The Users

In this day and age of information and technology, it becomes easier and easier for the users of the web to add their own voice to the mix. All you need to express yourself is a computer and maybe a few programs on the side and then boom. It's up on the site of your choosing.

Because of this sweep of average internet user create material, the 'amateurish' style has started to creep into the entertainment industry.  A few that come to mind off the top of my head: The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activities, Cloverfield,  District 9... The list goes on. Additionally, we see the same style in TV shows and Ads.  I'm thinking of any reality TV show and the baby E Trade commercials. This very raw way of filming hasn't been a bad thing, in fact its been a refreshing change from the synthesized and smooth flash and bang of a lot of media.  I believe that this new genre of media style will only grow and improve as time goes on.  As new technology becomes available and younger generations take their place among the working world, this style will live on through those who made their own web material in their teens.

Personally, the social media sites that I'm interested in are those that create something like flickr and youtube.    However, my favorite is with out a doubt deviantART.com.  A social network for artists to post their work, receive feedback, even sell prints of their pieces.  More can be read here: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/217859
I have a few of my new digital works up there including the one I posted earlier on this blog.

Will Facebook last forever?
I don't know.  Its easy to say that no one does it as good as Facebook does at the moment, but most are catching up.  Slowly.  Yet, at the same time Face book is very smart.  They have integrated themselves across the web.  How many sites have you been to that have that little blue -F- at the bottom to post something you've seen onto facebook? So for the foreseeable future, Facebook is here to stay because it's everywhere. Who knows how long that will last.


Transparency?
In regards to social media, transparency is to social networks as Anti Communism is to the 1950's.  Seriously, it's seems crazy how everyone, including the president ("Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this Presidency" ~Barack Obama), is all for transparency.  People, who are already overloaded with information, are asking for more.  
Yes, I see the point.  If something isn't transparent, then the message is corrupted somehow.  However this can't be true.  People are selfish and I found the bit on different types of currency fascinating (http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/the-illusion-of-transparency-in-social-media.html).  


How important is transparency in the real world?
I believe that the value of open information is growing.  We as a society are becoming so used to having an endless amount of information at our fingertips.  It's an easy switch to wanting that in our non-digital lives. 

McLuhan Photoshop Final Post

Professor,
I posted my final photoshop project earlier and missed the progress post.  Really sorry, I just misunderstood.   We talked about it in class.

A Downpour of Apps

Hi,
Today I'm putting up my most recent work.  Much like the last post, this is related to McLuhan's writtings.  My piece, done in photoshop, is about how our modern society seems to be so obsessed with the concept of the app. 

The app is everything when a company designs a smartphone nowadays.  The app seems to be an easy way to make a phone do pretty much anything and companies, such as Apple, Android, and Blackberry, only make more and more for us. 
So the figure I drew on the bottom of the image is being crushed by a rain of apps coming down from the 3 big phone manufacturing companies.  I used the pencil and paintbrush tools for the clouds and figure and the distort picture editing tool to angle the apps to look like they were falling. I think it could be better but it's good enough and meets a deadline.  Hope you enjoy!

New Mediums, New Messages

This post relates to Marshal McLuhan's "the Medium is the Message."  This revolutionary work delved into how new innovations altered society and human thinking.  "The medium is the message." McLuhan explains that a 'medium' is any extension of ourselves (aka technology) and the 'message' is the affects of using it.  Using one of McLuhan's examples from the text, automation, the use of machines for manufacturing, eliminated jobs that were previously done by hand, but generated more jobs in that someone had to create the machines in the first place.

Now, I know, one would think that what was produced from these "extensions of ourselves" are the messages.  Unimportant.  I doesn't matter what is made, whether that be a car from a factory, a phone call from a cell, or a email from a computer. What does matter is how these mediums change how we relate to each other as a human beings.  

For homework, I was told to give three examples of mediums of my own. My line of thinking went toward mobile communication.  Think about it.  How many times do we refer to our cellphones in a single day? To some people, I know their life is tied to that little piece of plastic and metal in their pocket.  

So my first medium is...

 Text Messages 

While the content of this medium can be anything within the realm of written word, pics, videos, and audio, the actual message, by McLuhan's definition, has had a great impact. 

Texts, within the past decade, have become the fastest easiest way to reach someone no matter where they are, what they're doing or what time it is.  Because of texting, I believe a kind of social expectancy has arisen that you have your phone on you at all times, in case a friend or family member needs to reach you.  It's even considered rude if you don't answer with a certain amount of time. God forbid your phone dies...

My second Medium...

        Smart Phones

Content: Phone calls, texts, internet connectivity, etc... meaning more functions than I care to write. :)

The message of the smart phone is even bigger than texts.  The smart phone is the first attempt to combine a computer and phone together.  With internet connectivity coupled with phone calls and texts, there is no reason for you to ever be out of the loop with your friends; in addition, you have the mind boggling vast amount of information the internet readily supplies while you're no where near a computer.  I believe this leads to impatience when wanting to know something as well as becoming more easily distracted in our day to day lives.  It's so hard to stay in the 'here and now' when cyberspace is at our fingertips...

My third and final Medium... 

 Mobile Video Chat


With written messages so popular in text, emails, facebook, and instant messaging, face time with an actual person becomes almost rare in proportion to the amount of people we interact with in a day, digitally and otherwise.  Because of this, it's so easy to become impersonal, detached, in how we communicate. Safely hidden behind a computer screen or cell phone, interactions become incredibly limited.  Now, with Apple's new FaceTime on the iPhone 4, phone calls become actual face to face conversations.  This tech is new and hasn't come anywhere near close to reaching everyone yet, but could the message be that people become more personal in their conversations over the phone?  No way to hide when you're actually looking at the person you're talking with.