Educations & Newspapers

These days, there is a lot of debate whether or not education and newspapers are dying out. While I feel as though times are changing, the two powerhouses will not simply "go away". In the Onion video "End of Newspapers", the commentators make jokes about what the "loons" will do when there are no more newspapers and how they will have to find new ways to clutter their houses. While, newspaper sales have certainly decreased, i just can not see a complete cease to newspaper sales. Brian Steffens disagrees in his article, "Newspapers Dead", paid circulation has dropped 20% while readership is actually stated to be growing. What I found interesting from this article is that sales in virtually every industry have dropped 20%, but not many people are pinpointing the other industries. In Mark Little's "The News is Dead", he states that he sees new opportunities in the news. From hearing about Micheal Jackson's death via twitter, he realized that news should be in niche areas, instead of only on the television or news websites. By using facebook and twitter, I whole-heartedly agree that real time news is the way of the future. As for education, what struck me the most was in Ian Jukes' "From Gutenberg to Google" article where he quotes former Secretary of Education Richard Riley. Riley stated that the top 10 demanded jobs in 2010 are not the same as they were a few years before, which shows the changing times. Therefore, by today's cirriculum, students are being prepared for jobs that no longer exist. I believe that in today's economy, students should be trained in areas that interest them, also in the ways that are best for them. I believe that online education programs should be offered to high school students if needed depending on their needs, as well as a program much like those of colleges, with a specific track intended acting as "majors.''

The Spectacle

The Manjoo and Hedges articles, along with Dr. Lowe have all brought up the fact about the spectacle this week. I feel as though many people enjoy being unmoored, or detached, to escape reality. New Media plays a large role in this. From website like twitter, facebook, myspace, or even TV shows, much like the Jersey Shore, people become detached from real life. Hedges discusses in his article, ”Our Country is Lost Believing in What it Sees on Screens, and We Are Going to Pay a Nasty Price for It”, the American public and how disillusioned it is by technology. One sentence which stood out at me was, “We believe that no matter how much damage we do to the earth or our society, science and technology will save us.” I agree with this statement. Many people will tune out what is happening in the world by the use of new media, whether it be “reality” TV shows, or texting updates to Twitter to take their minds off of what is going on. Although Hedge’s discusses the spectacle, it is quite myopic, or lacking foresight. We know how to tune out issues now through media, but what will we do in the future when technology improves even further? What is going to happen with the countries problems? These are issues which I would have found interesting to hear Hedge’s perspective on more.

I also found Wong’s article interesting. Since I am one of the people who reads from a Nook and buys e-books religiously, I enjoyed the section about the publisher’s self destructing the book itself. E-Readers are changing the book world, quickly. These days, the reality of students going to the library to actually take out books has changed. Now students will go to the library for meetings or to study, but rarely do I see someone actually taking a book out. This reason for this is simple: the internet. As Wong proved in much of his article, most of the information we need today can be found on the internet. I feel as though the need for human interaction is decreasing quickly, which makes me worried about what will happen with future generations.

People today expect to have information given to them immediately. As Manjoo says in “Why the Facts No Longer Matter”, “On the Web, television, radio, and all manner of new devices, today you can watch, listen to, and read what you want, whenever you want; seek out and discuss, in exhaustive and and insular detail, the kind of news that pleases you; and induldge your political, social, or scientific theories...grounded in reality you’re so far out your floating in an asteroid belt, among people who feel exactly the same way as you do.” I feel the same as Manjoo in this excerpt. The thrill of going out to find information, meet new people, or learn from even museums seems to have diminished. I strongly believe that new media tools, as great as they are, are part of this downfall. Many people are now even meeting other people from websites such as eHarmony instead of going out to public places. As I said before, this does scare me a bit, and begs the questions, “What will happen to future generations?”

The good, the bad, the ugly.

As in the Jenkin’s video, in “Our World Digitized”, Jenkins talks about today’s communication space. Throughout the discussion, Jenkins, as the moderator, brings up questions of whether or not the internet is fostering a convergence culture. Sunstein claims that the internet is still lacking a large portion of what should be on the internet, but it does have many beneficial qualities. Benkler does not talk as much about the public’s internet freedoms but rather our ability to create, destroy, and investigate the internet.

Sunstein states “Any well functioning society depends on relationships of trust and reciprocity on whether people see their fellow citizens as potential allies and willing and deserving to help when help is needed.” Sunstein is also quoted saying, “A well functioning society also has 2 distinct requirements. First people must be exposed to materials they would not have chosen in advance. The second is any or most citizens have a range of common experiences.” The third statement from Benkler is, “the new freedom holds great practical promise. As a dimension for individual freedom, as a platform for better government participation, as a medium to foster a self reflective culture, and an increasingly dependent global economy, as a mechanism to achieve improvements in human development everywhere.” Sunstein and Benkler agree on the self-reflexsive culture aspect of the claims, although Sunstein gives the Internet a C- as a grade. Benkler believes the “degree to which the practical constraints on action are determinative on how we evaluate the level of normative life lived as a practical matter.” I agree with Sunstein. I believe he gives the internet a fair grade. It has many benefits, especially with being able to now contribute to the convergent culture we live in, although it does have several “cruelties.” In the Jenkins video, he states that average citizens now have the power to take control & tell their own stories. Convergence culture is shaped as much by teenagers as it is Viacom board members. A large part of the convergence culture is discussed by Danah Boyd in “Twitter vs. Facebook” Boyd states that anyone from celebrities to average people checking in on high school friends use these services. Some choose one service over the other due to a better fit, more privacy, the other people on the service, or sometimes people can’t articulate why they choose one service over the other.

Net Neutrality

Bill Moyer’s “The Net at Risk” is an excellent overview of what is going on in the debate on net neutrality. Moyer, throughout several of the interviews and segments played both roles of being for net neutrality and also as the devil’s advocate. The segment that I found most interesting and informative was the piece where Moyer’s interviewed Mark Cooper, the director of research at the Consumer Federation of America. Cooper throughout the segment stands by his viewpoint that, “ open communications network is vital to our economy and our democracy.” One statement by Cooper that struck me and helped me pick my stance on the matter was his questioning of, “Will there be a gate keeper? Will there be a tollbooth? Or will there be a free flow of information?”

I’m now in favor of the net neutrality bill. As a young adult in American culture, I am used to being able to receive any information necessary at any point. I feel as though adding extra fee’s and services will create many more problems. Just as in “The Net at Risk” stated, in the past, ISP’s wanted to charge extra for e-mail. The amount of ISP’s have dropped from 8,000 companies to 2,000. Those companies which refused to offer free e-mail did not survive. I feel as though many Americans will boycott the companies charging extra for sites such as Yahoo and Google, and those giant companies will eventually be forced to lose their edge. By doing this, I feel as though new internet giants will come up in their place.

Sandra Fulton of the ACLU describes her accounts of working with the Obama Campaign. While working on the campaign, Obama had decided to support net neutrality by saying, “What you've been seeing is some lobbying that says that the servers and the various portals through which you're getting information over the Internet should be able to be gatekeepers and to charge different rates to different Web sites...so you could get much better quality from the Fox News site and you'd be getting rotten service from the mom and pop sites… And that I think destroys one of the best things about the Internet—which is that there is this incredible equality there." In addition to Obama’s declaration of support, the FCC is also in support of the bill. (http://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/net-neutrality-securing-equality-online)

Eliza Krigman of the Nationaljournal.com discusses the Tea Party’s view of the Net Neutrality Bill as well. While many believe the Tea Party would be firmly opposed to the bill, many would be surprised that it is not the case. The article “How Tea Party Might Help with Net Neutrality” states that “The Tea Party’s aversion to the Federal Communications Commission reclassifying broadband from an information service to a public utility is so strong that it leaves open the distinct possibility of tea party support for tailored regulation." I thought the [House network neutrality bill] was a good starting point for a legislative approach," said Phil Kerpen, vice president of policy at the Americans for Prosperity Foundation. "It was very encouraging to see Congress willing to act on this." Americans for Prosperity works closely with tea party activists and considers itself a "key ally" of the movement.” While the Tea Party is not completely sold on the idea of the government regulating any aspect of the economy, there viewpoint may be slowly but serly swayed.

"From Gutenberg to Gates to Google" Post 3

From Gutenberg to Gates To Google
In the From Gutenberg to Gates to Google article, Ian Jukes helps make sense of what is going on in the world of the internet and exponential trends.
The first law is “Moore’s Law”, created by Gordon Moore. Moore states that the technological processing power and speed now double every 12 months while during the same time it declines in value by 50% ( a factor of 4 every 12 months). In 1985, Moore modified his law, suggesting that because of advancing chip technologies, technological processing power and speed was now doubling every 18 months while it decreased in value by 50%. Moore has been accurate for more than 40 years.
The second exponential trend, as described by Jukes, is Gilder’s Law. This states that the bandwith speed and capacity per dollar triple exponentially every 6 months. According to Jukes, this simply means that the internet will soon be anywhere you go, leading to new mobile devices coming out consistently.
The third exponential trend is “The Internet Revolution”. At this point in history, we are used to the web being used a commercial advertising and marketing tool. In the past 24 hours, “144,000 new users have been added,-that’s 100 every minute- 3 million new Web pages have been uploaded- 30 billion instant messages and 35 billion emails have been sent, along with more than 40 billion SPAMS” (Jukes p 13) It has been estimated that the Web is doubling in size every 120 days, or doubling 3 times per year.
Jukes goes on to explain the 4th exponential trend, “The age of InfoWhelm”. This means that “The amount of unique new technical information doubling every two years, expected to be doubling every two weeks by 2006, and every 72 hours by 2010.” It is estimated that there was more data produced in 2004 than there was in the previous 5000 years. The fifth and final technological trend is “Technological Convergence”. This happens when what has been previously been separate technologies have fuse together to create powerful devices. While the power in these technologies are increasing, the devices themselves are becoming smaller and smaller.
Jukes believes that the power has shifted from the publisher to the consumer. I believe this is true as well. Thanks to technology, consumers, (especially in the news world) have access to the information, when they want, how they want, and where they want. We as consumers are no longer reliable on physical objects, much like the paper, but can look to the information to find any and all information that we search for. The roles have since witched and now the producers are expected to form to the consumers.

The Memex, the Record, and Interactive Writing

As We May Think by Vannevar Bush describes ideas that make the Internet so extremely powerful today: the memex and the record. In Polymers, Paranoia, and the Rhetorics Hypertext, Moulthrop looks into how creative writing spaces are different from Gutenberg’s printing press, which is also explained in From Gutenberg to Gates to Google.

In 1945, Bush wrote As We May Think in The Atlantic. While he gave ideas of many technologies that we use today, such as the computer, scanner, digital camera and the nook or kindle, on the 12^th page he wrote of the memex. The memex was described as a piece of technology “ where one stores books, records, ands communication with flexibility and speed.” The memex was to look like a desk with a keyboard, buttons, and a lever. To me, this seems as the basic concept of a computer and hard drive. Tha hard drive of the computer stores a person’s files and folders. Today when a person uses a piece of technology, such as the Nook, they can store entire books and magazines on their computer’s hard drive. Bush goes on to say that information, like long stories, poems, and letters, can be added through an opening . Today this opening can be thought of s our modern scanners, where we send our physical documents to the computer. Bush also speaks of “the record” throughout his article. The record today might be one’s files and folders saved by a person on their hard drive. “The Record” might also be thought of as the internet, where virtually any information you are looking for can be found, just like Bush said of his memory rolodex.

The interactive writing space today differs from the writing space created by the printing press. In the From Gutenberg to Gates to Google article, Ian Jukes compares the five and a half century old printing press to the thirty five year old computer technology. Due to exponential growth, the use of writing and interacting through e-mail , interactive writing is growing at 1000 times the rate of conventional mail (p. 14, Jukes). Interactive writing space has also helped spiked the size of our dictionary. In 2005, there were 540,000 words in the English language. This number, according to Jukes, is 5 times as many words than there were in Shakespeare’s time. On pages 23 and 24 of Juke’s article, he brings up the point that the interactive writing space is more efficient. If breaking news `occurred during the times of the printing press after a newspaper had been published for a day, the editors would have to wait for the next day to print the story. Today, news can be added to newspaper’s websites at anytime. While interactive writing space is faster, holds more information as predicted by Bush, and is generally easier for younger generations, there are some similarities. The printing press was first created to print copies of the Bible for the masses. Since its conception, the printing press started to become used to spread information to the masses, just like the interactive writing space.

Technology has come a long way since Bush’s publication of As We May Think. The progression of this technology can most notably be seen in the changes from the printing press to an interactive writing space such as a Word document, E-Mail, or the Internet.

Technology vs. the Music Industry

Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist, speaks about the choices that people make. The example he uses that stands out most to me is the portion of the video about organ donation. After showing a chart of individual countries and their percentages of drivers donating their organs, Ariely shows the DMV forms that countries with a high percentage use against the countries with lower percentages. Countries with low percentages use a box that contains a check mark if you want to participate in organ donation, meaning that most people do not wish to check the box. Countries with a higher organ donation percentage have a box at the DMV that states “Check if you don’t want to participate in organ donation program”. Since these countries had a higher percentage it means that drivers, much like countries with a low percentage, did not check the box on the form. This may mean that drivers either have very different viewpoints, even on culturally similar countries. This can also mean that drivers did not want to put forth any more effort into checking boxes on the DMV forms.

In Neil Postman’s article “Judgment of Thamus”, he quotes Freud by saying “Our inventions are but improved means to an unimproved end.” I must agree with this. This quote sums up the basic direction of the music industry. Our technology is rapidly improving, especially with audio devices. The new 80G iPods with video, radio, pedometer, and photo capabilities are much more advanced than the Sony Walkman or the Rio. While these technologies make our lives simpler and more convenient, these devices are also slowly tearing apart the music industry. The dawning of the mp3 has caused steady decreases in physical album sales, and in turn the amount of illegal downloads has been constantly rising.

Time Healy’s article, “ The Unanticipated Consequences of Technology” discusses that certain “fear” we have of technological advances. Healy introduces this concept of uncertainty with the example of Dolly, a lamb which was cloned by Scottish researchers. Since we don’t know what will happen, or what the consequences of our actions will be, we can only anticipate change. Dietrich Dorner is quoted in the article to say there are four reasons why consequences can be so difficult to anticipate: complexity, dynamics, intransparence, and ignorance and mistaken hypothesis. Many fear what is next in the Music Industry. After working at RCA Records this past summer, it was clear that the constant additions to the digital marketing department was the label’s reaction to the uncertainty of where technology will be taking us. More and more record label’s have been turning to internet sites such as Vevo, Twitter, and Facebook to help keep fans interested. What I find is even more interesting is the new trend of releasing a new album on vinyl when most do not have record players anymore. Will avoiding new technology be the music industry's answer to retaining their sales? We will just have to wait to see.