All Hail The Digital Deity.

You can not see it nor can you hold it. It answers complex questions and enlightens the confused. Millions of people put their faith in it and turn to it in difficult times. And without it, the world would be a different place. It is a god but no reincarnate of Buddha or a supposed son of an omnipresent being. It is the internet, our new Digital Deity.

Religion and politics are synonymous adjectives for organised manipulation. The topic of digitalized faith mirrors the sudden freedom of information that was made possible by Gutenberg and his printing press in the middle ages. Before this original form of ‘new media’, only the monks and priests had the access to bibles and possessed the ability to read. This dissemination of control has only progressed further thanks to the technological advancements and the internets ability for instant content creation.

As Leung states, the increase in user generated content has given a voice to previously mute communities. Yet it has also amplified the voices of those who were already heard too loud.Prefacing this study is a quote which reads "The superficial act of virtual shrine visits threatens to erode the dignity of this traditional shrine-oriented faith...” But already, in many cultures new media has been exploited to assist in the degradation of a once sacred activity through hugely popular 'televangilism'.

Going further Online churches such as Church of Fools casually invites you to “key in some prayers” and is a prime example of what one article from USA Today discribes as ‘religious fast food’, cheap imitations of the real thing. Not surprisingly, digital faith is proving to be just as popular and addictive and in my opinion just as dangerous as the real thing.

Thoughts on Paper.

Ah, the daunting feeling that arises from the prospect of constructing a critical essay. Putting forth an opinion, a personal perspective, a deeply rooted belief stirs up something inside that can only be described as confusing excitement. Like dipping a toe into a great abyss, you throw your underdeveloped self into a world of big ideas and hope to stay afloat, make it to the other side with a better understanding and relief that it's over.

The final piece of assessment for New Media acts as an extension of this blog. It calls for a highly refined discussion and critical analysis of a suggested concept, supported by material that we as new media practitioners have uncovered and use to our ability to prove or disprove a polarizing topic. The topics, which include hypothesis that either Susan or students have submitted, range from the personal to the political while still remaining vague enough as to be navigated in any direction desired. After being initially drawn to topic 5 ‘The internet should remain neutral’ concepts and ideas were developed and noted. From here, the realization became apparent that this was just one sub-concept that would be better fleshed out under the topic 'New media creates a new space/style of democracy'. This topic allows more diverse ideas to be brought forward and discussed.

Man on a Mission.

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Hugely influential Henry Rollins is a man that defies classification. A one man army in a fight against, well, everything, anything and everyone. He is the honest voice screaming back at society when it turns towards the mirror. I owe a great deal to him and was granted the experience of listening to his rants in person only last month. Here, in two different mediums for two very different audiences, he continues to speak passionately and unabridged about our dependance on new media.

Henry Rollins as Doc in Johnny Mnemonic.

Henry Rollins as Mad Stan in Batman: The Animated Series.

Your Own Digital Playground.

Originally, I was weary of blogs. I backed away from what I thought was yet another outlet for the masses to vapidly banter on about trivial happenings. This was a neiave and ignorant outlook, and the addictive nature of the internet soon had me trawling through thousands of blogs that ranged from delicate photography, outrageous soapboxes, professional meeting places and musical hangouts. I learnt the more you dig through the dirt, the better gems you find. I have a select few blogs I check religiously but, understand my expedition is just beginning. With thanks to this class, I am slowly converting from personal opinion blogs to more professional, informative and journalistic blogs that further inspire and prod my knowledge of certain topics. In addition to this, I have learnt just how simple and satisfying the 'art' of blogging can be and have begun to put together my own meeting place of ideas, inspiration and information. If for no other reason than to act as a personal digitalized photo-book.

The issue of perception dissonance raised by Martin on Kerrer's post is valid and highlights a flaw in the way blogs are perceived in comparison to more traditional forms of media and communication. He says, "If I was to say 'I've spent all morning reading blogs', some people might think 'waster', whereas if I say 'I've spent all morning in the library reading journal articles' people will think 'ah, good solid academic." I see this as perhaps the most pressing issue facing both bloggers and their blogs alike. However, I do not believe is a cause for concern. Just as the humble newspaper, television and the internet its self were received with a fair share of moral panic and distain, so too are blogs. And as every form of successful new media has done before, blogging will emerge as an essential and revolutionary upgrade in the way we communicate and interact with our world.

I can confidently state that this class based blog has vastly benefited my learning within this unit. I feel I can communicate more effectively large ideas in a condensed format (even if some blogs do exceed the 200 word limit, sorry!). More so, it allowed me to understand firsthand the basics of blogging; creating, maintaining and writing for the new digital playground.

Option: Paralysis.

Recently, cult heros of noise and precision The Dillinger Escape Plan released the long anticipated Option Paralisis to both critial and peer acclaim. The bands vocalist Greg Puciato was questioned about the meaning behind and content within the album. I find his opinions and the album a great exapmple of contemporary social commentary. The following is a segment of an interveiw between Shockhound Music and Puciato.

SHOCKHOUND: What does the term Option Paralysis mean to you?

PUCIATO: Technically, it's a term that was coined a few decades ago. It refers to one's tendency, when given a ton of choices, to make none. I think it's a good phrase to sum up not only what's going on in the world, but in many of our personal lives — certainly my personal life at times when we were writing the record. Culturally, it seems very apropos. Right now, there have been some amazing technological feats. Over the past 100 years, we've come much further industrially and technologically than we have in the entire course of human history. However, I feel like, as far as arts and culture are concerned, we may have never been at a lower point. I'm not saying that there's a necessarily inverse relationship, but I think that maybe some of the focus needs to shift back to an enlightened way of thinking where education and art are valued for their intrinsic benefits, and not just as means to a marketing end or to serve as a tie-in to some new product. When we were talking about album titles, Option Paralysis just felt good. It made sense.

SHOCKHOUND: Everything gets filtered through the internet — Twitter, Myspace, Facebook, etc. How many people actually still experience real art without these technological filters?

PUCIATO: That's what it's about! Technology is amazing. I'm not saying that I'd want to discard my phone or the internet, but people haven't learned how to say no. There are so many new things coming out constantly and the novelty aspect is extremely high. The users haven't learned how to restrain themselves, and they don't understand how the consequences of their daily actions affect everything as a whole. If you're a kid, you probably want to eat candy and ice cream for every meal all day and only drink soda. As a kid, you have no real idea as to why that wouldn't be good for you in the large scale, because you can only really see what's in front of your face. I think that's what people are doing now. They don't understand the repercussions of having everything be instantly gratifying or instantly available. It's not good or bad in and of itself. You can't say something that has no living properties is "good" or "bad." It needs to be used in the right way, though. The music industry is a perfect example. Pro Tools is not bad: It's people's inability to say "no" when they're using Pro Tools that is. It's their inability to not correct one vocal which turns into ten vocals, 20 guitar parts and 50 tom hits and destroys all of the soul that would've ever been in their records. It's about being bombarded with options constantly and not being able to filter through the bullshit, so to speak, and cut to the core of it.

Courtesy of Shockhound

In Sickness and In Health.

In our age of complete digitalization, its hard to think of anything that we can not do online. Conventionally, our personal health and well-being was reserved for the knowledge and prestige of the family physician. This trust, along with most of our actions, has shifted from the physical world to the digital as we type our ails and worries into a search engines to see what we may suffering from. This role of mediation (a key point raised by Latour in Wyatt et al.) is nothing new, it is what GP’s and nurses have been doing for centuries. But by introducing the internet as a trusted mediator, a rivalry between reverent and legitimate power has ignited.

Through the internet, we witness the rise of the medicine 2.0 and individualism through new source of both information & misinformation and spaces of research as detailed by Leong. The control of power has shifted; responsibility has stayed with the individual however the concern is now communal. The drastic changes in legislation and public opinion on smoking in Australia exemplifies this. In an attempt to regain the loose reins, you find new systems of management and administration in the from of websites and forums which aid the shift of power from public to private. In particular, government administrated websites that provide information on a range of health issues, including illicit drugs, in a responsible and proactive manner. By presenting facts in public forum, the internet aids in dispelling myths while assisting users to make informed decisions.

However, there remains the darker side to this 24/7 digital pharmacy as Neilson and Barratt discuss. The internet instantly oversteps the professional administration of products and treatments, delivering them directly to the hands of mere cyberchondriacs, to borrow Lewis’ terminology, full blown addicts or the curious consumer. They go on to raise the question of online monitoring, alluding that technology helps slay the monster it created.

When using the popular WebMD Symptom Checker, if the common symptoms of stress, headache and restless sleep are submitted, you are reassuringly diagnosed with either sunburn, dementia, porphyria or lymes disease. The only illness it fails classify is our obsessive attraction towards a complete and all consuming digital life.

Reshaping a culture around the digital revolution, countries now have to support their citizens who are affected by the new vices the internet provides. In Korea, a highly digitalized country, internet addiction is treated as a mental addiction. The video, Internet Addiction in China documents the move of communal interaction to individual digital obsession and the drastic treatment which is prescribed to rectify it.

References

Lewis, T. (2006). Seeking health information on the internet: lifestyle choice or bad attack of cyberchondria? Media, Culture & Society, volume 28, issue 4: 521-539.

Nielsen, S. and Barratt, M. J. (2009). Prescription Drug Misuse: Is Technology Friend or Foe? In Drug and Alcohol Review, volume 28: 81-86.

Wyatt, S., Harris, R. and Wathen, N. (2008). The Go-Betweens: Health, Technology and Info(r)mediation. In Mediating Health Information: The Go-Betweens in a Changing Socio-Technical Landscape. Sally Wyatt, Nadine Wathen and Roma Harris (eds), pp. 1-12. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Frankensteins Digital Monster

Splicing and growing one segment of media off another has led to many grotesque forms of new social media, all which aspire to the idea of ‘subverting and profiting’ off the ignorant. The readings from both Dezure and Gill focus on two abstract communities of new media ‘employees’; the creative Dutch creators of digital content and the ignorant, digital slaves in order to tear down the obscure perceptions held about the profession.

Leong is right in acknowledging that while excitement and wonder shroud this transient enterprise known as new media, there remains a sense of obscurity and unspoken trepidation. This is best expressed by Hilda, a respondent in Gill’s research, who states “new media does not have a tradition...that is why it is open ...It’s still not finished’. Due to the nature of the beast, it never will be. The notion of ‘compulsory sociality’ some practitioners uphold is a complete antithesis of the ‘digital slaves’ Ziltran uncovers who are subverted by the to the glow of a screen and menial reward in a presentation that opened my eyes to the extent of digital deceit.

Dezure’s documented fear exposes how digitalization spells death for those who reluctant of change. The fear that people will loose jobs, that industries will perish and convention will fall are not future concerns, but past events. Dezure’s reading appears too out of touch to see that while many traditional aspects of media and society have changed, they have not disappeared altogether. They exist as transformed media; as emergent formats.

References

Deuze, M. (2009). The people formerly known as the Employers. Journalism, Vol. 10, issue 3, pp. 315-318.

Gill, R. (2007). Informality is the New Black. In Technobohemians or the new Cybertariat? New Media work in Amsterdam a decade after the web. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures: 24-30 & 38-43.

Zittrain, J. (2009). Minds for Sale. 16 November. (accessed April 2, 2010).

The Nature of the Experiment.

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Reminiscent of Science Fiction sagas that envisions dystopian futures, Castells' courageously takes on the confusion of a strange new world in his 1999 ‘Introduction to the Information Age’. Now a decade old, his reading acts as a look back to when a fourth world of exclusion emerged and marginalized youth and women from the digital collective. How things have changed. Today, the digital playing field more even and inviting then ever before. Changes on our digital frontier occur rapidly, even daily in place of the incremental changes Castells' experienced over years. Modern time and space have well and truly warped, thrusting our society forever more into a multidimensional world where our lives, economies and cultures take place simultaneously in our past, present and future.

The Cambrian Explosion, one of the most important discoveries in our modern history, is surmised to just over 7,000 words long. It takes no more than an hour to read, if you have one spare that is. On completion, you will have attained the combined knowledge of thousands of contributors, each who committed years, if not their entire careers studying. Living in the information age (Castells) grants us all the wish of knowing everything instantly, as Castells’ timeless time compresses years into seconds, seconds into nanoseconds.

As people of the information age, we are able to access information and consume it with instantaneous ease. This, however, is not without intermediation. Search engines are one type of mediator, and are not unbiased in their actions. Marketing products, content filters and ‘paid positions’ as mentioned by Howard, control who sees what, how and for what reason. This only serves to construct a constantly shifting field of information in a static and mostly (if not naïvely) trusted environment, a concern raised by Hellsten, Leydesdorff & Wouters. Today, there is an answer for everything a mere mouse click away and a array of places to start looking. My favourite: Dinoogle. It gives you the scope of google, with the added benefits of dinosaurs!

References

Howard, P. N. and Massanari, A. (2007). Learning to Search and Searching to Learn: Income, Education, and Experience Online. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(3), article 5.

Castells, M. (1999). 'An Introduction to the Information Age' in The Media Reader: Continuity & Transformation. Hugh Mackay & Tim O'Sullivan (eds), London: Sage: 398-410.

The Secret Of My Own Soul.

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Akin to the iconic Dorian Grey, we too have the ability to contort our reality; to hide beneath a fabricated facade in order to achieve everlasting life. While preserving our digital souls, SNS contort the truth. Weak connections can pass for elevated social status, inferred knowledge of those remotely connected to us connote a false popularity and validation that requires individuals to uphold the performance of their selected identities. As Donath and boyd discussed, one thread of truth can be weaved into a convincingly deceptive online network. Through todays sundry of social networking sites (SNS) you are granted this everlasting life. However, interconnected social networks often remove beneficial barriers between divergent aspects of ones life.

As Elmo Keep exemplifies, eternal life may not be what you had in mind when these prior divided worlds meet. Through death, wether it be old age or a symbolic social suicide, you will leave behind open doors to a past life through your social networks. Private emails, public profiles and personal digital affects are left behind in the glass bedroom, preserving life in static, pristine condition for all to see. This exemplar of self preservation in its finest, leads to the question of just who is looking at it? An idea touched upon by Pearson. Just as Dorian found out, trying to contain to divergent parts of a personality, wether physical or virtual can lead to a tragic undoing.

References

Donath, J. and boyd, d. (2004). Public displays of connection. BT Technology Journal , volume 22 (4): 71-82.

Pearson, E. (2009). All the World Wide Web's a stage: the Performance of Identity in Online Social Networks.First Monday, volume 14, Number 3.

Keep, E. (2010) Everlasting Digital Life.

http://hungrybeast.abc.net.au/stories/everlasting-digital-life. (accessed March 26, 2010).

Walking Ghosts.

I fear I am meeting less and less inspiring people in my everyday life. People who lack opinion. Who don't know what is going on. Who don't really care. Who are too busy being 'someone' online that they are a 'no-one' in person.

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Intimacy At A Distance.

Our perpetual quest for approval, meaning and above all, individuality has been given a new name in a new age of media. The ‘symbolic project’ as Thompson so eloquently calls it, is a constantly fluxing representation of ourselves. One which is able to be tweaked, edited and added to incessantly. And through social networks, we have limitless content to construct this being out of and numerous stages on which to present it to the world.

Rosen spoke of fine art that was commissioned to depict the sitters worth and status through oils and costly frames. Centuries later, this principal of self preservation and documentation is still in practice, but depicted by pixels and the number of followers one has. It is the idea of acquaintances, or ‘mediated quasi-interaction’ as Huberman would say, overblown to grotesque proportions.

I know I am not immune. Half the artists, bands, public figures and cultures I am passionate about have been the rewarding gems of late night virtual trawling. But I believe holding a critical eye glass up to the site/profile/person before accepting it as truth and urge others to do the same. As today, marketers and companies are forced to blur the line between advertising, entertainment and information in an age when at a click of a mouse, their efforts can be forgotten.

References

Rosen, C. (2007). Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism. The New Atlantis, Number 17, Summer 2007: 15-31.

Huberman, B.A., Romero D. M. and Wu, F. (2009) Social networks that matter: Twitter under the microscope. First Monday , Volume 14, Number 1.

Thompson, J. B. (1995). 'The Self as a Symbolic Project' in The Media & Modernity: a Social Theory of the Media. Cambridge: Polity: 209-219.

Existing In The Ether.

Virtual worlds absolve us from the cultural constraints which bind us to reality. Online, geographical and physical differences dissolve. For many, this reason alone is the appeal of virtual environments. Cooper explains how online, pure self expression is free from judgement (Cooper, 2007). Ones online identity, or Avatar, can replicate them exactly; allowing two lives to be led simultaneously. More commonly, people choose to become beings of vicarious fantasy. Virtual realities grant us the ability to change and control our world and more importantly, our place in it.

Strip away the cartoon facade and again, people exist online through constructed, virtual identities. Chen’s reading is a window to a world of manipulated perfection and the quest for recognition. The YouTube culture has allowed Impression Management to evolve to a whole new level. The obsession to create, maintain, and manage celebrity persona’s was documented through participants who manipulate their digital identity to acquire and communicate with fans. The internet is no longer a passive platform of entertainment, it now acts as both the agent and the arena for performers and their online audiences.

The dawn of any new medium brings with it a new age of marketing and business, as discussed by Kirby and Marsden. ‘Post-internet marketing’ (Lang, 2010) tactics allow those who adapt to a digital environment to dominate. Convention is disregarded by bands, journalists, artists and business who understand and utilize power of viral marketing. Behind the online anonymity, corporations research, monitor and predict our next move to exploit a constantly growing market. Ads are targeted to potential buyers by scanning emails as well as analysing and retaining search history. This is fully exposed in the tragic ‘I Love Alaska’ documentary. In no other instance do we so willingly give our every detail to invisible strangers.

As a kid, I dreamed by 2010 we would be living in virtual realities. This is not even close to what I had in mind.

References

Cooper, R. (2007). Alter Egos: Avatars and their Creators. 15 May.

Chen, L. C. P. (n.d.). Individual Online Impression Management: Self-Presentation on YouTube.

Kirby, J. & Marsden, P. (2005). Conclusion: the Future of Connected Marketing in Connected Marketing: The Viral, Buzz and Word of Mouth Revolution. Burlington: Butterworth-Heinemann: 267-274.

Minimovies- I Love Alaska. 2009. Streaming video recording.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-SOCGdPyNU (accessed March 11, 2010).

It Speaks And Yet Says Nothing.

This weeks readings delved into the world of ‘communication’ in the words broadest sense. While Levy and McLuan discussed vastly different topics, from infections ipod culture to theoretical musings of message channels, both shared the themes of communication and perception.

Levy’s fear of having your musical diary scrutinized was something I could relate to as, like he states, Playlist is essentially character (Levey 2006, 29). The need for public validation and ‘one up-manship’(Levey 2006, 23) is foreign to me, yet is inescapable in a culture where competition takes a continuously evolving form. Levy spoke of the culture which has quickly built itself around the Ipod. He exposed a market which thrives on peoples obsession of knowing what others have, the desire to get it for themselves and the compulsive need to broadcast what they have to anyone, by any means possible. I question whether the ‘social connectedness’ (Levy 2006, 34) that David Li speaks of is just another phrase for public gloating? Methods of connection over shared attitudes already exist in many forms, providing the link to new friends Levy speaks of.

McLuhan presented a convoluted and at times arbitrary discussion on various communication channels. He spoke of their ability to alter how we associate with technology and in doing so, suggested how we should consider and validate the worth of new media. He believes 'The message of any medium... is the change...that it introduces into human affairs' (McLuhan 1965, 9). His notions of acceleration and social consequences are also something I found interesting and mirrored within todays obsession with social networking sites.

References

Levy, S. (2006). The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture and Coolness, New York: Simon & Schuster, pp. 21-41.

Lee, J-y. (2009). Contesting the Digital Economy and Culture: Digital Technologies and the Transformation of Popular Music in Korea.Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, volume 10, number 4: 489-506.

McLuhan, M. (1965). 'The Medium is the Message'm in Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw Hill, pp. 7-20.