presentation outline~Interactive Audiences?

Henry Jenkins, "Interactive Audiences?"
Dan Harries (ed.), The New Media Book, London: BFI Publishing, 2002, pp.157-170

The new participatory culture in three trends:
~consumers can appropriate and recirculate media content
~do-it-yourself (DIY) media production
~economic trends encourage consumers to be more active

the new knowledge communities
~voluntary, temporary and shift from one community to another
the history of science-fiction fandom
~form some informal network
~circulating letters and convention
~many science-fiction writers emerge

Share knowledge~ information known by all members of a community
Collective intelligence~ knowledge available to all members of a commodity

computer brings some change to fandom
-express and receive instant response
-translate some Japanese programs for American

some conflicts among different people
e.g. between male and female fans, between different generations of fans.

knowledge cultures change the ways that commodity culture operates
building brand loyaltyà broaden consumers participation

-culture jammers want to opt out of media consumption
-fans see unrealized potential in popular culture ,want to broaden audience participation

Jenifa's reflective post

Finally, this is my last post in this unit.

Overall I think this unit is quite interesting yet a bit difficult that it had introduced some new concepts and theories regarding identity in this digital era. For instance, this was the first time that I have ever heard of the term “cyborg” – seems like a very techno-term but never thought of we might already been a cyborg ! While the term “cyborg” is viewed differently according to different people, for me, I think to little extent I could consider myself as a cyborg as I’m quite over-dependent on new technologies, (and as I’m shortsighted that I have to wear glasses or contact lenses everyday). I like the topic of “Resistance is Fertile” the most because it had introduced some new ideas that (luckily!) we are not merely passive recipients of new technologies, but we also have the power to resist the new technologies or commodification of cultural objects.

I think using Weblogs is appropriate and very suitable for this unit. It did helped us to learn apart from essay writing or presentation - especially when we have to post our presentation outline on Weblogs so that our classmates can comment on it and we can even have a discussion about the topics there. It provides a platform for us to have a more in-depth discussion rather than just hearing other’s presentation without commenting.

Some minor things that I think could be improved is that some topics are really a bit difficult and theorized, and there are topics that are already covered in some other units (like gender in playing games, online community), the weight of the final essay is a bit too heavy as well.

Week 13 Presentation Outline -Smart Mobs

Howard Rheingold, ‘Smart Mobs: the power of the mobile many’ Network Logic. Eds. Helen McCarthy, Paul Miller and Paul Skidmore. London: Demos, 2004, pp. 191-202.

According to Howard Rheingold:
-Smart mobs consist of people who are able to act in concert even if they don’t know each other.
-‘Killer apps’ of tomorrow’s mobile infocom industry will be social practices.

1. Netwar
-The case of ‘People power’ in 2001
-The Battle of Seattle: the first ‘netwar’, use of wireless communications + mobile social networks , demonstrators had different interests but were united.
-The term “netwars,” by John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt
-Smart mobs: violent or non-violent netwar -> only a few of the many possible varieties of smart mob.
-Netwars -> share a similar technical infrastructure with other smart mobs
-New form of social organization, the network
-Networks constitute the newest major social organizational form, after tribes, hierarchies and markets.

2. Peer- to peer Journalism
- Potential for violence, malign purposes of smart mob technologies and techniques, non-violent smart-mobbing in the future, a few experiments of mobile communications are provided
- WearComp researcher, innovator and evangelist, Steve Mann launched ‘ENGwear’

3. Swarm intelligence
-PARC researchers have studied the dynamics of social systems -> a diversity of cooperation thresholds among the individuals -> tip a crowd into a sudden epidemic of cooperation
- Steven Johnson’s 2001 book Emergence ->
1) Kevin Kelly extrapolated from biological to technological networks,
2) apply to cities and Amazon.com’s recommendation system
3) In the case of the cities, the emergent intelligence resembles the ant mind, but humans posses extraordinary onboard intelligence or at least the capacity for it.
- Connections between the behavior of smart mobs and the behavior of swarm systems must be tentative.


Conclusion:
- raises three questions
- Smart mobs are not ‘thing’ -> could not be described with words, but Internet can do that, Internet -> what happened when a lot of computers started communicating
- Smart mobs -> unpredictable but at least partially describable emergent property
- more new media to invent

Jacqueline's reflective post

To be honest, it was really surprising to learn that one would be considered cyborg by having any single connection with technology. If this is really the case, we are all cyborg as we are now living in the digital age! In this sense, I can become a cyborg by just using computer/mobile phone, listening to ipod, wearing contact lens...etc. However, personally, I do not agree with such interpretation of cyborg. To me, cyborg should be like those as commonly shown in many sci-fi movies (part 'human' and part machine: they are actually completely robot, just that they are 'given' human-like appearance)

We are now living in the digital age, we rely heavily on technology and it is nearly impossible for us to be completely separated from technology. This is true, but I do not agree with the point that by simply having connection with technology, one would be considered cyborg. I think cyborg should not be defined in such a broad term. So I do not consider my self cyborg.

For the blogging exercises, it provides students with a good way to share ideas. I like the interactive nature of the blogging exercises. We can comment on other classmates' posts and share our thoughts on the subject matter regardless of time and space. We do not need to be face-to-face, by simply clicking the 'comment' button, we can share our thoughts together through the blog. We can have a more in-depth discussion on the subject matter and this enables us to have a better understanding of what we have learnt in class. Of course this would be even more effective if we are encouraged to blog more.

The presentation outline-- Playing Games

The presentation outline-- Playing Games
'As We Become Machines: corporealized pleasures in video games' by Martti Lahti

-->The video games link players to entertainment technology in what is a ‘new cyborgian relationship’ which attempts to erase the boundary between the virtual and the real.

William Gibson: “sees the players as already being subsumed by the computer, already as a cyborg’.

Argument: The video games as a unique ‘paradigmatic site for producing, imaging and testing different kinds of relations between the body and technology in contemporary culture.’
--> far from being ‘meatless’

Two contentions:
1.) The aspiration of gaming technology is to ‘erase the boundary separating the player from the game world’
- the sense of physical immersion created by advances
- the use of techniques
--> fuses the players perspective with that of the games character, and creates the impression of a ‘limitless space opening behind the screen.’

2.) The games encourage a merger of perspectives and subjectivities with the onscreen world
- the video games simultaneously invite players to take pleasure in the visual representation of avatars onscreen.
- the pleasure from:
--> to control and construct the body we desire
--> to 'try on' different bodies
--> to 'trespass or toy with racial and sexual boundaries'

Conclusion: complex relations between the player and the machine's cybernetic system with which it relates through gameplay > the players are subsumed as a cyborg.

The presentation outline-- Playing Games

Hot Dates and Fairy-Tale Romances----Mia Consalvo

Focus how the theories could apply in the case studies and how the norms of heterosexuality is in some way being challenged, but in fact reinforced in gameplay

1) Final Fantasy 9
idealizes the heterosexual romance
added many traditional norms in it to see the gender

Theory of erotic triangle
player-character relationship that emphasizes the nonsexual interest and affection between men, with female character to cover them as fears of being seen as gay
--> clashing of sexualized roles
The concept of Play---Johann Huizinga
“The disguised or masked individual ‘plays’ another part, another being. He is another being”
“a stepping out of ‘real’ life into a temporary sphere of activity with a disposition all of its own”
--> Players are masked to play various roles and being that roles in video game out of reality

2) The Sims
Structured polysemy game
Sexualities built on the activities but not identities
--> Limit radical potentials of sexualities (denied gay married status)

Theory of gay window advertising
Ambiguously to appeal both straight and gay players

Both of the games failed to challenge the heterosexuality because of the agency limited:

FF9:
The masked character does not stray far from the assumed identity of the game player (heterosexual male)

The Sims:
Forbidden of marriage between same-sex couples

Presentation Outline: Online communities

"A Rape in Cyberspace" by Julian Dibbell

This reading is mainly about the Bungle Affair happened in an online space known as LambdaMOO and how the online community(LambdaMOO), including the victims of the affair, handled the case. The writer uses the Bungle Affair to bring out issues regarding online communities.

Here is the outline of my presentation:

1) Brief information on the Bungle Affair: a cyberrape performed by a player called Mr. Bungle

2) The Bungle case highlights issues regarding virtual community:

->the boundaries between real-life and virtual reality (virtual offense = real crime?)

->the regulation of online spaces

The reading leads us to think about issues of regulation within virtual worlds and also the boundary between real-life and virtual reality (e.g. what was the real-life legal status of virtual offense?)

Outline of this week presentation (Edith)

I am going to present “The Virtual Community” by Howard Rheingold on this Thursday, here is my presentation outline:

 

1) The online community which the author participated in, was called WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link), he found that…

-- “I was audience, performer and scriptwriter”

-- “I was participating in the self-design of a new kind of culture”

-- “begin to mix up with them (virtual community) in real life”

 

2) Our own thoughts towards Internet should be presented, as it might be used and shaped by the commercial and political parties in the future.

 

3) The writer considered that everything about the Internet grow extremely fast, even this article was written in 1993.

Week 10 Presentation – Resistance is Fertile

Article: Pranking Rhetoric: "Culture Jamming" as Media Activism by Christine Hardold.

Exploring the practice of "culture jamming" as a strategy of rhetorical protest.

The theory of "culture jamming"

An interruption / sabotage /hoax etc

The monolithic power structures governing the cultural life
“to introduce noise to signal”
the kind of “glutting” of the systems

Approaches raised by the author:

Joey oey Skaggs
- Opened a false dog brothel for dogs, and posted advertisements up. Skaggs quickly earning ABC News interviews and eventually even criminal charges.


®™ark
- Switched voice-chips within Barbie toys and G.I. Joe action figures and then returned them to stores


the Biotic Baking Brigade
- Plays with the image of power, and the media's obsession with images and scandal.


the American Legacy Foundation's INFKT Truth Campaign
- to urge the readers to “Spread the knowledge. Infect truth.”

Conclusion

Week 10 Presentation – Resistance is Fertile

Article : Consumption and digital commodities in the everyday (Mark Poster)


“Media are as old as culture, influencing, constraining, enhancing and generally making possible from the beginnings of human society the practice of culture”

“The modern city is becoming a labyrinth of images” (Michel de Certeau)
- a threat to agency, as a deterministic system that eviscerated the freedom of the individual and group.

Postmodern and modern consumption:
[postmodern consumption]: while the consumer renders products part of her/himself, becoming part of the experience of being with products (expresses one’s identity)

[modern consumption]: consumer objects represented social status
Thus identity becomes more mobile and fractured, subject to alternations in what and how one feels at the moment.

Globalization:
- hybridity of consumption patterns
e.g. exhibition of African art that depicted black African hairstyles as imitations of afro-american styles

The role of digital media play in the emergence of post-modern consumer culture:
Digital media radically transform both the cultural object and the subject position of the consumer.
[ Digitized cultural objects ] e.g. consumers become producers through the action of reproduction and distribution

Resistances of consumers toward culture industry:
[music and film]
Analogue record-->CD--> mp3 files -->digitally encoded movies

[TV commercials]
TV commercials – rests on the idea of delivering audiences to advertisers
, meaning tv programming is first and foremost a vehicle to attract audiences for the ‘real’ messages transmitted by tv
remote controls --> digital tv recorders


To conclude:

New technologies offer consumers the power to bypass or resist the commodification of cultural objects through ads

Shift of identities -->Consumers are also producers, distributors, reproducers of the commodity.

Presentation - Virtual Ethics

Topic: Virtual Ethics

Article: The Ethics of Pron on the Net – by Kath Albury


Perspectives on Pornography

a.) Immoral + NOT ethical

- Judeo-Christian
- Left-wing
 Marxist
 Feminist
- Feminist
 Andrea Dworkin

b.) Immoral + Ethical

- Kathy Albury
- Don Slater
- Michael Foucault



Emergence of Porn on the net

Porno Communities formed
- no restrictions on the spread pornography
- invade our most private space
- Don Slater’s view
- Internet porn is formed in the virtual community
- a pleasurable space where people escape from the real life everyday
- part of everyday sexuality
- not de-humanizing or objectifying

- Some porn sites and sex chats list --> reveal the ethical sensibilities


Influence of the emergence

- Internet tells a different story of Porn
--> Amateurs do it for love but not money
--> atypical pornographic beauties created via the internet
--> sexual attractive women


- The rapid spread of sexual imagery --> internet porn’s ethical sensibility
- a facilitator to facilitate the anonymous sexual experimentation
- Relax the threaten of the cybersex and cyberporn
- Part of a spectrum of contemporary sexual tastes and practices


Conclusion: Pronography is immoral but Ethical

Outline of Week 7 Presentation

Topic: Virtual Ethics
Article: Diary of a Webdiarist: Ethics goes Online

Margo Kingston

The article is the diary of an online journalist Margo Kingston.

A new form of journalism

1. Online Journalism and its differences from traditional journalism
2. “Trust” Ethics online
3. Relationship between journalists and readers

Arguments:

1. Anonymity online
2. Offensive articles online
3. Conflicts of interest
4. Plagiarism and corrections

Ethic codes of a Journalist.


Main argument of Margo Kingston:

- Online Journalism differs from Traditional Journalism
1. He possesses absolute power towards his online webdiary.
2. The distance between readers and the author is removed

- Mutual Trust between authors and readers
1. Facts are not created
2. Corrections on the blog