Just watched this video of titled The Crisis of Credit Visualized created by Jonathan Jarvis, a grad student at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. It's a great primer for what's been going on in the economy for the last few years.
Check it out:
The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Kind of Interesting Maybe?
When researching MySpace, I found this complete interview of Rupert Murdoch with Charlie Rose from August '07. It didn't seem to fit anywhere quite right in my look at MySpace, but I found it pretty fascinating nonetheless.
Check it out:
Check it out:
Identity, Globalization, and MySpace
It confounds the mind to think that Myspace has only been around for about four years and see that the site’s own Tom Anderson currently has 252,710,328 ‘friends.’ Obviously, something of significance has occurred, but what implications does the mass internet migration of several hundreds of millions of people really have? In presenting an altogether alternate version of reality for millions of users, MySpace creates a new paradigm of social interaction, one that has the potential to profoundly affect not only an individual user’s sense of self but also the transaction of ideas on a global scale.
“The Public Person”
MySpace is a vehicle for individuals to interact with the world. This is made possible only with the internet, since such an infrastructure was unavailable before it. At first, only nations had the ability to interact on the world platform, then companies were able to with the advent of industrialization. The change the internet has brought has also created a new paradigm. The world created by MySpace is completely and utterly centered on the individual. This egocentric shift puts key importance on the self while diminishing the value of the group. A person-centered world has many effects both subtle and far-reaching.
One of the most evident changes MySpace brought was the creation of the mass public individual. Before the internet, the only individuals with access to the public sphere were usually celebrities of sorts, be they writers or television personalities or musicians. MySpace made it so anyone could have their presence known on a relatively global scale. To the many users of Myspace, this is assumed to be a good thing. The site helps you keep track of your network of friends and essentially puts some semblance of a human face on the oft impersonal realm of the internet. There have been a few cases, though, when MySpace has enabled the internet to be a little too personal. The most extreme accounts concerning child predators and MySpace party crashers showcase the dangers possible when what is usually private enters the public sphere. In the grand scheme of MySpace, though, these incidents are few and far between representing the dark fringe of its use.
More so than being a place for the transfer of personal or “hard” information, MySpace is a virtual space out of which users craft an identity. This is most closely associated with the postmodernist conception of the self as one having “shifting, fragmented and multiple identities” (Barker 220). MySpace leads its users to create an identity for themselves that is not necessarily grounded in reality. This fact makes it a prime space for two particular types of usage: forming an idealized self or experimenting with wholly new conceptions of your identity . These usages bring up many of the fears individuals have in typical social interactions but these fears are played out all the time and in the private space. Media pressures to live up to a certain standard of beauty are pushed out across personal profiles. With this in mind, it is unsurprising that the common joke about “MySpace angles” has occurred, as many attempt to live up to an imaginary ideal of beauty. There have even been occurrences of cyberbullying over MySpace, the most public event involving the suicide of 13-year-old Megan Meier, after being harassed by a fictional boy she met on MySpace created by a classmate’s mother. An interesting tribute to the strength of these identities has been the advent of MyDeathSpace, a site devoted to archiving obituaries of MySpace’s users. Some will even go as far as creating a memorial MySpace area where friends and family can grieve online.
“Friends: Not so Human Interaction”
Stemming from the creation of new and fictional identities, the interaction in MySpace can also be given a substitutive nature. It seems, especially in how bands and comedians advertised themselves over the site (some not even being real artists), that ‘friends’ are more collected than made. Not a complete danger, but this can lead to ‘packrat’ like tendencies in finding and making friends. When friendships become collections, this can lead to the “devaluing of real friendships and the reduction of face-to-face interaction” (psyorg.com news via UCLA). The Law of Diminishing Returns applies here, the more friends you seem to add to your collection, the less each additional one adds value. And when someone has a multitude of friends, it becomes harder and harder to keep up a semblance of personal contact. In fact, MySpace’s use seems to lend itself to a streamlining of interaction that can sometimes become a replacement for face-to-face contact. Making life more efficient, MySpace makes it possible for one to post messages or bulletins to their entire friend base, making it unnecessary to contact friends individually. Taken to an extreme, this can lead to a fragmenting of relationships, leaving users to neglect building strong genuine relationships with others. This fact has been one of the fears of a technology and internet driven world, that people can have whole relationships separated from each other, lending to a deeper existential issue similar to the Marxist laborer-end product dilemma. The ambiguity these relationships create further adds to an individual’s fracturing identity.
Even though identities are created on MySpace, there is still afforded a certain degree of anonymity to members as it is not generally considered a wholly factual medium of interaction. It is this potential for anonymity that allows for situations like Megan Meier’s to happen. People like Clay Shirky, a journalist and professor at NYU, recognize the danger of anonymity on a public space like MySpace. What they see is popularly referred to as “John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory” which essentially states that normal people given complete anonymity and an audience are prone to allow their most negative characteristics to surface.
Baudrillard’s writing on the consumption of objects plays a huge role here. MySpace users objectify themselves as people into the signs represented by their MySpace profiles. Others are able to draw conclusions about the individuals on MySpace based solely on the sign they display on the internet. In this way, we create a complete abstraction from a fragment of a person. The fragment or sign created becomes an object of consumption, just as the masses consume the ideas and half-knowledge we receive about celebrities. And just like celebrities, the sign is believed to be the true representation of a person when such a thing is impossible. Through this interaction, people continually consume the idea of interaction with a real person never actually making contact with that person.
“A Cause for Capitalism: Advertising on MySpace”
An unavoidable caveat of MySpace usage comes from its reliance on advertising revenue. Though it remains to be free for any and all users, it is important to recognize that it has a bottom line like any business. This is where MySpace begins to have implications much broader than an individual and his/her group of friends.
MySpace has become an important advertising venue for several parties. One the one hand, the site has been of great value to corporations, especially those hoping to target the younger 18-49 demographic that would be more likely to use its services. This demographic, in particular men in this age group, are notoriously difficult for advertisers to reach.
For its members, MySpace offers a vaguely similar service. Opposed to paying to have an ad service, users actually use their own profiles and messaging to advertise. The most popular users of this advertising ability come from musicians who are able to host some of their material on their personal profile for any to see. The site has been utilized for users’ movies, comedy shows, and even to promote their humanitarian efforts. It is in this way that the entire site is actually a large advertising platform. Both companies and individuals use it to promote and advertise their interests, whatever they may be.
“Origins”
To understand further implications of Myspace, it is important to understand MySpace’s history. An article written by Trent Lapinski chronicles the history and effect MySpace has had on the digital world. MySpace launched in the summer of 2003 as a better version of another social networking site, Friendster, hoping to take its strongest attributes and gain a larger audience. This was the intention of eUniverse (later Intermix Media), a marketing company responsible many forms of internet spam before such a thing was illegal. Using their massive information base consisting of upwards to 50 million email addresses, MySpace became an instant hit garnering users fast and financed by advertising revenue.
In 2005, the now massively successful site was bought by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp for $580 million. Three years later, reports TechCrunch, MySpace is valued between $3 billion and $20 billion. When MySpace is viewed in the context of being a business segment of one of the world’s largest media companies, the issues affecting the world on a global scale come into play.
“Globalization and the Internet”
MySpace is not limited to solely the American consumer base, there are permutations of MySpace available in several nations across the globe. Implicit here is that MySpace, namely News Corp, has a potential influence on a mass of individuals the world over through its ubiquity as an online social network. Express or implied, this marks MySpace as both an influence of a world capitalist economy as well as a global information system.
“Potential for Manipulation”
As MySpace presents a similar way to interact with people across the globe, aided by the advertisements they host on their pages, it is easy to perceive a global homogenization of culture through its use. Barker explains that “the cultural homogenization thesis proposes that the globalization of consumer capitalism involves a loss of cultural diversity.” Though this is usually viewed in nationalistic terms and News Corp is considered an American company, this can really be seen as a homogenization created by News Corp itself. An interesting dichotomy forms from this, as fractured and ever-changing individuals are actually becoming more alike through the very form of the website. Of course, there are variations between the several MySpaces all over the world, but the essential form remains the same.
With the standardization of form and a singularity of leadership coming from News Corp, it is very easy for hegemony to occur. Inevitably, when one source has the power to shape the information the public reaches, though it may not be consciously, the inherent attitudes and beliefs of the gatekeepers will be given. At the least this comes in the form of further fracturing identities and the pushing for a vague acceptance of a capitalist economic model. This flow of cultural ideologies has been slowed in more strict countries, such as China which blocks certain subject matter from being discussed, usually centering on current political issues though. Continuance of these habits contribute to cultural imperialism through the digital domain. Barker describes cultural imperialism as "the domination of one culture by another and is widely associated with the leading role played in the global economy by multinational corporation of American origin" (Barker 370). It is in this sense that MySpace has undoubtedly had an affect, as English remains the second-most spoken language in the world and online. Schiller notes that "with the spread of English comes the ready adoption of Anglo-American ideas...and so the free flow of ideas in practice means the ascendance of US cultural products" (Barker 371).
More alarming is the idea of overt agenda setting. Though no exact examples have come up involving MySpace, there has been some cause for concern. At the World Economic Forum, Rupert Murdoch as much as said he has tried to push an agenda when it came to the Iraq War, supporting it though noting that public opinion has not kept that support.
So, is having 252,710,328 ‘friends’ ultimately a positive force in our world? While it may seem very innocuous to Americans in particular, there are still some very real concerns. Even without some kind of agenda at work, MySpace has successfully built a massive subscriber based on their own changing and idealized identities. These identities are unified and held together by MySpace for the purpose of perpetuating the capitalist economic machine through advertising. If anyone so desired, News Corp could use MySpace as a powerful tool for cultural imperialism. In a world where the current financial crisis begins in America and has the ability to send shock waves of disaster to economies worldwide, many wonder if these massive multinational financial firms are "too big to fail." The fear is that one company could wield so much power in the economies of the world that their collapse would cause complete devastation. Maybe the same can be thought of companies that hold a fragment of the identities comprising individuals across the entire earth. Not that the collapse of MySpace could cause cultural collapse per se, but perhaps it is a dangerous thing to leave so many of those identities under the watch of a single company. While it is up to the public to decide if this is truly any kind of threat, the potential for it gives at least some reason for pause.
Works Cited
Baudrillard, Jean. “The System of Objects.” 408-418.
Barker, Chris, and Paul Willis. Cultural Studies : Theory and Practice. Minneapolis: SAGE Publications, Limited, 2008.
"Crafting your image for your 1,000 friends on Facebook or MySpace." PhysOrg.com. 18 Nov. 2008. PhysOrg.com. 18 Dec. 2008.
C-Span. "Murdoch of Fox News Admits Manipulating the News for Agenda." YouTube. 15 Jan. 2008. YouTube, LLC. 18 Dec. 2008.
Doing, Will. "Homophobosphere." Advocate.com. 26 Feb. 2008. Regent Entertainment Media. 18 Dec. 2008.
Douglas, Nick. "MySpace: The Business of Spam 2.0 (Exhaustive Edition)." ValleyWag. 11 Sept. 2006. Gawker Media. 18 Dec. 2008.
Douglas, Nick. "MySpace: The Business of Spam 2.0 (Exhaustive Edition)." ValleyWag. 11 Sept. 2006. Gawker Media. 18 Dec. 2008.
Krahulik, Mike, and Jerry Holkins. "Green Blackboards (And Other Anomalies)." Penny Arcade. 19 Mar. 2004. Penny Arcade, Inc. 18 Dec. 2008
Lehre, David. "MySpace: The Movie." YouTube. 21 Feb. 2006. YouTube, LLC. 18 Dec. 2008.
MacMillan, Douglas. "Rupert's World." BusinessWeek.com. 3 May 2007. The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. 18 Dec. 2008.
MyDeathSpace. "Dr. Shirley Steinberg "Culturologist" on MyDeathSpace.com." YouTube. 19 Sept. 2008. YouTube, LLC. 18 Dec. 2008.
"MyDeathSpace." MyDeathSpace. 18 Dec. 2008
"Myspace 05-11-2007 nyc channel 7 news." YouTube. 11 May 2007. YouTube, LLC. 18 Dec. 2008.
"Myspace Predators/Abduction featuring Camfrog users." YouTube. 10 July 2007. YouTube, LLC. 18 Dec. 2008.
"MySpace." Wikipedia. 18 Dec. 2008. Wikipedia Foundation. 18 Dec. 2008.
"Party dangers of being host with the most." Smh.com.au. 19 Jan. 2008. Sydney Morning Herald. 18 Dec. 2008.
Pokin, Steve. "'My Space' hoax ends with suicide of Dardenne Prairie teen." Suburban Journals. 11 Nov. 2007. Lee Enterprises. 18 Dec. 2008.
Schonfeld, Eric. "Three Years Later, Buying MySpace Looks Like One Of Murdoch’s Smartest Bets." TechCrunch. 5 Oct. 2008. TechCrunch. 18 Dec. 2008
Simpson, Dave. "Hype and Glory." Guardian.co.uk. 20 June 2006. Guardian News and Media Limited. 18 Dec. 2008.
“The Public Person”
MySpace is a vehicle for individuals to interact with the world. This is made possible only with the internet, since such an infrastructure was unavailable before it. At first, only nations had the ability to interact on the world platform, then companies were able to with the advent of industrialization. The change the internet has brought has also created a new paradigm. The world created by MySpace is completely and utterly centered on the individual. This egocentric shift puts key importance on the self while diminishing the value of the group. A person-centered world has many effects both subtle and far-reaching.
One of the most evident changes MySpace brought was the creation of the mass public individual. Before the internet, the only individuals with access to the public sphere were usually celebrities of sorts, be they writers or television personalities or musicians. MySpace made it so anyone could have their presence known on a relatively global scale. To the many users of Myspace, this is assumed to be a good thing. The site helps you keep track of your network of friends and essentially puts some semblance of a human face on the oft impersonal realm of the internet. There have been a few cases, though, when MySpace has enabled the internet to be a little too personal. The most extreme accounts concerning child predators and MySpace party crashers showcase the dangers possible when what is usually private enters the public sphere. In the grand scheme of MySpace, though, these incidents are few and far between representing the dark fringe of its use.
More so than being a place for the transfer of personal or “hard” information, MySpace is a virtual space out of which users craft an identity. This is most closely associated with the postmodernist conception of the self as one having “shifting, fragmented and multiple identities” (Barker 220). MySpace leads its users to create an identity for themselves that is not necessarily grounded in reality. This fact makes it a prime space for two particular types of usage: forming an idealized self or experimenting with wholly new conceptions of your identity . These usages bring up many of the fears individuals have in typical social interactions but these fears are played out all the time and in the private space. Media pressures to live up to a certain standard of beauty are pushed out across personal profiles. With this in mind, it is unsurprising that the common joke about “MySpace angles” has occurred, as many attempt to live up to an imaginary ideal of beauty. There have even been occurrences of cyberbullying over MySpace, the most public event involving the suicide of 13-year-old Megan Meier, after being harassed by a fictional boy she met on MySpace created by a classmate’s mother. An interesting tribute to the strength of these identities has been the advent of MyDeathSpace, a site devoted to archiving obituaries of MySpace’s users. Some will even go as far as creating a memorial MySpace area where friends and family can grieve online.
“Friends: Not so Human Interaction”
Stemming from the creation of new and fictional identities, the interaction in MySpace can also be given a substitutive nature. It seems, especially in how bands and comedians advertised themselves over the site (some not even being real artists), that ‘friends’ are more collected than made. Not a complete danger, but this can lead to ‘packrat’ like tendencies in finding and making friends. When friendships become collections, this can lead to the “devaluing of real friendships and the reduction of face-to-face interaction” (psyorg.com news via UCLA). The Law of Diminishing Returns applies here, the more friends you seem to add to your collection, the less each additional one adds value. And when someone has a multitude of friends, it becomes harder and harder to keep up a semblance of personal contact. In fact, MySpace’s use seems to lend itself to a streamlining of interaction that can sometimes become a replacement for face-to-face contact. Making life more efficient, MySpace makes it possible for one to post messages or bulletins to their entire friend base, making it unnecessary to contact friends individually. Taken to an extreme, this can lead to a fragmenting of relationships, leaving users to neglect building strong genuine relationships with others. This fact has been one of the fears of a technology and internet driven world, that people can have whole relationships separated from each other, lending to a deeper existential issue similar to the Marxist laborer-end product dilemma. The ambiguity these relationships create further adds to an individual’s fracturing identity.
Even though identities are created on MySpace, there is still afforded a certain degree of anonymity to members as it is not generally considered a wholly factual medium of interaction. It is this potential for anonymity that allows for situations like Megan Meier’s to happen. People like Clay Shirky, a journalist and professor at NYU, recognize the danger of anonymity on a public space like MySpace. What they see is popularly referred to as “John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory” which essentially states that normal people given complete anonymity and an audience are prone to allow their most negative characteristics to surface.
Baudrillard’s writing on the consumption of objects plays a huge role here. MySpace users objectify themselves as people into the signs represented by their MySpace profiles. Others are able to draw conclusions about the individuals on MySpace based solely on the sign they display on the internet. In this way, we create a complete abstraction from a fragment of a person. The fragment or sign created becomes an object of consumption, just as the masses consume the ideas and half-knowledge we receive about celebrities. And just like celebrities, the sign is believed to be the true representation of a person when such a thing is impossible. Through this interaction, people continually consume the idea of interaction with a real person never actually making contact with that person.
“A Cause for Capitalism: Advertising on MySpace”
An unavoidable caveat of MySpace usage comes from its reliance on advertising revenue. Though it remains to be free for any and all users, it is important to recognize that it has a bottom line like any business. This is where MySpace begins to have implications much broader than an individual and his/her group of friends.
MySpace has become an important advertising venue for several parties. One the one hand, the site has been of great value to corporations, especially those hoping to target the younger 18-49 demographic that would be more likely to use its services. This demographic, in particular men in this age group, are notoriously difficult for advertisers to reach.
For its members, MySpace offers a vaguely similar service. Opposed to paying to have an ad service, users actually use their own profiles and messaging to advertise. The most popular users of this advertising ability come from musicians who are able to host some of their material on their personal profile for any to see. The site has been utilized for users’ movies, comedy shows, and even to promote their humanitarian efforts. It is in this way that the entire site is actually a large advertising platform. Both companies and individuals use it to promote and advertise their interests, whatever they may be.
“Origins”
To understand further implications of Myspace, it is important to understand MySpace’s history. An article written by Trent Lapinski chronicles the history and effect MySpace has had on the digital world. MySpace launched in the summer of 2003 as a better version of another social networking site, Friendster, hoping to take its strongest attributes and gain a larger audience. This was the intention of eUniverse (later Intermix Media), a marketing company responsible many forms of internet spam before such a thing was illegal. Using their massive information base consisting of upwards to 50 million email addresses, MySpace became an instant hit garnering users fast and financed by advertising revenue.
In 2005, the now massively successful site was bought by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp for $580 million. Three years later, reports TechCrunch, MySpace is valued between $3 billion and $20 billion. When MySpace is viewed in the context of being a business segment of one of the world’s largest media companies, the issues affecting the world on a global scale come into play.
“Globalization and the Internet”
MySpace is not limited to solely the American consumer base, there are permutations of MySpace available in several nations across the globe. Implicit here is that MySpace, namely News Corp, has a potential influence on a mass of individuals the world over through its ubiquity as an online social network. Express or implied, this marks MySpace as both an influence of a world capitalist economy as well as a global information system.
“Potential for Manipulation”
As MySpace presents a similar way to interact with people across the globe, aided by the advertisements they host on their pages, it is easy to perceive a global homogenization of culture through its use. Barker explains that “the cultural homogenization thesis proposes that the globalization of consumer capitalism involves a loss of cultural diversity.” Though this is usually viewed in nationalistic terms and News Corp is considered an American company, this can really be seen as a homogenization created by News Corp itself. An interesting dichotomy forms from this, as fractured and ever-changing individuals are actually becoming more alike through the very form of the website. Of course, there are variations between the several MySpaces all over the world, but the essential form remains the same.
With the standardization of form and a singularity of leadership coming from News Corp, it is very easy for hegemony to occur. Inevitably, when one source has the power to shape the information the public reaches, though it may not be consciously, the inherent attitudes and beliefs of the gatekeepers will be given. At the least this comes in the form of further fracturing identities and the pushing for a vague acceptance of a capitalist economic model. This flow of cultural ideologies has been slowed in more strict countries, such as China which blocks certain subject matter from being discussed, usually centering on current political issues though. Continuance of these habits contribute to cultural imperialism through the digital domain. Barker describes cultural imperialism as "the domination of one culture by another and is widely associated with the leading role played in the global economy by multinational corporation of American origin" (Barker 370). It is in this sense that MySpace has undoubtedly had an affect, as English remains the second-most spoken language in the world and online. Schiller notes that "with the spread of English comes the ready adoption of Anglo-American ideas...and so the free flow of ideas in practice means the ascendance of US cultural products" (Barker 371).
More alarming is the idea of overt agenda setting. Though no exact examples have come up involving MySpace, there has been some cause for concern. At the World Economic Forum, Rupert Murdoch as much as said he has tried to push an agenda when it came to the Iraq War, supporting it though noting that public opinion has not kept that support.
So, is having 252,710,328 ‘friends’ ultimately a positive force in our world? While it may seem very innocuous to Americans in particular, there are still some very real concerns. Even without some kind of agenda at work, MySpace has successfully built a massive subscriber based on their own changing and idealized identities. These identities are unified and held together by MySpace for the purpose of perpetuating the capitalist economic machine through advertising. If anyone so desired, News Corp could use MySpace as a powerful tool for cultural imperialism. In a world where the current financial crisis begins in America and has the ability to send shock waves of disaster to economies worldwide, many wonder if these massive multinational financial firms are "too big to fail." The fear is that one company could wield so much power in the economies of the world that their collapse would cause complete devastation. Maybe the same can be thought of companies that hold a fragment of the identities comprising individuals across the entire earth. Not that the collapse of MySpace could cause cultural collapse per se, but perhaps it is a dangerous thing to leave so many of those identities under the watch of a single company. While it is up to the public to decide if this is truly any kind of threat, the potential for it gives at least some reason for pause.
Works Cited
Baudrillard, Jean. “The System of Objects.” 408-418.
Barker, Chris, and Paul Willis. Cultural Studies : Theory and Practice. Minneapolis: SAGE Publications, Limited, 2008.
"Crafting your image for your 1,000 friends on Facebook or MySpace." PhysOrg.com. 18 Nov. 2008. PhysOrg.com. 18 Dec. 2008
C-Span. "Murdoch of Fox News Admits Manipulating the News for Agenda." YouTube. 15 Jan. 2008. YouTube, LLC. 18 Dec. 2008
Doing, Will. "Homophobosphere." Advocate.com. 26 Feb. 2008. Regent Entertainment Media. 18 Dec. 2008
Douglas, Nick. "MySpace: The Business of Spam 2.0 (Exhaustive Edition)." ValleyWag. 11 Sept. 2006. Gawker Media. 18 Dec. 2008
Douglas, Nick. "MySpace: The Business of Spam 2.0 (Exhaustive Edition)." ValleyWag. 11 Sept. 2006. Gawker Media. 18 Dec. 2008
Krahulik, Mike, and Jerry Holkins. "Green Blackboards (And Other Anomalies)." Penny Arcade. 19 Mar. 2004. Penny Arcade, Inc. 18 Dec. 2008
Lehre, David. "MySpace: The Movie." YouTube. 21 Feb. 2006. YouTube, LLC. 18 Dec. 2008
MacMillan, Douglas. "Rupert's World." BusinessWeek.com. 3 May 2007. The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. 18 Dec. 2008
MyDeathSpace. "Dr. Shirley Steinberg "Culturologist" on MyDeathSpace.com." YouTube. 19 Sept. 2008. YouTube, LLC. 18 Dec. 2008.
"MyDeathSpace." MyDeathSpace. 18 Dec. 2008
"Myspace 05-11-2007 nyc channel 7 news." YouTube. 11 May 2007. YouTube, LLC. 18 Dec. 2008
"Myspace Predators/Abduction featuring Camfrog users." YouTube. 10 July 2007. YouTube, LLC. 18 Dec. 2008
"MySpace." Wikipedia. 18 Dec. 2008. Wikipedia Foundation. 18 Dec. 2008
"Party dangers of being host with the most." Smh.com.au. 19 Jan. 2008. Sydney Morning Herald. 18 Dec. 2008
Pokin, Steve. "'My Space' hoax ends with suicide of Dardenne Prairie teen." Suburban Journals. 11 Nov. 2007. Lee Enterprises. 18 Dec. 2008
Schonfeld, Eric. "Three Years Later, Buying MySpace Looks Like One Of Murdoch’s Smartest Bets." TechCrunch. 5 Oct. 2008. TechCrunch. 18 Dec. 2008
Simpson, Dave. "Hype and Glory." Guardian.co.uk. 20 June 2006. Guardian News and Media Limited. 18 Dec. 2008
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
The Most Suprisingly Philosophical 2 1/2 Minutes
For anyone who hasn't heard of it, SLC punk is a film about a punk's experience living in Salt Lake City. Pretty interesting, pretty funny, and maybe just a little radical.
Check out the vid:
This clip features the voice-over of Stevo (Matthew Lillard) describing the reasons and pitfalls of fighting as someone who considers himself a punk. He ultimately finishes his argument with several contradictions to his beliefs with no answer to them. Stevo's issues with anarchy effectively defeat themselves and show how counterculture, even in its rebellion to convention, can eventually become popular convention, complete with its own set of politics and ideologies.
Bonus!
Because I enjoy the video so much and it fits so well into the same theme, but gives a different contextual point of argument, enjoy Mark Osborne's short "More."
More - Mark Osborne from Paxton Hansard on Vimeo.
Check out the vid:
This clip features the voice-over of Stevo (Matthew Lillard) describing the reasons and pitfalls of fighting as someone who considers himself a punk. He ultimately finishes his argument with several contradictions to his beliefs with no answer to them. Stevo's issues with anarchy effectively defeat themselves and show how counterculture, even in its rebellion to convention, can eventually become popular convention, complete with its own set of politics and ideologies.
Bonus!
Because I enjoy the video so much and it fits so well into the same theme, but gives a different contextual point of argument, enjoy Mark Osborne's short "More."
More - Mark Osborne from Paxton Hansard on Vimeo.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Rest In Peace
So it's finally happened. My very long distance friendship has been terminated.
I've been following the Mars Phoenix lander's exploits over the last few months. I've excitedly looked at its photography as if they were vacation pictures from a distant land and waited in anticipation to see what would be found when it sifted through Martian ice and soil. I promise it's not quite as weird as it sounds.
When I started using twitter (a social microblogging service) I wasn't sure what to do with it. Sure, I had a few friends who also used it, but it's not much of a surprise to see that someone's going to the grocery store moments after you get off the phone with them. One day I stumbled on to an article listing some of the most followed personalities on Twitter, one of them being the Mars Phoenix lander which NASA made to relay information from the lander to the public.
An incredible thing happened, this rover, really a very sophisticated RC car-science lab combination, began to seem very much like a person. It's unending optimism and journey for adventure and discovery inspired me. I, not a science person whatsoever, found myself excited to see what it found in the Martian soil and if it indicates a habitable environment for any life. And when I started hearing the news of the oncoming ice storm, I felt saddened. I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but NASA fooled me into caring for a machine. And I don't mind. RIP MarsPhoenix
If you get a chance, check out the twitter: @MarsPhoenix
And the Phoenix website
Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I'm half crazy all for the love of you. It won't be a stylish marriage, I can't afford a carriage. But you'll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two. --HAL
Update: MarPhoenix epitaphs article from Wired
Mars Phoenix Returns to the Ashes (via Wired)
I've been following the Mars Phoenix lander's exploits over the last few months. I've excitedly looked at its photography as if they were vacation pictures from a distant land and waited in anticipation to see what would be found when it sifted through Martian ice and soil. I promise it's not quite as weird as it sounds.
When I started using twitter (a social microblogging service) I wasn't sure what to do with it. Sure, I had a few friends who also used it, but it's not much of a surprise to see that someone's going to the grocery store moments after you get off the phone with them. One day I stumbled on to an article listing some of the most followed personalities on Twitter, one of them being the Mars Phoenix lander which NASA made to relay information from the lander to the public.
An incredible thing happened, this rover, really a very sophisticated RC car-science lab combination, began to seem very much like a person. It's unending optimism and journey for adventure and discovery inspired me. I, not a science person whatsoever, found myself excited to see what it found in the Martian soil and if it indicates a habitable environment for any life. And when I started hearing the news of the oncoming ice storm, I felt saddened. I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but NASA fooled me into caring for a machine. And I don't mind. RIP MarsPhoenix
If you get a chance, check out the twitter: @MarsPhoenix
And the Phoenix website
Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I'm half crazy all for the love of you. It won't be a stylish marriage, I can't afford a carriage. But you'll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two. --HAL
Update: MarPhoenix epitaphs article from Wired
Mars Phoenix Returns to the Ashes (via Wired)
Friday, November 7, 2008
Final Showing of M. Butterfly
A few weeks ago, I compared Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany's to Song from M. Butterfly. I have to admit this choice was prompted by seeing the show for the first time the weekend prior. While I was familiar with the work, I had never seen it before then and I was blown away.
The point being... This Saturday (tomorrow) is the last showing. M. Butterfly is playing at the small and intimate Chandler Studios at 7pm. Tickets are $25. I would urge anyone remotely intrigued to come.
THE PRODUCTION COMPANY WEBSITE
The point being... This Saturday (tomorrow) is the last showing. M. Butterfly is playing at the small and intimate Chandler Studios at 7pm. Tickets are $25. I would urge anyone remotely intrigued to come.
THE PRODUCTION COMPANY WEBSITE
Thursday, October 23, 2008
A Shifting Paradigm
Just for my personal filtering I want to go over a few things we touched on in Tuesday's session. I believe we started with a short chronology of the changing status of the workplace. The jobs of our parents and grandparents were usually full-time, often labor intensive work. Employees had many work benefits resulting from the efforts of labor unions. There is an image of the factory associated to working, as illustrated in Metropolis and Modern Times.
Moving to the trends of today, there has been a shift toward more part-time positions in the service industry. Several factors such as automation and outsourcing have decreased the labor base in the US. It does seem though, that these changes have only proved to make the elite class more so, as many jobs are eliminated or moved overseas. The paradigm of gratification has also shifted, as consumers use future performance and funds to decide what can be purchased now. Loans and credit cards encourage a buy now, pay later mindset that has repercussions.
The most recent financial downturn illustrates the impending danger of living beyond our means. Technology has also played a role, as the internet has allowed for information and transactions to occur without delay. As far as the market, it's not difficult to see why companies have such huge swings in price, as tons of individual investors floor the web and buy and trade on a whim. While the market has been used for decades as a forward looking indicator of our economy, much of that seems diluted now as it seems to become more of a popularity counter.
Where will things go from here? I've heard some interesting notions of future trends:
The Project-Oriented Workplace
Some experts believe that trends will shift toward jobs being offered on a project by project basis. There's a pretty interesting podcast on this subject and I'll try to find it again, but essentially this would be very similar to how film production has been operating for a while. There's very little job security aside from the personal network of contacts you draw from. There's also a higher importance given to personal marketing, as a workplace of freelancers compete for positions.
The Speed of Information and Globalization
As computer technologies improve and more people use and continually make content for the web, the amount of data available will grow exponentially. We'll also see increased globalization as technologies "flatten" the barriers that once stopped individuals from becoming multi-national participators. For good measure, here's an opposing argument against the world being flat.
A wonderful illustration of many of the changes now and coming in the context of our lives now is a slideshow entitled Shift Happens:
Moving to the trends of today, there has been a shift toward more part-time positions in the service industry. Several factors such as automation and outsourcing have decreased the labor base in the US. It does seem though, that these changes have only proved to make the elite class more so, as many jobs are eliminated or moved overseas. The paradigm of gratification has also shifted, as consumers use future performance and funds to decide what can be purchased now. Loans and credit cards encourage a buy now, pay later mindset that has repercussions.
The most recent financial downturn illustrates the impending danger of living beyond our means. Technology has also played a role, as the internet has allowed for information and transactions to occur without delay. As far as the market, it's not difficult to see why companies have such huge swings in price, as tons of individual investors floor the web and buy and trade on a whim. While the market has been used for decades as a forward looking indicator of our economy, much of that seems diluted now as it seems to become more of a popularity counter.
Where will things go from here? I've heard some interesting notions of future trends:
The Project-Oriented Workplace
Some experts believe that trends will shift toward jobs being offered on a project by project basis. There's a pretty interesting podcast on this subject and I'll try to find it again, but essentially this would be very similar to how film production has been operating for a while. There's very little job security aside from the personal network of contacts you draw from. There's also a higher importance given to personal marketing, as a workplace of freelancers compete for positions.
The Speed of Information and Globalization
As computer technologies improve and more people use and continually make content for the web, the amount of data available will grow exponentially. We'll also see increased globalization as technologies "flatten" the barriers that once stopped individuals from becoming multi-national participators. For good measure, here's an opposing argument against the world being flat.
A wonderful illustration of many of the changes now and coming in the context of our lives now is a slideshow entitled Shift Happens:
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