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Like many people and expressed and stated, they also believe that the purpose of the creation of the copyright laws are outdated and no longer apply to our current society.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?

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.

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. 

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.