Augmented Reality (AR) is a very important technological application that can be applied to different mediated interfaces e.g. cell phone, video game, television, etc.  As a result, the technology functions by enhancing one’s current perception of reality.  We are beginning to see more developments in a variety of different media platforms where augmented reality technology is being introduced.  The relevancy and importance of this topic to new/digital media pushes the envelope and current paradigms of how we interact with our current models of media and technology.  In the following articles, several people help to explain this growing phenomenon and its possible impact on our future.

How Augmented Reality Works by Kevin Bonsor

In this article Bonsor outlines five key points to augmented reality of its role in different interfaces like cell phones, video games, and the military as well as its limitations and its future.  He mentions, “Augmented reality adds graphics, sounds, haptic feedback and smell to the natural world as it exists. Both video games and cell phones are driving the development of augmented reality…Augmented reality is changing the way we view the world — or at least the way its users see the world.”  A rather simplistic definition is to superimpose audio-visual and other sensory graphics over our real-world environment in real time he exclaims.

One example that he references is called “Sixth Sense” utilizing some basic components like: a camera, small projector, smart phone, and a mirror tied around a lanyard that hangs from the users neck.  The user than has the ability to manipulate his reality with the help of this device.  “If he wants to know more about that can of soup than is projected on it, he can use his fingers to interact with the projected image and learn about, say, competing brands. SixthSense can also recognize complex gestures — draw a circle on your wrist and SixthSense projects a watch with the current time.” Bonsor goes on to offer some amazing examples of how cell phone apps which can be downloaded on the iPhone or Android can perform amazing functions.  One example, Layar, uses the phone’s camera and GPS capabilities to gather information about the surrounding area.  Another, Yelp’s Monocle will provide the user with information about the surrounding restaurants.  Next, Bonsor discusses the uses of AR in military technology and video games.

Total Immersion is AR software that allows baseball cards to interact in a very unique way by making the player on the card a 3D model that performs a specific action like throwing the ball.  Even with military technology, a squad in enemy territory doing reconnaissance can wear a “AR-enabled head-mounted display that could overlay blueprints or a view from a satellite or overheard drone directly onto the soldiers’ field of vision“.

Lastly, Bonsor concludes with some of AR’s limitations and challenges that must be overcome like GPS’ accuracy, the reliance on using cell phones, the concern for too much/an overload of information, and of course, issues dealing with privacy and security are mentioned.  He states, “The future of augmented reality is clearly bright, even as it already has found its way into our cell phones and video game systems.”

Video: Bruce Sterling’s Keynote – At the Dawn of the Augmented Reality Industry

Bruce Sterling is as excited as a ‘kid in a candy store’ as he goes through some tips, predictions, and advice for the industry.  He describes three features to augmented reality 1) it combines the real and the virtual 2) it’s interactive in real time 3) and it registers in 3D.  People think they know what it is.  There’s too many companies, games, ads, applications, webcam, projected video technology, head mounted displays, and so much more that’s developing.  Along with these, there’s so much designing and skill sets that are required.  It’s a profitable business and AR looks “cool”.  It’s not too hard to understand, it’s not too geeky or remote.  It’s the most exciting thing happening in the tech industry.

1. There’s a lot of hype that’s happening and awaiting.
2. You are insulting the term’s pioneers when you try to change or neglect the term.
3. It’s a tag.  A hashtag that you can look up on Google.  Where are people interested 1) Seoul, South Korea 2) Singapore 3) Munich 4) Kaula, Lam pour 5) Auckland… etc.  Augmented Reality is magic.  It works like magic. Yet, magic can be ‘cheezy’ and deceitful.
4. It’s sleazy and is involved in pop.  It’s involved in porn, sells tampoons, sci-fi, comic books, politics, medicine, museum culture.
5. Security advice – criminals are going to come.  Security is important to build first.  You are going to have trouble.  You are also going to get publicity of panics.  You are going to the ‘four horse men of infopocalypse’.  How do you deal with the political implications of AR?  You’re going to need an industry journal and code of ethics to help.
6. Be prepared that the other guy will buy you out.  The major companies will buy you out.
7. Host of problems: batteries will fail, screens are too small, environmental problems, roaming fees, walled gardens, opacity in pricing, etc.
8. You need to have a look, an image.
9. Everything changes for the better or everything becomes abandon for the worse.  Either case, you are in for a wild ride.

Can Augmented Reality be a Commercial Success for E-Commerce by James Gurd

Despite it’s buzzword appeal and social media’s increasing relationship with commercial planning, Gurd boldly asks the question of whether or not there is a commercial model that could make AR a practical tool in the e-commerce armoury?

Gurd answers his own question with a quaint YES.

He begins by briefly and simplistically explaining what augmented reality is.   Then, Gurd examines the current landscapes of different businesses and interface applications that are using AR in some examples of retail, publishing, and automotive.  Again, Gurd asks another question, “What will drive the uptake of AR?” and then adds that the increased usage of smart mobile devices like the iPhone, iPad, Kindle, Blackberry, Android, etc.  will be driving forces for uptaking AR technology.

Lastly, he proposes some plans where AR can be applied to in retail and asks if it can add value to consumers and drive commercial value.  Here are some of his suggestions:

“The savvy marketers will deliver content and solutions that people didn’t even know they wanted but subconsciously always desired. I think retail can tap into this latent demand in several ways:

• High street retailers can develop a Store Finder mobile app that overlays local store information on interactive maps – perhaps an aggregation of all major brands would provide cost efficiency.
• Dynamic contextual advertising that displays offers and promotions based on the location and profile of the mobile user (e.g. iPhone user gets different message than Blackberry user) – next step on from voucher code sites.
• Serving customer reviews to mobile devices to facilitate decision making on the move.
• Dynamically generating cross and up-sell recommendations based on scanning a barcode in-store on your mobile phone.
• For the fashion industry, improving modelling of clothes from home to help make purchase decisions – increased accuracy should also help reduce returns.

If You’re Not Seeing Data, You’re Not Seeing by Brian X. Chen

Quotes taken from this article >

• “Augmented reality is the ultimate interface to a computer because our lives are becoming more mobile,” said Tobias Höllerer, an associate professor of computer science at UC Santa Barbara, who is leading the university’s augmented reality program. “We’re getting more and more away from a desktop, but the information the computer possesses is applicable in the physical world.”
• “Augmented reality is stifled by limitations in software and hardware” Examples are batter life, prices in hardware,
• “The smartphone is bringing AR into the masses right now,” Selzer said. “In 2010 every blockbuster movie is going to have a mobile AR campaign tied to it.”
• “This is the first time media, internet and digital information is being combined with reality,” said Martin Lens-FitzGerald, co-founder of Layar. “You know more, you find more, or you see something you haven’t seen before. Some people are even saying that it might be even bigger than the web.”
• “This industry is just getting started, and as processing speeds speed up, and as more creative individuals get involved, our belief is this is going to become a platform that becomes massively adopted and immersed in the next few years.”

THE PARTICIPATORY MUSEUM by Nina Simon

PREFACE

In the preface of her book Nina Simon explains the reasons that pushed her to focus on the development of a new strategy for museums.

She starts by making an objective statement: “Over the last twenty years, audiences for museums, galleries, and performing arts institutions have decreased, and the audiences that remain are older and whiter than the overall population.” In other words it seems to be pretty clear now that cultural institutions are no longer very good at fulfilling their educational mission.  They would have better to question their strategy and redesign it to attract a broader and more diverse audience.

If cultural institutions do not adapt their strategy they put themselves at risk to be supplanted by the Web: “increasingly people have turned to other sources for entertainment, learning, and dialogue. They share their artwork, music, and stories with each other on the Web.”

Obviously museums have lost their connection with the public. How to retrieve it? In Nina Simon perspective, the Web is not the enemy of cultural institutions, on the contrary she sees it as a great opportunity to “enhance cultural institutions”. Museums should recognize that people are no longer willing to be a passive audience: they expect to have their say in the learning process provided by museums. They want to actively participate.

Nina Simon strongly emphasize on the change in the visitor status: “Visitors expect access to a broad spectrum of information sources and cultural perspectives. They expect the ability to respond and be taken seriously. They expect the ability to discuss, share, and remix what they consume.” This point seems particularly interesting to me as I believe that this is the most challenging requirement, the one that is going to give the hardest time to cultural institutions. Cultural institutions are used to provide people with a discourse full of information and resources but they are not used to be open to question. In other words they are used to the one to many type of communication. They only work with experts and do not consider people’s insight. But this is not working anymore.

Museums have to change to become a place to SHARE.According to Simon it requires three changes in museums attitude:

1. To be audience centered that is to say providing a place designed to meet visitors’ expectations
2. To let visitors construct their own experience, respect their freedom
3. To take into account users’ voice and allow them to provide information and to invigorate the place

As we can see, the main change lies in the role attributed to the visitors. To attract visitors, museums should include them in their activities.

So far so good but how to practically achieve this major change in cultural institutions  that are used to traditional practices?

Simon stands for a participatory strategy and argues that museums should rely on the Web to take on the challenge of redefining the role of their visitors. Implementing a participatory approach could help solving five forms of public dissatisfaction in experiencing cultural institutions:

1. Museums are often said to be irrelevant in people’s daily lives.
2. They are said to never change, to be kind of frozen
3. A place where you only get one authoritative discourse
4. Not a creative place
5. Not a comfortable place to interact with people

Nina Simon explains that her goal with this book is to provide museums with practical tips that will enable them to organize this change.

CHAPTER 5: DEFINING PARTICIPATION AT YOUR INSTITUTION

I have chosen to provide you with an abstract of this chapter because it brings back to the ongoing tensions in the relationships between institutions and networks. The participatory Web has resulted in an increase in the development of diverse networks. Institutions used to be the only authority but now the situation has completely changed and the emergence of networks has generated a power of resistance. The knowledge that cultural institutions offer to people is not only likely to be analyzed but also questioned.

Nina Simon starts by establishing that a participatory strategy can only be successful if the institution stops rejecting the visitor’s input and accept to be open to establish a partnership. She stresses on 3 required principles:

1. “Desire for the input and involvement of outside participants
2. Trust in participants’ abilities
3. Responsiveness to participants’ actions and contributions”

In other words, the institutions have to be in the right mindset. Once these 3 principles are secured within the institution, there is a lot of ways of implementing participation.

The question is: How to chose the best kind of participation for your institution?

• Models for participation

To address the question Nina Simon aims at creating a typology of the different models of participation.

She relies on a comparison between science labs and refers to the scientist Rick Bonney. “In 1983 Bonney joined the staff at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and co-founded its Citizen Science program, the first program to professionalize the growing participatory practice. Over the course of several projects at the Lab, Bonney noted that different kinds of participation led to different outcomes for participants.” In 2008 Bonney and his team managed to defined three models of participation. In Simon’s perspective these models are applicable to museums as “like science labs, cultural institutions produce public-facing content under the guidance of authoritative experts.” Here are the different levels of participation established by Bonney and one added by Nina Simon:

1. Contributory projects = Visitors collect data that are processed by the experts
2. Collaborative projects = Visitors collect and analyze data together with experts in a kind of partnership
3. Co-creative projects = Visitors are included in the development of the project from the very beginning. Visitors’ concerns are seriously taken into account.
4. Hosted project = The institution provides a portion of its facilities to support project developed by visitors

• Finding the right model for your institution

Which model of participation suit you the best?

The answer comes down to the culture of the institution. Is its staff very likely to actually involve participant in the development of the museum? “Institutional culture helps determine how much trust and responsibility the staff will grant to community members, and forcing an organization into an uncomfortable model rarely succeeds.” It is key to understand the institution’s culture and to adapt the participation model to it. To be able to determine which model will suit you the best Nina Simon recommends a set of questions:

× What kind of commitment does your institution have to community engagement?

× How much control do you want over the participatory process and product?

× How do you see the institution’s relationship with participants during the project?

× Who do you want to participate and what kind of commitment will you seek from participants?

× How much staff time will you commit to managing the project and working with participants?

× What kinds of skills do you want participants to gain from their activities during the project?

× What goals do you have for how non-participating visitors will perceive the project?

• Participation and mission

Constantly refer to the mission of your institution and propose projects according to it. “Speaking the language of the institutional mission helps staff members and stakeholders understand the value of participatory projects and paves the way for experiments and innovation.” Be careful to design projects that remain consistent with your institution culture and identity.

• The Unique educational value of participation

Education is the corner stone of museums. In this specific area, participatory techniques have proven to be the more efficient “to help visitors develop specific skills related to creativity, collaboration, and innovation.”

Nina Simon states that “participatory projects are uniquely suited to help visitors cultivate these skills when they encourage visitors to:

1. Create their own stories, objects, or media products
2. Adapt and reuse institutional content to create new products and meaning
3. Engage in community projects with other visitors from different backgrounds
4. Take on responsibilities as volunteers, whether during a single visit or for a longer duration”

• The Value of giving participants a real work

While visitors develop their skills, museums can also benefit directly from participatory strategies if they entrust visitors with real projects.

• The strategic value of participation

Participation can enhance the value of your institution in its community. It can improve its image and gain credibility in the society. “Participatory projects can change an institution’s image in the eyes of local communities, increase involvement in fundraising, and make new partnership opportunities possible.” Nina Simon encourages cultural institutions to focus on local communities and be more relevant in people’s everyday lives.

If you have any interest in Digital Natives – this 1 hour talk is very informative about what a digital native is, and the godfather of this topic, John Palfrey goes into great detail on his definition and how this generation will change the nature of how we see the internet in the future. It is a population of young people who are will impact they we think, work, and function on a day to day basis.

The Digital Natives are a group of people who are comfortable with sharing their daily lives on the net (ie flick, twitter, facebook) and were exposed to these technologies at a very young age. This population is typically born after 1980, have never known life without a computer, TV without a remote control, and never dialed on a rotary phone (not true since I was born after 1980!).

Presentation by John Palfrey – “As part of the Google D.C. Talks series, and in partnership with Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Professor John Palfrey offers a sociological portrait of “digital natives” — children who were born into and raised in the digital world — with a particular focus on their conceptions of online privacy.”

There are a few points he clarifies in this video  -

• This is a POPULATION, not a GENERATION
• Born after 1980 – because this is when the advent of technology began
• They have access to these technologies
• 1 billion who have access (number is low due to digital divide)
• This is not a DUMMY generation – they are very tech savvy.
• Young people are INTERACTING, but in a different way – remixed, made in a different way.
• We must teach digital media literacy

We are Digital Natives – Barrett Lyon

“A new class of person has emerged in the online world: Digital Natives. While living in San Francisco, I also live on the Internet. The Internet is now a place: a two dimensional world that has transcended the web; there is no government, and the citizens are Digital Natives.”

Lyon’s main point is that people are no longer citizens of the United States, or France, but also citizens of the internet. There are specialized groups within these digital natives such as game players, hackers, developers, and the social etiquette that is involved is much different than the physical reality we live in.

Some people choose to define themselves by the activities they take part in on the web – such as social online movements – ie Green Movement, Tea/Coffee Party, which are branches from physical political movements, but these started on the net.

“This scares the crap out of Governments all over the world, because they are ill prepared to deal with these situations. To government regimes that are comfortable asserting their control, this concept is terrifying. How do they counteract the changes online and the movements? Do they need to change their politics, defense, propaganda, and warfare?”

This statement displays that some of these online movements do have an affect on how governments think about the web. Many countries have harsh restrictions on what their citizens can view on the net, ie China, Iran, etc.

The Future of The Internet and How to Stop it – Jonathan Zittrain – Short Summary

This title is actually a book that JZ has wrote which is actually available on amazon if anyone would like to purchase. His main point is that collaboration is key in the survival of a productive internet and cites wikipedia as the main example. The first generation of products that have spear headed the internet have been Tivo, Ipods, and Xboxes, which are tethered appliances, meaning they are using net as their connection to their content/databases.

“The Internet’s current trajectory is one of lost opportunity. Its salvation, Zittrain argues, lies in the hands of its millions of users. Drawing on generative technologies like Wikipedia that have so far survived their own successes, this book shows how to develop new technologies and social structures that allow users to work creatively and collaboratively, participate in solutions, and become true ‘netizens.’

“How to Save Journalism” by John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney

In addressing potential solutions to the journalism crisis, McChesney and Nichols argue that in order to have an educated and informed public, we must firmly advocate for a functioning and independent press. They advocate the importance of advocating journalism subsidies and increasing support for public media, and they show that these efforts do not lead to censorship or threaten private and commercial media and that this country actually has a strong history in supporting these kinds of efforts.

The two also discuss more potential solutions to the crisis of journalism, including potential tax vouchers for independent and community oriented media, an AmeriCorps type program which would put thousands of young people to work, perhaps as journalists on start-up digital “publications” covering underserved communities nationwide, and the LC3 model (LC3 stands for low-profit limited liability model – a sort of hybrid for profit and non-profit model for newspapers). Shifting newspapers away from a high-profit commercially driven structure to low-profit or nonprofit ownership would potentially allow them to keep publishing as they complete the transit from old media to new.

The two don’t undermine the importance of digital technologies and do believe that the digital revolution “has the capacity to radically democratize and improve journalism”, but they do advocate for paid staff that interact with and provide material for the blogosphere, and argue for the continued professionalization of the press. The overarching theme of the book and this article is that the journalism crisis is solvable; there are solutions and they have mapped out a clear road of what it takes to get us there. McChesney and Nichols have turned their ideas into a book called “The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution that Will Begin the World Again” which was published in early 2010, where they discuss this issues more in-depth.

“Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable” by Clay Shirky

Shirky’s piece, written in March of 2009 discusses the nature of changes happening to society, newspapers and journalism. He argues that society doesn’t need newspapers, but it needs journalism. In that way, the crisis is more than just about the demise of newspapers or magazines etc, it’s more about the institution of journalism itself. He really argues to say that nothing will necessarily save old media, it’s dying and its business model is failing and nothing (pay walls etc) will “save it”.

His underlying point is that because basis for the conventional newspaper model has gone away, we need to experiment a lot more in order to understand what is going to replace it.
Shirky also explains that print media does a very important job, or as he calls it, “society’s heavy journalistic lifting” and that this kind of coverage creates benefits even for people who aren’t newspaper readers (mostly because the work of print journalists is used by everyone from politicians to district attorneys to talk radio hosts to bloggers). And while he may not have the answer as to who or what is going to replace it, he also points out like McChesney and Nichols that journalism has a long history of being subsidized.

This may not be so surprising to many people who have studied what is going on with respect to journalism, but in this piece Shirky articulates the crisis and what may come next very well, and puts the entire debate into some historical context. He concludes by arguing that we need to shift our attention away from “saving newspapers” into “saving society” and that by doing so, the imperative will change from preserving institutions that no longer are viable into doing whatever it takes to make sure journalism will survive.

“Saving the News: Towards a National Journalism Strategy”

This report, which can be downloaded in its entirety from http://www.freepress.net/media_issues/journalism is written by Victor Pickard, Josh Stearns and Craig Aaron, for the national media reform organization Free Press. In it, the authors lay out several ideas for saving the news, and address the crisis from a policy standpoint. The ideas include:

- nonprofit, low-profit and cooperative models
- community and municipal models for future journalism
- foundation and endowment support
- public and government models
- news commercial models
- public subsidies and policy intervention

In this paper they also discuss several short-term and long-term strategies that are necessary to move towards a national journalism strategy. Some of the short-term strategies include new ownership structures, incentives for divestiture, and a journalism jobs program. Longer-term strategies include research and development for journalistic innovation and exploring options for new public media.

It also includes several figures which detail the decline in newsroom employment by year (there’s a huge drop for 57,000 in 2007 to 46,700 in 2009; the 2009 figure is the lowest in history). They also illustrate the percent decline in daily and Sunday Newspaper circulations (it’s like a walking down a steep cliff) and the numbers of US Daily Newspapers.

“Old and New Media Go to Washington”, On the Media, hosted by Brooke Gladstone

In this piece from May 2009, Gladstone discusses recent hearings that a Senate committee held on the Future of Journalism, which illustrates that this issue has received national attention. John Kerry (who is the Committee Chariman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation which held the hearing says that the purpose of the hearing was to examine and figure out from people in the field where new media is going and what to do to help existing media), Jim Moroney publisher of The Dallas Morning News, and Senator Ben Cardin (D-Maryland), who introduced the Newspaper Revitalization Act, and Arianna Huffington.

There are several issues mention in this piece that are of importance to the debate around journalism, including whether it’s possible and/or realistic to monetize online content (for example the now defunct New York Times “Times Select” option), the idea of the Kindle and other electronic readers as the “solution” that publisher’s should be going for (but really that’s not actually viable because of the split revenues they come down somewhere on the in of Amazon receiving 70%and publishers receiving 30%). There is relevance from that debate to the iPad as well, even though the iPad hadn’t been invented yet! The piece also discusses the emergence of new non-profit investigative journalism websites, like Voices of San Diego, which Huffington argues is having real impact investigative journalism.

Astronauts & robotic spacecraft presently stay connected to Earth via point-to-point radio links, specifically made for each new mission. Google’s vice president Vint Cerf designed the networking protocols that launched the Internet is looking to change this, though; he wants to put this same type of network in outer space. In hopes of making this a reality, he is currently working with NASA and MITRE Corporation on the Interplanetary Internet project. The project was set to be tested in 2009 aboard the International Space Station.

In an interview with Technology Review, Cerf further explains the project, where he notes that it began 10 years ago at the time of the interview (10/27/2008). He notes that one problem with space communication has been the “limited use of standards.” New communication software tends to have to be written every time a new spacecraft is launched, making it inefficient. Thus, the project was created to help develop a set of communication standards in space, much like ones already being used on the Internet.

One of the main challenges Cerf found in building this network is the delay time. Because of the vast distance in space between planets, it can take long periods of time for information to travel. Another major problem he found is that planets are constantly moving and rotating. Because of this, communication can not only be delayed, but also disrupted. Because of these dilemmas, part of the project involved designing a “delay- and disruption-tolerant networking system (DTN).” So far, no new equipment has had to be launched into space in order to facilitate this new network; only new software has had to be uploaded to already existing spacecraft.

These new standardized protocols could enable better communication between spacecraft launched by all nations in space. Over time, as new missions are launched, a better backbone for the system will start to be created. Cerf notes that, “every time you put up a new mission, you basically are putting up another potential node in the network.”

The Origins and basics of the Interplanetary Internet Project – By Vint Cerf

1. Node

If this video, Cerf notes that the Internet’s utility is in part a consequence of the standardization of communication protocols, making it easy for anyone from anywhere to instantly connect to the Internet. Because of this, Cerf and his team asked theirselves what type of standardization would be beneficial within the context of space? He explains that in 1964, the Deep Space Network was built, which consist of 3 antennas (one in California, one in Australia, and one in Spain) in varying locations. As the Earth rotates, at any one time, one of the antennas should be able to see a large amount of the solar system & interact with spacecraft. But, each time a new space craft is launched, the communications system must be tailored to this new space craft. Thus, Cerf and his team is looking for a more efficient way of communicating with spacecraft.

2. Frequency

The data rate that information can be moved at from spacecrafts to antennas on Earth is currently very low, as a result of the spacecrafts having little power and little antennas. To help boost power for new spacecraft, the project is looking into whether or not current spacecraft already launched can be used to help facilitate communication between Earth and space. The common answer has been “no,” since there is no standard set of communication protocols between the spacecrafts. But, over the past 20 years, there have been small attempts at standardizing certain parts of the spacecraft communication systems. There are many different levels this can be done at, with the 3 typical levels being: the bottom level of  “actual transmission over radio length,” 2^nd layer being “link management,” and the 3^rd level up being the network level, consisting of routing traffic. The 1^st layer of radio transmission has been standardized. Furthermore they are also beginning to standardize the 2^nd layer of link management. But, they have not been able to standardize too much above this 2^nd level.

3. Standardization

Here, he talks about the theory that with more standardization comes the ability to more easily use previous spacecraft within the scopes of the new space mission. He uses an example of 2 rovers that were sent to Mars, which has radios attached in order to send information between the rovers and the Deep Space Networks antennas. But, these radios had to be shut down after 20 minutes of use, otherwise they would overheat. Three orbiters were surrounding Mars, though, that, because of standardization, allowed the Mars rovers to send information to the orbiters, which could then be sent to the DSN antennas at higher speeds & longer periods of time.

Vint Cerf Mods Android for Interplanetary Interwebs – By Cade Metz

This article discusses Cerf’s work in trying to bring his Interplanetary Interwebs protocol to mobile networks on Earth. At first, Cerf and his team had tried to make his Interplanetary Interwebs protocol work using the Internet TCP/IP protocol, noting that it did not work because of, “a little problem called the speed of light” and the rotation of planets. Instead, the created and launched the Delay-Tolerant Networking (DTN) protocol. A main difference between TCP/IP and DTN is that, “unlike TCP/IP, DTN does not assume a continuous connection.” With DTN, if there are delays in transmission, nodes will not send out information until there is a safe connection.

Now, Cerf and his team is looking to bring DTN to earth. It has been tested in Sweden through using laptops in moving vehicles. Furthermore, the protocol has already been added to, “Google’s Android open source mobile stack as an application platform – ie it sits on top of the OS.” Cerf sees DTN helping out with mobile connections, since it is a “dense and hostile environment,” as a way to increase coverage.

NASA Launches Astronaut Internet in Space – By Tariq Malik

As of January 22, 2010, astronauts on the International Space Station have a live Internet connection, and have even been using Twitter.

While astronauts have used Twitter during space missions before, the tweets were dispached through Mission Control and posted by a third party.

The space Internet uses the station’s high-speed Ku-band antenna, making the Internet functioning whenever the station is connected through this. “To surf the Web, astronauts can use a station laptop to control a desktop computer on Earth. It is that ground computer that has the physical connection to the Internet.”

NSSA Applauds Presidents Commitment to the Mission of NASA and the Role of Space in Providing for the Future

In this article, the “National Space Society applauds President Obama for his expression of firm commitment for human spaceflight, and for moving forward in refining the administration’s plan for space exploration” during his speech on April 15, 2010.

Within his plans, Obama mentioned the importance of extending the life of the International Space Station. He also explained the importance of the, “critical role of breakthrough technologies in enabling NASA and our nation to create the future we wish to see come to pass.”

Being a nation is about being on the same page. Nationalism developed, according to Benedict Anderson, in the 18th century when print media began “fostering a new sense of attachment, in this case among those who read the same newspapers, or imagined the same fictional communities through novels”. This allowed:

1. The conception of community – a sense of attachment with people you have never met
2. A shared worldview – a common sense of meaning of the experiences of life (with secular nationalism replacing myth and religion)
3. A new, population-centric, mode of political engagement – replacing religious or dynastic authority
4. A new set of social and political relations – new modes of inclusion and exclusion

And therefore, linguistic bondaries crystallized into national boundaries.

If the print media provided the landscape in the 18th century on which various historical factors crossed to develop a sense of community that what we now call nationalism, then can the new media also create “a new sense of attachment” and generate “a common political culture” that would make possible a “just” and “well ordered” post-nationalist order.

Habermas hopes it can. Because the Internet allows being on the same [web]page! “In both cases,” says Frost, “a powerful new medium arrived into an environment already experiencing shifting political, economic, and social ideals, and was adopted at an unprecedented rate.”

Note: Anderson looked at history in retrospect. The Internet is too new for us to be able to look at it that way. It is still evolving.

Why ask the question? “If we are to make responsible decisions today, we need to think about what might lie ahead”

Frost looks at the advent in the context of the four factors in community formation that she identifies above:

1- Conception of Community

“Communities exist in a symbiotic tension with identities (whether self-defined or ascriptive). Without one, it is difficult to develop the other, because there is no reference point for differentiation or affiliation.” But online interaction is either anonymous or identities are “disposable”. There is no commitment and mutual obligation. “The internet… is a site of great social flux and uncertainty.”

“In fact, anonymity not only makes the growth of new communities less likely,” believes Frost, “it can act to dismantle existing social bonds.”

Question: when anonymity and privacy are no longer the norm, how will this change?

2 – Systems of Meaning

According to Hannah Arendt, this requires:

• a) a basis for mutual understanding, “the sharing of words and deeds”
• b) boundaries or “stabilizing protection” to hold together this shared experiences

As “a vehicle for social or collective projects”, the Internet “can provide a basis for shared norms and meanings in those instances”, but what it “currently offers in these regards is insufficient”. Citing Lessig, Frost says “the increasing trend towards commercialization online may simply be too strong for such projects to resist”.

“It is not clear, therefore, how any new political or social solidarity associated with the Internet would manage to resolve the problem of meaning”. Any transformation to post-nationalism will require this.

Question: The newspapers and novels that laid the foundation for nationalism were also commercial. Anderson calls the phenomenon Print Capitalism. Does commercialization hinder community building or make it sustainable?

Question: Can the boundaries that hold together common experiences be drawn on a new cultural plane – e.g. Can the copy left movement or the free software movement compete with nationalism for loyalty?

3 – Political Engagement

While more people can participate in a democracy when it is “internet-enabled”, Frost thinks “what matters in democracies… is not just the volume of participation, but its quality”. In order to be the site of a new “public sphere” the internet has to:

• a) be equally accessible for all
• b) allow equal participation

The internet “fails the requirement for inclusivity and is “not necessarily more equal in its treatment of participants than you would find in an offline setting”.

While the Internet can “free the individual from the restrictions of ascribed identity and communal attachments” and “replace them with more voluntary associations”, these “loose constituencies of shared interest cannot lay the groundwork for the demanding task of political life”.

4 – Social Inclusiveness

Since “the internet favors loosely bounded communities characterized by loosely democratic and non-democratic social relations”, a major problem for a new social order would be of cohesion.

• Solidarity can arise out of new innovations made possible by the new communications practices
• The Internet can deepen the existing experience of exclusion or just enhance its awareness, thus becoming a source of new solidarities

The digital divide – the fact that some countries or demographic groups do not have as easy and efficient internet access then others – is key. “The need for expensive computing resources and telecommunications infrastructure to support the medium means that it will inevitably favor the developed and affluent populations over others”. Similarly, “the language barrier, which played such a large part in the birth of nations, is still as singificant as ever”.

But “the Internet’s capacity to heighten the experience of exclusion… represents its greatest potential for change”.

Conclusion:

“The difficulty in assessing the prospects for post-nationalism in the wake of the Internet then is not that new political forms or social ideals are unlikely to arise. The problem is that we might be looking for change in the wrong places and with the wrong expectations”.

According to Frost, “It may not be the people with the most extensive access or highest profile online who will champion deep social and political change… it is the grounds with limited access judt enough to see what they are missing out on, who may have the most to gain from pioneering new modes of social relations, meaning and engagement.”

She explains the scenario in our second reading, in a response to a chapter in Collaborative Futures titled “Solidarity” [that cites her article].

Catherine Frost’s response to Mike Linksvayer

On the post Collaborative Futures 5

“Could the collaboration mechanisms discussed in this book aid the formation of politically salient postnational solidarities?” Mike Linksvayer asks. His thesis: “If political solidarities could arise out of collaborative work and threats to it, then collaboration might alter the power relations of work.” Therefore:

• a) Despite ease in international trade barriers, workers cannot simply move between jurisdictions for better salaries or working conditions. But an increasing share of wealth via distributed collaboration does mitigate some inequalities of the current system
• b) When knowledge is locked in through intellectual property rights, a worker cannot afford access to it. But with the GPL license, “the means of production are handed back to the labor”, and that makes possible “a feeling of autonomy that empowers further action outside the market”.
• c) Collaboration allows workers more autonomy in the market or the ability to stand outside it, but it also gives significant autonomy to communities outside the market. Some such communities, eg wikipedia, “are pushing new frontiers of governance” and could lead to community governance and postnational solidarities

Frost’s intention…

… was not to say that the solidarities generated by the Internet echo the nationalist solidarities of the past. Anderson had looked at the emergence of the nation state in retrospect and the same is not possible with the internet. “Consciousness very often follows real life realities”.  Her concern, she insists, “was to see whether we could learn FROM the rise of national solidarities to understand how any new orders might take form”.

One lesson she learns is that “exclusion is a powerful force for forging solidarity”. She explains this more precisely with the following scenario:

“If the global future really belongs to the developing world with huge populations of well educated people who by and large don’t relate to the glossy consumerism of the internet, then they may use this very versatile tool in their own, more innovative ways. Which leaves everyone else playing catch up. And that catch-up process shifts power subtly but consistently in a new direction.”

[Morozov & Shirky] Digital Power and its Discontents

At the time when the nation states were emerging – a time that Habermas celebrates for “cafes and newspapers” which “were on the rise all over Europe” and “a new democratized public sphere was emerging” – Kierkegaard was concerned that with so many opinions floating around, people could be made to rally behind a number of shallow causes with no strong commitment to anything. This concern is shared by Shirkey and Morozov.

In the words of Morozov, “there was nothing to die for”. Online activism, he says like Kierkegaard, “cheapens our commitment to political and social causes that matter and demand constant sacrifice”. Citing Habermas, Shirkey says that those newspapers “were best at supporting the public sphere was when freedom of speech was illegal, so that to run a newspaper was an act of public defiance”. And so, “a protest which is relatively easy to coordinate at relatively low risk” is “less of a protest”, and “draws off some of the energy that could go elsewhere.”

Discussing an example from failed flash mob protests in his home country Belarus, Morozov asserts that a virtual movement was, for those protesters, a way to avoid “the dirty and bloody business of opposing a dictator, a business that often entails harassments of all kinds, as well as bloodshed, intimidation, expulsion from universities”. “They thought they could just blog the dictatorship away.”

“Does a movement need a martyr?” asks Shirky. “Does it need an intellectual focal point that’s willing to take a hit in order to make the point? And the second question is does that have to be one person?” Morozov believes a movement does need a charismatic leader, but “my fear is that a Solzhenitsyn would not be possible in the age of Twitter.”

The discussion…

… includes the potential of the internet to provide the landscape for the emergence of this new public sphere that could make possible post-national communities, as well as how nation states are coping with this potential threat. I began with a topic that develops towards the end, only to connect the discussion to the previous readings. I have focused on the questions when they arise during the discussion, instead of re-cycling them in the end.

• Shirkey and Morozov agree that the cyberspace is not “a separate sphere unconnected to the rest of the planet” which would transform politics in a way “the internet utopians” think it would. Citing his critique of John Perry Barlow’s 1996 text “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace”, which he calls one of the seminal texts of cyber-libertarianism, Morozov says “we are currently facing a huge intellectual void with regards to the Internet’s impact on global politics”. But this “lack of a coherent framework does not really prevent us from embracing the power of the Internet”, he says, and both democratic and authoritarian governments are trying to harness the power for political purposes. A lot of the earlier theories were developed in a context that is no longer relevant however, and so, “We do need a new theory to guide us through all of this”.

• Morozov believes the State Department should use the potential power of the Internet to promote freedom, but is critical of its alliance with Google, Twitter and other commercial organizations. “We’re promoting Internet freedom for freedom’s own good,” he says. “So the real question is how to leverage the undeniable power of these companies without presenting them as extensions of the U.S. foreign policy.”

• “There is definitely a greater level of politicization attached to the use of Twitter, Google, and Facebook in authoritarian conditions,” he says however. “People who are now using Twitter in Iran are marked as potential enemies of the state.” Asked by Shirkey if the Iranian ban on Facebook even before the elections meant it was over-politicized, Morozov says “the fact that they blocked Facebook doesn’t mean anything” to him. “All it means is that they could block Facebook — and they did.” Citing the example of the three-day ban on texts in Cambodia in 2007, Morozov says there is a “symbolic value attached to censorship” as it helps a government “signal to the rest of the world that they are still in charge”.

But Shirkey cites the examples of Burma and Ukraine to argue that the regimes are also trying to “dampen the public sphere” by censorship because these technologies allow the citizens to better coordinate their protest movements. “Conditions under which a public that can self-identify and self-synchronize,” he says, “even among a relatively small elite, is in fact a threat to the state.”

Morozov responds by saying that the “very vibrant” online campaign of Iranian protests, did not extend into real world coordination. “There was synchronicity of online actions, I’m not sure that it translated well into coordinated protests in the streets.” Shirkey said one way the coordination manifested itself on the streets was through the participation of women. But Morozov points out that Iranian women had been using social media for a decade, and therefore “most social media activity is just epiphenomenal: it happens because everyone has a mobile phone”. The Iranian government, he says, was brutal despite the social media hype.

Shirkey says his focus is on the coordination made possible between otherwise uncoordinated groups, but they can’t be as organized as hierarchically-managed groups. He agrees that such political engagement can make the regimes even more brutal rather than being more tolerant towards change.

Other similar questions, according to Morozov, include Whether it is “making people more receptive to nationalism” or if it could drive them away from “meaningful engagement in politics” by promoting certain hedonism-based ideologies? Or whether it could empower certain non-state entities that might not be “conducive to freedom and democracy?” – in short -  Who will get empowered by these better coordination opportunities and by the Internet in general?

So, “if the question we are asking is, ‘How does the Internet impact the chances for democratization in a country like China?’, we have to look beyond what it does to citizens’ ability to communicate with each other or their supporters in the West,” Morozov says. Compared with the $70m China had spend by 2003 on censorship, it had spent $120 billion on e-government. “Will it modernize the Chinese Communist Party? It will. Will it result in the establishment of democratic institutions that we expect in liberal democracies? It may not.”

• Shirkey mentions his “bias” that “non-democratic governments are lousy at managing market economies over the long haul. That’s a baseline assumption, and it affects the context of digital publics.” Morozov says this was true even before Twitter, and most previous revolutions such as against communism in Poland, were not a result of such interventions as smuggling in of Xerox machines, but because of economic collapse. Referring to Iran’s announcement to ban Gmail and replace it with a national service, Shirkey says that by placing such bans, authoritarian regimes are “acquiring a kind of technological auto-immune disease. They are attacking their own communications infrastructure as the only way to root out the coordination among the insurrectionists.” But Morozov thinks that announcement should be seen in the context of the revelation of Google’s ties with the NSA. They want to be seen as: “We absolutely want to make sure that our citizens are not being watched by NSA”, which can be effective domestic propaganda.

• Since the dawn of the Internet, Shirkey says, “in overestimating the importance of the value of the access to information, and we’ve underestimated the importance of the access of value to people.” “If we could lower the censorship barriers between the West and China, could just remove the Golden Shield altogether, while the Chinese retain the same degree of control over citizens and citizen communication, not much would change. If the Golden Shield stays up in its full form, but the citizen communication and coordination gets better, a lot will change.” Asked if this change will be good or bad, he accepts that “there will be national movements whose goals are inimical to the foreign policy objectives of the West”, but adds what really matters is that these countries are democracies.

• “But what comes first?” asks Morozov, “Democracy or Internet-based contention?” And when democracies are new, they are vulnerable. “If you have a weak state entering a transition period — and it’s fair to say the Internet would mobilize the groups that would make a weak state even weaker — chances are you would not end up with a democracy in the end.”

Responses to Shirky and Morozov:

Rebecca Mackinnon

the changes brought about by the Internet cannot be exclusively good or bad.“It’s everything all at once because it’s an extension of human activity and an amplification of human nature.” While Shirkey’s arguments on how the Internet empowers people to organize themselves sounds true, Morozov is also doing an important job of deflating utopia fantasies. “The Internet’s future — technically, culturally, politically, and content-wise — is up to each and every one of us who uses and inhabits it.”

Nichaolas Karr

the Internet is both a tool of control (as a computer network) and of emancipation (as a medium of personal expression). “We are at the beginning of a long cat-and-mouse game between those who would use the Net to exert central control and those who would use it to break that control.” Whether the Internet “might be promoting a certain (hedonism-based) ideology that may actually push [people] further away from any meaningful engagement in politics?”

“As far as opiates of the people go,” he says, “the Internet is a particularly intoxicating one.”

Geroge Dyson

“Tis considerable, that it does not only teach how to deceive, but consequently also how to discover Delusions,” Bishop John Wilkins, founding secretary of the Royal Society, said about digital communications in 1641. “Wilkins was concerned with the case where the good guys are within the government, and the bad guys without,” Dyson says. Shirky and Morozov are talking about the case in which the bad guys are in the government.

Douglass Rushkoff

“Neda was still killed despite the fact that there were people taking those videos,” but “the function of the Net may not have been to save Neda’s life”, he belives, but “to allow the entirety of networked society to bear witness to the atrocity. Neda did not die alone, unnoticed and undocumented.”Similarly, “the function of Twitter in Iran may not have been to launch a successful challenge to a corrupt election — but rather to help those in Iran experience at least momentary solidarity with one another and the rest of the world.”

“It’s not that the Net doesn’t allow for the creation of the required charismatic leader,” Rushkoff believes. “It’s such a leader is no longer necessary. The ground rules have changed with the landscape.”

Jaron Lanier

“It seems apparent, alas, that Facebook, Twitter, etc. have not improved American democracy, and yet we expect these tools to promote democracy elsewhere.” According to Lanier, “The basic problem is that web 2.0 tools are not supportive of democracy by design. They are tools designed to gather spy-agency-like data in a seductive way, first and foremost, but as a side effect they tend to provide software support for mob-like phenomena.”

“Governments oppress people, but so do mobs,” he warns. “You need to avoid both to make progress.”

By Victoria Baranetsky, The Harvard Law Record

Published: Thursday, November 5, 2009

No Consensus on a Definition

• “We even lack a unified definition of cyberterrorism and that makes discourse on the subject difficult.”

• “The FBI alone has published three distinct definitions of cyber-terrorism: “Terrorism that initiates…attack[s] on information” in 1999, to “the use of Cyber tools” in 2000 and “a criminal act perpetrated by the use of computers” in 2004.”

• Two explanations on why it is difficult to agree on a definition:
  • “The interest in cyber issues only started in the nineties so the terms are still nascent.”
  • “The meaning [of cyberterrorism] depends on differing interests.”

• Some believe that “terrorists will use any strategic tool they can” so “cyber” terrorism is no more important then other forms.

What is the goal and who is affected by cyberterrorism?

• Like any form of terrorism, cyberterrorism aims to “cause severe disruption through widespread fear in society.”  Because we are so dependent on digital material and systems, we are very vulnerable to this type of terrorism.

• The U.S. is particularly dependent on online systems.  Countries that don’t depend so strongly on digital systems have an opportunity to attack without the risk of suffering from similar counterattacks.

Richard Clarke On The Growing ‘Cyberwar’ Threat

From Fresh Air on NPR

April 19, 2010

Richard Clarke served as a counterterrorism adviser to Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.  Clarke predicted the 9/11 attacks but was not taken seriously.  Now he is focusing on the possibilities of computer-based terrorism attacks.

What kind of harm could a cyberattack cause?

According to Clarke, here are a few examples:

• Disable trains all over the country
• Blow up pipelines
• Cause blackouts and damage electrical power grids so that the blackouts would go on for a long time
• Wipe out and confuse financial records so that we would not know who owned what
• Disrupt traffic in urban areas by knocking out control computers
• Wipe out medical records

Where can attacks come from and how are they executed?

Cyberattacks are not limited by national boundaries, and just one person can cause much harm.  A large team is not necessary to successfully complete this type of attack.  “Malicious code may infect a computer via a security flaw in a Web browser, or it could be distributed through secret back doors built into computer hardware.”

The government does have security set up to protect military and intelligence networks, but Clarke “worries not enough is being done to protect the private sector — which includes the electrical grid, the banking system and our health care records.”

“One common attack is for hackers to take over a series of home computers through backdoor security exploits. For example, malicious software can be downloaded onto a hard drive after you accidentally visit a compromised website. Your computer can then be used in conjunction with other compromised computers to engage in a large-scale attack. The average computer user may not realize when their computer has been drafted into a cyberattack.”

Clarke’s recommendations on how to reduce your risk of an attack

• Never use your work computer at home, where it may be unintentionally compromised by another member of your family.
• Make sure your online banks have more than just a password for security protection.
• If you’re going to buy things online, have a credit card for that purpose with a low credit limit.
• Don’t do banking or stockbrokering online and have a lot of money at risk — unless your stockbroker gives you a two-step process for getting in.

Assessing The Threat of Cyberterrorism

From Fresh Air on NPR

February 10, 2010

James Lewis is a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the co-author of the report “Security Cyberspace in the 44th Presidency.” He predicts that within a decade, Al Qaeda will develop capabilities to carry out attacks on the web.

“Every single day, sensitive information is stolen from both government and private sector networks as criminals become increasingly more sophisticated…

Recent breaches at Google and the Department of Defense have illustrated that the United States is not yet ready to deal with a large scale cyber-attack.”

The battle against cyberterror

By John Blau, Network World

November 29, 2004

The Good News

Experts “don’t think [would-be terrorists] have the technical ability yet – in other words, the combined IT and control system skills needed to penetrate a utility network.

The Bad News

Hackers “are beginning to acquire some of these skills… and in many parts of the world [people] are willing to peddle their expertise for the right price or political cause.”

The Worse News

• “Few, if any, of the industrial control systems used today were designed with cybersecurity in mind because hardly any of them were connected to the Internet.”

• “Many of the “private” networks now are built with the help of competitively priced fiber-optic connections and transmission services provided by telecom companies, which have become the frequent target of cyberattacks.”

• Moreover, security isn’t necessarily related to a country’s wealth.  Levels of protection vary from country to country.

Required reading/viewing (don’t worry, all short pieces):

• TED Talk- Negroponte takes One Laptop per Child (OLPC) to Colombia
• David D.Burstein- The Case for the Internet: A Human Right
• John Dvorak- One Laptop per Child Doesn’t Change the World
• Aparna Ray, Global Voices- Impact of ICT on Indigeneous Cultures: Rejuvenation or Colonization?

Very recommended reading:

• John Mulrow- Think Mobile, Act Local (go to April 2010: FrontlineSMS featured by World Watch Institute, and load down the PDF file)
• Muhammad Ayish- Universal internet access is the new human rights issue

Optional Extra:

• ITP Master Thesis Project: Design for The First World
• Brian Winston- Let Them Eat Laptops: The Limits of Technicism

If you are hungry for more:

• Jane Wakefield, BBC News- World wakes up to digital divide
• The Digital Oportunity Channel – South Asian centre of the international non-profit OneWorld network that aims to use the democratic potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs)

We’re leaving together,
but still it’s farewell,
last brief of the semester,
who can tell?

Wiki Marathon

In the last few days we’ve started to see a lot of work on Wikipedia. This week, we’re heading for Venus (so to speak) by doing more work on Wikipedia both along the same lines of edits we’ve seen this week and by each editing (at least) 3 articles based on somebody else’s travelogue. So for example Harris would be editing articles about Kotex and Elizabeth will be editing articles about Facebook… After editing a page based on someone else’s work, make sure to comment on their relevant travelogue posts with a link to the Wikipedia article and your specific change.

Your 2¢ – Better Late Than Never

And maybe we’ll come back
To earth, who can tell?

So we’ll (I’ll) be coming back to review your work through the semester to grade you accordingly. One of the things I will be looking at is your performance on the weekly summary comments discussion, but it’s not too late to still go back and comment on the ones that you didn’t get to comment on in time. I don’t expect flawless stats, but if you feel like you could’ve done better, you can definitely still effect your grade that way.

Optional Bonus Round

With so many light years to go
And things to be found (To be found…)

If you have time, interest and motivation (and you want to better your grade) you are welcomed to choose any of the topics proposed this week and publish a summary for us (along the lines of the weekly summaries). The summary can be posted after Sunday 4pm (but before Tuesday 4:55pm), and you will not be required to lead the class on it next week. For those who accept the challenge I promise to up-grade you generously.

Changing/Ruling the world from the comfort of your laptop

Welcome to your life
There’s no turning back
Even while we sleep
We will find you
Acting on your best behaviour
Turn your back on mother nature
Everybody wants to rule the world

Next week’s reading will focus on the potential (?) of Postnationalism presented by the networked public sphere

Required Reading:

• Frost, Catherine Internet Galaxy Meets Postnational Constellation: Prospects for Political Solidarity After the Internet (handout)
• Catherine Frost’s response to Mike Linksvayer on the post Collaborative Futures 3
• Harris’s summary + your comment

Recommended Reading:

• Digital Power and its Discontents – Morozov & Shirky: An Edge Conversation

Optional Extra:

• Responses to Digital Power and its Discontents – Edge Reality Club: Jaron Lanier, Douglas Rushkoff, George Dyson, Nicholas Carr

Harris:

• Read the essay & articles and view the presentation
• Optionally Highlight and annotate the reading to help its accessibility for the rest of you.
• Summarize it for us in a nicely accessible post to be published by Sunday 4pm, ideally running some threads between them.
• Be prepared to present the article and lead the discussion in class.
• Think of questions to lead off the discussion
• Post to del.icio.us some links that expand the discussion either about the text or about key themes in it.

The 80′s are back, did you notice?

Required Readings:

• The History of Sexuality – An Introduction [Summary] by Michel Foucault
• Sex lives in Second Life by Robert Alan Brookey and Kristopher L Cannon
• Next-Gen Sex Gets Its Jollies From Web 2.0 by Regina Lynn
• BBW: Techno-Archaism, Excessive Corporeality and Network Sexuality [in C'lick Me, Page 187-195] by by Michael Goddard

Required Readings and Viewings:

• Sex 2.0: Keynote by Melissa Gira Grant
• Technesexual by Micha Cárdenas and Elle Mehrmand
• A New Playground: Sexual Predators and Pedophiles Online: Criminalizing Cyber Sex Between Adults and Minors by Tyler Patrick Lovejoy [St Thomas Law Review 20 no2 311-57 Wint 2008]

Required Reading/Viewing:

• A Better Network for Outer Space on MIT Technology Review

• Vint Cerf explains the origins and basics of the Interplanetary Internet Project (3 very short videos)

1. Node
2. Frequency
3. Standarization

Recommended Reading:

• Vint Cerf Mods Android for Interplanetary Interwebs, interview by Cade Metz (The Registrer): Vint Cerf on how the Interplanetary Internet may help the Web here on Earth.
• Nasa Launches Astronaut Internet in Space by Tariq Malik
• Speeding up Space Communications in MIT Technology Review

Optional:

• NSS Applauds Presidents Commitment to the Mission of NASA and the role of space in providing for the Future. The National Space Society summarizes Barack Obama’s announcement of the FY2011 budget proposal for NASA.
• Follow astronauts tweeting from Space: José Hernández, Nicholas Patrick, Naoko Yamazaki

During the past 3 weeks, I tried to get people to share pictures of interesting situations they encountered in the subway. I tried with a web page, a Facebook Fan page, and a Twitter account. What I got was collaboration from my own social network—friends, or friends of friends submitted some stuff, but always with a short-spanned interest. The next attempt was to tap directly on audiences already interested in the subject—Flickr groups that shared subway pictures. I also added the competition factor—first, the prize was only about prestige: getting voted as the best picture. Then, I finally got an online photography blog interested in publishing the winner picture on their site.

I hoped that would spark interest a bit more, but the fact is that the new collaborations continued to spring from my previous social network and its subsequent effects. That is, when I launched the contest, I got more response from my original Facebook group (which had grown from my own contacts and the “work” I’d previously done on that platform) than from my call for Flickr collaboration. Even though I tapped on the communities that were already interested in the topic (three groups focused on underground transportation photography) and got “professionals” involved by getting them to publish the winning picture on their sites, my guess is that the Flickr group didn’t find enough reasons to take me seriously: I’d never been an active participant in Flickr before, all of my photos are uploaded on Facebook, and I’ve previously “worked” that audience much more.

What did this experience bring? A lot of learning. Not just based on my own travelogue, but I tried to learn from Leslie’s excellent results what had worked in her case as well.

I’d like to share my findings in this video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

As sidenotes:

Even though the contest wasn’t successful, I did receive some great pictures, and I’d like to share with you the most popular:

Author: Davii Rangda.  Caption: A night before the “Day of the Dead” in Mexico City.

I will submit the picture to http://lagiraffe.com/, the site that was most interested in publishing the contest pictures.

Special thanks to Leslie for her help and sharing.

Required Reading & Viewing:

• How Augmented Reality Works by Kevin Bonsor
• At the Dawn of the Augmented Reality Industry by Bruce Sterling
• Can Augmented Reality be a commercial success for e-commerce? by James Gurd
  

Recommended Reading & Viewing:

• If You’re Not Seeing Data, You’re not seeing by Brian X. Chen
• 10 Amazing Augmented Reality Apps for iPhone by Amy-Mae Elliot
• Envisioning your future in 2020 by Sam Martin
  

Enjoy digging deeper into this and scouring the net for more… It’s a very sexy topic

Required Reading:

• Signs of the Times: Smart Ads that Watch You Watching Them by Laura Farrar
• How Vegas Security Drives Surveillance Tech Everywhere &/or brief synopsis: 6 Ways Las Vegas Security Tech Has Entered Daily Life by Michael Kaplan
• Surveillance Society: New High-Tech Cameras are Watching You by James Vlahos

Recommended Reading:

• High-Tech Lockup: Inside 4 Next-Gen Prison Security Systems by Erik Sofge
• RFID-Enabled Phones Could Let Credit Card Companies to Track Users by Kim Zetter
• RFID Backers, Privacy Advocates Seek Common Ground by Rick Whiting

Optional:

• East Coast Diversified Corporation Completes Deal with EarthSearch & Enters GPS & RFID Technologies Industry Press Release, April 13, 2010

But most of all, new media are the opportunity to reach a broader and younger audience.

• Required viewings

Even though lots of museums have understood how interesting it is to embed their educational mission in new media, they remain a bit confused on how to use the technology on purpose.

Then why not starting by using new media to ask for people’s advice like the Smithsonian (“the world’s largest museum complex and research organization”) did:

Click here to view the embedded video.

This interesting initiative generated great content! Look at that it’s really worth it!

Click here to view the embedded video.

• Required readings

Here is a guide based on a new book by Nina Simon providing advice on how the museums should work on their relationships with their community

The participatory museum

Nina Simon also feeds a blog: Museum 2.0 (you might like this recommendation that Harris gave to me)

• To go further…

For those who would like to learn more I strongly recommend to look at the Brooklyn Museum who has become a reference in terms of new media strategy

Also the web site Museum and the Web 2010 has really great academic resources on the topic.

Required Reading:

• We Are Digital Natives by Barrett Lyon – “Some Digital Natives are deeply affiliated with all sorts of interests that bring them together organically: Piracy groups, massively multiplayer online games, open source software development, cracking encryption, etc. Others become deeply interested in movements such as Anonymous, the RBN (Russian Business Network), or even terrorist organizations.”

• The Future of The Internet and How to Stop it by Jonathan Zittrain – “The Internet’s current trajectory is one of lost opportunity. Its salvation, Zittrain argues, lies in the hands of its millions of users. Drawing on generative technologies like Wikipedia that have so far survived their own successes, this book shows how to develop new technologies and social structures that allow users to work creatively and collaboratively, participate in solutions, and become true ‘netizens.’

Recommended Viewing:

• Born Digital presentation by John Palfrey – “As part of the Google D.C. Talks series, and in partnership with Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Professor John Palfrey offers a sociological portrait of “digital natives” — children who were born into and raised in the digital world — with a particular focus on their conceptions of online privacy.”
  (you can play it in the background, it’s not very visual)

What is cyberterrorism?  Even experts can’t agree

The government has failed to convene its various departments to forge a single definition. The FBI alone has published three distinct definitions of cyber-terrorism.

Required Listening:

Richard Clark on the Growing “Cyberwar” Threat

Clarke says that cyberattacks can come from another country — or from a lone individual. Malicious code may infect a computer via a security flaw in a Web browser, or it could be distributed through secret back doors built into computer hardware. And though the government has set up security measures to protect military and intelligence networks, he worries that not enough is being done to protect the private sector — which includes the electrical grid, the banking system and our health care records.

Recommended Listening:

Assessing the Threat of Cyberterrorism

Lewis says that an attack can be simple and crude: malicious software placed on a thumb drive and left in a parking lot can wreak havoc on a computer system. He predicts that within a decade, Al Qaeda will develop capabilities to carry out attacks on the web — but says that terrorists may not bring down the entire Internet because they also realize the benefits.

Recommended Reading:

The battle against cyberterror

The cyberthreat to the electricity we use and the water we drink is real, experts say, but there’s no need to panic – at least not yet.

Required Reading/Viewing:

• “How to Save Journalism” by John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney

  (Link: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100125/nichols_mcchesney/single)

• “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable” by Clay Shirky,

  (Link: http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/

• Bill Moyers Journal featuring Jay Rosen and Glenn Greenwald:

  (Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sXPnlHoGGw)

Recommended Reading/Watching:

• “Saving the News: Towards a National Journalism Strategy”, written by Free Press. Download the report from: http://www.freepress.net/media_issues/journalism

• “Old and New Media Go to Washington”, On the Media. (Link: http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2009/05/08/01)

MyUniversity.com? Personalized Education and Personalized News by Cass Sunstein

Cass Sunstein looks into how education can be personalized for individuals. Sunstein states that personalization brings much efficacy in terms of learning more and faster and thereby makes education more efficient. Moreover, he explains that certain level of personalization is inherent in the education system in the very basic level of education such as students choosing which college they wish to attend. However, what Sunstein focuses on in his article is the level of personalization that education should be given. Sunstein argues that too much personalization can bring about a problem of “filtering” and make the society into fragmented heterogeneity without a binding force. Sunstein suggests that while personalization should be embraced, two requirements must be kept:

1) Unanticipated encounter: Being exposed to materials and knowledge that one would not have sought out individually under complete personalization.
2) Common experiences: Shared experiences among people to enable people to understand one another.

In order to explore this concept, Sunstein asks the readers to imagine a utopian world with complete personalization. During this thought experiment, he states that the feasibility of such world is the least of our worries with the rise of emerging media. Indeed, since the publication of this article in 2002, the world of today somewhat resembles Sunstein’s thought experiment. Yet, the differences between this thought experiment utopia and today’s society still exists. As Sunstein explains while the world has become more personalized, we are still able to experience “unanticipated encounter” and “common experiences”. In Sunstein’s example, he states that while more newspapers have become available and one may choose to read the newspaper that has the topic he is most interested in, he is still susceptible to being exposed to content he would otherwise not have encountered in that newspaper.

Sunstein states that in an over-personalized where individuals are nearly completely isolated from each other in terms of news and education can also cause the problem of reduced “public sphere”. Sunstein suggests that as the world becomes more personalized, we must keep the public forum doctrine to promote three important functions:

1) Speakers can have access to wide array of people. Sunstein shares examples that if one wants to speak out about high taxes or police brutality, existence of public forum helps them to share this opinion with many others.
2) Speakers can have general access not only to a heterogeneous group, but also to specific people and institutions with whom they have complaint.
3) The public forum doctrine ensures that the people will be exposed to wide variety of ideas and other members of the society.

In the new emerging media world, such public forums should be present, not just the specialized and isolated forums. Sunstein states that effects of isolated personalization can be especially traumatic in the case of education without proper control. As people inherent seek what is interesting to them, groups will become divided and polarized, leading to increased racial and cultural divide as well as political rifts. As a whole, Sunstein is for personalization, but only under an appropriate degree and not complete personalization.

The Impending Demise of University by Don Tapscott

Tapscott in The Impending Demise of University states while universities and colleges have the highest attendance than ever, yet they are losing their hold on the “monopoly” of higher education. More innately, Tapscott states that there exists a definite and clear disparity between the pedagogy defined by the instructor and one by the students. In the ages of digital, according to Tapscott, the students are no longer bound by the one-way street type of teaching the old pedagogy offered and are limitless and map-less in their pursuit of knowledge through the medium of Internet. (Tapscott also mentions that the universities have become too concentrated on research and less on education itself. However, I would personally argue that this is not a recent phenomenon and unrelated with emerging new media.)

Tapscott argues that “Industrial model of student mass production” must end and will end. He says the current pedagogy is a “broadcast learning” system where the instructor is the “broadcaster” and the students are the listeners. However, Tapscott points out the rise of technology and internet has enabled the students to tune into different broadcasts as the source of knowledge. Moreover, the new generations of students are adroit in their use of such medium and such method of learning. The teachers—“broadcasters”—must adapt to cater to these new students:

“They’re used to multi-tasking, and have learned to handle the information overload. They expect a two-way conversation. What’s more, growing up digital has encouraged this generation to be active and demanding enquirers. Rather than waiting for a trusted professor to tell them what’s going on, they find out on their own on everything from Google to Wikipedia.”

Tapscott states that universities have been the slowest to adapt as smaller liberal arts colleges are beginning to change and internet universities and classes are rising. In certain cases, there are new models of education being innovated. Tapscott shares an example of “Good Questions” program from Dr. Maria Terrell of Cornell, combining the web-based elements and in-class lectures. Students can ask warm-up questions before class and the professor can cater their class to address those questions (Very much like our class, I think). According to Tapscott, interactive learning allows for students to learn at their own pace and making direct input to what is being taught and therefore exhibits better efficacy.

As students find more channels to learn and find knowledge, Tapscott says that universities must adapt and that “universities should be places to learn, not to teach”. By doing so, he makes several challenges to different aspects of universities in order to become a place to learn:

1) Challenge to Teaching: Tapscott says teaching system should accommodate for next Geners, who are used to interactive learning and learning from each other in groups. New methods of pedagogy must be defined.
2) Challenge to the Revenue Model: classes in universities must differ from internet lectures and classes that can be had for free in order to justify its high prices.
3) Challenge to Credentialing: new method of credentialing must be determined to effectively measure the aptitude of university as a learning institution.
4) Challenge to the Campus: campuses should be able to offer a holistic package of education experience, in which students get together and think and learn together and ultimately enhance the learning experience.
5) Challenge to the Relationship of University to Other Institutions: Tapscott states that students should be able to learn not just from instructors of a particular university he is attending, but also from intellectuals from other institutions through the digital medium (not just through books).

In conclusion, Tapscott makes a bold statement that if the universities cannot adapt and change, they will perish.

My University.com, My Government.com: Is the Internet Really a Blessing for Democracy?: Presentation by Cass Sunstein

This is a talk at University of Michigan in which Sunstein discusses several of the points he made from the previous article. The article did seem somewhat ahead of his time, but this talk was held December 2008 and seems more relevant to today (he brings up Google News). In this presentation, Sunstein mentions additional experiments and meta-analysis that reveal striking effects of group polarization, and thereby stresses the dangers of over-personalization and “architecture of serendipity”.

First experiment was held in Colorado Springs, which leans conservative, and Boulder, which tends to be liberal. Participants in both cities were asked to give their views anonymously on three issues:

1) Should the US sign the international agreement to control the emission of greenhouse gases?
2) Should employers engage in race conscious affirmative action policies?
3) Should Colorado recognize same-sex civil union?

Following submission of their anonymous views on these topics, people engaged in discussion for 15 minutes. Then participants were asked to submit their view again in anonymous manner. According to Sunstein, the experiment revealed three interesting results:

1) After discussion group views were polarized and became more extreme.
2) Before discussion, internal diversity became existed but when examined after discussion, internal diversity disappeared.
3) The difference opinion of median between Colorado Springs and Boulder became dramatized.

The second example, Sunstein shared involved a meta analysis of Courts of Appeal in the U.S., which is comprised of three judges. Looking at historical judicial decision, the decisions are far more extreme and ideological when the panel is composed completely of Republican appointees or completely of Democrat appointees. For instance, Republican appointees vote pro-gay rights 14% in a 3R panel. Democrat judges vote pro-gay rights 100% in a 3D panel. Sunstein states that these percentages increased/decreased closer to 50% when the panel was mixed with both Democratic appointees and Republican appointees.

In the third example, 1,000 jury-eligible people in TX involved in the study. The participants were presented with asked to rank a hypothetical corporate misconduct on a scale of 0 to 6 and assign proper dollar amount of punishment. The median score in a group of six tends to be highly predictable measure of the median score of another group of six and were also in line with median American score. However, there were a lot of unpredictability on dollar value of punishment. In a follow-up study, instead of just submitting their score and monetary punishment value, the participants were grouped and asked to delivery a decision as a group after a discussion. According to Sunstein, there is a systematic severity shift: “people who are disturbed get more disturbed and people who were lenient became more lenient.” In other words, issues that had a median score of 5 become a 6 on the severity rank scale and issues that had a median score of 2 became 1. In addition, groups were systematically severe in terms of monetary punishment level. In 25% of the cases, the punishment level was at least as severe as the highest individual member’s punishment level before the discussion.

These examples stressed the point Sunstein made in the article about the dangers of group polarization. In order to prevent dramatic polarization, Sunstein suggests that “architecture of serendipity” must be put in place in education. The “architecture of serendipity” is essentially the two rules he suggested in the article of “unintended, un-chosen encounter with a person, a topic, or an argument” and “shared experience that unite people across differences”. Sunstein states that his ideas on public forum doctrine and implementation of architecture of serendipity in education system were inspired from Jane Jacob’s theory on urban public spaces in American cities. Sunstein believes that education system and Internet society can function like the urban public spaces that Jacobs described, serving as places in which people can meet others that differ not only in terms of looks but also in ideology and more importantly co-exist in harmony with them.

Sunstein points about that in the current blogsphere, political topics and views have become fragmented and polarized. Readers will tend to go from one blog representing one particular end of the political spectrum and move to another blog of similar content and political view, making oneself more extreme. One solution Sunstein suggests regarding this is that people start to practice more respectable linking to provide readers with means of becoming exposed to blogs and ideas that are not necessarily aligned with the current blog they are on. Sunstein states that the over personalization–through blogs or digital education–can be dangerous because of two factors:

1) People have natural tentativeness to reach conclusion on a given topic; however, ff given corroboration, people become extreme. Being exposed to only one view or side of a topic will push the people to the extremes.
2) Personalization of information and education brings about lack of exchange of information. In a filtered group, people will have chance to listen to only views that reinforce one view and will not have the chance to be exposed to other views.

In order to stress the danger of this, Sunstein shares a famous social conformity experiment. (He didn’t say, but I am pretty sure that it is by Solomon Asch). In this experiment people were given series of lines and were asked to choose on that is closest in length to a given line. The experiment session involved several people at the same time, but only one was a subject and others were confederates. When the confederates all chose a clearly wrong answer, the experiment subject also chose the wrong answer on 70% of the times despite the fact that the correct answer was very clear. Sunstein states that if social conformity is so powerful even when the answer is clear, on moral, political, and social topics, restricting oneself to only “personalized” views can make them conform to ideas that he/she might have otherwise thought too extreme.

Overall, Sunstein’s presentation is very much aligned with his article. However, in the presentation he even more strongly stresses the dangers of potential group polarization towards extremes and lack of exchange of information that can be caused to too much personalization. He does concede that in certain cases, the isolation through personalization and polarization may be a good thing as in the cases of anti-communist movement in the USSR or civil rights movement. However, it can also be the cause of birth of terrorists. He stresses that we must proceed with caution on the growing individual personalization through new media.

Event #1: Wikipedia, Museums, Libraries, and Access to Art Collections

Wednesday, April 21, 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM, 203 Butler Library,  Morningside Heights Campus, Columbia University.

Monday, April 26, 11:00 am, Columbia Law School, W&J Warren Hall, Room 101.

Event related to the Museums and the Web 2010 conference

Speaker: Liam Wyatt, Vice President of Wikimedia Australia

The availability of art images through Wikimedia and other openly accessible sources is often defined and controlled by license agreements and institutional policies asserted by museums and even libraries that hold the original art collections.  Re-evaluation and critical examination of policies that will enable museums to better contribute to and use Wikipedia or Wikimedia Commons, and for the Wikimedia community to benefit from the expertise in museums.  This session will provide a close look at rules, guidelines and examples that can be clarified to order to promote active engagement between the keepers of the collections and the scholars, publishers, and other members of the public who seek to benefit from them.

Event #2: The Polytechnic Institute of New York University presents:

WiFi Geographies: Designing Interfaces and Interventions or Collaboration in Place

Thursday, April 22, 2010. 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm, Dibner Building, LC 400, Five MetroTech Center, Brooklyn, New York

Speaker: Laura, Forlano, Phd, Cornell University.

How can we reformat our cities and public spaces – and the architectures and technologies within them — as sites of collaboration and innovation? This presentation examines the ways in which WiFi enables the formation of networks of socio-technical spaces that reconfigure people, work and forms of organizing based on a year-long empirical research project. This presentation will also report on an ongoing collaborative design project, Breakout!  Escape from the Office, which was presented by The Architectural League of New York as part of the Situated Technologies: Toward the Sentient City exhibition

Wikipedia, here we come!

This one is a group assignment. And by group I mean the whole class. At this stage there is much we learned that others can benefit from. While Wikipedia has been a great reference for us now is the time to give back. During the next two weeks you guys will become devoted contributors to Wikipedia, basing your contributions on the knowledge you have gathered in this class through the reading we did, the travelogues you conducted and the discussions around them. Some Wikipedia pages that should expect to hear from us (just suggestions, you are welcomed to come up with other ideas):

• Topics we discussed through readings: trust, community, CBPP, open source, social software, network theory, interface, fun, representation/simulation, control, remix culture, game theory, copyright laws, biomedia…
• Topics we discussed in class: video mash-ups, Twitter, digital identity, Ushahidi, corporate responsibility, e-waste, transparency, iTunes store, Kotex…
• The author pages for the individuals we’ve been reading in class this semester
• What does “New Media” or “Digital Media” stand for anyway?
• Some new pages that are not there yet.
• You name it…

To get started:

• Sign up to Wikipedia (if you haven’t yet)
• Send me your username so I can start following your changes (I intend to combine them into an RSS feed, maybe Leslie can help me)
• Learn the MediaWiki syntax (if you don’t already know it)
• To start a new page simply write its name after the wikipedia.org/wiki/_______ and then, when it says the page does not exist yet, edit it to bring it to life.
• Make sure to link between the pages using this syntax [[Page_Name]] or link to external links using [http://www.somesite.com the text you want to be linked]
• When saving, write what was the content of your change, so others can easily track it
• Use the talk pages to coordinate when it makes sense.
• Use the class blog to mobilize others to help you edit specific articles or to consult  and share tips
• Track changes through the new sidebar on the blog or through RSS feeds.
• Enjoy…

Some Tips:

• Feel free to link to currently non-existing pages like that: [[Eyewriter]] if you think it makes sense for someone (maybe even you, but not necessarily you) to write them, and then for someone else to help edit it.
• Work on pages together, start something, learn how to use the talk pages, make some subheadings that you think should be filled by someone, invite them to help you, even comment on their posts with something like: “Hey Jimena, I am working on this page concerning the way art organizations use social media and I thought you might have a lot to add to it” – that way this assignment will be a collaborative class effort that draws on what you’ve guys been doing together.
• Check out the History pages to see what edits have been made on a page.
• Follow the feed of changes so we can track what’s going on through the week

* I’m expecting each of you to make at least 20 edits this week, or in other words, make sure you edit so much that you stop counting.

More Topics in Digital Media

In the line of next week’s topic, I want us to also challenge my own decisions as the professor leading this class. Through this 14 week course we’ve been trying to cover many “topics in digital media” both those introduced by the weekly readings and those you brought up with your travelogues. But 14 weeks is not much and I am sure there’s only so much my limited selection can cover.

For next week, each one of you would recommend another “topic” and propose materials for it (recommended/required). Try to think about it as a “What if this was a 25 rather than a 14 weeks course?”. To make sure there are no repetitions please comment on this post with your topic as soon as you choose it. Some of the topics can be extensions going deeper into some of the things we have talked about (for example: user generated content).

So the way it would work is:

1. Comment on this brief with the title of your proposed topic (soon before someone else grabs it)
2. Write a post in the new “More Topics” category using this format:

Next week: Education is not what it used to be

Required Reading:

• The Impending Demise of the University by Don Tapscott
• MyUniversity.com? Personalized Education and Personalized News by Cass Sunstein
• The summary + your comment on it

Recommended Viewing:

• My University.com, My Government.com: Is the Internet Really a Blessing for Democracy? presentation by Cass Sunstein
  (you can play it in the background, it’s not very visual)

For Dan:

• Read the articles and view/listen to the presentations
• Summarize it for us in a nicely accessible post to be published by Sunday 4pm, ideally running some threads between them.
• Be prepared to present the article and lead the discussion in class.
• Think of questions to lead off the discussion
• Post to del.icio.us some links that expand the discussion either about the text or about key themes in it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Although Facebook’s memorial profiles  can facilitate the mourning process, they can also be the source of profound dismay. Security loop holes make the system vulnerable to hoaxes, and add to the grief of the people left behind.

Grafiti-memorial in Montevideo, Uruguay (photo taken by Arturo Peon Barriga). "Sergio Silveira used to fish and teach here. Today he is no more. If you wish to use this place, do it in dignity. Daddy forever."

[podcast]http://blip.tv/file/get/Nw546-TheDigitalAfterlifeWhatHappensInSocialMediaWhenWeDieP948.mp3[/podcast]

Further resources:

More on grief cycle and mourning stages.

Facebook blog: Memories of Friends Departed Endure on Facebook

Jose van Dijk, Mediated Memories in the Digital Age

Sorry about this temporary conclusion. In the end, the project finally started to give some results, but very slolwly. There’s a lot to learn from that, too (I know there was a reason). I will definitely post my conclusion, but I thought I needed to wait a bit more and see if I could reach the final stage or not. Thanks, guys.

I’ve moved my “How-To” section on how I made the bot/website back to the WordPress blog, as to not clutter  the Blogger site, containing the map that I am hoping NYCers will use. Sorry for all the changing up!

Here’s my post on how the promotion of Ice Cream Spy has been going over this past week: http://icecreamspy.wordpress.com/

A quick look at the stats:

• @IceCreamSpy – Following: 413 | Followers: 82 | Listed: 6

• 7 ice cream trucks displaying sticker (Honieh & Ryan- thank you for the wonderful idea of making stickers/talking to ice cream truck owners; it seems to be working well!)

• 24 geotagged ice cream trucks on map (on Blogger site)

Ice cream truck displaying sticker

Thanks Nadine for being the best Audicity Hotline

Hopefully, businesses will continue to adapt to these cultural changes and work towards a compromise or better solution instead of simply just continuing to tighten or extend the years of proprietary laws.  The current model of copyright laws are based off of greed, control, and exclusion benefiting more of the companies than the individual artists.  On one hand, artists should have rights to protect their works and the incentive of financial gain if anyone wishes to use it.  However, the prices to which other artists or individuals must pay in order to sample or use one’s material is too high.  As a result of these outrageous fees, individuals will continue to challenge and circumvent the systems in place with the risk of being sued.  However, the question remains – are companies going to sue everyone or just those who they feel are extensively profiting off of their material?  Is it just a matter of ethics or a matter of money?

“Everyone has access [to content]. Enforcement is a global problem. It is a practical problem, because of the reach of where the content might appear.  Finding [infringed copyrighted content] is harder.  One issue the law has to deal with is this new sense of a user ‘right’, referring to that of mashup creators.  User-generated mashups are changing the face of copyright laws, which have to evolve to catch up with the Internet generation.  Laws need a way to catch up with changing culture.  This could be in a greater recognition by the courts of the social use of user expression, or legislative change.  On the part of businesses, having a solid online business model will help prevent broadcasters from taking down every use of their content.  Businesses should have a clear and robust revenue stream online. We’re not there yet.” -  Mary Wong, an expert on intellectual property (IP).

Music and Videos are data that have a code.  They can be sliced, spliced, edited, and mashed together to get an entirely different code.  Remixing or mashing up the code in one’s own unique way allows a person to potentially enrich the value of the existing program.  While artists can conjure up their rights to “Fair Use” = an exemption in U.S. copyright law that allows limited use of works under copyright without permission from the rights holders.   Parody, teaching, news reporting and commentary are some of the uses allowed under fair use, the stipulations under which one can use copyright material without the owner’s permission seems limited and weakly defined.  “Transformative works” need to be better defined.

Mashups will continue to challenge the system of copyright while copyleft and other alternatives challenge the traditional statues and ideologies.  One of the biggest downsides to this debate is the incentive for artists to create an original work and have someone take it without permission, recognition, or even payment.  Of course, this is extreme, however, defenders and advocates for mashup and remix culture will continue to push for a more open system.  Lastly, people need to recognize the significance that whole new genres have been birthed due to sampling, remixing, and mashups.  Consider this in a brief article by Grant Gross,

Artists shouldn’t face threats of huge fines and prison time for sampling from copyright works, said filmmaker Nina Paley, creator of the film “Sita Sings the Blues”, Paley, speaking at an event in Washington, D.C., called for a wholesale rewrite of copyright law to allow mashup artists to create new works without threat of lawsuits or prison time.  Paley’s 2008 film uses several songs from 1920s jazz singer Annette Hanshaw, and copyright holders demanded she pay US$220,000 for use of the works. Paley eventually settled for $50,000.

$220, 000 US dollars?  $50, 000 dollars?  Honestly, who can afford to pay money like this to use other people’s work?  I would argue that the average person cannot.  No wonder people are so vexed at the current proprietary system.  Peep the video.  Thanks.

Bonus listening: If you want to you can also listen to this song that I made using parts of a sermon by a Christian apologetic Ravi Zacharias and Common’s instrumental to his song “Resurrection”.  It took me a couple days to fit things together the way that I wanted to.  I can only imagine trying to fit together an a cappella  and an instrumental let alone put together a song using sampled-snippets of other songs.  Like hip-hop producer 9th Wonder exclaimed, it’s not as easy as it looks/sounds.  Enjoy.

Resurrection (Ravi Zacharias Remix)

Until next time, try not to get sued-  Clear your samples and get permission if you can afford it. 

2. Listen to the podcast and view the accompanied slides.

References:

Mobile Active Org

American Red Cross – Mobile Giving Program

US Mobile Carriers

Mobile Giving Foundation