlets such as YouTube and MySpace hold the greatest power of all.  The steps taken to achieve success have been rerouted, which can most likely be attributed to the development of technology and the new digital age.