newmedia10dwn24

After a tough afternoon of dominating the beach volleyball courts on North Campus, a couple of friends and I decided to head over to Bear Necessities in RPC and grab some food like we used to in the good old days when we were freshmen.  I figure i’ll have the usual turkey sub (with no tomatoes) and a Gatorade.  Not a difficult order right? Wrong!

Long ago when I was a freshman there were mini sheets that were used to order what you want. Today, I am standing in what i guess you would call a restaurant and I have to swipe my ID and order through a computer. It took me 15 minutes just to figure out how to order and pay for the thing, and then another 10 trying to complete the order with no tomatoes.  Of course, I did not get the sub I wanted and I used up 25 minutes of my life which I will never get back.  Since when did computers start appearing in public eating venues?  Technology does make our live much easier but at what point do we say enough is enough?

 In today’s world it is not uncommon to see computers everywhere, whether it is a classroom, a household, even outside in some areas of campus.  Cornell’s dining facilities are not any different.  Although i personally think this computerized process is useless other than the fact it saves paper, the idea of literally touching a screen a few times and a sandwich is handed to you over the counter does not seem that outrageous.  When did this become normal? I like the satisfaction of actually ordering to a person so I know it is correct but it seems as though that is a thing of the past.

When this issue is actually examined, from an architectural standpoint, this computer ordering process makes sense. First of all, Robert Purcell Community Center is a fairly new building and has a very modern look to it.  There are other computers in the building and most importantly, Cornell dining does charge people most through ID numbers.  The set up of the area for ordering can accommodate the computers and multiple people have room to order at once.  Other than the brutal software in the computer that is difficult to use, the whole concept actually works.

This also changes the social aspect of the dining scene. Social interaction drops right down to zero now that you have the ability to order electronically.  People’s social skills are bad enough as it is. Now, as these simple changes creep into our daily lives I think it is safe to say that people’s communication skills will only get worse over time.  Technology is typically used to connect people and this is the one scenario where it has the opposite effect.

It seems to me that having a computerized system to order food in a dining hall, such as Bear Necessities is pretty much pointless. The old system worked and was just as quick as the new. The only advantage I can see is that it saves a little bit of paper. But on the other hand, it also takes me an extra few minutes to order.  Now that I have taken a moment to scrutinize this small change on Cornell’s campus, I find myself asking the question that although technology does make our live much easier but at what point do we say enough is enough?

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I chose to examine the wiki article for “TiVo” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivo).  This article basically discusses the origin and overall breakdown of what TiVo is, and what it can do for its users.  It goes into detail about where it is available, when and who created it, etc.  There is a large variety of contributors to this article making it fairly well rounded, informative for all crowds and it also means that it gets updated rather quickly.  The reason I picked TiVo as a topic for this blog assignment is because first of all, it is something that I am very familiar with therefore I can have somewhat of a base knowledge on what I am reading. Second, it is very relevant to the course and the material we’ve been learning, and last, I think that it is important to examine TiVo because of the way it drastically is changing the way marketers go about reaching their audiences. Also, I am personally curious in learning more about how one person’s simple idea can actually shape the way we live our lives and be involved in our daily life.

Looking at the discussion of TiVo through the wiki article, I am surprised that there is not more in depth detail about the way people make use of the service and how it impacts the entire industry.   It touches on oppositions and what advertisers are doing to fight against it but only as I said, “touches” them.  The main discussion talks about how TiVo works which is understandable considering the article is about TiVo in general.  But, on the other hand, I feel that this article is slightly biased because although it lays out simple information for anyone who wants to come and learn more about this particular topic, it fails to go past that and hit more of the problems in has caused as well.  Part of this could be because of fact most of the contributors were TiVo users and therefore are not concerned with too many of the other issues. 

I think that Wikipedia is a great source of knowledge and information sharing but that is as far as it goes. It cannot be used to truly grasp exactly what something is and what it is all about. There accuracy can be debatable but overall can be considered acceptable.   Wikipedia is more of a place where one can get a great starting point in their research.  It is an archive that is supreme to anything else on the web when it come to people obtaining at the very least, a broad understanding of what their topic of research is all about.

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Fenton puts forth the idea that now that journalism is moving into this online space and changing its form completely from its traditional ways, it adds another variable for people to continue the long standing history of criticism that journalism and journalists have taken for years.  He talks about how so much of today’s work is dumbed down and that accuracy is being sacrificed for speed.  In other words, because there is such a high demand for the speed in which consumers want their news, it has caused lower quality journalism and reporting, and has increased number of new sites we see today.  Fenton even mentions that one of the last major newspapers to go online was way back in 2004.  In saying that, I feel that now that we have so much information at our finger tips with almost every news outlet having an online source, our generation is not necessarily more informed but rather much more aware than class’s a decade ago. 

The main reason I feel that this is the case is because of the way journalism in the online environment affects the way we are able to access information financially as well as the way it impacts convenience.  With regards to the finances, now, as opposed to 10 years ago, we have access to multiple sources of news and information for free.  Undergraduates do not have the money, nor do I believe they would want to spend the money they had on subscribing to a newspaper or journal. Even if the school provides it, it is just a much more expensive process to distribute information when it is not online.  Secondly, 10 years ago it was a much longer process to get online with dial up connections and then access only limited information.   Internet has allowed access to vast amounts of information which is extremely easy to retrieve.

On the other hand, as Fenton describes, the change to the online environment is not considered to be for sure a good thing.  He comments on how the quality of the work has gone down to meets the demands of speed and to fill space.  Today, writing is more informal, creative and is written in a style that is almost more to entertain the reader rather than really inform the reader to the full extent.  Therefore, it can be argued that because we now have all this information we just think we know more than what people did 10 years ago when really they were the ones with the ‘good’ info. 

Overall, despite Fenton’s mentioned drawbacks of the journalism shifting, I still feel that because of the mere speed we are able to learn about anything, anytime, anywhere, makes today’s students more informed, not necessarily academically, but have a better understanding of what is going on in the world in a more general sense. In other words, people today compared to years ago are not more informed as but rather more aware.

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There is no question that Google is one of the most, if not the most powerful sites we see online today.  I am a user of Google for email, searching, maps etc.  One of the applications that I find also use quite frequently is Google street view which is considered to be a controversial application.  What is happening is people are complaining that this street view feature of Google is an invasion of privacy as it posts 360 degree views of roads most in many countries.  Therefore, anyone can see almost anyone else’s house as well as whatever that person was doing the time the Google van drove by to document that street.   Google’s biggest incident involved them being sued by a couple for “intentional and/or grossly reckless invasion” of their seclusion and privacy since they live on a street that is “clearly marked with a ‘Private Road’ sign.  In this Boring v. google inc. case, the couple claimed that the images of their home online decreased the value of their ‘secluded” home.  The images were removed upon request but the claim was that the damage had already been done.  Although they presented a strong argument regarding the financial loses the images caused, they ended up losing the court battle because of the fact any member of the public, such as a mailman, is allowed to walk on that road and see the house therefore the road was not considered to be %100 private. 

The way Google gets away with using this program is that they still give the option for users to customize what is seen.  Street view operates by using an opt out policy.  They will consider everything visible as a fair image to display. What they do to make this legal is they blur out any personal information on all photos such as license plates, etc. and also remove any image if you request it through their website.  Google claims they review all images and take out any offensive/personal information yet they still get thousands of picture removal requests per day. The problem with this is that once pictures go up, even if they are taken down, the damage is already done and can be severe. This leaves for many problems with this program.  The problem is that you can see everything so it very useful so people like it, but at the same time, because you can see everything, people hate it.  Without this opt out policy, the program would be useless because not enough people would give permission to display their property. I find it extremely difficult for Google to operate their program any other way than the way it current runs.  The money they make from street view is much greater than the expenses off battling the lawsuits therefore there is no doubt Street views will only get bigger and bigger.  Although people many hate it, the demand is so high for it there is nothing any indiviual can do to stop it from happening.  The bottom line is that Google seems to make it the responsibility of the owner to block what is shown on their property which, in my opinion, is completely wrong.

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The website I decided to examine for this blog is the National Women’s Political Caucus website. This website was put together as a multicultural grassroots organization dedicated to increasing women’s participation in the political field and creating a political power base designed to achieve equality for all women. The website interface was fairly simple yet professional. There were different menu options along the right column as well as along the top. Everything was easily labeled and there were sections on what is coming up as far as current events and what is coming up in the “women’s calendar”. Furthermore, the website’s events are set up in a blog like style where each events is presented on the front page in reverse chronological order. In addition, there is an opportunity for users to sign up and volunteer for the organization. The tone of the writing is fairly informal and matches its blog like set up.

I feel that the National Women’s Political Caucus website does a fairly poor job at balancing the political information and the discussion. On the one side, the discussion part is very good because of the large variety of outlets of information for its users. This is done through the not only the website interface but what also the various menus such as the homepage blog style set up, and the updates page as well. However, after examining each outlet, there seem to very poor political information available. The information seems to be very dated, with no real major current issues mentioned. Although there is limited information to present because information is focused only on women, there still should be much more to talk about.

As far as managing the message it wants to get across and making space for the voices of the site’s users, I feel that again it is quite poor. It seems to be very easy to join and contact the organization, participate in their newsletters, and contribute to the group’s overall cause. The issue is that the message that this organization wants to voice, which is to increase women political position in the field, doesn’t seem to hold much credibility or have any type of impact on what they are looking to accomplish because of the fact it is such a broad area. It seems as though they need to narrow their message to make users more likely to participate. If this can be done then I feel participation will go up and because the website is nicely designed to take on more input, the organization would do much better as a whole.

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Of the four principles, the Unfinished Artifacts, Continuing Process is potentially the most consequential for media and cultural discourse because of the way that it utilizes the new technology that is available today. It allows us to be extremely efficient with the way we share information.  The biggest way this impacts cultural discourse is the fact it allows people who wouldn’t normally be able to share their viewpoints to do so.  An example would be Wikipedia.  Through this idea of having an ongoing exchange of information through one data base by millions of different users, Wikipedia is able to constantly generate accurate information that is available to anyone who has online access.  Having all these users make minor contributions as opposed to a few hired authors is a form of new media that economically, simply could not be done years ago when the majority of information could only be published in print.  As a result, in applying this new media it leads to the development of new ideas and quicker implementation of action.

On the other hand, the risk of this Unfinished Artifacts, Continuing Process principle of ‘produsage’ being an increasingly prevalent aspect of our public information environment is that collectivism has come to dominate the way many people participate in the online world.  Jaron Lanier argues that when you have everyone collaborate on everything, you generate a dull, average outcome in all things. You don’t get innovation (Lanier, 2010). He goes on to say that digital collectivism might seem participatory and democratic, but it’s painting us into a corner because of the way that this one big collective operation has so much influence on the U.S. culture and economy (Lanier, 2010).  He feels that the only way to foster creativity and improve the content that is generated there has to be some boundaries.  Other people, such as Caterina Fake have opposite viewpoints. She says that systems such as Wikipedia, Flickr, Delicious, Facebook, Twitter, and various parts of the open source movement are based around small contributory systems, bodies of work in which there are incremental improvements by multiple contributors, or exposing small actions that would be insignificant in isolation, but are meaningful in the aggregate. These types of software and platforms are specifically designed for conversation and contribution. That is the point (Fake, 2010).  The arguments brought forth by Lanier hold some significant weight, but as Fake reminds us, there are pros and cons to everything we do as a society and although there is risk associated with the continuing process principle, we cannot overlook the overall benefit of this new media.

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A World Summit on the Information Society, sponsored by the UN, was held in Geneva in 2003 and then again in Tunis in 2005. Their goal was to bring together heads of state and address the concerns of current implications of information technology across the globe. A Declaration of Principles was created at this meeting and one that I thought was particularly important included the following 

                         10.) We are also fully aware that the benefits of the information technology revolution are today unevenly distributed between the developed and developing  countries and within societies. We are fully committed to turning this digital divide into a digital opportunity for all, particularly for those who risk being left behind and being further marginalized.

I think this is one of the most important aspirations because if the fact that is summarizes and focuses on what we want to do as a global society.  Not only do we want to be successful on a small scale such as running a successful company or business, but we also want to keep in mind that  we are all (at least I hope) are working on these technologies to make the world we live in a better place. 

On a small scale, we have, for example companies developing technology that can make people use their time much more efficiently and be much more connected to what is going on in the world. A blackberry would be good example of a recent revolution in technology.  Its target is middle to high class, educated working people who need it to go about running their business.  Obviously the motivation behind developing this technology is that there is a demand for this type of product/service and the company wants to make money and grow as a successful organization. 

When looking at this from a global perspective, this technology can connect all individuals around the world with each other exchanging news feeds, innovations, political issues, new developments, emergencies, disasters, and whatever other information one wants to send.   This is a major benefit on a global scale because now people can have open channels of communication even when people try to close them off.  An example would be when the Iranian government shut down almost all mainstream news and social networking sites and the protests going on at the time were followed through people using various devices to tweet.

This aspiration of making sure the information technology is distributed between developed and developing countries in hopes to turn this digital divide into a digital opportunity is one that I think is extremely important we reach. It can help bring people around the globe closer together and feel more like a society.

The biggest obstacle in doing this I think is first of all, many governments still have strict controls on what they want people to have access to such as China and many others. Secondly I feel that economically, it is very difficult to implement the resources that are available, to areas of the world that cannot meet their own basic needs let alone make use of new technologies.

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In Turow’s article, Audience Construction and Culture Production: Marketing Surveillance in the Digital Age he discusses why a surveillance-based customization approach is the best way to reach audiences.  Today, media organizations are going beyond simply looking at demographics to ultimatelyunderstand why some consumers are exposed to certain ads over others.    

Marketers are worried that the fragmentation of media channels is making it more difficult to reach customers.  People are now using ad-skipping technology to get what they want from ad-supported media ex. TiVo.  Therefore, the way media organizations think about their audiences will explain how to effectively reach an intended audience.  The days of grouping everyone into one big pool are over.  More eyes exposed to an ad is no longer considered the best thing. Studies have shown that today’s consumer have actually trained themselves to ignore ads and focus only on what they are doing.  This highly correlates to the evolution of technology. Years ago there were only a few channels on television where viewers were forced to watch ads while watching their desired program.  Now that consumers have the ability to “tune out” these ads, it is up to the media organizations to keep up with the changes so they can continue to be successful. 

I see this more of an opportunity than a problem.  If I was looking to advertise years ago I would be forced to put forth huge amounts of money to air a 30 second commercial on prime time TV. Now, with a little understanding of consumer behavior and some creativity, I can reach just as many, if not more people at a cheaper cost. Furthermore, these people that  I am reaching out to are specifically targeted to my product therefore increasing my chance of sales ever more.  The down side is, if you are a company that fails to be creative and keep up with these technologies, then you will probably find yourself in red figures. 

In conclusion, we are now seeing marketers searching for new advertising outlets in this media-crazed 21^st century in order to get results.  The industry has become more of a “survival of the most creative” where those who can get inside the mind of the consumer are going to be the ones who rise to the top. In other words, if you’re not smart, you’re days are numbered!

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Of all the tweets that are posted daily, how many actually reflect polical issues as opposed to just one’s own frustrations?

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As we all know by now Twitter is a free social networking and blogging service that allows users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text messages that can be up to 140 characters in length (fairly short), and other users who view your page are known as followers.  At first glance at the homepage, unlike most social networking sites where most material is very personal, Twitter looks like a informal news update of current events which, when looking a little deeper, is exactly what it is.  

Due to the volume of tweets that are posted, ultimately Twitter works as a host for the thoughts of basically what society feels is important and worth talking about in real time.  While looking through the site I found a lot of talk about Canada and the Olympics, specifically hockey.  Canada, as well as the Olympic committee has been under a lot of scrutiny because of the way the games are going this year in Vancouver.  This issue is considered political as it deals with the interests of many counties.  As of last night, the Canada women’s ice hockey team walked through the entire games earning themselves a gold medal while barely even working up a sweat.  I found that a lot of the current tweets are about this issue of how women hockey should be taken out of the games, (similar to what happened to women’s softball) because there is not enough depth in the sport across around the world.  Had the American’s won, I think there would be minimal tweets on the subject.  Therefore, I think this is just the American’s way of dealing with the fact they lost.  But what do I know, I’m just a dumb Canuck.     

While the game itself might not be considered a significant political event, the Olympic Games certainly are.  After seeing this happen and the immediately seeing the tweets come up in real time, it shows the importance of this technology.  Now, as events take place, the thoughts and feelings of the public can be seen immediately which can most certainly have an impact on what people now choose to say in speeches, interviews etc.  Now that is technology is available, it will always have some sort of impact on all political issues.

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