I think it is so cool that if I wanted to write a novel, all I would have to do it pull out my cell phone. However, I do believe it would also be difficult. I make many typing mistakes and rewrite my work  various times and typing on a cell phone would limit that. But the Japanese are doing it. Anyone can be a novelist, though maybe not a good one, and all they need is a cellphone with internet access. And people read it. You don’t need a publicist or an editor. You write how you txt and people love what you write. And if you want to make money off it, that’s no problem either. Basically, I feel that with online blogging and cell phone novelists, any one can be a writer. However, do you believe that this is making the quality of writing that people read go down? Do you think that people are not longer reading the work of great authors and settling for junky ameuter stories?

Interactive television

As soon as I say the words interactive television, I thought of viewers screaming at their television sets saying “No, don’t go in the dark scary alley”, “Catch it, catch the ball!”, or “Oh come on, just kiss her already you know you want it”. We act like the people on tv can hear us, and that our yelling will make a difference. In other words, we are trying to interact with an inanimate object who isn’t really doing much to interact back. But I guess interactive television is real in some sense. We do yell at our tvs, there are fan clubs and web sites for our favorite shows. It has become “an interaction between fan communities and the broadcast television producers (along with their new media teams) or, perhaps, the interaction between story elements in one media and another.” Producers are creating story telling experiments by introducing their stories outside of the living room. This is called cross-platform storytelling. An audience can experience the realm of their favorite shows whenever and wherever they want, and not just half an hour once a week. They can find out what has been going on in between each broadcasted show. There are some rules to the real world story telling element in order to link audience with tv show. 1. Act like your characters are real, they are someone audiences can learn more about through the internet. 2. The elements should be plausible. 3. Tell the story, don’t make it look like your trying to sell them something or persuade them into participation. 4. Make lots of participation oppurtunities available. 5. Monitor how your cross-platform storytelling is going and update it all the time. Create new and exciting ideas for participation. 6. Try to engage people through a mystery or a riddle. And finally, 7. make sure that people who chose not to participate still understand whats going on in the story. 8. Start cross-platform storytelling right from the beginning of your story. 9. Don’t force it to work. 10. Think outside the box. Go outside the realm of tv and internet. How do you feel about participatory television? Do you want to get involved in tv or would you rather just veg out and watch the action?

Lost as New Media

So Lost has done amazing things to interact its audience with the show. It is truly a new form of media. He uses the word meta-media which refers to developing layered, interwoven media, which engage fans to create further media. There is a site in which you can creat anagrams of characters names, look at codes, mysteries, featured works of literature and philosphy. There are puzzles everywhere. There is a Wikipedia-like website devoted to everything Lost. There are series of unofficial fake sites based off of the show. There are message boards, blogs, and community sites for Lost all over the internet. And Lost producers probably read all of this and take from it. But what the author of this blog finds so amazing is the product placement of a book called Bad Twins. If you look the book up on Amazon, it is actually real- and Lost and Amazon have made their stories collide. “About the Author: Bad Twin is the highly-anticipated new novel by acclaimed mystery writer Gary Troup. Bad Twin was delivered to Hyperion just days before Troup boarded Oceanic Flight 815, which was lost in flight from Sydney, Australia to Los Angeles in September 2004. He remains missing and is presumed dead.” This paves way for serious interaction. “The amount of content produced about your content should be of far greater weight than the originating content itself. This in turn creates a new kind of content, forged from a social process of collaboration with users, viewers, listeners.” I find this truly amazing that Lost could promote itself in such a way and truly get its audiences involved. it seems that there are quite a lot of people interested. Do you watch Lost and if so, how do you feel about the idea that the producers might be creating their stories off of fan feedback? Would you be happy or upset to one day see an idea that you came up with and wrote on a fan site actually show up within the show? If you were upset, is it because you might consider the idea your property, and therefore Lost is stealing your ideas without giving you credit? Does any of what I’m asking make sense?

2. Next week, I hope to have most of it done, or at least more than half way. The actual video parts should be done and I can just work on voice over and editing.

3. I had to give up on trying to figure out how to use iMovie. Fortunately, I found another program that I seem to get along with better. It is called muveeproducer and though I have problems with it as well, I have figured out the general basics. Plus, the program is now on my laptop, which makes it easier to work on my project any time I want rather than going to the lab.

4. I am starting to realize, through doing a lil editting, how hard it actually is to make a movie. To get the timing right between picture and sound mixed in with how you want it to look and the flow of everything is very difficult. I have also realized that if I want to get this project done on time, I have to try and put my perfectionist traits aside until its fully completed. Then if there is time, I can go over everything accordingly and see what needs the most work.

This article talks about the game Grand Theft Auto. First off, it is extremely violent. To win you must kill anyone and everyone around you. And the story line barely even justifies the killing. It seems like the game is teaching people how to be criminals. it has no social qualities, has missions that involve killings, tell you the best times to perform a bulgary, and how to earn respect through crime. And unfortunately, these overly violent games are super popular bringing in loads of money and flying off the shelves. The game allows boys and young men to live out unfullfilled dreams and desires. Why do people enjoy these games so much? it could be because we are all like animals with the desire to kill and  have sex, but since society says such acts are punishable and such thoughts should be suppressed, GTA creates an outlet for these desires. But some people worry that those playing could forget the line between reality and virtual reality and become a danger to society. Every player becomes the character CJ. CJ is a poor young black man. You can change his hair cut, give him a tatoo, make him fat or muscular, but they only thing you can’t change is his skin color. Does the game then suggest that its creators believe all criminals or gangbangers are young poor black men? Do people find that to be a bit racist? The creators simply suggest that it is like stepping into your favorite rap song. But it could be more then that- the article suggests that we all want to be a rebel with an attitude. But is crime and mayhem really a progressive way of fighting the authority. However, GTA allows a player to “walk in another’s shoes” thereby making it so that we can embrace each other’s differences. What sticks with a player the most is the setting of the game. The virtual world is huge and the freedom within it is great. It is this freedom to explore a whole new world and not just play the game that makes GTA so successful. GTA can teach us that not all fun has to be politically correct- we can play violent games and not be violent people. How do you feel about this- do such video games make us more violent or are they an outlet for our suppressed desires?

Is this man cheating on his wife?

A man spends hours and hours on SecondLife, a program that allows the user to create a very unique character and basically live a whole other life. The character has a job, pays bills, and has virtual relationships. This particular man is recently married, but now he is recently married again to a virtual wife. Most people would hate the idea of having a whole other set of responsibilities, but for some reason SecondLife is extremely popular. Users say that their virtual life is better than their real life. Though they never see their virtual friends in person, they find their emotional connections with these people to be very strong. And why shouldn’t people like the program? A person can create any version of themselves-make a better, younger, more enhanced version of themselves. They can have any job they want and do whatever they want. And best of all, they never get old and gray. Academics are surprised at how well virtual worlds mirror the real world. People feel bad when something bad happens to their avatar, and they feel quite good when something good happens.” Some say that players can’t mentally distinguish between the real world and the virtual world. The man in the article was having a hard time and Second life provided him with a distraction. Then he met Tenaj and they were soon virtually married. They have no plans to meet and they know little about each other besides what they talk about through instant messaging. The man’s real wife is starting to lose patience. She feels she barely knows the person she married anymore. He claims that it is just a game, but spending hours and hours a day on this program is not just a game. It seems to be an obsession. Real marriage divorces due to virtual infedelity. Some people say that the hours spent on SecondLife is nothing to worry about, that it is equivalent to the average hours spent watching tv. Do you use SecondLife? Do you feel that this virtual socializing world is taking away from actual life socializing and experiences?

Cyborg Ancestry

The firs cyborg was a poor little rat with a tiny osmotic pump implanted in his body. The word cyborg is used to describe the vision of an “augmented man,” better adapted than ordinary humans to the rigors of space travel.dy. He was half animal half machine. Being able to create a cyborg was like giving a person super powers, making it so that they could escape the limitations of the human body. And the idea grew from fantasy to reality. People were given artifical limbs and organs and soon augmented humans  were a popoular tv hit with the BIonic Woman and the Six Million Dollar Man. But today’s cyborgs are information machines. Cybernetics is a science that explains the world as a set of feedback systems, allowing rational control of bodies, machines, factories, communities, and just about anything else. It promised to reduce the problems of society. It is the cyborg makers that want to turn this idea into something real. They see the human body as information processing machine of flesh. They believed that if you wanted a better body, simply improve the feedback system or add an artifical organ. Cybernetics has faded away but it has left behind two important impacts. One is how we now see the world as a series of networks and the other is the idea that there isn’t as much separating man from machine as we would like to believe. If you were given an artifical organ or limb, would you feel that it made you less human, or that it made you part machine?

Boot Camp Cure for Internet Addiction

So cyberspace is becoming a very bad addiction for people. And if your in desperate need of a cure, you can go to Korea and join the Jump Up Internet Rescue School. It’s possibly the only place of its kinds in the world that you can go to for major help. South Korea knows the internet like no other country. They have fulled embraced it, and as a consequence, fully become obsessed with it. People can’t tear themselves away and it’s becoming a problem. There have been people who have literally dropped dead from exhaustion after days on end spent in front of a computer. Most young people are at serious risk of the internet becoming an unhealthy habit. The camp was designed for the most aggressive of obsessors. Participants are denied access to a computer and are only allowed one hour of cell phone use a day. The get lots of exercise and do a lot of group activities meant to strengthen their connections to the real world and weaken their connection to the virtual one. The participants are under constant supervision, because many try to sneak away to use the computer, They must constantly be kept busy. Do you ever wonder if you may have in internet addiction or are becoming overly obsessed with the internet?

2. This week I plan to have my paper completed and with luck start to put things together in a film.

3.I am having trouble figuring out how to use iMovie…I am looking into someone who can show me the basics. I am also worrying about how I will arrange things and how I will choose accompanying music.

4. I am realizing how much time and work goes into making a film, and am learning to appreciate the workings of the movie industry.

Humanity  has a need to express itself. Ways of doing this are through communication and creativity. The role of creativity is to constantly shake up old ideas, to always be making something new. Time and space are an important part of creativity. We can only account for time and space through a person’s experience of it. We look at how a work of art will unfold, the sequence of time in a movie, or where our eyes will travel on the space of a painting. The art of architecture controls how we move through space and the time it takes us to move through it- it is interactive in its art. Cyberspace is a new public form of architecture. It is conditioned through timing because physcial distance is no longer a problem and therefore neither is the time spent traveling. Digital film making has also changed the meaning of time and space. Though real time is passing, editing techiques can manipulate how we view time within the film. Space is also manipulated giving the audience multiple perspectives of a a scene. The article also points out that a computer is made out of time. It is continuous and discrete and controlled by the coxwain, sending out millions of pulses per second. The chircuit has changed the ways of time and space. It is merely a series of ones and zeros yet is the creatice design of the circuit that allows us to view it as a form of space in which a click of a button takes us from one location to another. Discussions of space talk about the issue of real and unreal in terms of experience. The space of the internet is boundless, with no limit to how far it can go. Music only exists through time. Where is it played is its only space. Today digital music is performed in the realm of the circuit. The circuit makes the music being played performed both to a private audience (ipod) and a public audience with an infinite number of listeners. Do you think that the internet truly enables you to defy space and time, allowing you to virtually be in two places at once?

Virtual Hunting

A man wants to share the hunting experience with anyone who wants to participate via the internet. It would enable customers to see what its like to hunt-shooting with a click of the mouse and killing live animals. Another man believes that almost all hunters will be opposed  to this. It is not ethical and not the right way to hunt. There is a state law being proposed that requires a hunter to be on site before they can kill an animal. Do you think that virtual hunting is unethical? Does it deny a person the true hunting experience? Do you think that being able to shoot a gun with a mouse click will make it so that people will not fully realize the total impact a gun can have?

Virtual Iraq

A new technology is helping soldiers confront their memories of war. Its called virtual iraq and it attacks PTSD in the way a soldier would. The program uses the  training of soldiers to turn against bad memories. It takes them back to Iraq in a virtually very real setting…right up to the smells and sounds. A soldier is told rel start to recount and start to describe a memory and the doctor makes it happen in virtual reality. The theory of treatment is to gain control of the experience. Some say its not what they want and that it is easier to avoid painful memories…but that makes the memories maintain the power  that they have over you. It is better to face them and make peace with them. If you were a soldier suffering from PTSD would you be willing to participate in this program?

The mobile phone and text messaging have changed the world. “It’s even bigger than the printing press” supposedly. Cell phones, text messaging, and various other new up and coming phone applications, such as internet, are making it easier for the every day person to get involved in things that only people called activists would have once been involved in. Text messaging and cell phones has helped in spread the word of an uprising and demonstrations, set off bombs, and act as clues to uncovering bombers. Thus enter mobile activism. 1. Nomadic technology can expose human-rights abuses as honest citizens use technology to monitor and expose crimes and co-ordinate the response. Add still and video cameras on phones to help with this 2. Health care and poverty. Cell phones will play a big role in detecting, mapping out, and responding to epidemics. In poor countries, mobile phones are fast becoming the main communications tool, schoolbook, vaccination record, family album and many other things. 3. Environmental monitoring. People can send a text to a service asking about a food product, air quaity, or pollution of a place and get results back. Soon phones will have sensors that will be able to detect and tell us just about anything. This might suggest a coming surveillance state, people’s personal lives that used to be private become input for new services such as traffic maps, health warnings or security alerts. Or a global neighborhood watch type deal. Do you worry that, as the article suggests, cell phones will eventually be turned against us in a Big Brother sort of way?

Always-on/Always-on-me

This is a very interesting and true article. It talks about how attached we have become to our technological devices. We always have them with us and they are always on. People walk around talking to the air or with their head down text messaging. Cell phones and such make it so that we are there in reality, but our mind and our thoughts are somewhere else-checking email, talking to people in another state, or even living out an entirely different life through sites such as Second Life. It gives us a feeling of connection to everyone and anything that is going on outside what is actually going on around us. We are constantly dividing out attention with reality and the cyber world. Sometimes we even feel naked or lost without our devices, demonstrating just how attached we have become to what these devices offer us. The article suggests this feeling of anxiety when we are without our devices is due to “missing the self that is constituted in these relationships” we create through our devices. Technology enables us to be a different person through the internet, no one knows us or can see us and we can form an identity closer to the one we wish we had in reality. Or it allows us a filter to act out real situations on the internet so we can better handle them in real life. How can we tell if the people around us are dividing their attention? Work environments suffer because it becomes increasingly harder for people to focus all their attention on the task at hand. Reality is constantly being interupted by alwayson/alwaysonyou devices and we are slaves to their beckoning, unable to resist. It used to be that certain events and special places were meant to disconnect ourselves from distraction and focus on only those around us. Now we can’t even muster up the courage to turn our phones off for fear of what we might miss if we do. It is becoming harder and harder to disconnect. We are becoming too conected to machines. People are actually forming relationships with robots who are simulating a relationship with them. Is it possible that one day our relationship with the machine will destroy any relationship with actual people? Is man becoming like the machine? Are we turning machines into humans? Will machines one day rule the world? Scary thoughts. Feel freee to respond to any or all of the questions.

Politics is becoming more technological. McCain and Obama have anti-other videos on Youtube. The internet will not only change the way of politics, but democracy itself. People can create wikis blog and comment on the campaign. Candidates can use social networking sites to generate money, volunteers, and supporters. The article states that Obama understands how to use the internet to his advantage, and McCain is slightly tech-illiterate. However, the Republican party is taking steps to up their game. Voters are being separated into two groups divided by technology. One group is called the Millenials, people born between 1976 and 1996. This group is more technologically connected while the other group is older and relies more on more convention types of media such as tv. Do you think that use and knowledge of the internet is just as important in office as it is on the campaign trail?

Obama’s Txt

Obama is using mass texting in his campaign. What is happening is that the Obama campaign is involving everyone with a mobile device in a process to build database of phone numbers to get out vote. A person sends txt to get out that they are an Obama supporter and thereby get info back-such as when they received a txt about Obama’s choice of running mate.Techpresident believes mobile technology is the best way to reach young supporters who are in touch with today’s technology. He relates it to pebbles falling on quite lake…starts with one  ring and gets wider and wider. Would you want to receive a text from the Obama campaign?

How much is Youtube worth to Obama and McCain?

Both candidates have videos on Youtube, created by others and their campaigns. Obama’s number of hours viewed of his videos is significantly high than McCains. And the fact that these are free video’s, no money spent on tv time, means that both candidates are saving a lot of money. The article also points out the difference between tv campaign ads and internet ones. Tv is more of a push, meaning you are forced to watch it. Internet is pull, because you choose to watch it. Do you feel that the candidates are cheating when it comes to internet techniques-being able to make free videos and bringing in ridiculous amounts of money?

Twitter

“From voter caging to misleading fliers to faulty machinery to the long waits exacerbated by poorly trained poll workers, it’s often a lack of knowing that jams up the process.” Twitter can help change all that by correcting the information imbalance of the elections. 1. Empowering self organized volunteers 2. Sharing patterns 3. Serving as mobile legal aid 4. Smart routing around resource gaps. 5. And guiding the watch dogs. Do you think twitter will be successful in its endevours of the election?

The Daily Me

Technology is making it easier to filter out what media we want to view. With the aid of the internet, you can mix and match your media-movies, music, news, sports, shopping, and socializing. Everyone has the freedom to view what they want and avoid what they don’t want to see. Its almost a complete personalization of communications. But this raises some questions. “How will the increasing power of private control affect democracy? How will the Internet, the new forms of television, and the explosion of communications options alter the capacity of citizens to govern themselves? What are the social preconditions for a well-functioning system of democratic deliberation, or for individual freedom itself?” First, people should be exposed to materials that they would not have chosen in advance. Unplanned, unanticipated encounters are central to democracy itself. Second, many or most citizens should have a range of common experiences. Without shared experiences, a heterogeneous society will have a much more difficult time in addressing social problems. While the idea of digital divide and a utopian communicative dream isn’t so perfect and could cause more problems then one would think. How do you feel about this article and what it has to say about democracy and media?

Web of Activism

This article talks about viral marketing. The author compares it to word of mouth saying that internet marketing is much faster and more effective. But then the article talks about how these online sites can be problematic when it comes to politics. The internet can be a great tool in politics if one knows how to use it. But because the internet is more of a pull media, meaning you have to seek out what you want to see rather than have it shoved in front of you, it may not work out right in politics. They can’t always expect people to seek out there campaign ads, videos, and support sites, and putting them up on sites like youtube, facebook, and blogs might not be effective. Do you think that online politics is a good or bad move?

1. Don’t expect to be rich @. Write what you want to write about in your own words 3. Fit blogging into your schedule 4. Keep a reliable rythm of posts for your readers 5. Always link baack to blogs whose idea you repeated 6. Put yourself out there by posting your link on other sites.

What is your favorite blog that you read on a regular basis?

Photo Flickr

Getty images finds Flickr photos to be of such good quality that they are reviewing all the photo’s and buying the one’s they like best. Flickr photo’s look more authentic because they are not taken by commercial photographers and advertisers like authentic. A program is underway in which all Flickr photo’s are eligible and those liked best will and participants will be ensured that their images have the proper releases to be licensed legally.

Do you think that Flickr is a good way to get photographers out there as a way to start your career?

Why Blog?

There is a man who started a blog called Stuff White People Like. Many many people like it and find it funny. Now they are planning on making a book. The article talks about how blogs being turned into books is an up and coming thing. But is also hit or miss. Some blog books make it big, others do not. White people will hopefully be a success because it’s site gets so many hits and the book will have mostly new material. Also, the blog is similar to a book already because it is written like a series of short essays. In reading this article I thought about in the past when books were written through magazines. Everytime a magazine came out another part of the story would be published with it. Blogging is similar expect it isn’t with a story, but arguments, thoughts, and topics.

What blog that you read would you like to see become a book?

Download this

Marie Digby made it look like she was an ametuer singer through her videos on youtube. In reality though, she has a record deal and it was Hollywood Records idea to get her name out into the pblic by making her sing cover songs. People search a famous singer’s song and she pops up in the results page with her cover. It is clever really, but also deceptive because she is still keeping up with this front. She still makes it seem like she was this nobody and youtube made her discoverable.

Do you think the fact that she made it seem like she was an ameteur helps or hurts her success as a star now that people know it wasn’t real?

Rebecca Blood

The article talks about the history of blogging. How it went from a few weblogs to hundreds upon hundreds. It also talks about how the definition of a blog has changed. Now it is a website that is updated frequently, with new material posted at the top of the page. A filter-style weblog provides many advantages to its readers. It reveals glimpses of an unimagined web to those who have no time to surf. Writing a weblong hepls you discover your own interests and value your own point of view more highly.

What topics would you like to discuss in your own weblog?

I think it is difficult to compare the two candidates of the same level. One reason being that McCain has a record of things he has and has not done in Washington while Obama is fairly inexperienced. Therefore some media compare their campaign promises based on what McCain has done and what Obama promises. How do you feel about this? Is it right? How can we level the playing field?