Curation on Fan Culture

Fandoms in General: 
So following various fandoms on Feedly had amazing results as far as current events.  I watched when the writer for Star Wars Episode VII was dropped and the preview for the next Captain America movie was released.  I also witnessed casting decisions for the upcoming 2015 film "Avengers: Age of Ultron" were hinted at or made. 

As a curation tool, Feedly had its drawbacks because since I am focusing on fan culture I want to keep in touch with the fan base, but the news articles were mostly from established news organizations and were at most opinion editorials about the occurring events.  So for more specific data, I logged into my newly created twitter account and looked up the response to Aaron Taylor-Johnson's casting as Quicksliver in Avengers 2.  The response has been mostly positive, in the sense that the fans seem to think he will be good for the role.  But there is some indignation that he was hinted at getting the role at least four months ago and this only just became official.

Specific Fandoms: Marvel's Agents of SHIELD.
 I used Storify and Twitter to follow Marvel's "SHIELD" and fan responses to the show.  I used links from Twitter to find reviews and fan comments.  What I am finding is that in spite of the show's huge opening ratings, ratings are declining and fans are complaining about the weakness of characters/actors/storyline/etc.  But the fans who are supportive of the show--and  friends I have talked to--say that the naysayers were expecting too much since the show has just started and the story needs time to build.  And the low ratings are because people aren't tuning in to ABC on Tuesdays at 7 or whenever but they are downloading the show from ABC.com or Hulu.  The responses on Facebook seem a little more moderate.  At Medieval Club tonight a friend told me that he watched SHIELD on the internet during work--and even Joss Whedon's other shows, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly, took a while to take off. So these findings show that the fans have nothing to complain about--yet. It is clearly a good strategy to utilize both online resources and my social graph. 

My personal questions about the show:
1 . What do I think of the girl in the flower print dress from the last episode?  She's creepy.  I look forward to her creeping me out because apparently she's good at it. 
2. Is Coulson really "alive"? I am hoping against hope that he is.  But apparently "they" did something to him.  My friend at club was hopeful. 

self-generated meme

I'm not a hundred percent sure what I'm doing or what I'm planning to do. What I need to do next is find online forums and blogs for the fandoms as well as do more in-depth investigation of current events and talking to people.

Mashup in the Context of Present Shock

As I was flipping through Present Shock, I noticed a chapter on Mashup and Makeup. This is particularly pertinent to our recent discussion of remix and mashup culture. Rushkoff begins with a description of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. He explains that, in an effort to freeze their appearance in a state of timeless beauty, they have surrendered their ability to communicate effectively. 94% of language is body language, and these women are unable to use their faces to provide context to what they are saying. Plastic surgery, Botox injections, and collagen infusions have created a physical mashup of was once their face. In trying to preserve the present, they have estranged themselves from actually participating in and connecting with what is present all around them, including other human beings. Here is a video for illustrative purposes (though I won't blame you if you don't make it all the way through...I almost couldn't).

As Rushkoff says, "No wonder they have so many misunderstandings" (150). They send false signals that do not adequately convey their feelings. Rushkoff goes on to relate this to mashup by showing that being stuck in the present moment is due in part to the ready availability of anything to everyone. This constant availability stops new and emerging genres and cultures from fully developing. There is no place for a new genre to thrive, collect itself, grow, and create a base (if that makes sense) without becoming viral and available to the public almost immediately. Therefore, as a substitute for these new genres and cultures, we turn to mashup. Rushkoff does not discount mashup as unoriginal, thoughtless creation, but instead sees it as an artful phenomenon. He says, "Mashup is to culture as genetic engineering is to biological evolution" (154). I thought this concept was a fresh take on the idea of mashup. He sees mashup as a product of present shock. 

Remixing and Mashups

I was so glad that we covered remixing and mashup culture in class. I think it is always interesting how people could create a new product, a new creation and make something totally new and different.  Creating remix and mashup videos within our community is a very common and popular thing to do.

In fact, many people within the class have already bloged about this subject Paul in his blog post talked about video Game Modding and Melody within her post talks about remixing within cultures. Remixing culture, as stated in class, provides individuals the opportunity to view music and media in different way.  Remixing allows individual to make and create popular videos such as this one where the top 50 music hits were mashed together in one song.

So why has remixing been so popular?  How can videos(such as the one above) receive over 40 million views? Why would people take the time to create multiple website and give lots of advice of How to remix?

Though there are many factors that all contributes to why remixing is so successful, this blog posts address some of the reasoning and factors of how and why remix culture is so prevalent in our current society.  It states that one of the prevalent reasons of how it can be so successful is because it allows people and individuals choose specifically moments, or songs such as the top 50 hits of 2012, and then allows them to create a video that other people are able to relate to.  Like many people and expressed and stated, they also believe that the purpose of the creation of the copyright laws are outdated and no longer apply to our current society.

In the book I am reading for class Future Shock it addresses the different issues that the American society faced in the early 1970's.  During the 70's technology and digital culture were at there beginning stage as different projects concerning technology and the digital realm were beginning to be developed.  The author Alvin Toffler expresses his concerns concerning the public regulating the area of technology.  Toffle states that " Where self-regulation fails, however, as it often does, public intervention may well be necessary, and we should not evade the responsibility.  Tofflers point that we as a society are expected to treat I guess you can say our technology right as we would with any other rights.  This issues comes up in may ways within technology as was brought up in class concerning aspects of technology such as how copyright laws are outdated, and because of this it is hindering our ability as individuals in a media and digital culture world to not only share information, but also in our ability to express ourselves.

The example of Youtube that was discussed in class is a classic example of how our copyright laws and media worlds are clashing in a negative way.  So how do you think this change will come about?  Do you think that it will be easy?  Do you have the confidence that issues such as copyright laws can be changed and amended or do you think that the issues are so complicated that coming to a mutual agreement will be impossible?

my curation experience with diigo

via

Over the past week or so as I have been exploring Diigo, I've used to the tool to track my research concerning public sharing, and in particular, online missionary work.  One of the unique tools Diigo provides is that it allows you to see other bookmarks and lists that other users have curated. This was helpful in finding information concerning online sharing in general, and even other enthusiasts of Public Parts by Jeff Jarvis, however it was difficult to find information specifically related to the LDS effort to use digital tools to share the gospel of Jesus Christ. So in that way, Diigo was not as useful as it might have been with another topic. However, the highlighting, bookmarking and note taking features were extremely useful in tracking my research through various church websites and blogs. It was a funny thing to hear Elder Ballard explaining the digital realm in a very similar way to Jarvis.  

Elder Ballard stated, "Those conversations will continue whether or not we choose to participate in them. But we cannot stand on the sidelines while others, including our critics, attempt to define what the Church teaches. While some conversations have audiences in the thousands or even millions, most are much, much smaller. But all conversations have an impact on those who participate in them. Perceptions of the Church are established one conversation at a time." This sounds very familiar, as Jarvis likewise stated, "To make those [real] connections, we must be public and share. We first have to reveal ourselves as members of those groups." Ballard's talk was given back in 2008.  As I've gone through various blogs I've seen both good and bad examples of this in action.  It's not enough just to throw in the word "mormon" or "lds" and call it good. Yes, we must identify ourselves as members of the LDS church, but we must do so consciously.  Ballard continued on in his talk to expound upon the idea of explaining things online very clearly and simply. I found some wonderful articles, both by members of the Church and others, who discussed the need to consciously create a positive online identity, or as Jarvis calls it, a "brand". 

As I continue on in my research, I want to focus on not only the content that has been circulated, but how it was received. I'm hoping to look into several blogs that I have discovered and bookmarked through Diigo, and explore how those not of the LDS faith received and responded to the information. 

What have your experiences (good or bad) been with sharing your religious beliefs online? 

Copyright Infringement Hits Close to Home

This is going to get very personal. 

So, around thirteen years ago, right after Pixar's Toy Story 2 came out,  Disney and Pixar came out with a 2D animated television show called Buzz Lightyear of Star Command. It showed on ABC's One Saturday Morning alongside Recess  and Fillmore.  It followed the adventures of a version of Buzz Lightyear that the toy in the Toy Story films is supposedly based on. I wasn't much of a Toy Story fan, I'll admit, but I fell in love with the show.  Deeply.  It was funny and cool to watch. My brothers loved it, and I remember my mother telling me about how she came home from work late one night and stayed up late with my babysitter just to watch it Buzz Lightyear.

But, like all good TV shows of my childhood, Buzz Lightyear eventually stopped airing.  All my family had left were the direct-to-video premire and a few tapes of the Saturday morning show, but gradually we forgot about them and lost interest.  The only show that got remotely close was Star Wars: The Clone Wars, but then Disney bought Lucasfilm and canceled that too--and rumor on the street is it ended on a cliffhanger.

self-generated meme

Then last year, feeling a need to reconnect with my childhood (another long story),  I looked up the show on YouTube.  The best resource I found was a YouTube channel called Radio Free Planet Z (reference to Zurg's headquarters in the TV show), which featured the entire series premire and whole episodes in single youtube blocks, mostly recorded off the British Disney channel Cinemagic.  Let me tell you, that was a glorious, albeit indulgent, summer.  And not only did I find episodes I was familiar with but also episodes and plots that I had never been aware of. (And my mom was very excited)

This past summer, I wanted to introduce my roommate to the show because, for crying out loud, it's awesome, and this is what I found:

 YouTube account RadioFreePlanetZ has been terminated because we received multiple third-party notifications of copyright infringement from claimants including:

• Disney

I swallowed it.  Sure, I knew the episodes had been ripped off of old television recordings, I knew it was bound to happen sooner or later, but it stank that I had lost access to a precious resource that gave me access to childhood memories and that I was able to share with friends and family.

But as we have begun talking about copyright in our Digital Culture class, I have realized something.  Disney has not come out with the episodes on DVD.  If they did not make Buzz Lightyear available for fans publicly--in fact, there are a lot of classic TV shows that aren't available publicly--what did they expect us to do if we wanted to watch it?

I think this brings up an interesting point about copyright.  If people care enough about something that isn't available to them, they will make it available for themselves and for other people who want it.  And for free.  If Disney doesn't care about its old animated TV shows anymore, why doesn't it release them for sale, or for free even, instead of blocking people on YouTube who are trying to do the world a favor.  On Radio Free Planet Z's site,  there were a lot of comments from people like me who watched this show growing up and loved it.  They appreciated the poster's efforts to make this available. I posted pictures from the show from my facebook profile, and people told me--former roommates, cousins, less-than-intimate-acquaintances--how much they'd loved that show growing up.  If Disney cares so much about making childhood memories, why must it dictate what we ought to cherish and how?  It wasn't earning money from that channel but it wasn't losing money, either?  I am sure the company had good reasons to take it down, but it was a big letdown for people who, like myself, gradually came to depend on it for a small, 20 min+ dose of happiness. 

That's my beef on copyright.  Having finished composing this, I feel more angry than sad. And if you don't understand my angst, here is a video of the lyrics to "Those Were the Days" sung by Mary Hopkins.

An Introduction to Evernote

I started using Evernote as a way to curate. As I keep exploring it, I am realizing that it is an extremely valuable tool, and that a lot of researchers and scholars are using Evernote to keep track of their resesarch. Basically, Evernote is a place online that keeps track of Notes that you create. You can make to-do lists, web clippings (pictures of website pages), copy links to articles, etc. These are a few features that make Evernote a great tool for research.

1. Searchable Text
Whenever you create a note, anything on the note is searchable through Evernote. This is beneficial because I usually use Googledocs to keep track of my documents and links I find on the web, but with Evernote, I can search the content of each note. This will also be helpful because for another class, I have to do some long interviews. I plan on recording the interviews, but I will also want to take notes. I will use Evernote to take notes so that I can refer back to them later when I am completing my project.

2. Notebooks and Tags
Evernote allows you to organize your notes in different categories. I created a notebook for our class to keep relevant research in. You can also tag your notes with different labels. I will be using ENG326 as one tag to keep track of my own research for this class. I will also probably use the tags PresentShock and Rushkoff.

3. Web Clipper
With the web clipper, you can highlight content from the web and then click the Evernote icon on your browser in order to save it in your notes. This is a quick and effective way to keep track of information that I find as I'm collecting research. It will be much more efficient than copy and pasting into a Googledoc, which is how I usually keep track of things that I find on the web that I want to remember.

I think Evernote is going to be a very helpful tool as I curate research. I have begun to make notes regarding Present Shock, the book that I'm reading for class. I have found some articles that I have made into a note that I want to refer to later. I also plan on downloading the Evernote app for my phone so that I can keep track of my notes there, too.

An intro to Flickr

So for those of you who are less familiar with Flickr, here is my introduction post on what it is.  Flickr is a photo/video web service that was created in 2004 by Ludicorp. Though it may be similar to Facebook, many people ask why or how Flickr differs. This website   gives some suggestions and idea of why you should use Flickr. It includes the following:

1. Flickr stores and displays your images at full resolution.
2. It includes basic photo-editing tools
3.There are a variety of communities and groups within Flickr

One of the interesting ways I found that people use Flickr as a tool to gather and store information through photos was through a community called World Breaking News.  This group is basically a photojournalism group where people post personal photos or videos they have taken whether it be political, cultural, social photos which can then lead to discussion and links to articles.

And then something that has nothing to do with Flickr, but kind of.  So I went to the Copyright forum today, and after listening to the discussions I though I would go and read some of the guidelines that Flickr has on their website that pertains to copyright and they basically warn to make sure you play nice by not stealing other peoples photos and videos.

Curation Report--Fan Culture

I have been using multiple tools to curate.  My primary source has been Feedly.  Feedly provides links to news articles and web pages from specific sites.  I have grouped most of my sites into "Fan Culture."  My most useful news sites have been Vulture, Entertainment Weekly, Moviefone, and Vulture.  Today was a particularly busy day on feedly because all of these news sites were posting links to the just-released trailer for Captain America: The Winter Soldier, some with commentary.  For those of you who were just as anxious for this trailer as I:

And not to mention the guy they originally picked to write the new Star Wars movie has been replaced.  With J.J. Abrams and another guy who worked on The Empire Strikes Back.

What I generally do is tag the articles and also add them to Instapaper. After hearing Paul's recommendation in class, I also started using Storify.  This gives me a different perspective on fan culture since I mostly find tweets from the fans themselves.  I am using Storify specifically to monitor Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. show. Twitter and other resources from Storify give me links to news articles and fan reviews.  I spent most of my Storify time today reading the comments to a negative review of S.H.I.E.L.D.--most of the comments were negative, too, but there were a few bold defenders.  Personally I support the show--I acknowledge, it has weaknesses, but I love it.  Mostly because I love Coulson. 

What I need to do with this data is start going to the next step and finding more fan comments about these news developments--especially this Star Wars writer change.  I am also thinking I want to get a Twitter account so I can have more access to tweets and the people tweeting. 

The Effects of Technology and Alvin Toffler"s Future Shock

It will be interesting to read about the concerns society had concerning the effect that technology has on the individual, the family and society as a whole in the 1970's.  It will be interesting to see if those concerns remain the same today, or if our concerns today differ thirty years ago.

Preview:
While looking over the table of continents it is evident that Alvin Toffler divides his book into three sections: Pre-technology age, the technology age, and the future of technology.  It is evident that Toffler will address the historical age before technology was invented , the technology age within the 70's,  and his opinions of the effect technology has on individuals and society, and the way it may effect everybody in the future.

Early Social Proof
I"m excited because one person has liked my post on Google+ and I think that in general people are very interested in the effect technology has on people(take for example video game addictions).  After talking to my friend about what they think about both the positive and negative effects technology has on people and society, it clearly something that people think about given that though this book was written over thirty years ago, we are still trying to address the concepts that the book is addressing.

Similar Books
While searching for similar books to Toffler, there was one author Doughlas Rushkoff who wrote "Present Shock" that was repeatedly recommended on the recommend list on may books. Nicholas Carr was also a repeated author that was recommended.

"The Shallows: What The Internet is Doing to Our Brains"  Nicholas Carr

"Present Shock" by Doughlas Rushoff

"The Digital Divide: Arguments for and against Facebook, Google, Texting, and the age of Social Networking"

     

Who Cares?
Apparently Alvin Toffler is very popular when it comes to subjects on technology.  Many people on both twitter and Google Plus were talking about him and his works.  One of the quotes that were repeatedly quotes on both of these social mediums was the quote " “Illiteracy will not be defined by those who cannot read and write, but by those who cannot learn and relearn.” So apparently some of the concerns from the past are still very applicable today.  There was also a wide variety of people reading and reviewing his work, people that ranged from the college student to the high school student to some random old person reading it to understand technology better.

Formal Reviews
There were a variety of recent reviews of "Future Shock"  the Daily Bankruptcy Review 
had a very positive review of how his book was very applicable today.  Other reviews such as Forbes Forbes Future Shock: Why Alvin Toffler Was Wrong review do not agree with the ideas Alvin Toffler present.  Having these two very well known magazines and websites review Tofflers work with two very distinctly different opinions was both surprising and exciting.  It is clear through reading reviews that people have a lot of opinions about technology and its effect, but also about the ideas that Toffler presented within his book.

Multimedia
A technical college in Kentucky used "Future Shock" within their syllabus as well as the University of Hawaii, both of which were very recent.  After looking it up on multiple sites such as flickr and Vimeo, it is seriously everywhere.  People where showing it on their bookshelves, they made little videos about it on Vimeo, there was also tons of youtube videos about the book and its contents.  It is just interesting to see the effect this book has had, so much to the degree that even today people are still interested in Toffler's ideas.

First Impressions of the Book
After reading the book for an hour I was drawn to a chapter near the end of the book called "Coping With Tomorrow.  In this chapter Toffler explains that despite how people view technology(both positive and negative) its important from time to time to take a step back from it.  He explains that " there are definite limits to the amount of newness that any individual group can absorb in a short span of time, regardless of how well integrated the whole may be(329).

My Thinking So Far
After completing all of the steps and getting a good review of this book and the feedback it has already received online, I am definitely ready and excited to read the whole thing. While completing this process, I think for me personally it has changed the way I will read this book. In particular, the review I read were helpful in helping me create my own ideas, as well as helping me see both sides of the spectrum by introducing to me both positive and negative reactions towards this book.

Exploring How Douglas Rushkoff's Present Shock Characterizes Modern-Day Interaction and Digital Use

Rushkoff discusses the idea of presentism, an epidemic that took the place of a fixation with the future and now characterizes the 21st century. I am interested in finding out how this affects us day to day. What are the implications of present shock? Is there a way to break out of it? And what comes next? I aim to find out through reading Present Shock.

Preview: After skimming the chapters of Present Shock, I have discovered that Rushkoff is going to describe this phenomenon in five stages. The stages are narrative collapse, digiphrenia, overwinding, fractalnoia, and apocalypto. The first few stages will explain how present shock came to be. I am excited to learn about how we transitioned from a fixation on the future to being frozen in the present. It seems like he gives a lot of stories and examples to illustrate his ideas, so hopefully that will bring to life the concepts of present shock.

Early Social Proof: After explaining the concept, I asked my roommates about their opinions on present shock. We talk a lot about progressive ideas like this, so I was interested in what they had to say. They thought it was an interesting, sad, and valid concept. We started discussing why we can't think progressively anymore. Why are we frozen? New technology is made in order make the now better instead of improving life. It is about what is going to make life more convenient. What about people who don't have computers, whose lives are not convenient? They are probably in more a of survivalist mode. We don't have to do much to survive anymore. In the 60s, everything changed. The youth of the 60s were raised by people who survived the Great Depression and WWII. They knew they could give their children more, and they even almost coddled their children. Those children grew up to become hippies and rally against the war that was now visible from the home. It started our fixation on the present. My roommate said she thought it was the first generation raised without a strong sense of responsibility to survival. She said that once you reach that mindset, you can't ever go back. You start sliding into what is easier. A focus on making our present lives easier is what characterizes our generation. Present Shock discusses our search for an end, which is manifested through our obsession with the zombie apocalypse. Ironically, we paused an episode of The Walking Dead to discuss this.

Similar Books: The first book that Amazon and Google recommended was, of course, Future Shock by Alvin Toffler. This book discusses the fixation on the future that Rushkoff says is over. Another book I saw was Program or Be Programmed, another book by Douglas Rushkoff. This discusses the immediacy of the internet and how it is everywhere. He talks about how to master it rather than it mastering us. Alone Together by Sherry Turkle talks about why we expect more from technology and less from each other. This is one aspect I am interested in finding out more about while I read Present Shock.

Who Cares? As I searched Twitter under #presentshock, I was surprised to find a few musicians and radio personalities in the mix. After some more thought, however, this makes total sense: music is an area affected by present shock. Our demand to have it now forces a decline on waiting for the release of an album, attending a concert, etc. Another group of people who care is the IEET (Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies). They highlighted Rushkoff and posted a link to a video of his. Their post had 776 hits, so I think the topic is reaching a wide scope of people through the IEET's support. It seems like Rushkoff is very active on Twitter, so I followed him and tweeted at him. I hope he responds. I plan to formulate a couple more tweets as I continue with my research. I have also come across a lot of professors who are interested in and/or teaching present shock. One professor from Wisconsin said that she read one of her student's essays that connected Walden to Rushkoff's ideas of present shock.

Formal Reviews: The formal review I found most helpful was the New York Times review of Present Shock. Janet Maslin reviews Rushkoff's work and calls it "one of those invaluable books that make sense of what we already half-know." She suggests that we have a subconscious awareness of present shock. We know that we are stuck. I wonder if we also know, as Rushkoff insinuates, that we are searching for an end. Maslin asks the questions, "Now that a single Facebook post can have as much impact as 30 years’ worth of scholarship, how do we analog creatures navigate the digital landscape? How do we shield ourselves from distraction, or gravitate to what really matters?" We pay attention to human interaction and try to monitor what we are doing to each other through media. 

Informal Reviews: I found a blog called Zero Hedge that discusses present shock in the context of the fantasy of change, a term that the author came up with to describe the constant incoherent flux of digital input. He says about the consequences of present shock: "This phenomenon also has broader cultural and economic manifestations. The flattening of history and narrative generates a distortion field around the present, persuading us it is largely impervious to disruptive change. For example, millions of Millennials (born 1982-2004) are pursuing high-cost university educations in the belief that multiple degrees are now essential to being offered a job. Even as evidence piles up that the economy has changed in fundamental ways such that even advanced degrees no longer inoculate the owner against financial insecurity, millions of young people feel they have no choice but to indebt themselves and spend scarce family resources on a questionable-value education." This was a particularly interesting notion to me since I fall into that category quite explicitly. This author's idea of present shock affecting change is another notion that I might want to explore in my research with Present Shock. 

Education Courses: 
I found a syllabus that included Present Shock for an online class called Science Fiction to Science Fabrication. I also found a class at the University of Nebraska called Being Human in a Digital Age. They also read Present Shock. 

Multimedia: Douglas Rushkoff has done a lot of interviews and talks about Present Shock. Here is a link to a YouTube video of Rushkoff presenting his ideas at TEDx. By surfing Flickr, I found this picture of him presenting in the PBS Newsroom. It seems that people are latching onto this idea of present shock. I think that it's happening that way because it is a speculation and observation of a current state rather than of a past state or future state. 

First Impressions of This Book: After the reading I have done, I have gotten through the first section called Narrative Collapse. There was a part of this section that was a little disheartening for me as an English major, and that is Rushkoff's belief that presentism is obscuring narrativity and causing it to decline. He talks about how video games are an example of a response to the decline of stories. He says, "Instead of panicking at the death of the story, players become the story and delight in acting it out in real time." Today's young people become the equivalent of storytellers themselves. They become an "expert" on something, like snowboarding, and then they master the landscape. "Like their peers in other pursuits, they are playing winnerless, infinite games." This is just one response to the idea of presentism. 

My Thoughts So Far: By doing this research, I feel more prepared to dive into this book. I am excited to pull out certain ideas that result from present shock. As my title indicates, I am interested in finding out how present shock characterizes interaction and digital use by people. I found in one of the blogs I perused that Rushkoff's concern was how we are treating each other through media use. I think that exploring the personal connection through the idea of present shock will yield some interesting results. 

Lee Siegel's Against the Machine and the Digital World

Title: Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob.

I want to explore the more human side of digital culture, what media people use, how, why, and how they create, share, and interact in digital worlds. I am told that  Lee Siegel's Against the Machine is about how the internet has changed humanity's minds and culture.  The categories of technology, communications, and commerce are now so intertwined that it is hard to tell where one begins and another ends.  The fact that there are loss of distinctions and challenges to human identity is important to me. What is Siegel's argument and is he right?  How has the digital changed human culture?

Preview:
In the Introuction, Siegel comes right out and identifies a reciprocal relationship between human culture and the internet.  He also identifies himself as a cultural critic with the mantra "Things really don't have to be the way they are."  From what I gather from the rest of the book, Siegel isn't trying so much to debunk myths about internet culture (which he does in some cases) as he is to put the internet in a human context. It is obvious that he's trying to make you think twice about the mainstream, but does he actually propose any viable solutions?  Maybe I saw one while skimming through but didn't realize it was what I was looking for.  Siegel uses a lot of snappy chapter titles and sub-headings and frequent pop culture examples throughout the text--something I think I might enjoy.

Social Proof:
Posted a new discussion on Goodreads exactly three hours ago.  No activity.  Shared update on Google +.  No activity.  Shared Facebook status.  No activity. Guess I should have gone on Twitter after all.

But tonight's episode of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. had an interesting storyline.  Skye (our hacker heroine) reunites with an ex-boyfriend/fellow hacktivist whose name I think is Miles.  Skye defends Miles from her new friends by saying that he is an idealist who believes in the freedom of ideas...but then her friends find out that he sold information to an evil organization for a million dollars.  Skye is definitely turned off (as she should be) but Miles defends himself by saying that he can't make a living off his beliefs in free expression alone. I recall Siegel discussing the ideas about information democracy in his book.   Not exactly social proof, or maybe it's social proof from Joss Whedon. Maybe I should watch out for copyright wars information and get more info on that.  What is Siegel's position? How does this tie into digital culture?

Friends of Against the Machine.
To Amazon first.   Top results:  Siegel wrote Harvard is Burning and Falling Upwards: Essays in Defense of the Imagination.  This latter option intrigues me. Item added to wish list.  Siegel also wrote Are You Serious?  How to Be True and Get Real in the Age of Silly.  Siegel appears to be an authority on contemporary/digital culture.  His books are linked to books debating the relationship between technology and society.  En route to Google Books I notice that on the search for "against the machine lee siegel" my Google + post from early is number eleven on google search--that's either really good or really bad. The Google books link is right above that, number 10.  The only repeated author on either Amazon or Google is Siegel himself.  Siegel also wrote Not Remotely Controlled, Fires of Love--Waters of Peace, iand Love and the Incredibly Old Man, a novel. His non-fiction books are very culture oriented.

The Social Context
On Google +, it's quality over quantity.  Two years ago, someone shared a video of a TED talk related to the ideas in Siegel's book.  And just over a year ago someone shared to a link of an article by Siegel talking about parenting issues in technology use. 

Twitter Search: No one has talked about this book on twitter since 2011.  The very bottom tweet called it "the first credible book to criticize the digital age."  Found a tumblr link that quotes an email saying Siegel argues that the digital age has turned "privacy into performance, play into commerce, and confused 'self-expression' with art".  Found a link to a very negative amateur review that will be revisited later.  The author himself is very active on Twitter. 

Formal Reviews:
The New York Times 2008 book review reveals that Against the Machine was written in response to a controversy over being "pilloried" by the web because he "respond[ed] to comments about him posted on his blog at The New Republic’s Web site." Ouch.  Am I supposed to expect an angry rant? "Siegel sees the Internet as 'the first social environment to serve the needs of the isolated, elevated, asocial individual.'" That makes sense.  The reviewer points out the fallacy that Siegel neglects the internet culture outside of the US and is overly displeased with Siegel's biased, angry stance.  Lower on the Google search page is a link to a review by the Technology Liberation Front, an organization with a communist color scheme on their website and dedicated to keeping the government off the internet and out of all things technology.  There is a review of Against the Machine individually as well as grouped with other books about optimistic and pessimistic views about the internet, which is also linked to another article about internet optimists and pessimists in general. On this site, Adam Thierer argues that the debate over new technologies and their impact on society is nothing new, in fact it is cyclical.  He divides thinkers into "optimist" and "pessimist" camps.  He argues that the optimists are in the lead but need to be a little less romantic, and that the pessimists need to be less hysterical.  Thierer argues that the preferred approach ought to be "pragmatic optimism."  Thierer catagorizes Siegel as a pessimist along with these titles I have heard before: Andrew Keen's The Cult of the Amateur,  Nick Carr's The Shallows, and Jaron Lanier's You Are Not A Gadget.  Thierer categorizes pessimists as believing that the internet is polarizing, fragmentary, and anti-democratic. Thierer describes Against the Machine as "the dourest of the recent books that have adopted a pessimistic view of the impact the Internet is having on our culture, society, and economy" but also "one of the most important technology policy books of 2008."  According to Thierer, Siegel is concerned about the loss of truth and authority on the internet, views user-generated content with contempt, and that most people want money/recognition from their internet activities.  Thierer accuses Siegel of not looking at the benefits of Web 2.0. Professional reviewers are quoted on Amazon as praising his writing style the most.

Informal Reviews:
First, the Review I found on Twitter:  Sarah D. Bunting on Tomato Nation in 2011. Bunting also takes issue with Siegel's negativity.  Most Goodreads reviews gave Against the Machine a rating of 3 stars or less.  The top reviewer on Goodreads states that Siegel's argument is that the internet is using us and the commercial Web has an agenda to take advantage of us, and the text fails to deliver on the promising title.  Even the most positive reviewer argued that he could have used more positive examples.  Another reviewer says he contradicts himself at times--well, there could be a trickster element to this book, I wouldn't be surprised.  Most Google Books readers gave it a 3 stars or less rating.  The average rating on Amazon is 3.5 stars.  The most helpful review called it "a cautionary tale."  The Amazon reviewers believe this book had a potenitally good idea that failed.  Ouchihuahua.

Can't find anything on Against the Machine in college courses.

Multimedia
I have already found this YouTube video and a Newsweek Article .  Here is an interview  Siegel did with New York Magazine.  It turns out the YouTube video is a TED talk. The speaker said that the internet's algorithms are tailored so that we get personalized search results rather than access to a variety of information, news, and entertainment.  He uses the phrase "internet of one" towards the end of his speech.  The reason I found this video was because the girl who linked it said that Against the Machine predicted it.  While this is true economically, this could also be a model for internet behavior in general.  The Newsweek article is about parental involvement in children's online safety, and includes a video interview with Siegel himself.  The argument is that children's internet activities do need to be monitored by parents, that children are just as vulnerable to online marketing as to online predators, but sometimes parents are also caught unawares in internet activities and put their children at risk.  Unfortunately the video will not play.  As for the interview, Siegel says he wishes people would get over the blog incident that led to his writing the book in the first place.  He says, "I love the Internet, I’m on it all the time. I couldn’t have written the book so quickly without it. But I think that its claims for greater social connectivity are a sham. I don’t think it’s making people more connected than they were before, not at all."  He is not opposed to amateurs but hates how the internet treats all amateurs like professionals.  So perhaps he is not quite as pessimistic as the reviewers think--he's just picky. He is pointing out what he thinks the internet is doing wrong.

1 Hour's Worth of Reading
In the space of an hour, I read chapters 3, 4, and 7.  True to the reviews, Siegel is always going back to how the Internet was made for marketing and how people who "express themselves" online are really just rehashing what someone else has said in order to gain popularity and sell their leisure time.  I would definitely classify Siegel as a pessimist.  He is trying to be objective, but he is constantly returning to the same ideas.  This book is part book review of other works on the internet and modern culture and part tempered rant.  But he does say a few things that I could look into, stuff about the nature of art and remix, and also about the real "freedom" of the internet experience. 

My Thinking So Far:
I wish I'd read something else. Siegel is informative but not objective.  I wanted something a little deeper.  I think I would still like to read this book but I want to find other books with differing or at least tempered viewpoints. 

Flickr

So I had a really hard time deciding which tool I would love to explore more, and ultimately I decided to go with Flickr.  Though I am still exploring it, my first impression of Flickr was a mix between confusion and I don't know what is happening here feeling. So overall my first impression of the site was less than positive. Ultimately, this made me want to explore Flickr more as my negative experience led me to a feeling that I need to understand why people use it.

For me personally, I would love to see how people use Flickr not only as a tool to gather information, but I would also love to look at how people use it to create their identity. Though at times it can be confusing and though there is still a lot more I can learn about the site, I am very excited to begin using and exploring it.

Exploring the benefit of digital sharing for the LDS church in Public Parts by Jeff Jarvis

With my personal experience serving my mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at Temple Square and using digital tools to do missionary work, I have been fascinated with the potential that the digital world offers for sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ. I am reading Jeff Jarvis's book Public Parts with the hope to gain some insight into just how effective digital sharing can potentially be.  I have a personal desire to continue to share what has made a large impact on my own personal life, and feel that a greater understanding of how digital media and sharing impacts our day to day life will allow me to accomplish that.

Preview

After spending some time browsing through Public Parts, I can see that Jeff Jarvis is going to cover in detail, the different benefits that he believes the public sphere provides.  That being said, he also discusses the boundaries between private and public, and how much is too much.  Jarvis also goes through history as a means to discuss public sharing, discussing the printing press, as well as how the introduction of basic technology affected everyday life.  I'm happy to see that Jarvis discusses specific social media platforms, and the benefits that they individually possess.

Early Social Proof

Unfortunately I didn't get any responses to my initial posts about my plans for research combined with this book.  However, I contacted several mission friends, and spoke with other friends who served missions as well, and they shared interest in my plans.  Whether or not they were involved directly with using the internet to share the gospel while they were full-time missionaries, they saw the influence it had on others, and how many people's first exposures to the church were online. If anything, I now know that there is interest in my purpose!

Similar Books

As I browsed through the other books recommended on Amazon, it seems that a common topic is examining how social media in particular can drive social change.  Jarvis's other book What Would Google Do? also popped up when searching on several different sites.  Privacy concerns are also a big issue and topic, and it would be interesting to read some of these other books to see how their arguments compare with the one made by Jarvis in Public Parts.

Who Cares?

As I explored the conversation going on concerning Jarvis and this book, I discovered that Jarvis himself is very active on twitter. There was a lot of conversation going on between himself and others who appear to be fans of his book, and interested in learning the balance of the digital world.  A lot of the discussion going on online is due to Jarvis's online presence. He has posted videos and has his own website and is very active online, which creates an opportunity for lots of discussion, on twitter, google+, etc.  I also found Jarvis on storify!  

Formal Reviews

Fortune reviewed the book, and I found the review extremely encouraging! They wrote, "Privacy has its advocates. Jeff Jarvis has made himself an advocate for publicness. In Public Parts, the original Internet optimist argues that if we become too obsessed with guarding al personal information on the 'Net, we'll miss important opportunities that come. with making information available." I found it interesting that Jarvis is referred to as the "original internet advocate".  It seems that he is a credible figure on the topic.  As I continued to read reviews by other papers and magazines, I've come to realize that Jarvis is very much an activist on the topic. USAToday refers to him "often taking corporatiosn and governments to task for assaults, as he sees them, on teh openness of the Internet." I'm gad to see that Jarvis is an authority on Internet publicness.

Informal Reviews

I found a review by Tim Peter who commented on the position this book plays among other business literature.  He recommended a specific chapter for those interested in the internets affect on marketing, and I'm interested to start my reading later on in that chapter.   He also mentioned that Jarvis keeps things funny! So I'm looking forward to that. On Goodreads, many of the reviewers commented that they read the book on audiobook and that it was fantastic. I was happy to see that both people who agreed with Jarvis's point of view, and those who disagreed both found the book informative.  A reader named Terry praised the book for it's well formulated argument and the logical soundness of the book.  I'm excited to read!

Educational Courses

I found that at Harvard the Berkman Center for Internet and Society uses this book and other lectures by Jarvis.  I found some videos of Jeff Jarvis lecturing on their website that look interesting.  UMBC had videos of him posted in their curriculum as well, and I learned that Jarvis is a professor of journalism at City University of New York.

Multimedia

While Jeff Jarvis is extremely preset online, posting his own photos, video, etc., I found many photos on flickr and other sites of him lecturing at various conferences.  Many also made video reviews of the book, which I was able to listen to. I am excited to see that this is an ongoing discussion, which Jarvis himself is participating even after the book.  I'm beginning to recognize how society will need to adapt and change before online sharing is the ultimate norm.  I'm excited to see what this means for the LDS church moving forward.

First Impressions of the Book

After my initial research, I began reading in the chapters that focused on the benefits of public sharing, as I wanted to see what his argument was founded on.  It was fascinating to see examples from all across the spectrum, not just social media companies, but from healthcare companies, government organizations, etc. as well. His arguments regarding the value of forming relationships and connections and how these relationships essentially "brand" and organization support my initial ideas regarding the continued use of digital media to share the gospel for the LDS church.  I'm beginning to realize the "what" and "how" of sharing is something I don't understand as well as the "why", and I'm looking forward to continuing to learn more about that as I read.

My Thinking So Far

As I was reading I kept feeling that as I research this I need to be applying what Jarvis is advocating-I need to be more public. Not in the sense of posting my meals and daily schedule, but in regards to my research, and even my own experience with missionary work and digital culture, I need to be more open and public.  I'm hoping to get in contact (via the internet) with missionaries I personally served with, as well as  with other friends who have served missions or who have been exceptionally diligent at sharing the gospel online. I want to gather their thoughts and opinions in regards to this topic and actually experience the book as I read it.  

Fan Culture Bonding Time

So this weekend my Literature of the American West class visited Arches National Park.  While I enjoyed finally being able to check something off my bucket list, I also bonded with my classmates by climbing on the red rock and talking fan culture with my classmates.

Self-portrait in front of Landscape Arch. Personal Photo.

It started about six in the morning when we left Provo.  One of my classmates, Amanda, told the most unbeleivable fan story I have ever heard.  The previous evening her ward threw a Halloween party, and her sister/roommate wanted to be the She-Hulk and go all out--that is, entirely bedeck herself in green laytex paint.  Amanda still had the paint in between her fingernails to prove it, not to mention the paint was all over the bathroom, the floor, etc.  So they go to the party.  Nobody recognizes what character Amanda's sister is--except for a guy who approaches dressed as Captain America (and may I add, fangirls, he also had a similar build to Chris Evans).  They dance, and as it turns out both of them are Latin dancers.  At the end of the night they exchange names and phone numbers.  Deciding not to take any chances, Amanda and her sister go home and facebook stalk the guy in case he's a creeper.  As it turns out, he is not. And not to mention, in spite of the Marvel-themed costumes at the masquerade she discovers that they both like the Justice League. 

Now be honest: how many of us singles have common fandoms as requirements for potential spouses?  And how many married people are with their current spouse because they had a fandom in common, among other things?  My parents, for instance, both like Star Trek, Star Wars, and Indiana Jones. 

Navajo Arch, personal photo

And of course, friendships are often fueled and enriched by fandoms. I spent a good part of Saturday talking and hiking with Amanda, and although we were able to relate on a number of different subjects, it was the initial interest in our common taste in superheroes that allowed us to bond during the day. 

The last area of the park we visited that day was the Windows area.  Although quite an interesting area in its own right, one of the reasons we stopped there was because the opening sequence of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was filmed here.  I have never liked Indiana Jones, despite my parents' efforts to breed me to the contrary, but I have seen most of the Last Crusade and Raiders of the Lost Ark.  But my classmates were a little more enthusiastic.  I just tagged along because I wanted to see Double Arch.  While walking over, one of the class' pop culture gurus, Andrew, whom Amanda and I had also been hanging out with, put on a bandana and turned it backwards to imitate young Indy as a boy scout.  So to Andrew and the other Indy fans, the Windows Area was a pilgrimage to an area connected to a fan culture they were part of. 

Double Arch. Wikipedia Commons.

In much the same respect, a Star Wars fan like myself would want to visit Tikal, Guatemala where A New Hope was filmed, because ever since I saw that movie for the first time as a little girl my mother has been telling me that that place is in Guatemala (I would also like to visit Tunisia but unfortunately the movie sets there are buried!). Fan culture is an imaginative way of viewing the world, and visiting movie backdrops is a way of connecting to the physical reality of that imaginary world--these are physical places that have been manipulated by the human imagination to have a whole new meaning, rather the same way religious sites become places of pilgrimage.  So that's where the anthropology of fandoms and the digital universe becomes apparent.

The Magnificence of Metadata

As I've begun to look at Diigo as a platform for curation, I have come to realize what a necessity detailed metadata (labels, tags, etc.) is.  I have been looking into missionary work for the Church, both how full-time missionaries can use digital tools as proselyting tools, as well as how non-proselyting members can use similar tools to share their beliefs with their friends. The tag "missionary" brings up all sorts of craziness, and not much of it is useful.  Trying to generally search for websites and research related to missionary work for the LDS church brings up hundreds of blogs of missionaries currently serving, or people ranting about how their missions were the best. I found that the pages that appeared most useful were ones who had quite a few tags, so that a variety of searches would pull up those pages.  Until this point, I haven't worried much about putting labels and tags on my posts, yet as a result of the frustration I experienced trying to find information relevant to my research, I'm now recognizing that if you want your research, opinions, etc to be taken seriously, let alone seen, labels and other metadata are necessary. As mentioned in class, metadata also contributes to the identity you create online. If I want my work to be taken seriously, and if I want to be a person whose thoughts can be taken seriously, then the labels I assign need to reflect that. Overall, this process of curating has been an awakening to the magnificence of metadata!

Present Shock: An Introduction

I decided to read a book by Douglas Rushkoff called Present Shock (although we haven't got our official book assignments, I'm being optimistic. I also would want to read this even if it weren't for class, so I suppose it works out). This is different from the topics I have been studying, but it really grabbed my attention as I was looking through the list of books on digital culture we were to pick from. Present Shock is the idea that we have spent the twentieth century preparing for the future, and now it's here. Now that we have advanced technology that allows us to continually progress in it, we suddenly do not have time for it all. Rushkoff puts it this way: "Well, the future's arrived. We live in a continuous now enabled by Twitter, email, and so-called real-time technological shift. Yet this 'now' is an elusive goal that we can never quite reach. And the dissonance between our digital selves and our analog bodies has thrown us into a new state of anxiety: present shock."

The beginning of this talk helped me clear up some ideas about present shock before I start reading the book. Though he is relating present shock to publishing for most of the talk, he explains the main ideas and effects of present shock at the beginning of the speech. He says that present shock is a way of seeing the world. There is a present shock of a lot of different things, and he talks about present shock of digital culture in this book. He discusses the idea of presentism instead of futurism, how our society is no longer leaning toward the future but is now trying to keep up with the present.

As I begin to read this book, I am starting to realize how present shock affects my daily life. By the time I am done blogging for class, designing my magazine spreads on Adobe for another class, using various other technologies for all my other classes, keeping up with my social media, et cetera, et cetera, I don't have time to explore new technologies and truly immerse myself in ways that expand my knowledge of digital culture. I am excited to explore the concepts that Rushkoff brings up in his book that contribute to present shock.

Discovering Diigo.

As I work on curating, I have been exploring Diigo. It's been a great tool to bookmark pages, but I've had a more difficult time figuring out how to best utilize the other options. Diigo would be a wonderful tool for a group collaboration though. After bookmarking and highlighting pages, it is possible to send the bookmarks to others.  There are also online groups that have been created, or that you can create. I checked out one that is on social media, and it was fascinating to see how people were having a conversation about social media via bookmarking! Through their tags and highlights they were literally having a discussion back and forth arguing the direction in which social media could go.  So as a collaborative tool, Diigo is fantastic. I hope to figure out how to personalize Diigo even more and use it more effectively. Has anyone experimented with Diigo before and have any tips?

via

Post-Midterm Mapping

No thanks to the time crunch last week, my paper didn't turn out as good as I would have liked it to, but my topic of immersion really caught Dr. Burton's interest.  In all honesty, I wrote about immersion because that was the topic that caught my interest.

 I would like to continue exploring the topic of immersion, partly to articulate my ideas the way I would have liked to in the paper and partly to see if there is actually evidence to support my claims.  I want to focus specifically on immersion in fan culture.  I think Dr. Burton got my number during the interview when he asked me to describe a digital subculture.  Fan culture is the subculture I am most familiar with and most deeply immersed in myself.  I like being a fan of popular sci-fi and fantasy brands because they give me something in common with other people, even if my tastes aren't quite as conventional as other fans'.  I feel like this is a topic that would give me an excuse for answering my own questions about fandoms and also exploring how fan cultures behave as, well, cultures, and how do people behave or immerse themselves within these groups or within the imaginary worlds they have in common.

I feel like since working on the paper that using the term "culture" has been a reminder that I am an anthropology minor.  In an anthro class I once took the professor once asked me what English has to do with anthropology?  Well, everything.  Language and literature are what make us human.  Referring to Dr. Wickman's lecture on Wednesday, the humanities exist to help us think and engage, and people who are immersed in fan cultures think and engage in specific ways because their worldviews are informed by certain media.  In a telephone conversation I had with my dad earlier today, he commented on my ideas about war and peace, justice and right and wrong, etc in the draft of a fantasy novel I am working on.  I told him that I got my deep ideas on these subjects from reading the Redwall and Harry Potter books as a teenager.  Within a fandom, fans engage with certain media that, via their immersion, give them reasons to think deeply about certain issues. 

I am also encouraged to go in this direction because I have other classmates discussing these issues, specifically Kylee, who wants to discuss fan fiction, and Mary, who is curating material on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.  This is going to be exciting!

Post-Midterm: Possibilities for Future Study

I wasn't quite sure what to blog about today, but after reading Mele and Kelsey's posts, I thought it would be good to sum up my experience with the midterm and the paper. First of all, I agree with Mele in that writing this paper presented a challenge for me. I think it challenged me to write and to think in a non-conventional-conventional way, which does not sound like it makes sense, but stick with me. It was meant to be an academic paper, yet there is very little research and academia written on these kinds of topics. I saw very few studies that linked digital culture to Moby Dick or to any literary work. I felt a little bit like I was blazing a new trail. That being said, I wanted to format it as a normal English major response, with a claim and support. I think that this paper should have been more analytical (as Dr. Wickman pointed out to me) and should have included less claim making and more exploration of the nuances of the topic.

I would like to delve deeper into the issues I presented in my paper. I thought that studying for the midterm and reviewing all the topics we have covered in class was a great way to start making connections and thinking about what I want to focus on for my future studying. My paper topic was crowdsourcing and networking and how Captain Ahab failed to do both of those things appropriately, which ultimately led to his demise. I am very interested in the power of the collective that is manifested through drawing on groups to complete a task. Dr. Burton brought up a good idea. I am also interested in fan culture, so why not pair the two? The most obvious place where I see fans collaborating creatively is in fan fiction. Fans can write their own stories using worlds, characters, and situations from actual series. They then request feedback, and the spiral of social proofing begins. This would be an interested phenomenon to consider studying.

Thoughts on Midterm and Paper

Here are some of my thoughts on the midterm.  The paper for me was really hard to write because of the length of the book, this made it difficult for me during my writing process in narrowing my examples and the ideas I wanted to present. For me, most of my problems came from my topic (finding identity within a technology age) which was a really broad topic and so my problem was being specific and narrowing it down so that I would be able to discuss my ideas in a four page paper.

My paper’s ( if you are interested in reading it, it can be found here) thesis was showing the way Ishmael throughout the novel Moby Dick goes on a journey in finding and changing his identity and applying it to how today people in this technological age go through a similar process and journey.  I personally, would like to explore the idea of how today digital culture and technology are changing the way in which we are defining ourselves and the impact that has on not only on our society, but on individuals an individual level as well.

The Final Product of Midterm 1

As I have mentioned before, for my midterm paper I chose to focus on what can be learned from Moby Dick about creative collaboration.  While many of my English lit classes have arranged peer review sessions, this was the first time I have "pitched" my ideas online.  The comments that were most helpful (both online and in-person) were the ones which pointed out the holes I had yet to consider, and even suggested possible connections I had yet to think of. In a way, my paper on collaboration came as a result of slight collaboration on the side.  After Dr. Wickman mentioned in class that our papers should not just be summaries of analogies found in Moby Dick, I was pretty paranoid that my analysis and thesis would not be deep enough or fully developed. One of the most helpful resources I had in gathering my thoughts and examining my conclusions were reading back through many of the posts that had been written by my fellow classmates. Some had also touched on the subject of collaboration, but even those that were not directly addressing the subject sparked ideas, or directed me to a portion of the novel I had not considered discussing.  Bouncing my ideas around online and turning to social media as a source for my work provided more material than any other source! Whether or not this is required for papers later in the semester, whether in this class or another, I'm excited to continue this process!

Check out the final version here.

Meme Contagion

So when Dr. Burton introduced me to The Information by James Glieck I found a new way to look at how ideas are shared--especially in the sense of memes. The original term "meme" has nothing to do with the quirky captioned pictures that we enjoy today.  Gleick re-envisions the world of ideas or human culture as an "ideosphere" coexisting alongside the biosphere where all organic life exists. And like life, ideas have a life of their own, and they grow, spread, and multiply like other life forms. 


As early as 1976, scientist Richard Dawkins proposed the term meme to define the "bodiless replicator" of ideas, similar to the term gene.  Within human culture, memes are transmitted between human brains through language and then within the brain are reconfigured (or mutated) and re-emerge as new, bigger ideas. Categories of memes or "meme pools" include ideas, tunes, images, and catchphrases. 

One of the most popular catchphrase/image memes of the last year or so is the "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster.  Recently, I was wondering where exactly that poster came from, and thankfully a little while ago I found a video link floating around on Facebook.  The story is actually very inspiring.

As we know, the original poster has been turned into several spin-off memes that you have probably seen on Facebook or other sites.  For instance:

Donna Brown on flickr.

The idea that is mutating here is to create a poster with a reminder to give us a reminder and encourage a certain action that will help us to succeed. And aside from being very entertaining, some of these knock-offs are inspiring in their own right.

LeventKayin on Keep-Calm-O-Matic.uk

As some of you may or may not want to remember, one of last year's top songs, Carly Rae Jeppson's "Call Me Maybe" is an excellent example of a musical meme.  It has inspired spin-off songs as well as knock-off memes mocking the concept of you are telling something crazy to someone you just met, for instance that you would like them to contact you or do something else out of the ordinary.  And of course, some of your opening blogs were entitled "Call me [insert name here]".  the association with the song makes it catchy and attractive.

So what do memes have to say about my theme topic of immersion?  Memes are the substance of ideas that is shared between people.  The propagation of certain memes is a sign of engagement in the related topic.  Within a fandom, for instance, memes are bridge connections between a popular/very mocked song and a particular movie/film.  When this connection is shared, the meme is recognized, accepted, and propogated by members of the fandom who recognize the connect--especially if it's funny.  I think funny memes are particularly "viral" because we're always on the lookout for something funny.

So that's just one chapter of The Information--the memes we are familiar with are manifestations of memes that we share every day about school, work, and hobbies. Although, glancing through The Information for that one chapter on memes was a headache (it took me a minute to realize I ought to check the table of contents), it would be very informative to read what Gleick has to say about the structure of ideas and our connections to them. .

Common Goals and Magnificent Results

I really appreciate the feedback regarding my paper! I wanted to share a portion of it.  I soon discovered that four pages was not enough space to really dive into all that we can learn about collaborating from Moby Dick.  This is just a small portion, but this is a topic I would like to study more about, not just from Moby Dick but from other groups, companies and organizations that are effectively collaborating to form magnificent results! 

San Francisco Opera's Moby Dick. Photo by Cory Weaver.

        Whaling itself is an operation that is structured in such a way that collaboration can thrive in it’s purest form.  For the men aboard these ships, the trust and reliance that they have among each other is very literally the difference between life and death.  To stress this idea, Ishmael spends entire portions of his narrative describing in detail the process by which these men work together to capture and collect the whales.  Ishmael goes into specifics concerning the monkey-ropes.  Ishmael explains, “From the ship’s steep side, did I hold Queequeg down there in the sea, by what is technically called in the fishery a monkey-rope, attached to a strong strip of canvas belted round his waist” (Melville 302).  Ishmael goes on to describe the bonding this simple monkey-rope created between himself and Queequeg and states, “So strongly and metaphysically did I conceive of my situation then, that while earnestly watching his motions, I seemed distinctly to perceive that my own individuality was now merged in a joint stock company of two; that my free will had received a mortal wound; and that another’s mistake or misfortune might plunge innocent me into unmerited disaster and death" (Melville 303).  Ishmael’s individuality was sacrificed so that he could become part of a larger cause, a larger collaboration.  While life itself does not need to be at stake for a successful collaboration, Ishmael demonstrates that to achieve a deeper level of commitment, there needs to be a common goal, or something of communal value must be at risk.  

        In the professional world we see that some of the greatest creations come only after separate parties come together with a common goal in mind.  LinkedIn is a professional networking website that creates opportunities for people to collaborate in ways that extend beyond just making a contact for a job.  True progress occurs as people from different backgrounds with a common goal or desire are able to join forces.  Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn’s co-founder stated “No one can succeed by themselves. Apple today is totally focused on how it can better work with its [applications] developer community.  It cannot thrive without them. The only way you can achieve something magnificent is by working with other people” (Friedman).  This level of magnificent collaboration is achieved as those involved recognize and utilize each other’s strengths.