I believe that second life although it has been around for several years now will start to take of very soon as the technological world becomes more advanced and maybe catches up to it. I think that second life will one day be worth billions and to a lot of people’s surprise h more interaction via second life will be happening than ever imagined before. If this does happen I believe that new laws need to be applied to internet activity and the world needs to stop living in the past with rules that are outdated and don’t fit with the context of today’s world. I think that this is just the beginning of the online revolution; in fact I am prepared to say that this is the beginning of the twenty first century’s technological revolution as compared to the twentieth century industrial revolution. So all that being said there is a clear need for new laws and new social laws to be introduced into society in order for the internet and all its wonders to take place in the context of today! I think the social laws will not change immediately they will change with the generations that use them.
I think that second life and developing social networking sites are just the begining of the technological revolution.......
I think that online documentary making is extremely relevant in ensuring the potential for freedom of speech and for all voices to be heard. The ‘red tape’ surrounding the professional film industry is no doubt preventative to those who want to make a “professional” film but for those who just want to be heard and have the right to freedom of speech online documentary making has no limits and great potential. Online documentary making is also a vital tool for people and activists group to spread controversial messages and documentaries that would never be allowed to be shown on T.V or for mass distribution because of its “dirty reality” content.
The term ‘dirty reality’ is used to describe some content of online documentaries, especially the one that are immediate and intimate portrayals of people or events. Some examples of these ‘dirty reality’ clips or documentaries can be found on sites such as Youtube and Google video which were launched in 2005. These include various war clips referred to as ‘war videos’ which show the everyday scenes, emotions and happenings of life in a war zone, these videos are made by the soldiers and are edited and posted to online video sites mentioned previously as a reflection of the harsh realities and moving circumstances they find themselves in. These types documentaries along with the new extension of blogging known as ‘vlogging’ which is a blogging but into a webcam,( a mixture of blogging and video), that usually last for a several minutes, are part of the web2.0 craze that has hit the world in the 21st century, That is gradually moving the power into our hands or the users hands which relates back to the previous blog on ‘Produsage’.
Although online documentary making is the growing popular and indeed very relevant to freedom of speech it is very hard to become successful and gain many viewers and exposure because there are so many people out there doing the same thing. Big screen documentaries such as Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, Super size and The corporation, are all good examples of controversial documentaries making it to the big screen but sadly they are only some of only a few to make it because of gatekeepers and other political and social restrictions on ‘dirty reality’ documentaries. I believe that it is important for some documentaries like these make it to the big screen because it influences and inspires many people to create online documentaries and have the right to freedom of speech.
Some people however don’t need any inspiration what so ever like in the case of Dylan Averey ‘s online documentary called ‘Loose Change’ this is a documentary that uncovers and asked questioned about what really happened on 9/11 and who was really responsible for the so called ‘terrorist attacks’ on America that day. It certainly highlights the dirty reality of the world we live in and for that it has had over 3 million views on YouTube alone. I would highly recommend watching this very interesting and enlightening documentary if you have a spare hour and half or are just interested in some facts and figures about 9/11.
In closing I believe that online documentary making is not only extremely relevant but also vital to freedom of speech and the telling of truth that would never be allowed for distribution to mainstream avenues.
Yes!!! Yes of course the mobile phone screen will become the dominant screen of the 21st century and fast because we just can’t help ourselves when it comes to technology and especially new technology ‘the more we use the more we expect’ I believe this statement to be very true, the more we use and consume technology the more we expect from it.
With the mobile phone being a screen that most people rely on the most in their everyday lives because of family work and now the internet on mobile phones I think that it is inevitable that the mobile phone will become the dominant screen if it is not already doing so. I don’t think it is really a case of need it is rather that we want and expect to be our mobile phone to be all things at all times, which comes back to the idea of ‘the the more we consume the more we expect’. However in saying that I recognise that as technology is progressing at such a fast rate it may allow the mobile to almost completely takeover other screened devices. In past few years the internet has become a common feature on most new mobile phones with many people who have the feature opting to use every day.
I remember in 2005 when I got my first digital camera it had 5 megapixels which at the time was considered pretty good but now days a lot of new mobile phones have double the pixels. This makes me think that in a short time from now will the mobile phone also become our primary camera our video player/recorder and our internet, eradicating the need for separate devices to do all three things? Of course a large computer screen/normal computer is still necessary for a lot of uses but will they be the dominant screens used by everyday people in this increasing fast pace world. After watching the short films it is clear that creating art via mobile is not hard to do either and im sure that as technology becomes more advanced in turn the mobile phone will be as well. Thus creating the ideal technological device that will be all things to all people and a screen that is dominant wherever you look or view!
Of course this idea of having and using a mobile phone brings with it the idea of no escape from technology, people will constantly be using it and engaging with it that it could become a part of us an addiction that no one will know will know how to stop or even want to stop and the moment they do ironically they will probably look to technology to find the answer on Google. Haraways cyborg may not be far away!......
The use of YouTube for political gain is currently developing into something that in the future will be a tactic used by all serious politicians and political campaigns. Although the use of YouTube and other social networking sites is in the early stages of development the political world has seen some groundbreaking and successful results. In Australia we saw Kevin Rudd successfully gain leadership with the help of he’s online campaigning through YouTube and other social networking sites to promote himself with the slogan “kevin07” that was aimed at the younger internet savvy Australian voters. More famously however was the appointment of the US president Barack Obama in 2008.
Obama’s use of the internet and its social networking capabilities such as YouTube, Facebook, Myspace and others saw him successfully captivate America and indeed the world. As discussed in the articles Obama campaigned on the internet in the correct context, he encouraged communications across the internet from voter to voter, unlike the Clinton campaign that encouraged conversation between voters and Clinton, which some thought was the wrong stance to take.
As seen in the Obama campaign the use of YouTube was very successful. The launch of a short YouTube video by the Obama party in December 2008 called “robot attacks” attracted more than 166,167 viewers in 24 hours. These types of results along with the party’s website MyBarackObama.com saw him appointed the US president in 2008
The Obama party was not the only party in the run up to the US election to use YouTube and other social networking sites in their campaigns, in fact the first use of YouTube as a tactic for the election of 2008 was made by John Edwards in December 2006 when he announced that he would be running for president via a YouTube video. Now you would think that since Obama was so successful when using YouTube that it would be the same for most candidates, but that is wrong. John Edwards did receive 166,167 views on he’s video but it took him two years to get those views unlike 24 hours for Obama. Edwards did become successful eventually on YouTube but for the wrong reasons when a 2 minute clip of him fixing he’s hair was posted and attracted far more views than he’s previous video.
Another example of the dangers involved with the use of YouTube for political gain is the famous Clinton clip (vote different) that was remade by DeVille and depicted Clinton in a bad light through the use of a 1980s super bowl advert. This is an example of when YouTube can go very wrong and the original clip doesn’t get half as many views as the satire clip!
So some benefits and risks of using YouTube for political gain........ YouTube can replace the need for expensive and time consuming political advertising because whatever is posted to YouTube is guaranteed to be aired on all the major news satiations in a matter of minutes or hours depending on its newsworthiness. The risks of YouTube and sometimes benefits are that it is easy and cheap to create satirical and parodies of oppositional leaders that will spread fast and far.
Produsage!? What is that I thought when I first heard the word, so I decided in order to endeavour to discuss this statement of Bruns I felt I should do some more research and gain better understanding of what “Produsage” is and what it means.
After reading some articles on Axel Bruns website (snurb.info/publications) and (produsage.org) i have discovered that Produsage is not an easy concept to get your head around. ‘The collaboration and continuous building and extending of existing content in pursuit of further improvement’ is how Bruns defines Produsage At first this did not make much sense to me either but I read on which is where things began to come far more clear and I began finding myself relating my own social media happenings back to the idea of Produsage. This is where the ‘producer’ comes in, traditionally the ‘producer’ is someone who makes or produces a product in full, or ‘is defined by its boundedness; it is 'the complete package,' a self-contained, unified, finished entity’ (bruns) but in the case of the Produsage theory the line between producer and user is blurred hence the term the Produsage this is so because the user can become the producer and the producer the user. Bruns believes that Produsage has been able to form due to the easy back and forth communication of the internet and in particular social media in all of its forms, could this mean that we are all inevitably going to be Produsagers?
In an article written by bruns he talks about the ‘value chain’ as an idea that it doesn’t matter what people produce or use or both and to what to standard they contribute, they are still carrying on the Produsage idea that a product in these terms is never actually finished it is always evolving (temporary) and serving different purposes until a ‘producer’ or could I say a ‘user’ chooses to or doesn’t choose to (just does without thinking twice that they have) become a Produsager, (inevitable idea) and further develop it. I think it is important to note here that was said by bruns ‘produsage is based on a principle of inclusivity not exclusivity’.
This is where I related Produsage to my life in the form of Facebook... yes Facebook.Facebook is an excellent example of Produsage with users being producers and producers being users. I will explain how I came to think this... so facebook is a social networking site where a person creates an account so they are a user of facebook but they are producing their own account with their own information, then once they have produced it they use it by adding people, updating statuses and commenting on other peoples pages which is then producing again and adding to the temporary nature of the idea of Produsage. Inclusivity is very prevalent on facebook, because of its constant updates, news feeds and comments section so it never goes a second without someone updating the temporary product.
Although this clip is a bit long and boring, i found it interesting that when i typed into youtube 'facebook features' it came up with things that you can use and produce, i found it a prime example of someone using facebook and at the same time producing a youtube video.
Im not really sure if i have correct understanding of produsage but i tried.....
Wow! Reflecting on sex in cyberspace! This topic is not as easy as I thought it would be. After reading the readings I am realising that sex in cyberspace and the issues surrounding it are relatively new to an average person who hears about it.
In this day and age sex in cyberspace can mean all different things and appeal to all different types of people, a well known cybersex phenomenon is online porn, with it being the biggest revenue making industry online. Another not so well known area of sex in cyberspace is that of the second life virtual world.
The virtual world of second life and everything that goes on inside it makes people question and start to wonder if what is happening real or is it just that virtual. If I go by my previous blog and say that shared experience creates reality then everything in second life should reality, but is sex in second life really sex? For some it probably is as close as the real thing they are ever going to get and for others its just a bit of fun. There are some downfalls of sex in second life for example once the sexual script has been chosen and two avatars are engaging in their activity then you cannot change what the script is programmed to do, as said by Levinson p.150 “Spontaneity, in other words is scripted”. The plus sides are anything is possible including even penis and breast sizes, and there is a lot of money to be made, real and imaginary.
However sex in cyber space is not always fun and games and it doesn’t always stay in the cyber world for adult eyes only. The content that is available on the internet for anyone to see leads to the discussion of whether or not the internet is a safe place for children to spend hours of time roaming the net and doing what they want and watching what they want. It makes sense to think that the children of today are the most internet savvy of the modern world so it would be just as easy for them to access cyber sex as it would for an adult, not even at the library is a child safe from inappropriate content, but in fairness it is imposable to regulate everything on the internet.
With this being said the likelihood of young people becoming addicted to pornography is of prime concern in the article ‘internet porn: worse than crack?’ the comments that were made in the article do raise some good points about whether this new and attractive industry could potentially become an addiction that is worse than gambling, drugs and alcohol addiction in ten years time? I thought it was interesting to note this statement by Layden "The internet is a perfect drug delivery system because you are anonymous, aroused and have role models for these behaviors," Layden said. "To have drug pumped into your house 24/7, free, and children know how to use it better than grown-ups know how to use it -- it's a perfect delivery system if we want to have a whole generation of young addicts who will never have the drug out of their mind."
I have learnt that sex in cyberspace has so many forms and implications that it is impossible to cover them all, but a new thing I have learnt is that women are massively overlooked as a large percentage engaging in cyber sex.
Soooo..... Sharing is caring, but is it real or not?
Yes I do agree with meadows statement. “Shared experience creates a sense of reality” I think that this statement is very true in all facets of a person’s life not just in an online world where everything to some is perceived as being fake or not real. I think that when you share an experience with someone else whether it be an unusual or hard to believe one it provides you with the confidence that it was real and what you experienced was in reality however strange or unbelievable it was and that the same is provided for the other person. If you experienced something on your own it sometimes can feel like it wasn’t real and you get no confirmation from another person that it did in fact happen to you and you are living in reality. I think that these same ideas apply to online worlds as well as the real world.
I believe that online worlds and their activities are just an extension of a chat room or an msn conversation and are taking online experiences to the next level. Online communications whether it be email or instant message creates a shared experience between users and a lot is sometimes riding on it, an email for example could be a job offer. So I do not think that an online world for example second life should be looked at as any less real than the real world, sure enough its virtual but so are many other things we find ourselves engaging with everyday. If big businesses are investing in online worlds and making real money from them then something real is definitely happening. I agree that shared experience creates grounding belief because more than one person is invested in it and there is proof of that.
An example of both big business investing and lots of people investing in the online world is the virtual world of second life. In this virtual world people are exchanging virtual money for account US dollars and big banks and corporations such as Harvard University are building and maintaining a second virtual life in second life, So this tells me that if these types of organisations are creating these types of experiences for themselves that there is defiantly a reality about the virtual world. To share an experience with someone whatever it is and to what extent immediately makes that experience real whether it be in the virtual world or not.
le’s surprise h more interaction via second life will be happening than ever imagined before.
